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Retirement Planning - Redefined
For Couples, Retirement Planning Is A Team Sport

Retirement Planning - Redefined

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 3, 2024 16:17


Are you and your spouse on the same page when it comes to what retirement is going to look like? If not, it's time to talk. Listen to this episode where we'll explore why it's so important for couples to have detailed conversations about their finances and retirement futures. We'll cover exactly what you need to discuss, and how to handle any disagreements.   Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com   Disclaimer: Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is an SEC Registered Investment Advisor. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. The topics and information discussed during this podcast are not intended to provide tax or legal advice. Investments involve risk, and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial advisor and/or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed on this podcast. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Insurance products and services are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed insurance agents.     Mark: Are you and your spouse on the same page when it comes to what retirement is going to look like? If not, it's time to talk. So check into this episode where we explore why it's important for couples to have detailed conversations about not only their finance, but their retirement futures and their dreams, this week on Retirement Planning, Redefined.   What's going on? Welcome into the podcast. Thanks for hanging out with John, Nick, and myself as we talk investing, finance and retirement. And we're going to go to couples therapy this week here on the podcast a little bit, or maybe we'll make it more manly, I guess, and call it a team sport.   However you want to look at it, you want to be on the same page with your spouse, with your loved one when it comes to retirement. I wanted to talk a little bit about that this week, guys, to see how many people generally are on the same page by the time they sit down with professionals like yourselves, financial professionals, or if it's happening a lot in real time, right in front of you. So we'll get into it this week.   What's going on, John? How are you bud?   John: Hey, I'm doing good. How are you?   Mark: Doing pretty good, hanging in there. Looking forward to chatting about this a little bit.   Nick, I hope you're well.   Nick: All good.   Mark: All good as usual. Well, that's very good.   Nick: Good start to the season for the bills, so I'm happy.   Mark: All right, well there you go.   Nick: It's early. It's early, but...   Mark: My lions, my lions are all right for right now. We'll see. I don't have a lot of hope. 40 years doesn't bode well when you have one good season in 40 years, but we'll see.   Nick: I get it, [inaudible 00:01:33].   Mark: All right, so let's dive into this couple stuff here. Why is it important for couples to work together on their retirement plan? I mean, you come in, somebody sits down for the first time with you guys for a consultation, and they're just not even remotely on the same page. That's got to be a bit more problematic, yeah?   Nick: Yeah. Not being remotely on the same page is tricky. I would almost say we probably, at least for John and I, we probably don't run into it too much where they're completely on separate pages.   Mark: Well, that's good.   Nick: I would say that there tend to be different ways that they think about money and kind of communicate about money. To be honest, that's one of the reasons that I would say that John and I like working together as a team with clients is because oftentimes one of us will kind of pick up more on the vibe that one of the people in the relationship is on, and then vice versa the other way around.   And so I'd say it's pretty rare that people in a couple tend to think about finances the same way. Even though they might end up having similar goals on the backside, they kind of attack it a little bit differently. And really it's, I think we joke sometimes, I think at this point we're 80% therapist, 20% financial advisors.   Mark: Right.   Nick: And really it's just trying to get people closer to the same page, and realizing that a lot of the things that they're talking about are pretty similar and they're just going about different ways to attack that.   Mark: Well, John, to expand on that, when somebody sits down for the first time, do you guys, if they haven't really discussed some of those big issues, is it important that they maybe try to knock some of that out before they come in to see an advisor? Or does it not really matter as long as it's getting done?   John: Yeah, I don't think it really matters. I think sometimes they're not even really sure exactly what to be knocking out prior. So to delay meeting with someone just to try to figure out, "Hey, are we on the same page?", I don't think makes sense. I think what tends to happen in our meetings is we'll ask some questions that kind of get them thinking a little differently. Like, "Oh, I didn't think about that." And ultimately, I think what we do when we do our planning, they tend to have some things come out and then they tend to kind of understand where the other one's coming from and that kind of lines up.   Mark: Yeah. Well, I mean, I talk to advisors all across the country and I certainly hear stories often about people saying, one person will say something and the spouse will go, "Since when? I never heard of that."   Nick: It definitely happens sometimes for sure. I would say almost that tends to be more on the lifestyle side of things.   Mark: Okay, all right.   Nick: Versus almost purely financial.   Mark: Like "I want to go scuba diving in every major ocean or something." And the other one's like, "What?"   Nick: Yeah, when the husband pulls, "I want to drive across country in the RV" card, that's where I've seen a lot of the sideway looks where... My parents are a good example, it's like my dad doesn't like to drive to Publix, but then he said he wanted to drive-   Mark: Across the nation.   Nick: ... In an RV, because that's going to be more relaxing. And I remind him that a thousand miles is a lot worse than five. So there's things like that absolutely. How to spend that time, or even just the extra time together. I've almost seen it where it tends to be a little bit of a smoother process for couples when one person retires first, and maybe there's a year or two lag, where they kind of have a little bit of a staggering on spending an extra 50 hours a week together, which can be a little bit of a shock.   Mark: Sure, yeah, it's a totally different animal. Yeah.   Nick: Yeah, a totally different ballgame. So I would say from at least my experience with clients, it tends to be more in the lifestyle side of things. What I've seen most often with couples are it's rare that it's a 50/50 input on finances.   A lot of times I'll see it where one person might be a little bit more strategic on expenses, and then the other one might be a little bit more focused on the actual investments, things like that. But they end up being kind of having the same goal or outlook, but the lifestyle and how they're going to spend their time in retirement and how much they're willing to spend to do those sorts of things tends to be a little bit different.   Mark: All right, John, well let me throw this one your way. So my wife and I are not usually on the same page when it comes to certain different things in a relationship, like most couples. And when it comes to risk, we are completely different.   So how can couples navigate if they are in different places risk-wise? Because let's be honest, I mean the statistics are what they are. Typically, us fellas tend to want to take a little bit more risk, and a lot of times the ladies tend to want to play it a little safer. Not always, but that's kind of the average.   So how do you guys handle that and what's some advice there?   John: So we'll do risk tolerances for each client when that comes up. And we we'll find that someone, again, might be more aggressive than the other, so maybe their accounts are invested, maybe a moderate where someone else's, the spouse might be invested conservative. So that, having separate accounts makes that a little bit easier.   It becomes more difficult when it's the, a joint account. And what we'll do at that standpoint is we kind of go back to the plan. So a lot of the times it's what type of rate of return are we trying to achieve from the planning standpoint. We kind of have conversations, and we'll try to blend the two of them together.   I'd say for the most part, I don't want to speak for Nick, but he could jump in, have never really had this come up as an issue. It's kind of like, "Hey, this is how you want to do it. This is how this other person wants to do it." And for the most part, the spouses are okay with it as long as they're achieving their goals.   Mark: Interesting.   Nick: For the clients that tend to be, for the ones that have a little bit more of that risk appetite, we found through conversation that they have the risk appetite when things are good.   Mark: Sure. Everybody likes it when it's up, right?   Nick: Yeah, for sure. And not necessarily when things are bad. And so we're big fans of almost having, for lack of a better term, like a petty cash drawer or just kind of a smaller investment account that will carve out. So when there are clients that want to have that higher risk appetite, want to take opportunities to really kind of get some big upside.   Mark: So that's your speculative casino type money, right?   Nick: Yep.   Mark: If you will.   Nick: Yup, yup, exactly. And really too, because I would say the majority of our clients are pretty close to retirement or in retirement, they tend to, at least in our experience, be a little bit over that phase with any sort of larger amounts of money. Oftentimes they come to us and they're like, "All right, we had our fun and we're ready to be a little bit more in line on the risk side of things with the investment decisions that we're making." And oftentimes when we have that conversation of, "Hey, if you get an itch, let's have this off to the side and it'll help you make better decisions with the rest of the money." That tends to be kind of a winner for everybody.   John: No, I was going to say, yeah, that's kind of what we reference sometimes as a cave, this is kind of your play account where you want to buy some individual stocks and things like that, where the fluctuation won't really make a big impact overall on your plan. So as Nick mentioned, that kind of satisfies some of the very aggressive clients.   Mark: Okay. Well, so you mentioned the fact a second ago that a lot of your clients tend to be nearing or into retirement, and with a different demographic comes different feelings and mindsets about money.   So with that in mind, we tend to find that, which is really weird if you think about it this way, a lot of times you tend to find that in couples, going through the life, building of the life, raising the children, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, typically the wife tends to budget the money, handle the money, so on and so forth. She's doing all that stuff in the house. But when it comes to retirement, it tends to seem like us guys tend to take the lead there.   Is it okay for one person to handle all the financial matters? Or do you guys really prefer that both people have a good understanding, even if it's not your bag, do you still prefer them to have a general, I don't know, 10,000 foot view of what's going on?   Nick: Yes. I would say too, more and more that, again, from our experience, and maybe it's our clientele where you've got a lot of households that are both people work, both have retirement accounts, and although they may make some differences from the perspective of risk in their portfolios and stuff like that, it tends to be a collaborative effort. Again, I would say we have, anytime we do planning, we have clients fill out an expense worksheet. It's rare that they both fill it out. It's usually one of the two that are filling out the expense worksheet.   And so it does tend to get kind of broken up a little bit from who focuses on what. But it's definitely important that they're both on the same page and have a good grasp and an understanding. And I would say too is the easiest example of that, and the people that work with us kind of know this is there's one report that we go over with clients, it's like a cashflow. It's in detail, wall of numbers, lots of columns, can be kind of intense. And then there's an area called the decision center, which takes all those columns and it puts it into kind of a graph format and it's more interactive.   And I think that's kind of almost the best illustration of the different sides of the brain where one person in the couple sometimes likes the details and likes the column report and they like to, because they can go in on their client side of the portal and go through that and re-review it. And the other one is, "Hey, let's zoom out. Give me the broader picture. Are we good? Are we not good? Give me an idea of a couple of decisions that we need to make moving forward and let's go from there."   Mark: And there's no right or wrong to either one, it's just what is your personal appetite? But I think neither, like if both of you don't have a good understanding, John, that's a recipe for trouble later on too.   John: Yeah, no, I'd agree with that. It's important for both to at least have an idea of what's happening and working as a team, whether one takes a lead and one takes a backseat, we encourage everyone to have a general understanding. Because this past year has been interesting where I've had some clients have some health issues, pass away. And you got to make sure that both pistons are aware of what's happening because you don't want that situation where it's like, "Hey, I don't know where anything is. What do I do?" So [inaudible 00:11:43].   Mark: That's exactly the point, right? Yeah, that's the worst case scenario. And it often, it happens more times than people realize. So you both want to have a decent understanding, even if it's not your thing. And again, no gender roles there. It tends to be the case, but I mean, my wife is way smarter than I am, and she actually deals with, she's very analytical and deals with money and numbers all the time for work. And it's one of those things where when it comes to our retirement, she's like, "I don't want to deal with it. So you deal with it."   And it could just be as simple as, "I deal with numbers all the time, I don't want to deal with it yet another way." So no matter what it is, you find a way to make it work, but not having a decent understanding of what you have, and why you have it and who to turn to in the event of a catastrophe, is a recipe for disaster. So obviously if you're working with a financial professional and a team like the guys at PFG Private Wealth, then at least you also have that resource to turn to when something does happen like John just mentioned.   So one final question here, I'll let you both kind of jump in and chime in a little bit here. What final piece of advice would you give to couples who are maybe just beginning their retirement planning journey, when it comes to making sure that they both are feeling comfortable?   Nick: I think it depends on what phase they are in life, but in general, I think it's hard to screw it up long-term, if you're saving money. So even if you are very conservatively saving the money and you're not getting much return on your money, that kind of instills an ingrained habit of saving money and being used to living on the rest. That will lead you to better habits and better outcomes.   You can always take the next step in, whether it's working with an advisor, whether it's doing research by yourself and then making better and smarter decisions on how you invest that money that you saved. That tends to be kind of the easier part. But the behavior of saving that money first and then going from there, is the number one thing, I think that's important.   Mark: Okay. That's his advice there. What do you about you, John, what do you think?   John: Yeah, it's really similar. You can never go wrong saving. And it's really just kind of the words that just get started. Just get started saving, just get started planning, get started with any of it. Whether you have kids, you want to make sure that estate documents are in place, insurances are in place.   So depending on what phase, it's just a matter of getting started with the overall planning, and saving is definitely where you want to be the forefront. Because like Nick said, you can't go wrong. You're never going to be mad looking back saying, "Man, I saved way too much for retirement."   Mark: Right, exactly. Taking the forward steps and doing something to quote the rush song, right? If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. So don't make that choice to do nothing. Do something for yourself and your future self and get started today. Make sure that you are planning for retirement and having conversations with your loved ones so that you guys are on the same page.   And of course, as always, if you need some help, make sure that you get onto the calendar with qualified professionals like the team at PFG Private Wealth. You can find them online at pfgprivatewealth.com. That's pfgprivatewealth.com to get yourself some time on the calendar to sit down with John and Nick and get started today.   This has been Retirement Planning, Redefined. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on whatever major podcasting platform app you like to use. They're on all of them. So you can just type in Retirement Planning, Redefined in the search box, or just go to pfgprivatewealth.com.   We'll sign off for this week. For John and Nick, I'm your host Mark, and we'll catch you next time.

#DoorGrowShow - Property Management Growth
DGS 263: PM Software to Collect Payments, Advertise Properties, and Screen Potential Tenants

#DoorGrowShow - Property Management Growth

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 29, 2024 21:32


It's been 6 years since we've had TenantCloud join us on the podcast, and a lot has changed since then! In today's episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull welcomes Mark DeHaan from TenantCloud to talk about how it can help property managers collect payments, advertise properties, and screen potential tenants. You'll Learn [03:03] TenantCloud update!  [06:46] How does TenantCloud compare? [09:34] TenantCloud integrations  [12:20] Scaling with your software  [15:56] Starting strong with Rentler  Tweetables “A lot of times when you get into rental real estate… you log into a property management system and you're like, "holy smokes, this is so overwhelming like I can't figure this out.” “A lot of property managers have all of these different tools. They kind of build their own Swiss army knife or stack of different tools and software.” “A lot of property managers have a challenge with financials and accounting.” “We love the rental real estate industry and helping people grow and make passive income and that's what we're all about.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Mark: A lot of times when you log into a property management system and you're like, "holy smokes, this is so overwhelming, like I can't figure this out." [00:00:07] And that's, I think the differentiator that we tried to solve.   [00:00:11] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:29] DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners, and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market and help the best property management entrepreneurs win I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. [00:01:10] Now, let's get into the show. And my guest today is Mark DeHaan of TenantCloud. So Mark, welcome to the show. Good to have you.  [00:01:19] Mark: Yeah. Thanks Jason. Nice to meet you. Appreciate it.  [00:01:22] Jason: So we haven't had TenantCloud on the show for like six years. Back then, Joe Edgar was CEO. I had to look it up because I'm like, "I know, that they've been on the show before." [00:01:32] So I'm guessing a little bit's changed since then. So why don't we start by getting into a little bit about Mark. Tell us, tell everybody like, who are you and how'd you get into your entrepreneurial journey and then what led you to being at TenantCloud?  [00:01:46] Mark: Yeah, great. Yeah. So I'm based here just outside of Salt Lake city, Utah. [00:01:50] And I was a co founder of Rentler. And we partnered with TenantCloud, merged with them about five years ago with Joe. And when he exited, I ended up taking over as a CEO and running both Rentler and TenantCloud. And it's been a big journey by then, but yeah, my history was rental real estate. [00:02:13] And being an entrepreneur and really sacrificing and so forth. And it's been really exciting, and I love your audience because I think they can relate to, you know, being an entrepreneur and trying to grow in the real estate business.  [00:02:25] Jason: So for sure. I'm looking up Rentler right now, cause I don't know what it is. [00:02:30] What's Rentler? [00:02:31] Mark: So Rentler primarily focuses on listings and filling vacancies for landlords, small mom and pop landlords. Yeah. It does some payments and screenings and a few other tools and syndicates out your leads. And then TenantCloud is a lot more robust. It does the accounting, the maintenance, a ton of things that you can track with service professionals and your owners and reporting. [00:02:53] And so they came, they come together really nicely. And we just try to really focus on. landlords and property managers and using technology to make their lives easier.  [00:03:03] Jason: Got it. So what's what's been going on at TenantCloud since in the last six years? Like what what are you guys doing lately? [00:03:12] And you know, why should people use TenantCloud? Like, let's get into it.  [00:03:17] Mark: Yeah. So the last bit we've been growing tremendously. We're processing over a billion dollars in rent payments a year. Well over that. And TenantCloud really as its core is to help the rental life cycle and help owners, service professionals, tenants, and landlords really come together and leverage technology to run the business and the way we built it was with that in mind to really make things seamless and easy. And you can pay your rent with, you know, ACH, credit, debit, Apple Pay, Google Pay. We have a lot of things that we're working on to just make life easier there. We do screenings, have a ton of different bundles, options for you to do screenings and to protect your investment. And that's been really good to help people with income verification and criminal and background checks and of that nature. [00:04:11] Yeah and we do a lot of accounting. We will even file your Schedule E for you automatically. So the cool thing about TenantCloud is you don't have to have a degree in accounting. You can really log into our software and we're, we'll lead you along that process. And we'll do a lot of the tax reporting team management and you know...  [00:04:33] Jason: Can you explain what a schedule E is for those that might not be familiar with it. [00:04:38] Mark: Yeah, absolutely. So schedule E is you know, to report income or loss on your rental real estate. And that's one thing that you'll have to do. You'll get a 1040 form and, you know, the government will want you to file that. And sometimes that can be tough to do, but with our system we will track all of your expenses and all your income and so forth and help you file that form on your behalf.  [00:05:05] Jason: So for property managers, they're doing this third party for owners, this then becomes a resource for the owners that they're managing properties for. It will do it for them as well? [00:05:15] Mark: Yes, and we do have like an owner portal. So what's great is you can have your owners log in instead of having that back and forth. [00:05:24] We give them a login where they can have some view access to see their portfolio as well. So it just makes it easy for those property managers to work with their owners.  [00:05:35] Jason: Got it. Okay. Now what's different between a property manager using this tool or like owners just going direct and getting TenantCloud and bypassing the property manager? [00:05:46] Mark: Well, yeah, I mean, some owners can do that, but I mean, then they have to deal with a lot of the heavy lifting with the maintenance and managing all the units. And so with the property manager using our system, we make it easy for the owners to have access and you can send your distributions to them and so forth. [00:06:05] But it really comes down to the ease of use and being able to manage all your leads. Manage, you know, all your contracts, all your communications with your tenants and with it, it's such a affordable option. Like our lowest plan is 17 bucks a month and we don't do a lot of unit restrictions like other competitors where you can add a bunch of units on the system. And really make it affordable for you as a property manager. So, yeah, hopefully that answers your question there.  [00:06:36] Jason: Got it. Okay. So you would say TenantCloud's probably a lot more affordable than some of the competition that exists for property managers out there. So how would you say TenantCloud kind of compares to some of the big names in the industry like Appfolio, Propertyware, there's a bunch of these You know, and then I know Bodia just came out with RentVine and then Rent Manager, you know, these tools. So we've got clients using all these different tools. [00:07:03] So how does TenantCloud sort of fit into the mix and how do you kind of stand out among all these different tools because there's so many of them now.  [00:07:11] Mark: Yeah. So we started with the end user in mind where it was more of a business to consumer platform where you didn't have to do a heavy integration and you could just quickly create an account and more of a self service where it would be really intuitive. [00:07:28] If you were, you know, if you had one property up to, you know, 50 units, you could easily log in. And it was way more affordable than those bigger players. They have monthly minimums, and you'd have to spend months to integrate your stuff. Everything we built was to make it so, boom, within a couple days, you could get set up, and we would help you add your accounts, add your units, add your tenants data. And so we really tried to make it cutting edge where we used a lot of the technology to help you get set up a lot quicker. And so one thing that people really, they come over to us is. You know, they're like, "man, your platform is a lot easier to use because of the way you built it. It's just really quick to get it. I don't have to hire an accountant or get an implementation manager to help me use your software" because a lot of times when you get into rental real estate, you're an entrepreneur or you have a day job and then you log into a property management system and you're like, "holy smokes, this is so overwhelming, like I can't figure this out." [00:08:35] And that's, I think the differentiator that we tried to solve is that you don't have to have a professional help you use our software. You can just go ahead and get started and it will help you from day one.  [00:08:46] Jason: So basically, you're kind of one of your unique differentiators is since you started with the consumer in mind, instead of maybe a property manager in mind, you focus really on maybe the tenant and the property owner's experience being you know, really great, which once you started focusing on property managers, probably made a lot easier for the property managers. They're probably getting less questions. Maybe the reports are a little more clear. It's a little bit easier for them to figure out what they need, which has been a frustration. I've heard from a lot of software, you know, the owners find it confusing. They find their statements confusing. The tenants are like feeling things are confusing. Now a lot of property managers have all of these different tools. They kind of build their own Swiss army knife or stack of different tools and software. [00:09:34] How are integrations with TenantCloud or which things do you guys do really well that they might not need? You know, some of our clients might, for example, be using TenantTurner, even though they use Appfolio in order to get properties leased out and, or they might be, or to do self showings, or they might be using we've got a lot of clients getting going on this new AI maintenance coordinator called Vendoroo, or in the past, they might use PropertyMeld, you know, for maintenance coordination. [00:10:01] So they're stacking all these different tools because usually there's better stuff than what the property management software has internally. How does TenantCloud sort of go with this?  [00:10:11] Mark: Yeah, that's a great question. So TenantTurner is an awesome company and we have an integration with them. [00:10:18] Jason: Okay.  [00:10:18] Mark: And so we feel like we're a platform and we're doing more and more integrations with companies like you mentioned with maintenance. There's others out there that solve that problem. I mean, we have a maintenance portal, but we love to integrate other tools and make it so it's seamless and easy that you can do a show in coordination like a TenantTurner and so forth. [00:10:39] And so, yeah, that's a big thing for our users and we love to work nicely with other companies that will help benefit them.  [00:10:47] Jason: Great. So, TenantCloud has an open API that some of these companies can connect with? Yeah. Okay. Awesome.  [00:10:54] Mark: Absolutely. I mean, we have a partnerships team and they can reach out and we can, you know, when our users request certain things, we say, you know, that makes sense. [00:11:04] So absolutely. We love that.  [00:11:06] Jason: Is there a scenario or a situation in which you think. TenantCloud' s maybe not a good fit for certain property managers or certain types of management.  [00:11:18] Mark: Yeah, that is sometimes like multifamily or you're getting really a ton of units. You're going to probably need something a little bit more robust. [00:11:27] Now, we just launched reconciliation and some other features more reporting tools to help as we move up market because primarily we were focused on ones that, you know, had under 10 units and then we started growing. Now we have people that use us that have a few hundred doors and they love it. [00:11:46] They love the ease of use. They love the cost. They love that it's not restrictive, but some of that trade off is like, "Hey, you don't have some of these other customizations that you know, maybe a Yardi or some of these bigger players have." And so I would say if that's the case, you know, you'd have to wait a little bit as we continue to add more of those robust features for the upmarket bigger players. [00:12:08] Jason: It sounds like TenantCloud is a great place for a property manager. And it's small to start, especially when they're getting pushed back from places like Appfolio or Buildium, saying you have to have a 200 door minimum stuff like this. Is TenantCloud something that can scale with them up to maybe a thousand doors? Are they going to run into some capacity issue or some challenges if they continue? Because switching software is hard.  [00:12:31] Mark: Yeah, it is. And we do have some that have a thousand doors and some bigger ones and they love it. And I think it's just the way you approach your business and how you can adapt. [00:12:41] I mean, you'd save a ton of money and the way that every property manager is different. You know, I wish there was a standard in how accounting worked in the industry and how things did with money in, money out and so forth. But so sometimes people say, "well, I'm just so used to how these older systems work," and that's fine. [00:12:59] But if you want to be more innovative and more customer facing and adopt, you know, the latest technologies on how payments are being transferred and so forth, then I think you'll fit in really good, you know, with what we have going on.  [00:13:13] Jason: Got it. Yeah. I know that's been an industry issue for a long time is they're not being sort of a standard in accounting and NARPM then released the NARPM sort of chart of accounts and the NARPM accounting standard that hopefully is starting to get people a little more on the same page. [00:13:30] It has kind of been an adoption challenge, I think, and some people are starting to get going on it. And then there's definitely some businesses that have been capitalizing on it financially to like help businesses get that dialed in and get their QuickBooks like mapped out. Related to that, a lot of property managers have a challenge with financials and accounting. [00:13:51] They've got the accounting they've got to do for the client, right? Which is usually done by their property management software. But then there's their internal accounting, their own books. And some of them try to run that through their software, which I think is a little crazy. Or some of them tried, like, will have QuickBooks or something else. [00:14:07] I've noticed this it is a common problem in the industry is like people having this accounting mess and not being focused on it. Some outsource it and I've had clients come to me that say they found out their bookkeeper or accountant wasn't doing things right for like three years. And then one of my clients was suing their accountant and won and like, but it's still a mess that has to be cleaned up. [00:14:31] And so, maybe you could touch on TenantCloud. I know you help with the owners and their properties and the accounting. I'm sure. How do they help with their business accounting? Is there any connection to like maybe quickBooks, or is this something that the tool helps with or how would this work? [00:14:50] Mark: Yeah. So we have an integration with QuickBooks and that helps. And then everything we do with the reporting and with all your financials, we just try to make it really easy between the owners and the property managers so that, you know, it's seamless, but I do feel like, you know, QuickBooks could help. [00:15:09] And, you know, primarily we're trying to do property management software. But you know, personal finance is a big part of that. We just are launching a cool product with our banking partner where we can now loan some capital to folks that want to grow some doors. And so with our payment system and our banking partner, people can quickly get a loan directly through our system and they could use it to then go buy their next rental property. So we're looking at more innovative ways. That just kind of reminded me on the personal finance, like, "Hey, I really want to go buy this next door, but I don't have some money." We can help loan that money to help you grow your business. [00:15:51] And that's going to be coming out here at the end of this year.  [00:15:54] Jason: Cool. Very cool. So how does how does this relationship with Rentler and TenantCloud benefit, maybe property managers that are looking to use your software. And this, your shirt has on it. So then you've got this relationship going there. [00:16:08] So how did these kind of work together? I'm curious.  [00:16:11] Mark: Yeah. So Rentler doesn't have a subscription. It's free to use. And so if you're just like one unit. And you're just barely getting in. Let's say you're moving and you just need to rent out your basement apartment or you just have one property, you can use our payment system, do screenings and you can list your property, syndicate, get your leads, fill vacancies. And it's like super light. I mean, it would probably be very similar to like a Cozy back in the day, or like a Zillow Rent Manager just something there to just boom, do that. And then as you graduate, as you go, "Hey, I really want to do more accounting or actually property management software." [00:16:51] Then you graduate up to TenantCloud and when you list with TenantCloud, it will post on Rentler, but Rentler was primarily, you know, a listings and filling vacancy. So that's how that works.  [00:17:02] Jason: Is there an easy upgrade path from Rentler to TenantCloud or?  [00:17:06] Mark: Absolutely. Yeah, there is. [00:17:07] Yeah, we have a fantastic support system. Pretty much 24 seven support. We have chat, we have people you can call and we'll help you. Most all of our support have been in property management and ran their own property management companies. And so they're really helpful to. to guide you and what you need for your business. [00:17:26] Jason: Got it. Okay. Very cool. So, well, this is very helpful. Anything else that people should know about TenantCloud if they're working on making this decision right now between all these different software that exist out there?  [00:17:38] Mark: Yeah, I'd say we have a free trial and give us a shot and there's a lot of great things coming down the pipe. [00:17:44] So just ask our team, you know, Hey, if we don't have something that we probably will have it coming soon, but yeah, give us a go and you'll love it and we'll make your life a lot easier.  [00:17:56] Jason: Very cool. Awesome. Well, Mark, how can people find out more about TenantCloud? How can they get in touch with y'all? [00:18:04] Mark: Yeah, they can log on TenantCloud. com. We do a webinar every Thursday and they can learn about our system. And they can sign up for that on our website, TenantCloud. com. They can reach out. We have a great sales team, account management team that will give you a demo. You know, We'll do a consult free consultation on your business and help you out with that. [00:18:25] So we're happy to help we love the rental real estate industry and helping people grow and make passive income and that's what we're all about.  [00:18:34] Jason: Awesome mark. Thanks for coming on the DoorGrow show giving us an update on TenantCloud and everybody check them out at TenantCloud. com. Thanks for coming, Mark. [00:18:43] Mark: All right. Thank you, Jason. Appreciate it.  [00:18:45] Jason: You bet. All right. So if you are a property management entrepreneur and you are either struggling to get leads or to add doors to your property management business, reach out to DoorGrow. We might be able to help you and we've been able to help lots of our clients add hundreds of doors to their portfolios to help them scale their businesses. [00:19:09] And we would love to see if we might be a fit for you to help you scale as well. So check us out at doorgrow.Com. And if you are a fan of the podcast or you follow us on YouTube. Make sure to like, and subscribe and make sure you're plugged in and make sure to join our free Facebook community by going to DoorGrow club. com. If you go to doorgrowclub.Com, it will redirect you to our Facebook group so that you can join. Make sure you answer the questions clearly because we're really careful about who we let in. We reject 60 to 70 percent of the people that apply to join that group every month. It's for property management, entrepreneurs, property management business owners. [00:19:54] That includes those of you that are starting a property management business, just let us know that in the questions. So answer the questions. Join that and make sure you're asking questions inside the group and you'll by joining the group. We will also send you a series of free gifts to benefit you including a fee bible and some other resources that I think would be really useful to your business. [00:20:18] And you can also then schedule a call with our team. So check that out doorgrowclub.com. Until next time, everybody. To our mutual growth. Have an awesome week. Bye everyone [00:20:28] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:20:54] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism
Religion and Politics

THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 25, 2023 47:28


Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com. An Atheopagan Declaration of Policy Values (2022): https://theapsocietyorg.files.wordpress.com/2022/03/an-atheopagan-declaration-of-policy-values-2022.final_.pdf S4E30 TRANSCRIPT:   Yucca: Welcome back to The Wonder, Science Based Paganism. I'm one of your hosts, Yucca. Mark: And I'm the other one, Mark. Yucca: And today, we're talking about religion and politics. Mark: Yes, but don't turn it off. Yucca: Yes, we were saying, what should we call this? What should we call this? But no, this is, this is important. This is what we're going to talk about. And there's a lot to say here. But today it was inspired because, Mark, you just got back from a trip, which you got to do some pretty cool politicking. Mark: Yes I went to Washington, D. C. as a part of a fly in delegation by the Conservation Alliance, and I'll tell some of those stories later advocating for protections for public lands, including the designation of some new national monuments. So, I, as I said, I'll, I'll talk about that stuff later but yeah, just got back from a lobby trip, Yucca: Yeah. So one of the things that... It is very common to hear in pagan circles, and I think probably not just pagan circles, but a lot of new age things and kind of, mini counterculture sorts of groups, is, you know, don't bring politics. into this, right? Don't, don't bring politics into my religion. Don't, you know, we, we aren't going to talk about that. We're not going to be this is separate, right? Let's be, let's be off in our realm or our magical experience and leave that other stuff out. Mark: right? And there is so much to be said about that. I mean, it has a nexus with toxic positivity. This idea that, you know, we should only talk about happy, shiny stuff, and that, you know, we're going to have this nice, warm, glowy, serotonin oxytocin experience by doing our, our spirituality, and we're just not going to engage with anything that doesn't stimulate that. It has to do with the toxicity that we see in the societies around us where the mainstream religions are engaging with public policy and they're doing it for really destructive and antisocial reasons. And so that becomes sort of the poster child for why you wouldn't want you to have politics in your spiritual space. But a lot of it, in my opinion, is simply... We don't want to think about any of those issues because they might bring us down. Yucca: hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. But, and there's just so much to say because there's, it's going to depend on every different kind of situation but I think that if we think about the values that We often claim to have that we value the earth, that we think the earth is sacred. You know, we may have different interpretations on, you know, whether divinity is involved with that or not, but hey, we're agreeing, we think that the earth is important, we're agreeing about believing that love and freedom and all of these things are important, then I think that... If we really believe that, then we have a responsibility to those things. Mark: Yes, yes, we it's because they won't happen by themselves. You know, there are interests which are destructive interests and are not filled with love and are not about advancing liberty and are not about supporting the biosphere in a manner which is consistent with biodiversity and with the sustaining of humanity. And they're out there advocating for their stuff every day. And if we absent ourselves from the process because we think that it is too negative or too gross or too demoralizing, then we are leaving the field to those who would do us harm. And it's just not, there is no logic to it that makes sense to me, other than at the most sort of Self indulgent, I just want to feel good for me kind of place, where it makes sense to say, I'm not going to vote, I'm not going to advocate for what I care about, I'm not going to be interested in any kind of activism. I mean, everybody's circumstances Yucca: become informed about it, Mark: right. Yucca: right? Mark: Everybody's circumstances are different, and not everybody can be a big activist, right? You know, if you're, you know, you're raising kids, or, and you're, you know, scraping by, and, you know, there's a lot of different, I mean, poverty is a social control strategy. Yucca: Yeah, Mark: So, it is, it is one way that people who have the common good at heart are kept limited in the amount of power that they have. So let's, let's not mince words about that. But even with the limitations that we have, I have always felt that it was my responsibility to do what I can to try to advance the values that matter to me. And I'm pleased to say that the community that's grown up around atheopaganism is very much the same way. We're gonna, we're gonna put a Link in the show notes to the Atheopagan Declaration of Policy Values, which came out last year and was developed by the community with tons of community input and editing and all that kind of stuff. Yucca: There was a lot of back and forth and lots and lots of people participating and, you know, wording things just for, it was quite inspiring, actually. Mm hmm, Mark: the level, level of collaboration with the minimal amount of argument was very inspiring to me. And so now we have this document, and it can be downloaded from the Atheopagan Society website. So we're going to put the link in the, in the show notes so you can download that. But that's an example of the community speaking out on issues that really matter to us, and saying, this is where we stand. This is what our activism is going to be built around. This is, you know, we... We embrace LGBTQ people. We do. And it's not just, it's not just You know, so called virtue signaling, we genuinely do, we want those folks, we want people of color, we want indigenous people in our community, you know, we want them to be safe, we want them to be seen, we want them to be heard as, as an example. And similarly, along the environmental axis, along the axis of personal liberty and autonomy, bodily autonomy, all of those you know, the importance of critical thinking and science all of those pieces are a part of what our movement is about. And so, when we talk with the public, That is, that is core to what we express. Yes, we're here for happiness. We're here for people to feel good. We're all for that. But as one of the atheopagan principles says, you know, responsibility, social responsibility is one of our principles. Yucca: right. Mark: It is an obligation that we have. Yucca: And so those values, they're not just about talking about them, they're about, those are what inform the choices that we're making. Mark: Mm hmm. Yucca: Right? And being able to reflect on what those are, right? is really important. Have conversations about that, because we're not, there's going to be nuance, right? We're not always going to see eye to eye on things, and being able to, as individuals, talk about that with each other, and as a community, be able to, to talk about that and, and, you know, have that conversation is really important. Mark: Absolutely. Absolutely. And we learn from one another, right? I mean, that's a really important piece because As strongly as I feel on a value level about supporting people of color in the LBGTQI plus community I'm not one of either of those groups. And so I have to listen a lot in order to understand, well, what is an appropriate statement to make in support, right? How do I show up as an ally and as and as an advocate? Or a supporter for their advocacy, you know. So, you know, it's not as simple as just having a laundry list of policy positions. And it has to also recognize that we live in a world of subtle differences. Right? Subtle gradations of change throughout the whole natural world, and that includes humanity. So, I get really kind of bent sideways when I hear the lesser of two evils, or I'm not going to vote for that person because of this one little position, when the alternative is so much worse on every position. The best analogy that I've heard is that voting isn't dating, it's selecting, it's selecting the best possible option off of the available menu. And the available menu only includes people that actually have a chance of getting elected. It's not just some fringe outlier who tells you what you want to hear. Yucca: mhm, Mark: that can actually get into a position to make change in a positive direction. Yucca: mhm, mhm, mhm. Mark: So, we had a bunch of stuff on the outline for this podcast. What else have you got? Yucca: Well, certainly the, the issue of privilege is definitely Mark: Oh, yeah  Yucca: and this is something that I think comes up where people will be unaware of the place of privilege that they may be coming from to be able to say, I don't want to deal with this. I don't want this coming into, you know, my religion or my, anything about that, because that, that isn't the position that most people are going to be in that situation, right? Yeah. Mm Mark: Yeah the, I think the clearest way to express that is that if you have the luxury of saying, Oh, I don't want to vote that just encourages them, or I'm not going to consider any of those issues because I just want to be on my, you know, spiritual path of lightness and joy thing. Is that people that are marginalized and endangered by the way our society operates, they don't have the luxury to do that. If you look at voting rates, for example, African American women vote astronomically in high proportions in the United States. And the reason for that is that the interests of the community that they are in are, are, are stark. The, you know, the threats that certain people like a Donald Trump and the people that he brings with him present to that community are so real. They're not, they're not theoretical. It's not just something where, where as a white person, you look at it and go, Oh, gee, that's too bad. This is life and death for them. And they turn out to vote. They're organized. They're knowledgeable. You know, these are people who are, are leveraging the power that they have absolutely as much as they can. And when I hear people say, you know, oh, well, I'm not going to vote because blah, blah, blah. What I, what I really hear is, I am so cushioned from the impacts of the policies that get made by people that I don't... Agree with in theory that I can just skate on this and ride on, on the, the, the privilege that I enjoy in the society in order to avoid having to deal with something that I might find icky. Yucca: yeah, I'm being served by the system, fundamentally. Yeah. Mark: So, you know, I'll give an example. It's like, an argument can be made that the certain proportion of people who in, in key states who supported Bernie Sanders, And then refused to vote for Hillary Clinton may have given us Donald Trump. It's not that they had to agree with everything that Hillary Clinton said because they didn't, I didn't. But the appointees that she was going to make, the appointees to the Supreme Court, the appointees to the, the cabinet positions, the appointees to federal judgeships. All of those things were going to be head and shoulders above any of the things that Trump ended up doing. And it's painful to say, but those people needed to look at the big picture and go and vote for Hillary Clinton. And they didn't. And it's that, it's that, that sense of privilege, that sense of it not mattering that much that I really think needs to be interrogated on the left. And I am on the left, right, but I'm on the left that seeks to achieve progress because I'm a progressive, and progress happens in incremental steps most of the time. Progress isn't a home run. Progress is a base hit, and electing Hillary Clinton would have been a base hit on the way towards achieving better policies. And instead, we have what we have. So, you know, and I realize that there are going to be people that are going to be fuming when they hear me say this but seriously, look at the playing board, and look at what we got, and You know, think about, well, what does this mean for the next election? Where, where should I be putting my support? Yucca: Hmm, yeah definitely was not expecting that, I was not prepared for that direction of the conversation. That's something that I would have to really think a lot on. I understand some of the sentiment behind it, but I would want to look more at some of the numbers. And some of the assumptions about who is entitled to what vote, and whether those, I think that there's a lot to that situation, and I don't feel comfortable, I mean, you certainly have the opinion that you want, but necessarily agreeing and and um humming without really looking at that particular situation. I think that there's a lot that was going on there. But I've certainly heard that argument a lot, and one of the things that I have been uncomfortable with is, and I'm not saying that you're saying this, but this is something that I have heard often, is the sense of entitlement of those people's votes. That, you know, somehow this party was entitled to people's votes. What about... So, you know, do the numbers actually work out of how many Democrats voted Republican in that situation versus how many Independents voted one direction or the other? I think that there's a lot to really look into there. Mark: Sure, sure. And I have looked into it some. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: I should be clear, I'm not saying that Hillary Clinton deserved anybody's vote, or was entitled to everybody's, to anybody's vote. I'm saying she deserved them from a strategic standpoint. Yucca: hmm. Mark: That when you look at the playing field, And what was the right next move, that that was the right next move. And in certain states like Wisconsin there were, there were enough votes that dropped off. That the argument can be made, but, but let's, Yucca: Yeah. Mark: let's make the whole thing abstract, okay? Rather than talking about that, that election in specific, let's talk about elections generally. When you have a situation where somebody who you agree with 50 percent is running against somebody who is agreeing with you 10%, And then there's somebody out there who agrees with you 100%, but they have no ability to be elected. And it's clear Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: You know, I need to go for the 50 percent because, again, I'm a progressive. So I want to see things advance, even if they're going to go a lot slower than I want them to go. Yucca: Right, well I think in some of that case it's going to depend on what are the particular changes that, and what are the things that you are placing at highest priority, right? And if one of the things that you're placing at high priority is trying to do something about the monopoly, then that the two parties have, I can see the logic of making a different choice there. But I think that the point, I think the point where we probably agree is that when you're voting, it's something to be very strategic about. It's to look at what is the situation where you are and what are the possible outcomes and thinking about You know, what are the values that you are, that you are fighting for in that case, right? What are they, right? Mark: and the key takeaway that I would, that I would leave this particular rabbit hole with is that not to vote is to vote. If you don't vote, you are Yucca: is voting, yeah. Mark: It is voting. So it is you know, you, you don't get away with your hands clean just because you don't vote, right? You, you bear a responsibility for election outcomes just like everybody else does. And that's a really important thing for people in democracies to understand. And I'll talk a little bit later on about democracy and the degree to which we have it and all that good kind of stuff. Yucca: And This is just one area, right? This is an area that we happen to be talking about because this is an area where, where this is something that there's some strong opinions on, and this is an area where people do have influence, but of course there's a lot of other things. As well, in terms of you know, commercial choices and lifestyle choices and all of that kind of stuff that we can but one thing I really want to highlight, and you touched on this a little bit before, but I think it really deserves its own section of the podcast as well, is that being able to spend large amounts of time on these issues is a form of privilege itself too, right? And this is not something that everyone has. And you don't have to be guilty and beat yourself up and you're not a bad pagan because you've got to do a 9 to 5 plus your two side jobs to even be able to Barely make rent, right? That's not, so we're not sitting here saying, oh, shame on, you're failing because you're not fighting oil rigs in the, you know, gulf and how come you're out there? Like, that's not what we're saying at all. And I think that it's really, really important to think about and balance in our lives the self care component. And, that sometimes, yes, it's, sometimes it is okay to just have your celebration and to not necessarily be talking about, you know, let's raise money for this, this particular candidate at this time, or something like that, but know that it does, that this stuff does have a place in the community, it is important, but it isn't, The, you don't have to be doing it all the time, if that's not what your, what your mental health needs. Mark: No, no, definitely not. And it's important for those of us that have the privilege to be able to engage the system in that way, either from the outside or the inside, that we recognize that privilege and use it. Right? You know, those of us that have the bandwidth, those of us who have You know, the thick enough skin and that have the energy and sometimes the money even just to travel, to go somewhere. I mean, the trip that I just took, I didn't pay for because otherwise I wouldn't have gone, right? But but it's, it's, that kind of privilege is very visible. It's like, The D. C. is a very, very African American town. It's a very Black town. Lots and lots of Black folks, and, until you get into the Congressional buildings, and there it whitens up considerably Yucca: Mm Mark: with the lobbyists and the, you know, the constituents that are going not, not universally, of course but noticeably, and it is incumbent upon those of us who have been there. The privilege to be able to engage, to do what we can to improve justice, and to speak for the things that we care about so that they can advance. Yucca: hmm. Mark: So, I could talk about my trip. Yucca: Yeah. Yeah, you were just talking about D. C., so, Mark: Okay, well. So, I got sent on a fly in with the Conservation Alliance, which is a consortium of businesses which was originally founded by REI, the North Face Peak Design, and Patagonia. And they came together to create a unified voice for speaking up for the outdoors, for for wild lands and outdoor recreation. That was a long time ago, and now they have 270 businesses from a variety of different sectors, and what they do every couple of years is they gather a bunch of the leaders of those businesses along with, and they make grants, right? They pool their money and they make grants to organizations that are doing organizing and advocacy for the issues that they care about, and the organization I work for, Cal Wild, is one of those. Yucca: mm hmm. So that's how you were able to go on this trip? Mark: Yes, CalWild was invited to send a representative, and I was selected to go, and so I went. This is not the first time that I've been to Washington to lobby, but the last time was in the 90s. So it's been a while. And everything has changed, of course. I mean, technology has changed everything, and 9 11 has changed all the security. So, it's, it's just a completely different experience. So, so I went and I was going to speak on to, as a grantee, to speak as a content expert about the positions that we're trying to advance. My organization right now is working very hard. for the creation of three new national monuments in California. My organization is limited to California, so that's why, you know, that. But we're also advocating for some policy changes at the administration level, which would affect the whole of the United States. And I should say, you know, we're talking a lot about kind of American politics in this podcast, but if you have a representative democracy of any kind, the things that we're talking about are really applicable to you too. Yucca: Right. Yeah, we're just talking about our experience with our Mark: the stuff we know about. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, the idea here is not to get everybody all plugged into American politics. It's to use that as an example of what citizen participation or resident participation looks like and why it's important. I go on this trip and I go to Washington and I meet with the team and we have a training briefing and all that kind of thing, and my take, we, on the first day, I had two meetings with administration offices with the Department of the Interior and the Council on Environmental Quality of the White House now when we're meeting with staff, we're not meeting with the people that are in charge in those agencies, we probably would have met with the Secretary of the Interior, but it's Climate Week in North Northern New York, so she was away at Climate Week, Yucca: Mm Mark: Um, so, and there was something going on with the Department of Environmental Quality such that we had the staffer that we had. But these are sharp, smart, influential people that we're talking to, and the sense that I got, and then the second day we had meetings with California delegation members both to the Senate and to the House of Representatives, including my congressman which I had a very interesting experience with talking to my congressman's office in Washington, so I'll get to that in a minute. Yucca: hmm. Mm Mark: The main takeaway that I got from, especially from meeting with the administration, was that they want to do what we want them to do. Their, their hearts are in the right place. And they are delighted that we are coming to Washington and talking to people, and organizing on the ground in local communities, because they need the political cover to be able to do what we want them to do. Yucca: hmm. Mark: And in that Yucca: like that's charging them up, right? They want to do it, but they need to be charged with the power of the people. Mark: yes, Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Exactly so. And... It gives them something to point to when opponents say, we don't want that, Yucca: Mm Mark: right, they can, you know, they can point to the organizing that my organization is doing and say, well, the people in the community who live right next door want it, you know, the elected officials of the county where the expansion of the National Monument is proposed, they want it. So, You know, those are their representatives and they elected them to office to make those decisions, so why shouldn't we do this? So it's really important to be doing that kind of community organizing and talking to other people about the things that you care about in a, you know, in a focused way. So that was really gratifying to me because, of course, American democracy has taken a beating over the last 20 years, but it's still functioning. Thank you. The elections are kind of messed up, and we could certainly do without gerrymandering and and all the dark money, and I could go on, but as well as the occasional insurrection, which I really, really think we could do without. I walked Yucca: that's not an, let's have that be a singular thing, please. Mark: yes. I walked several times, because the house office buildings and the senatorial office buildings are on opposite sides of the capitol. I walked back and forth in front of where the insurrection took place a bunch of times. And there it is, you know, large is life. And, you know, there are the windows they broke, that's how they got in, you know, there's where they hung their banners, you know, all that. So, that said it was encouraging to see that at least under this administration, There was a commitment to listening to constituents and to hearing, you know, they were very appreciative of the businesses that were represented there, you know, in, you know, speaking up on behalf of protecting public lands so that their ecological values last forever, their recreational opportunities there, all that kind of stuff. Yucca: Actually, is that something you can, I know that we're talking kind of more process here, but for a moment, you were, talking about trying to get more national monuments. Why are those important? Mark: Oh, good. Very, very good question. My organization focuses on conservation of wild lands on public lands. And a lot of Yucca: you keep going, can you define conservation? Because that is a term that has a lot of different baggage attached to it. So what do you mean when you say conservation? Mark: man protection of the land so that it will not be developed in certain ways. And management of the land for the resource, for the benefit of the resources that are there, of the ecological resources, cultural resources in some cases historical resources, and recreational opportunities for people to go camping or hiking or whatever that might be. So, one... One misapprehension that many Americans have is the idea that public land is protected land. And it is not. Most public land in the United States is owned by the Bureau of Land Management or by the U. S. Forest Service. And those have been managed primarily for extractive purposes like logging and mining and Yucca: Oil is big Mark: and oil exploration. Yucca: yeah. Mark: Yeah, very big. So we're advocating for chunks. of undeveloped land to be protected in perpetuity and managed for the benefit of those values. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: That's what a national monument does. Or a National Wilderness Area, which is declared by Congress. We're not asking for a National Wilderness Area in the areas we're focusing on because Congress is broken, and there's no way to get anything through it. the President can use the National Antiquities Act to declare a national monument. He can do that on his own. Yucca: So, by taking , these areas, you're setting aside, you're allowing ecosystems to stay intact, right? So that you can have the populations of these animals and plants or whatever. Particular kind of species you're looking at, they have a place to be, they can continue to play the roles that they would play in a hopefully healthy system and to help manage for that, Mark: Right, and that helps us to accomplish a couple of important things, one of which is, you know, we have a biodiversity crash problem, you know, the, the biodiversity of the earth is the, which is the number of different species and the number of individuals of those species are both on a steep decline. Having habitat is necessary in order for, you know, organization, organisms to live. And but not only that, this is a very interesting one. One of the things that we're advocating for is the expansion of Joshua Tree National Park. Yucca: hmm. Mm hmm. Mark: And the reason for that is that because of climate change, Joshua trees are migrating out of Joshua Tree National Park. Yucca: Interesting. Mark: Over time, they're moving north because it's too hot Yucca: Because it's warm. Yeah. Okay. Mark: Yeah. So, it... Protecting these areas also enables the natural systems of the earth to do what they do in terms of adaptation, right? So, there's a place for the Joshua trees to go as the southernmost of them die because of excessive heat, and conditions become better for them outside of the park to the north. So that's just one example.  Yucca: And may I add that we of course want to protect these for simply the innate value of that being , has any right, as much right to be there as we do. But they also, the functioning system performs ecosystem functions, which is like cleaning the water and the air that we all breathe. So it's, it's not just that, oh, we like there being lots of animals and plants and fungi. It's that there needs to be. these plants and fungi and animals for life as we understand it to continue to function, Mark: right, exactly. And that requires, because everything is so fragmented now, it requires some level of active management in order to protect from invasions by invasive species, for example, which will wipe out all the biodiversity. Yucca: right? Or in my area of the world where we're missing keystone species, so we're missing whole ecological roles, there used to be these animals that aren't there anymore, and if you just take your hands off and you don't touch it, you fence that area off, that area will starve, quite literally, right? If you don't, if humans don't try, because it's kind of like the voting. No management is management. Mark: yes. Yucca: Right? It is a choice that we're making as well. And so we have to really be thoughtful about and understand the systems that we're dealing with. Mark: right. And there is so much science. I'm not saying we know everything, because we don't. There's an awful lot that we don't know, but there is a tremendous body of science about how to manage lands in order to improve biodiversity at this point. Yucca: And we're getting better at it. Mark: One of the things that we who work in the conservation sector, in the environmental sector, actually need to fight against within our own ranks is the group of people who still advocate for putting a fence around things and leaving it alone. Yucca: That's why I asked you a little bit about how you are using the term, because where I am, the term has been kind of changing a little bit, where we have kind of two different camps, which are the restorationists and the conservationists. And the conservationists are the people who, who are, you know, an anti gras, who are like, don't touch anything. Don't just fence it off. Don't know people know nothing. And then you've got the people who are going, well, let's look at the way the whole system works and maybe we do need to, you know, one, let's not keep kick the people off. 'cause you know, It's been here for 20, 000 years. But also, like, what, you know, what about the animals? What do we do for the, you know? So that's why I was kind of asking a little bit about that terminology there. Mark: here's a great example in California. There were devastating wildfires. that ran through Sequoia National Park. And in Sequoia National Park are the giant sequoia trees, these, you know, huge, vast, amazing, amazing Yucca: Amazing. Mark: awe inspiring. Well, because humans had been suppressing fire in those forests for a hundred years, when that wildfire ripped through, it burned much, much hotter than it ever would have otherwise, and killed a lot of those trees. Now, there's a big debate. The Park Service wants to replant seedlings of giant sequoias. in the burned area. And there are environmental organizations, self styled, that are saying, no, you can't do that. You just have to let nature take its course because that's the right thing. But we have been suppressing fire for a hundred years. We have been doing the most invasive, destructive thing that can be done to that ecosystem for a hundred years, and now you say we're supposed to leave it alone? That's ridiculous. You know, reseeding giant sequoias in that area is absolutely the right thing to do in order to keep the species from going extinct. And, I, I don't know, I mean, obviously this is what I believe. Yucca: I'm smiling as you're saying that because I used to work in stand management in the Jemez, and we had very, very similar, like, I can hear the two sides right now and it's, People get, have very, it's very emotional, right, and one of the things that happens, I think, is that people have very strong emotional connections without having some of the background to understand what is happening. And that goes back to what we were talking about before with some of our responsibility, I think, is that we have a responsibility to become informed about these Issues and learn about them and and be able to, if you're going to be involved in making choices about how these If this land is going to be managed, you need to understand the ecosystems that you're dealing with. Because our system, our ponderosa pine systems are very similar in terms of the fire ecology. You know, people become very, people are very concerned about thinning and controlled burns and things like that, and I think that they're coming from a good place. Their hearts in a good place in it, but are very, very misinformed about what the results of their actions will be if we do that. Mark: And there are two big pieces there that I think really are takeaways from all of this. The first one is that they are coming from a good place, but it's a romantic place. And we need to recognize in ourselves when we are romanticizing something rather than basing our decisions on facts. Yucca: Mm Mark: The second is... We have seen a terrible onslaught on the appreciation for expertise over the course of the last 40 years or so. And we need to respect the people who have letters after their names and understand deeply how things work. We need to listen to them. And they don't all agree with one another, that's fine. But in generally, in most cases, there is a scientific consensus. To some degree about what is the right course for these sorts of decisions. And we need to be listening to people that have devoted their lives to understanding these questions, rather than just thinking that because we like trees or we like nature, that we are in a position to make those kinds of decisions. Yucca: hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. Mark: I'm speaking to you and you're in the process of getting letters after your name. Yucca: I have plenty of letters. I'm getting some more letters, but yes. Yeah. . Well, I had cut you off when you, in your story, to ask you to explain a little bit about the monuments, of why that was such an important issue for you to go across the entire continent. to talk about. Mark: That was a really important question. And as you mentioned this, yeah, it's true. I mean, there are a few reasons that I would put myself into an airplane at this point because of the impact on the atmosphere, but this is one that feels like on balance.  Yucca: Potentially for your lungs, too. Mark: yes, yes, that's true boy, although I came back here and oh my god, the smoke, we're, we're really, we're really buried in, in wildfire smoke right now. So, Going to, and, and, you don't have to go to D. C. in order to advocate for things you care about. First of all, a lot of decisions are local, and you can go and talk with local officials, or organize a contingent to go and talk with local officials. But also, your congressional representative has an office in your area. You can go and talk with them and let them know what you feel about things. Yucca: Well, and state level as well, Mark: state level, absolutely. Yucca: right? And it, you know, it's going to depend a lot on your state. The experience in a smaller, population smaller state it may be A lot easier, like in my state in New Mexico, going down to the roundhouses is super easy you just walk in and there's everybody and you just go up and talk to them. I would imagine in a more populated state, it's a little bit trickier, but it's still possible, right? Mark: The culture contrast between, you know, California, of course, is the most populous state, almost 40 million people and the culture in Sac, yes, between Sacramento, our state capital, and D. C. is really stark. When you go to lobby in Sacramento, If you're a Democrat, you almost never wear a tie. I mean, registered lobbyists will probably wear a tie. But if you just go as a constituent or as an advocate for, you know, one of our groovy left enviro positions, You can wear an open shirt and a sport coat, a pair of slacks, I mean, and, you know, you don't have to hide your tattoos and your piercings and all that kind of stuff, it's great. You go to Washington, it's a suit for a man. You wear a suit, you wear a tie. I left my earring in, but that was my one sort of concession. And and you're right, it's very organized and very regimented in Sacramento, just because of the sheer volume of people that are, that are traipsing through there. Yucca: hmm. Mark: But I, I really, I want to come back to this idea that elected officials are there in a democracy to represent you, and they may not know what you think, Yucca: hmm. Mark: so go tell them. You know, get informed on an issue and, you know, go tell them what you think, what you, what you would like them to do. It's more powerful when you've organized more people to be a part of that voice. And that's why the Conservation Alliance exists. And that's Yucca: many other organizations too, Mark: yes, yes. That's why that's why community organizers exist. To gather the voices of... Individuals into a collective voice that's able to make change happen and that's true in any representative democracy, so it's, it's well worth, you know, you know, sticking a hand in, and the people you're talking to are just people. They don't bite. At worst, they will frown. That's, that's Yucca: wrinkle their brow at you. Mark: Yeah, that's, that's about the worst of it. I didn't have any Republican visits this time, so, we were very welcomed and just very encouraged, and I think there are going to be some declarations coming up here in the next few months that will make us very happy. So it's bringing all this back around politics is How we as a collective society make decisions about what's important, what's not, and what's going to happen. And if you care about your world, and as atheopagans and naturalistic pagans, I believe our listeners do care about their world and about their fellow humans then it's incumbent on us to say so, and do things that make things better. Yucca: I keep having the image of Mary and Pippin sitting on Treebeard's shoulder and shouting, but you're part of this world too! Mark: Yeah, yeah, there's, because there are things in this world that are worth fighting for. Right? Yucca: Yep. Well, we could certainly go on for a long time, but I think this is a little bit of a longer episode, so we should probably finish up here. And we are going into October, and we have some fun, and some spooky, and some great episodes coming up. And Stinky, and all of those great things that we love to celebrate, and recognize, and all of those things, and this great Time of year. And happy autumn, everybody. Mark: Happy autumn! Yeah, Yucca: So, thanks, Mark. Mark: yeah, thank you so much, Yucca. It's a pleasure talking with you, and I'm still obviously really kind of jazzed about this trip, so thanks for welcoming a conversation about that into the podcast. Yucca: See y'all next week. Mark: All right, take care.

THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism
Harvest / Fall Equinox

THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 12, 2023 29:14


Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com.   S4E29 TRANSCRIPT:----more----   Mark: Welcome back to The Wonder, Science Based Paganism. I'm your host, Mark, Yucca: and I'm Yucca. Mark: and once again, it is time for us to talk about the autumnal equinox, one of the eight stations of the wheel of the year of holidays. Yucca: That's right. It just keeps turning and turning. So here we are. Mark: Here we are once again, you know, looking at The, the the calendrical arrival of autumn anyway. I mean, I I'm pretty clear that I'm into autumn here where I am already, and I think you are too, Yucca but, Yucca: though, because the beginning of autumn and the end of autumn are very, very different seasons here. Mark: yeah. I mean, autumn and spring are the transitional seasons, and they things change pretty radically during the, during their extent. Yeah, so, well, we can talk about kind of what tells us that autumn is coming, but we can also talk about the holiday, and what it means to us, what we call it, how we celebrate and kind of its positioning within the wheel of the year and how that relates to the things around it, and all that kind of stuff. Yucca: Sounds good. Well, let's start with names. Mark: Okay. Yucca: So, for me, the equinox, and of course it's one of the equinoxes, but it's pretty clear which equinox we're talking about during this time of year. And it's also first fall or first autumn, Mark: Mmhmm. Yucca: because here I look at the seasons like there's either eight seasons or there's two seasons. Mark: Mmhmm. Yucca: So there's the Because the traditional temperate four seasons, really as we were just saying, early or first fall and second fall are two very different seasons Mark: Mmhmm. Mmhmm. Yucca: But then there's also really, there's just the hot time of year and there's the cold time of year. And this is the transition between the hot into the cold. This is one of those, those gateway or door holidays. For me it feels like we're going from one season to the next and so it's a very busy season. Very busy holiday, very busy season here. Mark: Sure. Yeah, you've got to get everything prepped and everything buttoned down for, for a cold winter. Yucca: That's Mark: Yeah I call this holiday Harvest. And of course it's not the only harvest holiday, but this, this is the time when kind of the cultural imagery of cornucopias and all that kind of stuff really, you know, starts to pop up in all the media and all of the winter vegetables are producing abundantly out of people's gardens and the earlier vegetables are pretty much petering out at this point. The, the grape crush. The grape harvest and crush is happening right at the point of the equinox, it starts usually in August but it extends, what happens is the whites get harvested first, and then the reds, and then there are what are called botrytis vines, which have the botrytis fungus growing on the berries. And they create so they, they sort of shrivel and they get very, very sweet and concentrated in flavor. And those are used to make dessert wines and ports and things like that. So there's this, you know, there are several phases to the grape harvest and crush. And it's just... It's a lovely time. The leaves are changing in the vineyards and and in some of the trees around here, and there's a feeling of industriousness Yucca: hmm. Mm Mark: uh, you know, people have gone back to school, they've gone back to work, all that summertime playing is pretty much over now so there's just, it's just a, as you say, it's a very busy time, but it's also a very lovely time and so I call it harvest. Yucca: Yeah. And neither of us are in areas where we have lots of broadleaf trees that are churning, but I have a few here and it's just so lovely. to see the, to see them changing and watch that, that very traditional fall look start to, to start to happen. And there's a, there's a smell to it too. There's this very lovely crisp smell that comes with the changing of the leaves. So, do you smell the Like, when the crush is happening, is there a, you smell that in the air, Mark: If you, if you drive around the country roads, it smells like rotting grape juice everywhere. It's, Yucca: you like? Mark: I do. It's a, it's a it's a sort of quasi wine smell. It's not quite there, but it's working on it kind of smell. And you know, and there are truckloads. So grapes going by and, you know, farm equipment all on the roads and all that kind of stuff. We do have a lot of broadleaf oaks here. We have a lot of valley oaks and California coastal oaks and black oaks.  Yucca: Do they change during the autumn? We have a, we only have a few oaks here, we have these little scrub oaks, and they hold on their leaves, really, they, they really hold on to them for a long time, and then it's just, they turn brown, and then they're... They, they don't even drop them really till the spring, till they're growing new ones. We don't, and we just don't really have any other oaks at all. So I Mark: Huh. Yucca: do all oaks do that, or is that's a very special Mark: No, I mean, there, there, there are what are called live oaks. There's California live oaks here, too, and the live oaks, they don't drop their leaves at all and and they're kind of unpleasant to be around because the edges of their leaves are prickly. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So, you know, you end up walking on them and it hurts. We had one in the last place that I lived, we had one outside of our yard that leaned over into our yard and dumped huge numbers of those sharp pointy leaves into our yard every year. Yucca: If they don't want to be eaten, Mark: no. Yucca: that, yep, Mark: And they have adapted ways to prevent that from happening. Yucca: yeah. Mark: So, but yes, the, the oaks do change, except for the live oaks, they do change and they do drop their leaves. But they don't turn red and yellow, they just turn kind of a rust color. And that then eats in from the outside of the leaf into the, into the center of the leaf and then it drops. And I particularly love the look of the oak trees in the late autumn and winter. Yucca: hmm. Mark: Because they're so crabbed and Halloween y and, you know, wonderful in the shape that they have. And, you know, there's just such a stark sort of gothic quality to those trees when they've dropped their leaves. Yucca: Mm Mark: Um, So yeah, harvest. And thematically, that really is kind of the centerpiece of how I think of this time. It's, it's a good time for feasting with friends and relations. Sometimes I think of this as pagan Thanksgiving. And, of course, Canadian Thanksgiving is right around this time. They have it figured out much better than, you know, late November. I don't know who's, I don't know who's doing harvest celebrating in New England in late November. That, that just seems a bit off to me.  Yucca: Well, I suppose you have all of your harvest in at that point, right? You're not in the process of harvest, you've gotten everything ready, Mark: historically that first event almost certainly didn't happen in November. It just got declared as a holiday by Abraham Lincoln some, you know, century later. Or quite a bit more than that actually. Fourscore and seven years ago plus. The, so I think about this not only as a time for, you know, coming together with loved ones and feasting, but also to reflect on what the last cycle has been like and what the fruits of that have been, of the cycle of the last year, what I've invested my energy in, and my creativity, and, you know, what I've had hopes for, all those, all those dreams and aspirations and plans, you know, that happened around the February Sabbath and And the, the spring equinox, you know, those got implemented, and there was a lot of work involved, and all this energy got invested, and all that kind of stuff, and then now is the time when it's like, well, how did that work out? What, what actually emerged? Oftentimes it turns out that what emerges as a harvest from your year is not what you planned to, to have happen. And that... That's a very useful exercise, I think, that this holiday really lends itself to a lot of gratitude and appreciation for living, which I think is true of all of the holidays, but this one particularly, I think, is really a life is good kind of holiday but it's also a time to think about what didn't work out, you know, what, what crops did you plant that did not come up you invested OK, And why? What lessons did you learn? Because maybe it's just that that sort of thing is not really the sort of thing for you, Yucca: hmm. Mark: or maybe it's that it was just a bad time for it and you can take another crack at it later. But, you know, Part of learning is assessing how things have performed. Yucca: Mm Mark: And it's interesting that we, we have a society, the economy of which is built around all these performance metrics all the time and annual performance reviews and, you know, all that kind of stuff for, for people who work. Yeah. But we don't do that very much in our personal lives very often, Yucca: hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. Are you still there? Mark: and I think it's, it's helpful to reflect, not in a self critical way, but in just a, you know, sort of transparent and open minded way to take a look at, well, what was I trying to accomplish this year? What were the strategies that succeeded? What were the strategies that failed? What has, what is the result? What is before me now? And what does that tell me about The next cycle, what, what I would consider doing next. Yucca: Yeah, I think that's really important, and having, I think that's something that we should be doing throughout our life, but that it's very useful to have a time that is dedicated to thinking about that in particular, right? And that's one of the really lovely things about the Wheel of the Year. And, you know, next month we'll be talking about the death stuff and all of that, and then, you know, getting into the dark part of the year with the real deep self reflection and it's just lovely to have, to have it sort of built into life that, oh yes, this is when I come to this time and do the reflection upon what did I harvest, right? Maybe literally and in terms of a metaphorically. Mark: Yes. Yeah, I agree. I mean, that's one of the things that I find very beautiful about the pagan practice of the Wheel of the Year is that it, it programs for us the kind of good human habits of thinking about certain things at certain times of the year and remembering to be grateful and, you know, all, you know, Remembering to to pay attention and you know, to be frank in our, our assessment of ourselves and, you know, looking at, at who we are and how we behave all that kind of stuff. I, I just, well, I wouldn't be doing this practice if it wasn't very, you know, moving and meaningful to me but it really is and that's one of the main reasons that it is. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And another thing that I do that I should mention because I always. But in a plug for it is that, and I've spoken about this many times on the podcast before, that I think of the Wheel of the Year as metaphorically embodying the arc of a human life. So with birth you know, with, so, sort of, conception at at the winter solstice, and then, you know, birth at the February Sabbath. And then, kind of toddler childhood at the spring equinox, and young adulthood at May Day, and then kind of full adulthood, and then middle age, and now this comes around to the time of the elderly. This is the time when, because that's the time of life when you look back and you realize, you know, what did I, what did I achieve? What's, what, what is the harvest that I... What is the crop that I grew in, in my life, right? It doesn't mean that your life is over, that you can't do anything else, but it's a time when most of your years are behind you and you can kind of assess. You know, hmm, I did that. That was cool. I'm glad I, I'm glad I did those things. And it's also a time to really be appreciative of the accumulated experience of people that are elderly, which we don't do much in our mainstream culture. We don't value old people very much. And I really would like to change that. I, I really, I, I think that elderhood is something that should be honored. Rather than viewed as something to avoid through all kinds of surgical and Yucca: and whatnots, yes. Mark: and exercise regimes and diets and, you know, all that kind of stuff that people do desperately to try to prevent themselves from being old. So, yeah, that's another, another piece that I think of here. I think of you know, toasting the old people in the community when you're having your harvest feast. Yucca: hmm. In fact, I mean, I think it was created mostly as a marketing thing, but wasn't it just Grandparents Day? Actually  Mark: I don't know. Yucca: I think it was, yeah I think that's in mid September. Mark: Hmm. Yucca: I love, I, I really love the way that you structure your Wheel of the Year and the different stages of life. And I really appreciate seeing, sometimes in the Facebook group or in other groups, people will share their different approaches to the Wheel of the Year. And I also assign different meanings. to the different seasons, but I have a slightly different approach. So when I'm looking at the seasons, I look at different components of the ecosystem, or large ecosystems, like the grasslands or the forests. And for this time of year, It is a recognition of the decomposers and the microbes the fungi and the bacteria, because this is the time where, this is the only time of year that you're going to be able to walk around in the forest and see mushrooms, first of all, because it's just too, too hot and dry during the rest of the time of the year. We have lots of types of fungi, but in terms of seeing, like, there's your bright red mushroom, don't touch that one, right, like, that's only going to happen. This time of year and really up in the mountains but this is also when for temperate climates, the, the fungi are just getting going, right? They're really doing their work. We forget that the mycelium, it's all down below the debris, the leaves that have fallen and the old plants that have died down, and they're down there. This is their feast, right? They're getting ready to start decomposing, and they'll be working all through the autumn and the winter into the spring breaking that down, and returning it into a form that then life uses again. And the bacteria, and it, it leads quite nicely into, the next season for us is about, is the ancestors. Everything that came before, and of course we start first. We go far enough back and our grandmothers were microbes, right, and so it kind of is this nice lead into that. So we, we really like to be thinking about that sort of on an intellectual level. And recognizing that, you know, we're making some of our pile, you know, compost piles and things like that. Of course, we do that throughout the year, but this is when it's going to be sitting and doing that. Mark: Mm hmm. Mm Yucca: And then, as I was saying at the beginning, that we sort of see there being two, either eight seasons or two seasons. And this is the, this is the beginning. of the cold time of year. But not quite. The days are still hot, but the nights have a chill in them, right? The wind, we're closing the windows at night and we can kind of, it feels that chilly in the morning, and you might have to, you know, in the morning you've got to, for the first half of the day, maybe have a sweatshirt on, and then you take it off by the end of the day, and you're like, oh, it's so hot. But there's just so much that It's clear now winter is coming and you've got to get ready for winter, and it's lovely to watch. Where I'm sitting right now, I'm looking out, and I'm seeing we have jays and squirrels, and they're doing their, that industrious feeling you were talking about. They're out there right now, getting... Plump, and we've got our, we have a little bear family that lives nearby, and you can see they're trying to get all plump as well, and and so that's what we're doing, too, is going, okay, well, the cold's not here, but what do I need to have ready when the cold does come, because there's just certain things you can do at one time of the year and others you can't, right? So there's some flashing that I need to put on some of my windows. That's not going to stick once it gets cold. That has got to happen before the cold comes. It's time for us to change the angle on our solar panels and to open up the, the shade cloth on the greenhouse to let the heat in. And so it's just a time of making lists. And making sure, okay, before the winter comes, does everyone have hats? Do we all have hats? Because it's a, it's a hassle to need a hat and not have it. What about boots? Because when the mud comes, we're gonna want those boots, right? And it's, there's, there's a, it's one of the two big prep times of the year, right? There's the spring prep and there's the fall prep. And I like to do like a big, lots of people like to do spring cleaning. I like to do a fall cleaning before we're gonna be inside for... Months and months. And so that's sort of the other side of the harvest, right? Like there was this whole year that happened, but now there's the whole half that's going to happen. And how am I going to prepare for that? Not in the the growing way. It's not the starting new projects kind of way that is in the spring, but it's the being ready for and prepared, sure that everything is, is buttoned up and finished up and that there's no, you know, we haven't missed any loose ends or anything like that. Mark: mm hmm, and if you have outdoor projects, you gotta get those finished Yucca: Absolutely, yep. Mark: before, because you can't bring them indoors, and you gotta get it done before it starts to rain and then snow, Yucca: Right. And I mean, and there's some that, there'll be a few projects that are much more pleasant to do when it's cold. But there's things that have to get done to have that prepped to be ready to do it. So there's just a very, it's a thoughtful time of year. It's another one of those pause and think, Mark: mm hmm, Yucca: be prepared times. And, and for us, these are our specifics of the way that, that Our climate is, but each climate is going to be a little bit different and so for some people, maybe this is, right now, that's not when it's happening, because that's not when the seasons are quite changing. For some people, the seasons are changing earlier, or later, or, you know, what you're going to be doing if you're getting ready for a winter in Wisconsin is very different than a, you know, a winter in Southern California. Mark: yes, because they hardly have winter in Southern California, oh no, it's freezing, it's 70 degrees, Yucca: Well, but that's the thing, like there's, that each climate is going to be different, and it's not, it's not less valuable to be in one climate versus the other. What's happening in your climate, some of those themes may be still happening, but what that holiday means to you in Southern California may be somewhat different. different because that, it might be a little bit more appropriate to have that sort of prep time happening at a different time of year. Or maybe it's not quite as intense, right? For me, it's really an intense time period, we've got these few weeks, and it's gotta happen in these few weeks. For somebody in a climate that doesn't have quite as huge swings as mine does, Maybe it's something that you spread out more throughout the year, and you think about a little bit each you know, maybe each full moon or something like that instead of, boom, it's, it's fall, right? Mark: Yeah. Yeah, that, that, that completely makes sense to me, and I even think about how... In a very, you know, very temperate climate like Southern California, you know, if you're, if you're in the coastal area, for example, it may even be like an opportunity to do things that most of us associate with the summertime, because like the beaches aren't going to be nearly as crowded as they were in July and August, right? So, as the weather cools off, you might be able to get a little bit more privacy and, you know, time to yourself and stuff at a beach. Yucca: Mm hmm, yeah. Mark: Yeah, so, as always, we are really interested to hear what how you're celebrating the holidays, our readers. You can reach us, or, sorry, listeners, what am I saying? You can reach us at thewonderpodcastqs at gmail. com, and we always appreciate getting your emails. We are not going to have a show next week. Because I am going to be flying to Washington, D. C. to lobby for wilderness protections so that's kind of exciting. And I've decided that I'm going to wear a Sun Tree button on the underside of my lapel, where they can't see it, but I will still be wearing it on my lapel in the Capitol when I'm going to meet with congressmen and senators. Yucca: that's wonderful. So you'll still, it still has the meaning for you, you know it's there. Mark: That's right. Yeah, yeah, but the problem is, if I wore it the other way, then it would always be stirring up conversations about what does that mean, and it would derail from the conversation we want to have, which is about new national monuments, BLM's new public lands rule, things like that. Yucca: right. So it's one of those things to be thoughtful about is when do you... So, what are you trying to accomplish, and what do you need to do in each of those cases to accomplish that? So, very fitting for the time of year we've been talking Mark: Absolutely. And actually, as I mention it oh, never mind, the public comment period is closed. Yucca: Wow. Mark: There's a Many people don't know this, the largest holder of land in the United States is the Bureau, it's the the BLM, the Bureau of Land Management. And it does not list in its priorities for land management conservation. It, it lists things like mining, and oil and gas extraction, and timber, and grazing, and all that kind of stuff, but It does not list conservation values at all. So there is a proposal that has been launched by the Biden administration to change that, to add conservation into the mission statement of the BLM so that they will make decisions not only for extractive purposes, but also for the purposes of the ecosystem. Yucca: hmm. Mm hmm. That's Mark: And that's one of the things we're going to be advocating for. You know, it sounds like a bureaucratic thing, but it's really not. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: You know, these agencies are legally bound by their mission statements and and they will make decisions and allocate resources accordingly. So, it's it's an important thing. The, as I said, the public comment period has closed. The public comments were overwhelmingly in favor of the rule. Yucca: That's Mark: They got something like 300, 000 comments, and they were, you know, they ran like 90 10 in favor of the rule. Yucca: That's great. Mark: Yeah, so Yucca: I know my state, I have to look at the numbers again, but my state, BLM is, owns most of my state. Forest Service has a lot of it too. Mark: Huh, Forest Service is the second largest landholder in Yucca: it's more, yeah, it's, it's, the federal government owns most of New Mexico. Mark: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. I, I got to meet your senator, by the way, Kurt Heinrich at an event a couple of weeks ago. Martin Heinrich, I'm sorry and wonderful guy very, very thoughtful, very strategic around climate change and You know, we had a good conversation about public lands management and just good. Yeah, great leader. Yucca: Yeah, well I hope you have a fun I guess fun, a very productive and enjoyable time talking with all, all those DC folks. Mark: I'm gonna get to meet a bunch of atheopagans from the D. C. area. I'm arriving on the 17th and on the afternoon of the 17th. If you're listening to this and you're in the D. C. area, I am saying, staying at the Yotel on on Capitol Hill, and you are welcome to come. I'm going to set myself up in the hotel bar at around two o'clock, and people are just going to drop by and we're going to visit. So, I'm really looking forward to meeting some of our East Coast folks that I haven't met before. Yucca: Great, well give them hugs for me, if they're hug folks. Yeah. Mark: Yeah, I'll ask first, of course, because I know you would. I would too, but... Yucca: Yep. Well, wonderful. Mark: All right, so Yucca: you Mark: you in a couple of weeks. Thank you everybody so much. Yucca: Have a wonderful equinox, harvest, whatever you call it. So, Mark: I hope your harvest has been bountiful. Yucca: take care folks.    

Retirement Planning - Redefined
Mastering Retirement Cash Flow (Part 2): Understanding Changing Expenses

Retirement Planning - Redefined

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 2, 2023 19:11


On this episode, we will continue our conversation on what expenses may change when you enter into retirement. Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is a registered investment adviser. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investment involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Transcript of Today's Show: For a full transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/ ----more---- Mark: Back here for another episode of the podcast with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth. On Retirement Planning Redefined, we're going to get back into our conversation from the prior episode about cashflow. We went through some categories, housing, work stuff, healthcare, taxes, so on and so forth, on how those expenses will change either to the plus or the minus, depending on our setup. Well, this is the time to talk about the setup. So as we are assessing our retirement expenses, we'll break these down into a couple of categories. So we're going to talk about those with the guys. John, welcome in buddy. How you doing this week? John: Hey, I'm doing all right. How are you? Mark: Hanging in there. Doing pretty well. How about you, Nick? Nick: Pretty good. Staying busy. Mark: Staying busy and enjoying. So we're taping this before the fourth, but we're dropping this after the fourth, so hopefully you guys had a good fourth? Nick, you probably went up and saw family, yeah? Nick: Heading up north to just, yeah, extended family and friends. That fourth week makes it an easier week to get away because everyone's doing stuff anyways. Mark: Yeah, yeah. It's always funny when we have the holidays and we're kind of taping the podcast ahead of time because then drop it because we're not around, so sometimes I get confused on my dates. So yeah, again, we're talking about this before the fourth about what we'll probably will be doing on the fourth. So John, are you on grill duty? Because I know I am. I'm stuck on it. John: No, no. My brother's forcing me to have a cookout at my house, so I told him if I'm providing the house, he's the one on grill duty. Mark: Okay, that'll work.   John: He's visiting from Boston, so he's excited because my other brother's down here and my sister, cousin, and actually the best man in his wedding is married to my sister, so he decided to come down.   Mark: So Marketing 101. So the second you said Boston, all I hear is these Sam Adams commercials right now, "Your cousin from Boston." Every freaking time I hear Boston, that's the first thing I think of. Or Sam Adams beer, I go right there. All through the hockey playoffs and NBA playoffs, I kept seeing those commercials so it's embedded in my brain. But hey, that's the point of marketing, right, is to be those little earworms, so you go out and buy whatever it is that you go out and buy. And speaking of that, that's my transition into the must haves versus the nice to haves. So if we're talking about those accounts, those different categories that we went through on the prior episode, guys, how do those things now play into for our cashflow? Again, cashflow is the conversation wraparound, it's the wrapper of this whole endeavor. We need to break this down. And do you guys do this with clients? Is it something you encourage them to do, because everybody's individual needs and wants are going to be a little bit differently, but do you break things up in the must-haves versus the nice to haves? Nick: I would say to a certain extent, we do. We kind of list basic expenses and discretionary expenses. Mark: So give us some musts. What's the musts? Nick: So obviously housing, healthcare, food and groceries, some form of transportation, whether it's one vehicle, two vehicles. Getting rid of debt. Those are all things that are obviously needs. [inaudible 00:03:02] Mark: Life essentials, right? Nick: Yeah, for sure, for sure. Depending upon the people, some things are discretionary. I would say most of the people that we work for can't afford to have some sort of traveling in retirement. Mark: Yeah, so is two trips a year or is it five trips a year? That's kinds how it starts to change? Nick: Yeah, exactly. Or even a big trip every X amount of years. So like a baseline travel budget of X, and then let's add one of the things that we commonly do is, let's say the travel budget is $6,000 a year from a baseline standpoint, and then every three years they want to do an additional trip of another 6,000, that's one trip. And so we can scatter that in throughout the plan and show them what it looks like and toggle that on and off. And with how we do planning, we can show them the impact of doing something like that and what it does to their plan. So for the higher tier, nice to have. For discretionary expenses, we will use our planning software and kind of show them, Hey, here's the impact on your plan if you want to do that. Because we always preface everything, it's telling people that it's your money, we're not telling you how to spend your money or what to do with your money, our job is to show you the impact of the decisions that you make. Mark: That makes sense, yeah. Nick: So let's arm you with that information so that you understand if you do these things, then let's make an adjustment accordingly. And for sometimes it helps them put into perspective where not everything is a yes or a no. And what I mean by that is, well, let's just say that there's two lifetime trips that they wanted to really do, and so they like to have a bigger travel budget, but really when you boil it down, it's like, okay, I want to make sure I go to these two places. So we make sure that we can accomplish those and make adjustments elsewhere. [inaudible 00:04:58] Mark: Yeah, because the must ... I'm sorry to cut you off, but I was thinking about this as you were saying it. The must-haves, like the housing, the health, food, you're not going to have any kind of discretionary wiggle room. Well, you don't want to. Now you could say, okay, we'll eat less food, or something like that, but that's not the goal in retirement, you don't want to go backwards. So the place typically we do make some adjustments in the cuts are in the nice to have categories. Nick: Yeah, and usually it's almost more of a toggle where even to a certain extent of, we've had conversations where, hey, if things are going really well in the markets and we're able to take advantage and take a little extra money out in years where things have gone well, that's kind of the impetus to do this sort of thing. Mark: Kind of pad the numbers a little bit.   Nick: Yeah. Mark: John, let me get you on here for, besides the expenses we covered, some of the things we went through, what are some contributing factors that will affect cashflow problems that you guys see in retirement? So all these different things, whether it's healthcare, housing, whether it's whatever, give me some bullet points here for folks to think about on things that can, not in a category per se, but like outside effectors, outside influencers, that can really cause us cashflow problems in retirement. John: The number one I'd say, concern for most people going through retirement is longevity. How long does my money need to last? Mark: And that's the great multiplier, right? Because if you live longer, it makes everything else go up. John: Correct. Yeah. So that's one thing we look at, and we do plans. We're planning for age 100, and we'll always get people like, well, I'm not living that long. But the thing is, that's always ... Mark: What if you do? John: Exactly. So it's like, Hey, listen, if you live to 100, guess what? Mark: You're covered. John: Your plan looks good. You could live to 90 and the plan looks good. So we always plan for, we again, overestimate the expenses, overestimate the life expectancy, Mark: And then you don't have to live with your cousin in Boston, right? John: Exactly. That's right. Mark: All right. What else besides longevity? John: Another big one we're seeing right now is inflation. Because with retirement, you're not getting a paycheck anymore, so your ability to earn is now gone. So your nest egg is providing that income for you and social security. And keeping up with inflation, especially the last few years has been a challenge for quite a few people. And mostly I would say for me, I've noticed my food bill has gone up drastically in the last couple of years, more than anything else is really. Because we talked about musts and nice to have, if trips go up, you could say, all right, I'm going to go on a little bit lesser trip, or not go as much, but you know, you got to eat and you got to have healthcare. So those things there are big ones to really consider going into retirement and to be aware of, is the plan [inaudible 00:07:42] Mark: Yeah, a friend of mine, for Memorial Day, we were talking about cookouts earlier, so we got July 4th, you're probably hearing this after July 4th, but how much did it cost you to buy this stuff? So a friend of mine posted a picture around Memorial Day that he bought three steaks, and he lived in the New York area, Nick, actually. And the tag on the thing was like 60 bucks for three steaks. It was like, holy moly. And I know different parts of the country are more expensive than others, but it was just where I'm at, it was like, wow. And they weren't like that impressive of a steak. So to your point, you got to eat. Nick: To be honest with you, I think there's a little bit of ... Mark: Price gouging. Nick: ... ridiculousness and price gouging going on right now from the perspective of a lot of different areas. I just got my six months notice on my car insurance, I've been complaining to everybody about it. One vehicle, no accidents [inaudible 00:08:34] John: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Nick, this isn't a therapy session, right? Mark: Well remembered, well remembered, John, from the prior episode. Very good. Nick: Yes. I drive probably 7,000 miles a year at the most and paying almost $2,500 a year for car insurance. But the crazy part is that, so okay, if it's always been high, that's one thing, but two years ago when I had switched companies, it was about 1,700. So again, we take ... Mark: Inflation. Nick: Do the math on that. I'm sorry, but 50% is not inflation, there's some 50% in two years and it's kind of wild. And then even just going, the area that we're in has been massive growth in this area, but even what the restaurants are charging, and it's just inflation impacts different areas differently. Mark: It's an excuse. I mean, just like anything, we've turned it into excuse, just like the supply chain problem issue. A friend of mine was trying to get his RV worked on and they were like, well, we're still having supply chain issues for a valve. And it's like, really, a valve on an RV, it's been three years. I don't know if supply chain issue really holds in that argument, but if companies are dragging their feet or employers, somebody's just taking long, that's just an excuse. And I think that's the same thing with the inflation. Is it real? Yes. But to your point, are some of these numbers really truly justified? But they can use that, well, inflation's bad. That's the excuse they use in order to hit you with a 50% increase. Nick: Yeah, and I'd say from a planning perspective, because people get concerned about that from a planning perspective, and saying, well, hey, we had much higher inflation last year than we did in our plan moving forward, and [inaudible 00:10:27] Mark: Are we going to be okay to survive it, yeah. Nick: Yeah, and the easiest way that we mitigate that from a planning perspective is we reprice current expenses. So in other words, repricing the current expenses allows us to take that into consideration, the increases that we've had, and then use more normal rates moving forward, which is how you more accurately display that from a planning side of things. Mark: Gotcha. All right, John, so you hit us with longevity and inflation as a couple of areas that can contribute to cashflow problems. Give me a couple more before we wrap up this week. John: Investment returns is another spot, depending on what type of plan you do or type of planning, if some people will really have their income depend on what their portfolio is returning for them. Mark: So we're talking about sequence of return risk, kind of thing? John: Yeah. So if you having a down year and there's not as much income coming in from your portfolio, well that could ultimately affect your cashflow. Or if it's a down year, and we go back to longevity of, Hey, how long is my portfolio going to last, just have a 20% dip in the market, you're going to be a little concerned about pulling out in that period of time, because once you pull out, you know, you realize those losses, and there's no more recovering [inaudible 00:11:41] Mark: Yeah, it's a double way, it's the market's down and you're pulling money out. So the truth that makes the longevity factor interesting. Okay. John: So one more thing on this. This is really important, and especially what we're seeing in the last couple of years where you have some type of plan where if you are dependent on that, you have almost like a different bucket to pull from in a time like this. So you really want to position yourself to be able to adapt to downturns in the market which could affect your income. Nick: One of the things, and I've been having this conversation quite a bit lately, is that previous to last year, for the dozen years leading up to that, rates in return on fixed or cash and cash equivalence was so low, you couldn't get any return on that money, that really people shifted predominantly, or at least in a large way, to take more risks, meaning more upside, so more heavily on the [inaudible 00:12:39] Mark: Well, because the market was going up too. We get addicted to that, so it's very easy to go, well, it does nothing but climb, it's done it for 12 years in a row, so let's keep going, right? Nick: Yeah. And a little bit of that's a circle where it's part of the reason it kept climbing, is because people were saying, well, and not just, but it's just a contributing factor where it's like, well, hey, I'm literally getting zero return here. So inflation's eating away at my money anyways, I might as well take a little bit more risk. And so earlier this year in the majority of our client portfolios, we took some money off the table because now we can get four to 5% in something that has no risk, and that lets us kind of at least take a deep breath, see what's going on, get some sort of return, where most of our plans, we use five to 6% in retirement anyways. Mark: Yeah, that's a good point. You just got to be careful, right? Because we don't know how long those rates will last either, so you don't want to lock yourself into anything too hefty either, without making sure it's the correct move for you. Especially, I'm thinking more like CDs for example. Nick: Yeah. We still target things that are short term, that sort of thing. But for a retiree, even from the perspective of, let's just use the million dollar number, there's a huge difference between five years ago, where if you wanted to do a one year CD and you could get 0.8%, that's $8,000 on a million bucks versus 5%, even just for a year, now it's 50,000 of income. I mean, one is you can't pay your bills, another one is going to be much more comfortable. So for a retiree, one of the sunny side or glass half full part of what we've been dealing with from an inflation perspective, is that at least there's a little bit more return on safer money as we try to re-plan and readjust. Mark: Yeah. No, that makes sense. So one more category here that I want to hit for just cashflow problems in retirement, John, you did longevity inflation and investment returns. I'm going to assume the fourth one's probably just the emergencies, the things that life throws at you in retirement years? John: Yeah, a hundred percent. Emergency funds, it's [inaudible 00:14:44] Mark: Got to have one. John: ... for that, because you just don't know what's going to happen. Mark: Murphy's Law's going to happen, right? John: Murphy's Law's been happening for the last three years. So basically a big one is healthcare expenses, which we touched on as a must have. So big health event could really dip into your emergency funds. Or again, especially here in Florida with the roofs, have talked to some clients and friends who basically were having homeowners insurance issues here, and then carriers are basically saying, Hey, for you to get renewed, you need a new roof. And all of a sudden it's like, what? I just go, my roof's fine. It's like, well, it's outdated, you know, you need a new one, or else [inaudible 00:15:24] Mark: And so they're not covering maybe the full cost or some of the cost, I guess, but they won't insure you. John: I had some friends actually get notices saying, your roof's too old. If you don't replace it, we're dropping coverage. Mark: Oh geez. Okay, yeah. John: So that's an emergency expense. Mark: Definitely. John: Roofs aren't necessarily cheap, so important to have an emergency fund because like you said, Murphy's Law, you have no idea what's going to come up and you want to be prepared for that. Mark: Yeah. No, that's a good point. Nick: The roof thing is pretty wild here too, because a lot of people have tile roofs down here. And depending upon the size of the house, a tile roof is going to cost you, what John? Between 50 and a hundred thousand dollars? John: Yeah, 50 to a hundred grand. Mark: Really? Holy moly. Nick: And so, yeah, and then if you're in a neighborhood that has association rules and all these other things, it can get a little squirrely. So just understanding even little basic things like that, where especially people that came maybe from up north where it's just shingle roofs and 10, 12 grand, 15 maybe, and then [inaudible 00:16:25] Mark: Yeah, I was going to say, my metal roof was like 20, and that was like eight years ago. Nick: Yeah. So there's just things like that where we always very much emphasize having an emergency fund. Mark: Yeah, definitely. All right, good stuff. Talking just cashflow issues, things to consider here on the podcast the last couple of weeks. So if you're worried about the cashflow or you're just worried about making sure your plan is accurate for the time of life you're in, especially if you're one of these folks that maybe got a plan, you're like, ah, I got a plan put together like a decade ago, or whatever. Well, it's not a set it and forget it, it shouldn't be a set it and forget it, anyway. Even insurance policies, sometimes it's very easy to get one and throw it in the drawer for 20 years and forget about it, but all those things can be looked at and reviewed and see if there's a better way to put a strategy together. So if you need a first opinion or second opinion, reach out to John and Nick and the team at PFG Private Wealth. Find them online at pfgprivatewealth.com. That's pfgprivatewealth.com. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, whatever the case might be. Whichever podcasting platform app you like, just type in retirement planning redefine in the search box. Or again, find it all online, pfgprivatewealth.com. For John, Nick, I'm your host, Mark. We'll catch you next time here on the podcast. This has been Retirement Planning Redefined.

THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism

Talismans video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML-sED3fAzY   Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com. S4E18 TRANSCRIPT:----more----   Mark: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. I'm your host, mark, Yucca: And I'm Yucca. Mark: and today we are talking about talismans and touchstones and things that we do during the course of our day to remind ourselves that we are on a naturalistic, pagan, pagan path and to remind ourselves of our practice. Yucca: Right. And these could be things, we could have objects that help. Remind us but also moments in the day or activities that we're doing that we can use as, as metaphorical touchstones, right? Mark: Right, right. I mean, we've talked about a daily practice before. Those tend to be. In the beginning and the ending of the day, not in the sort of rush of the middle of the day. So what we're really focusing on, on with this podcast is more about what do we do just to bring back to mind that we're on this path and that these are our values and that kind of stuff, while we're in the midst of all the various business that we have to take care of during the day. Yucca: Right. So why, actually, why don't we start with one? You were just telling me about that. This was one of Michael's suggestions who we've had on the podcast before he was on the council. And you were saying it was 13 o'clock. Mark: 13 o'clock. Yucca: o'clock, yeah. So what's this 13 o'clock thing? Mark: Which is one o'clock in the afternoon of course. Michael is Irish and apparently there is something that happens at noon every day in Ireland on the public television stations which is called the Angelus, and it used to be a. Catholic thing with, you know, images of the Virgin Mary and all that kind of stuff. And the idea was that you were supposed to stop and pray or contemplate or just kind of remember, you know, that this is your religious path. Well, it's, it's become much more secularized now. They have images of the Irish countryside and. That kind of stuff instead. But it's still kind of a lovely idea. And so Michael suggested that because we have 13 principles and there are 13 moon cycles, and we just like that Yucca: 13. It's just fun. Yeah. Mark: Yeah, it's, it's a cool prime number. That we celebrate something like that at 13 o'clock every day. And just take a minute. That's all, you know, 60 seconds, that's all that it takes. What I do, I've put it in my phone as an alarm to remind me when it's Yucca: buzzes at you at one o'clock, Mark: Well, I actually get a 10 minute warning so that I can finish up whatever I'm doing right there and have a minute, but at, at, at the stroke of one. What I do is I just grasp my suntry pendant that I always wear, that I got at the Suntry retreat last year, and just imagine that I am floating in space, looking down at the earth. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: Watching it slowly turn underneath me and just recognize, you know, as Carl Sagan said, this is everyone you've ever known. Everything that's ever happened in human history, all that you'll ever Yucca: king, every baker, every, yeah, every conflict we've ever had. Right. Every. Mark: event, every birth, every celebration, every cataclysm, all those things are embodied in this little planet floating in space. And so I just sort of meditate on that for about a minute, and then I let go of my pendant and go about my day. But I find it's a really wonderful addition to my practice and it's nice to have a little intercession in the middle of the day. That's about my spirituality. Yucca: Hmm. That's great. I love that idea. That's, that's where noom comes from the term originally, isn't it? Weren't there Mark: I think it, yeah, because it was originally Noce Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Noce, which is one of the. Catholic masses that celebrated through the course of the day. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: I don't know what I, I know the first one is Matins and the last one is Vespers. Leys in the middle. Yucca: Yeah. So I think that's where the term is coming from, but I don't know enough about it. I just remember hearing that at one point that that's the origin. So it's a but I, I very much like those. I. And Islam has a, a similar structure of throughout the day having the different, the, just a small ritual throughout the day just to remind us. Right. And I think that there's a lot of, of power in that. Just stop for a moment and kind of have that reset. Right. Mark: Right. Yeah. Because I mean, it's so easy to get caught up in all the busyness of everything we have to do in order to keep the functions of our lives going. But one minute of time just to. Refocus on the big picture I think is really, for me, it's been very meaningful and has kind of contributed to my happiness. So, it's something I'm doing and I really appreciate Michael for suggesting it. Yucca: Yeah, that's fun. Mark: So what are some other things that we either practices or. You know, carrying of objects or keeping them in a, in a, a bag or a purse or putting them in our car. What, you know, other things that we might do to remind us during the day of our path. Yucca: Well, there's one that in my family on my adopted side, my stepmother is having a by the door. Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: Which is like a the other versions what might be like a Honda Fatima or it's like a protection against the the evil eye, but it's this beautiful, stylized hand. And the traditional belief behind it was, you know, it's protection from the evil eye. But that's something that, you know, growing up we would always have by the door and it would be something that We would just touch on the way out of the door, Mark: Hmm. Yucca: Not as a belief literally that that's somehow going to protect us. But just as a reminder of, hey, I'm stepping out of the home. I'm going out into the world and just to be more aware. Right. And just to kind of, you know, shields up, right? So it's almost like the button of like shields up right? Going out, leaving the, the sanctuary of the home. And so having something like that and I actually have the one that, that I grew up with in, in my home now, and it's just by the door and it's. It's just a nice reminder every time of coming in and out of the home space. Mark: And does everyone in your household do that? Yucca: The grownups do, it is too high at the moment for these smaller hands, but as they get older, I think they, they will.  Mark: Ah-huh. Yucca: the one that we have is, If enthusiastically touched, could come down and break, so Mark: Oh, okay. Yucca: get a little bit older. Yeah. It's one that's made from broken pottery. Mark: Oh like Yucca: made from broken. Yeah. It's a mosaic made from broken pottery from Jerusalem. So it's, it's really beautiful and I would rather it not get crushed, but when they're when they're a little bit calmer, Then maybe they'll get, they'll get to do that particular one. Mark: Okay. Yucca: So in the meantime, they're, they've got plenty of other stuff to do. But that's, that's a type of object that's really nice. And I, although I don't drive a lot anymore in my hanging on my rear view mirror, I have a little bead that when I get into the car, it's just a, I just kind of give it a little boop. And just as a reminder of, Hey, I'm getting into the car, I'm taking on a big responsibility with the life of the passengers, my life, the life of anyone else on the c the road. And just take a moment to center and ground and then, then be on the way before just rush. You know? Cause a lot of times we're so tempted to get in the car. You've got the keys, you know, you've turned the car on before your seatbelt's even on and just, no, hang on. Slow down. About to drive this, you know, very, very heavy piece of equipment, very, very fast. So let's take a moment. So those are two that I have on a kind of a very practical level, but they, they really have that special meaning, so, Mark: I, I like that. I mean this, this sort of illustrates that you can imbue anything really with a particular meaning if you associate a practice with it. So, you know, just a little bead. It doesn't need to be anything fancy. It can just be a little something so that you you know, it, it becomes a part of your pattern as you, you know, you put the keys in, you put the seatbelt on, you, you touch the bead, you start the car, and it's just a part of the routine. Yucca: Yeah. So what about you? Do you have any other ones that you do? Mark: You know, what I do is I carry I carry some talismans and I've, there's a, there's a blog post, or it may be a YouTube video actually, because I think I did it while my arm was broken and I couldn't type.  Yucca: Think it is a YouTube video. I think I've a long time. It's been several years, but yeah. Mark: Yes. That would've been 2017 when my, when Yucca: I'll see if I can find the link to that and put that in the show notes. Mark: Great. Yeah, so that's about talismans and the ones that I carry and what they mean to me. And what a talisman is really is just a little. Something a little token of some kind that reminds you of something specific. So, for example, I have an Arrowhead, which was one of the giveaways from. A, an earth honoring ritual that we did at Pantheon a few years ago. And it reminds me of the broader Pagan community and also of deep time being a, a, you know, a found arrowhead. So that's one. There's another, that's a smooth stone. That I got at a fired circle gathering, and it reminds me of that community and the, the people that I have in my life that really love me. So I have fi and there's a little mala bead that looks like a skull that is a memento mori. It reminds me that I'm gonna die and that I need to seize the day. So there are five or six of these little things. And as well as the suntry pendant that I wear around my neck. All of those serve to, kind of, to bring deeper meaning to my daily operation. You know, if I reach in my pocket for my comb while there are those talismans reminding me again that I'm on this path and I'm, I'm doing this, and it's more meaningful than just kind of wandering through life without. A sense of purpose or meaning? Yucca: So do you have a, is it. Is that part of a ritual in the morning, just to stick those into your pocket or are they already in your jeans and when you put your jeans on in the morning? There they are. Mark: They're already in my jeans and when I put my jeans on in the morning, there they are. The only time they come out is when I wash my jeans and then they go in another pair of jeans. Yucca: they're, they're switching pants. Okay. Mark: Yeah. But like for example, I bring them, you know, when I'm wearing dresses, Slacks to like a job interview. I bring those with me because they, you know, they're the, the emotional underpinning for me, right? They, they serve to represent all that community support and enthusiasm and history that I have as a basis on which to be confident and put myself forward. So, Yeah. So, and I've been doing this for a very long time, and of course, once in a while you'll lose one. And that's okay. These things happen. And, you know, I, I do a little ritual to charge each one when I first start carrying it, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: To give it its meaning. To associate it with that particular meaning. And I find, you know, this is a very old tradition. I mean, Roman soldiers used to carry little, you know, rolled up lead tablets with inscriptions on them of things that they, you know, wanted to happen for them, or ways they wanted to be protected. And we as atheopagan and, and naturalistic pagans, we can do the same thing. Yucca: Yeah, some of the ones that you mentioned reminded me of a few things that I have. But they're not objects. They're actually tattoos. Mark: Ah, Yucca: So a few years back at this point, we did an episode on CILs and I hadn't, sigils weren't really a big thing for me at that point but I played with it. Afterwards. Well, we, we did it a little bit before and I had kind of experimented with it so that we could prepare for the episode. And then I ended up deciding one of them after a few months, I went, you know what? This is really working for me, and I decided that I actually was gonna tattoo that on myself. So I did. Now I have on my left hand because I'm right-handed. Well and multiple other reasons as well. Cuz I wear my watch on my right hand. I wanted to access it on my wrist, but I did some white tattoos, which barely show up because I'm, I'm very very pale skinned. So the white just looks kind of like a scar almost. And so I put some marks on. And so I have one on my wrist. Which is for, for fo remembering where my focus is throughout the day, right. And to be paying attention to the things that I actually have influence over and I can control and not stressing constantly about the things that I. I do not have control over. Right. I have no control over what this weather is going to do, but I do have control over how I'm going to respond to that. Right. And another one I have on the back of my hand is a Memento Mori reminder. And throughout the day, I actually touch these on a regular basis. Just to remind, remind myself. It almost feels like pushing a button, like a Oh, right. Okay. Remember, Where's your focus, right? Or hey, this is, this is what you've got, right? Today is what you've got. You don't have tomorrow promised. And you know, that's okay. Right? What are you doing today to, to really live? Because nothing is guaranteed every day, every new day is a bonus. It's a gift, right? So those are. Those are, those are things that I felt strongly enough that I wasn't going to change my mind about whether or not I had that in 20 years. If I'm lucky enough to be here in 20 years, I'm still gonna be thinking about being lucky to be here in 20 years and where I'm focusing my energy on. But if there's certain other things that I'm working on in particular, I actually really like to use Henna. So Hannah's really nice because it, depending on where you put it on your body, right, there's certain areas where it's gonna fade right away. If you put Hannah on your palm, for instance, it's not gonna last, last for very long. But other parts of your body, it might last, you know, or you're not touching things as much or you don't produce as much oils. But you'll get several days to maybe a week out of time of having that symbol literally on your body or that reminder literally on your body. So. Mark: That's a great idea. I, I love that. I don't have any tattoos. I have design for two tattoos that I want to do, one of which is the Sumtry symbol. But I've just never had the free money to invest in having somebody do it. But one day I, I love that idea and I love the idea of You know, of, of recognizing that some of these things are permanent modes that you're, that you want to pursue in, in life. You always want to be aware of your mortality and its implications that you always want to be able to, you know, focus on what you're able to influence and not stress about the rest. Yeah, so tho those are very tallman. And I think. As, when we look at like tsi, the ice, the so-called iceman, the the, Yucca: Yeah, they had lots of tattoos in various places. Mark: right? And they were very obviously magical symbols of some kind. They, they were not, they were not particularly decorative. But you know, that that man had tattoos, which were clearly meant something. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: We will never know exactly what they meant, but we can conjecture that they were protective or for luck and fortune in hunting or, you know, any of those kinds of things. And so I, I think the history of tattoos, you know, really kind of feeds into what you described for yours, Yucca. That's really, really great. Yucca: and I think there's, so I have, I have other ones too that were done by artists. I've got quite a bit on my back and And those were very meaningful and special too. But there's also something about, for the really simple ones, the doing it yourself. There's something very, Mark: Hmm. Yucca: there was, it was very nice to do that. So just the poking stick, the old style, you know, you just have your, you can buy the kits right, and get the right ink. You don't wanna just do any ink. You have to get the right ink to put in your body and you don't wanna be putting in your lead ink or things like that, right? But that in itself can be a ritual. And actually having an artist do it as well, Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: you can really make that a really special thing. Mark: Sure. Well, and you've got all the endorphins that are provoked by the pain of the, of the tattooing. That puts you in kind of an altered state. I mean, people talk about how tattoos can be addictive Yucca: Yeah. Mark: and I, you know, I understand that. But that, that trans state, that state of being altered by the tattooing process is. Very much a ritual opportunity. It's you know, it's a, a state where you can, being in that trend state, you can apply a layer of meaning beyond simple decoration. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: To the, to the, the symbol that you're putting on yourself. And, and most of the people that I know who have tattoos, they associate meetings with them. They, they, they're not just decorative, they, they, they're there for a reason. Yucca: Yeah. That seems to be pretty, I mean, I can't think of anyone who I've asked about their tattoo and they haven't had some elaborate explanation about, you know, oh, this is, you know, the pair of sewing scissors because my mother and grandmother and I used to this and that, and you know, there's often, often stories that go along with it or, You know, things like, you know, this is my this is my five years sober tattoo, or my, you know, that kind of stuff, Mark: Or the semicolon for people who have survived suicide attempts, for example. Right. Not the end of the story. There's more to the sentence. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: All, you know, there are, there are a lot of different kinds of symbols like that that are very meaningful to people and that I think are some of which are intended to be communicative. You know, they're supposed to tell a story to someone else, and for others it's just you telling the story to yourself when you see them on your body. Yucca: and that's why for me, I chose white. I wanted them somewhere that I could see all the time, but I didn't want something that was gonna be flashy to someone else. Right. So that's why, I mean, I don't think most people even notice it. Right. But it's about, Mark: I certainly never did when we met at the Century Retreat last year, I. Yeah, I, I never noticed them. Yucca: Well I had, when we, then I had the one on my wrist, I didn't have the one on my hand. But again, I don't think it's showing up on the Mark: I can't see it on the screen through Zoom. No, I can't see it. Yucca: I think maybe it shows like you can barely see it, but I see it and that's what matters for me. Mark: course, of course. Yucca: my more visible, my more like elaborate ones. I do still have them so that I can cover them if I want, but the, the stigma around them is really faded, right? People don't get worried about that anymore. It used to be a big deal, but now it's a I don't know if the statistic is real, but it's supposed to be like a third of American millennials have a tattoo, Mark: Hmm. Yucca: like that. Wouldn't surprise me at all. Mark: Me neither. I mean, you see them everywhere and you know, I, in professional office circumstances, I've, you know, worked with a lot of people who, you know, they have sleeves and and all that. So yeah, it's, it's very common to me. I've just never really felt the opportunity. It's, it's not that I'm in any way morally opposed So, yeah, what we're talking about here really is about how do you create symbolic meaning that reverberates through you in the course of your daily operations as opposed to your daily practice, which might be, okay, I do this formal thing in the morning, I do a formal thing in the evening. That's great. But you know, I, I wanna be reminded of my values on a regular basis, and I want to be reminded of the things that I've learned that help me to be wiser and kinder. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: So, you know, having those kinds of practices I think is a good way to have a touchstone to go back. those principles because, you know, the world can frazzle you, Yucca: He can't. Yeah. Mark: you know, really pull you out of any sense of centeredness in yourself. Yucca: As you were saying that it occurred to me. There's other points throughout the day that aren't things that I use, but that would be opportunities for other people if it's something that they do. If you wear makeup every morning, Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: a great time. Right to c incorporate some something in there. And just the act of getting dressed too, like you talk about having the items that you keep in your jeans, but you know, is there, is there something when you are dotting your clothing that you are reminding yourself about the, the values that you have or so things like that. Mark: Not ordinarily, but certainly when I'm dressing professionally, like if I'm putting on a suit, I'm putting on a suit of armor. And, you know, I put on a suit to go to war because the kinds of contexts where I need to be dressed that way tend to be ones where I am advocating. Yeah, I'm advocating for something. I'm, you know, I'm, I'm trying to make a change. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: And either that or I'm defending myself which is, you know, another, another possibility. So. You know, clothing and costume is another whole conversation we could have. And, you know, maybe we will at some point Yucca: think we should, yes. Mark: I think we should too. Because decorating ourselves in various ways is highly communicative to the people around us. And We make choices about what we wanna say. You know, we, it talks about what class we are, it talks about what gender we are. It talks about what what kind of work we do. It, it, it says a lot of stuff. Our education level. Yucca: views, our, you know, yes. All kinds of things. Mark: Yeah. So let's, let's put a pin in that and, Yucca: Yeah, we'll come back to that. Mark: Yeah, we'll definitely come back to that. But you know, the whole self adornment thing, you know, beyond the practicalities of being warm enough or cool enough I, I think are, are an interesting vein to explore for people that are working to fold meaning into the operation of their lives. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: So this is, you know, sort of a. Whirlwind examination of all this stuff, but I, I, I think the, the fundamental point that I want to communicate is that you know, if there's a special rock that you like and it reminds you of something like a beautiful day at the beach or something, don't feel weird about carrying that around. That's, that absolutely makes sense to carry that around. Yucca: That's very human. We've been doing that a long time. Mark: Yes. Yes. And we can do it intentionally and it can become a part of our, of our practice. Yucca: Yeah. Well, this was a fun one. Thank you. A. Mark: Yeah. Thank you, Yucca, and we'll see you next week.    

THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism
Imaginal Journeys (Pathworking)

THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism

Play Episode Listen Later May 15, 2023 42:20


Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com. S4E17 TRANSCRIPT:----more----   Yucca: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. I'm one of your host Yucca, Mark: And I'm the other one, mark. Yucca: and today we are going to be talking about the power of imagination and how we as Pagans can use that in a very conscious way. Mark: Right. Yeah. Because our brains are so powerful and we are so built for the creation of narratives, of stories that we can harness. That propensity and that talent to be able to take ourselves places and have experiences? Yucca: Right. We're the storytelling apes. That's who we are, right? Yeah. And that's what we do, right? Wh wherever you're from in the world, that's what humans do. That's something that all cultures have in common, is the storytelling that we do, and, and sometimes it's. Very subtle that we might not even notice it, you know, telling you about my morning. And other stories might be these long epics to, you know, the Lord of the Rings and this and that, you know, but, but we do it all the time throughout the day, Mark: Right, the, the connection of events into an arc that starts one place and ends in another place. Science is a storytelling process Yucca: right. Mark: in science. Just because it's a story doesn't mean it's not true. I. There are many stories that are factual stories. I mean, we, our hopes of history are that history will be as factual as possible. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: Science is all about developing narratives that explain stuff first. This happens, and then that process happens, and as a result you end up with this. Yucca: A and with science there's just very specific narrative rules you have to follow. Right. And in other types of stories, there's different kinds of rules that are being followed in, in the creation and the telling of those stories. And we do it, it, it's just the way that we're even understanding the world. And so, Sometimes our, our imagination can not be in line with someone else's understanding of events or of a more objective perspective on what happened. And that can, either way, whether it's reflects other people's understanding or you're not, we still have an emotional response. To the stories that we're telling. And that's where I think a lot of the power is in, is what is the response that we have to that story. Because stories they, they invoke a response. Mark: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And a part of what's very interesting and powerful about our brains is that the same systems that are used to assess real world events and then draw, connect the dots between them to create a narrative, are also used in the imagination. And our brain is actually not very good at differentiating between what is imagined and what is actually experienced. It's the, those kinds of narratives, they just run right parallel in our minds. And as a result, you can have a memory of how an event went that conflicts sharply with someone else's memory of how that exact same event went. And neither of you are necessarily right or wrong. Because we edit our memories. We remember different things from different points of view, and our memories are constantly evolving. So if there's a car accident, for example, the two drivers might have very differing stories about who was responsible for what and so forth, and they believed them. Absolutely. And this is why eyewitness testimony is taken with a grain of salt in a court of law because just because you believe something absolutely doesn't make it true. Yucca: Right. We were saying, Lord, the Rings earlier, it's, it's Gollum with, it was his birthday present. Right. He firmly, he told himself that enough times that he's rewritten his memory to believe that. But yeah, we do that with, you know, Whether you actually had your turn signal on or not. And what was it that, the, what, what was your tone? What was your intention with that argument that you had with your spouse last night? And sometimes we're rewriting things in a way that is beneficial to us. Right. And sometimes it's not a con, it's not a conscious thing where it's like, oh, yes, I'm gonna talk myself into this. It's just. It just kind of happens, right? You're just a little bit unclear in the details and your mind just fills in details for you Mark: right. Fills in the gaps Yucca: right now. This is, Mark: what we don't like is a story that has holes in it. Yucca: yeah. Mark: Because it makes us uncomfortable. A narration that smoothly explains everything is more comfortable to sit with than one that's got these holes in it where it's like, okay, this happens. And then a while later this is happening and we don't know why, which is kind of what science is all about. Yucca: Yeah. Well, and a physical, a perception example of this is actually our vision. We have blind spots and you can actually detect it by, if you take your thumb and you take it all the way out to your side to your peripheral vision, and then you slowly move your thumb to the front of your face, you're gonna find that there's a, a blind spot that you have, but we don't notice it because our brain fills it in for us. Right. Our imagination fills that in, but it's, it's there. Mark: What I've read is that what we experience is a, is a, an edit of about 15 seconds of sensorium. So the reason that your brain can fill in the stuff that's in the blind spot is because it caught it earlier when your eyes were looking in a different. Place and it just cuts and pastes over the proper location, which is miraculous when you think about it. It's just, it's extraordinary that this thing is able to happen. Not to mention the fact that we should be seeing upside down, but we're not, cuz our brain turns it over. Our brains are very, very powerful in terms of editing this stuff to make sense to us so that we can create a coherent story about the events of the world. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: All of that is to say that we can create stories that we experience with as much vividness as if we were actually going through them. Yucca: Right. Mark: And we do that with books. We do it with movies, and we do it with radio dramas, and we do it with theater. We do it with all kinds of immersive sorts of experiences. And in the context of Paganism, we can do it in our minds by doing what's called Pathwork or journeying. Yucca: That's right. Well, and even on a much broader level, that's what a lot of our ritual work is. So we're gonna talk specifically about Pathwork or journeying, but those are, that's. It is more of a subset of ritual and working with the mind and working with imagination. So when we imagine that we are casting this circle, that's us working with our imagination. Do we know? Do we actually know that? No. That we're not, there's not really this magical force that we're putting out. Yes, but the, there's still so much power in the imagination that it still helps us to feel things. Mark: It reassures us, for example, that within that circle there is safety. And feeling safe is a prerequisite to being able to be vulnerable. And if you're vulnerable, you can access your emotions better, and then you can more easily kind of manipulate the sort of experience that you want to have coming, you know, out of this, this ritual. So, you know, when we talk about creating the sacred container, for example, a lot of that, I mean, it's imaginary, right? I mean, hopefully you're not. Doing your ritual in a place where people are gonna come barging through. But but there's no physical impediment to them doing that. If there are, and I have had people come barging through into a circle that I've drawn and it's uncomfortable. It, it really kind of throws you off. So, when we do this, when we do rituals, usually a ritual has a story. Right. A ritual has a story. Okay. The story is we are now in sacred space. We invoke powers to come to help us, whether that's elements and directions and gods and goddesses, or whether it's qualities that you invoke or whether it's, you know, spirits or. Ancestors or whatever those things might be. Okay. We bring all those powers to help us, and then we go through a transformational process in which something that started out one way ends up a different way afterwards, you know? And then we thank the powers that have helped us and we express our gratitude, and then we close the ritual. That's a story, Yucca: Right. Mark: yeah. Yucca: And so for Pathwork or journeying, it's a story that might be a little bit more developed than. In terms of maybe you're imagining yourself going on a physical journey where it's more like depending on for the person, more like playing a movie out in your mind. So why don't we actually, let's, let's step back and talk about what, what this is. So from your understanding, when somebody says journeying or Pathwork, what do you, what comes to mind for you? Mark? Mark: Well, I, I think of two general categories. There is the solitary journey. Which doesn't necessarily mean it's a solitary ritual, but one person is going through the process of developing and experiencing the story, while others may be drumming and chanting or something like that. And then that individual, when the journey is over, will kind of report back to the rest of the group about what they've discovered. And this is a very traditional kind of healer magic person. Kind of tradition, like those that happen in cultures like in the Siberian North, for example, where you go on this, the, the, the shaman, then that's a Tousk word specifically to talk about those cultures uses the, the rhythm of a drum. And other magical techniques in order to go off into their mind and have an experience. And then when it's over, when they come back, then they will explain to the rest of the people gathered there, what they learned for the tribe, what important information they gathered what actions they recommend, all those kinds of things. So that's, that's the first bucket, is the kind of the individual journey, earth path. Yucca: Which could also be solitary, right? You just described a, a kind of a group ritual, but it could be something that somebody does in the privacy of their own home by themselves or some, or, you know, in the forest or wherever they are. Mark: yes, yes. And then the other category is one where, Once again, it can be solitary, but it can also be a shared group experience where there's a guide and the guide is telling the story and everyone else is hearing it and experiencing it in their mind. So, and we call those guided meditations. And yaka, I know you've created a whole lot of 'em. You've got a YouTube channel with them and all that kind of stuff. Yucca: On the nature guided meditations is the podcast I, I updated every couple months now for a while during the pandemic, I was doing it every week. It seemed like that was something folks needed. But now it's kind of when I've got a little extra time here and there, I'll put it, put one out. So, Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: yeah. Yeah, so a, a guided meditation and in those, there's different structures, but often there's a, it is a. A physical journey that somebody is imagining that they're going through.  Mark: And in these journeys we can meet characters. We can meet people from our lives or from our memories. We can meet people we've never met before. We can meet we can encounter various kinds of challenges, like a wall of fire that you need to get through, or a big river that you need to cross. One of the, one of the prompts that I really enjoy for solo journeying is a giant plant growing up out of the ground, like a giant bean stock, and you climb and climb and climb and climb and climb until you get to this land in the clouds. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: And then the adventure takes place. The experience takes place in this sort of cloud-like, like place, right? Which I call the overworld as opposed to the underworld. Yucca: I've heard the upper world referred Mark: Oh, Uhhuh. Yucca: So yeah, the underworld, the upper world. And then there's the mid, the mid world where we are. And you know, there's a lot of different frameworks to, to think about that with. Mark: Right. And that's one of the places where your own imagination and creativity really come into play, because you will imagine this in a different way than anybody else, and it works for you. That's great. Yucca: and in, in either way, whether you're doing a guided journey or you're doing a self-guided one, so let's say you're listening to something that somebody's recorded or they're speaking live to you, and there's a. Two of you listening to the exact same thing, your experiences are going to be different of that, right? You are going to imagine different things. The details will be different for you and the responses that you have to those those images are going to be different. Mark: Right. Yucca: And there's, you know, you can discover a lot about your current state by simply. Noticing what responses come up for you. Mark: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yucca: And there's, you can really play with how do you, if you're something you're guiding yourself how you. Influence how you choose to respond. I find that, you know, trying to just be like, no, in real, like stern, like I'm not gonna do this fight. It just makes the idea stronger and stronger. And so learning to kind of go with the flow of it and redirect kind of, it, it makes me think of like a keto, right? Like instead of trying to block the punch that the person is, is sending it, you just. Take it and, you know, pull 'em right past and move 'em past to you. Right. And you, you can kind of play with that when you are journeying with your own mind. Right. And just be like, okay, well I'm gonna redirect and how do I practice redirecting to go on this in this particular direction? Mark: and you learn things by choices you make. So if you find yourself looking out at this vast landscape, well, Am I gonna follow the river off into the trees or am I gonna climb the mountain? Or, you know, you, you will learn things about your own inclinations. Like, okay, here's a huge, deep, scary mountain looking. I'm, I'm gonna climb that. Well, do you always pick the hardest way to do things? Might, might be something, Yucca: Oops. Mark: might be something to consider. So if you're paying attention, which of course you really wanna be during this journey You, you can learn a lot about your own proclivities and habits and blind spots and all that kind of stuff just by watching the kinds of choices that you make. And we'll be talking about ritual later. But one of the things that makes for a really good guided visualization is that key pieces are left vague so that you can fill them in with specifics that are really pertinent to you. Yucca: Right. Mark: So you might meet a wise guide figure, right? But you yourself know who that person is. So you, you will put that specific person in the place of the wise guide figure. Yucca: Right. And. You can, you can approach this in a lot of different ways. You can go in seeking a particular answer. Or working on a particular issue or problem that you're, that you're facing right now or mulling over. Or you can also go in as simply a, let's explore what's going on in my mind right now. This is a landscape of my mind or whatever it happens to be. And so the, there isn't really a right way to, to. To be doing this. It's what's gonna, just like everything that we talk about on this podcast really is, you know, you can have different goals and Mark's goals. My goals, your goals, those are gonna be different, right? And so what do you, this is a tool to, to approach those goals with. Mark: Yeah. And and it really helps to capture as much as you can about the story. If there are particular things that you notice, like along the side of the path that you're walking along, you, you know, you notice mushrooms, well take note of that. You know, your mind put those there for some reason. You probably want to explore what that reason is. You don't necessarily have to interact with them at all, or you can choose to, but the fact that they're there probably means something. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: So, I mean, it can actually be helpful if you're doing like a solo journey, like I'm, I'm talking about it can actually help to sort of narrate your experience as you're having it. And I've even recorded myself as I'm having this experience so that I can go back over the journey later and remember the pieces that I might not otherwise remember. Yucca: Wow. So speaking doesn't take you out of the experience Mark: It doesn't, but I, I'm sure that it does for some people though, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So you'd kind of play with that and see does it, if it takes you out of the experience, then. You know, maybe write it down afterwards. If it doesn't take you out, then recording that sounds like a great approach. Right. And then you can come back and transcribe that later or something like that. Mm-hmm. Mark: right. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Yeah. So there's the, the guided meditation approach is one that I think more people in Western Paganism are more familiar with. Because we've been doing that sort of thing for a long time in, in psychological circles. And of course its analogs are things like books and movies and, you know, having a story told to you and having that come to life in your mind is very familiar to us. But the exploration of the open landscape of the interior, can be really powerful. Very moving can be terrifying. It can be a lot of things. And you, you learn stuff. I mean, you, your, your subconscious knows stuff. You don't, and you, you will learn things if you do this kind of journeying. Yucca: And this is one of those practices which I really encourage people to be patient with themselves on. If this is the type of thing that you've never done before, it's, it's, maybe it's gonna take some practice, maybe you get into it and you find yourself kind of being pulled out of it. That's okay. It's really, it's a skill, right? Just because it doesn't come supernatural the first time doesn't mean that it isn't something that could be useful for you given time. Right. It's like, it's like any other thing. I mean, remember the first time that you were learning to drive and how weird and awkward and how much your ankle hurt afterwards, right? Or whatever the experience is. This is one of those types of things where it, it really just does p take practice. And it becoming skillful at something like this can also help you in other ritual practice as Mark: Yes. Yes, because. The state that you're in when you're doing that? Inner journeying is definitely a form of trance, and lot of what Pagan ritual is about is going into a trance state so that we can tinker with our subconsciousness and Learn and discover things and grow as people, transform things that have hurt us, things like that. So, being able to induce yourself into that trans state is a learned skill, as you say, but it's very useful. Once, once you've gotten good at it, it's, it's really a helpful thing to be able to do. And there are things that you can do that will help. You along with that, like there are certain kinds of music, for example, that can be very facilitative for particular kinds of journey. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: So it's a, you know, there, there are some things that you can do to make it easier on yourself. Yucca: Right. A classic is a, a drumbeat, just a very simple drumbeat. I find the sound of running or rushing water for some people who have a deep connection with the ocean, the waves, those really repetitive but very natural kind of sounds. I mean, I suppose for some people maybe, There, you know, some screeches might work for me. That doesn't work. Right. It's, it's definitely gotta be a very kind of a primal, natural type of sound there. Mark: Yeah, but not an alarming Yucca: Not an alarming. Yeah. Something that is, is very rhythmic. You know, it, I think of it as almost like being back in the womb and hearing your mother's heartbeat. Right or the, or you probably could hear her, you know, the gurgling of her digesting things and all the types of sounds that you'd kind of hear back in that most, most early beginnings of you coming into awareness. Mark: Right. Yeah, I, I think that's really well said. And, and, and I mean, there is a lot of variety. Like, there's a, there's an electronic music album, a very, very old one by a group called Tangerine Dream, which I mean, they're, they, they existed in the late sixties into the 1970s, and I think there's some configuration of them that exists now, but I know that two of the three people that were a part of it are, are now gone. They're dead. And there's this Yucca: it hard to keep making music. Mark: really? Yeah. Unless, unless you're, unless you're John Cage. And it's just that long silence. Do you know about that? Yucca: I don't know. Mark: John Cage has a piece, I think it's called seven and a half minutes, and it's Yucca: Oh, I do know this. Yes. Yes. Mark: it's subs absurd. Yeah, I mean you can see the sheet music right. Rest, rest, rest, rest, rest, rest. The Yucca: I could play that song Mark: yeah, me too. So, the. This particular album has a very soaring, rhythmic kind of quality to it. For me. It makes me feel like I'm flying and particularly flying at night, like kind of gliding over the landscape, very low altitude. So sort of following the contours of hills and valleys with lights below. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: it's very, very visual to me. And So I, I will use that in journeying sometimes. So a, and you know, we've talked about this before, but that kind of, you know, repetitive, rhythmic, transi kind of electronic music, there's a reason why people dance to that stuff. It's very trans inducing. You can submerge into your body and have this, you know, full. Non thinky experience moving. And I mean, dance clubs, they do it with low light conditions and, you know, colored lights and all the various things that we say are great for ritual, right? Yucca: They're good at it. It's, it's literally their job, Mark: That, that it, that is their job. And so anyway, there, there are a bunch of different ways that you can facilitate these things. One of the. Tactics that's used in various kinds of religious practices is scent incense, right? Or essential oils, or, you know, or other things like that. I, I know that some people will choose a particular scent for their journeying. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mark: it becomes a trigger. You smell it, and then you're in there, you're, you're on your way. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Right. And so that scent, the sound people could probably do that with particular, Physical sensations as well. Right. Do you have a the particular comfy sweater or the robe or cloak that you put on and, you know, all of those sorts of things. The, the physical sensations can really pull us into a, into an experience more quickly. Mark: Right, right. And the complete absence of those things can also pull us into a very altered state very quickly as well. You know, the, the isolation tanks that people submerge in and things like that. Or, you know, noise canceling earphones and a and a blindfold or a, an eye mask, for example. To really reduce your sensorium so that you're inside yourself and your imagination starts to take over and give you imagery. The brain is strong, it does lots of cool stuff. So experiment, you know, have a, have a good time playing around with it. Yucca: Right. Yeah. Mark: So I guess we sort of segued into talking about ritual things that you can do. To do this kind of journeying. The, the thing that I think is really important when you're doing the solitary internal journeying is to have a really, a really firm sense of what it is that you're seeking to find out. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: Because otherwise you'll be shown other stuff, which is also true, but may not be relevant. Yucca: Hmm Mark: Uh, at least that's what I find. And maybe that's just cuz I have a d h d and I'm kind of all over the place. But I, I have found myself going down into cul-de-sacs that were about stuff that was entirely unrelated to what I was trying to do Yucca: Great. Mark: in some of these experiences. Yucca: And I wanna make a clarification that I think our listeners will probably already be clear on. But when we talk about this, the framework that we're coming at it from is not that there's some outside entity giving us these visions. Right. This is, this is ourselves. This is a way that we are communicating with ourselves. And this is this is our minds coming up with all of this and interpreting these just like, with dreams or this is the same framework that we talk about with practices like tarot or other divination. I mean, this is kind of a, I suppose you could. Kind of put this in the class. In the group of being a form of divination in some Mark: Yeah. Yeah, in a way, I mean, it's the same sort of psychological temperature taking and trying to sort of get under the hood to find out what's going on in the subconscious mind. Yucca: Right? And seeking understanding. Mark: Right, right. But what's cool about the internal landscape that can be explored through this kind of journeying is that unlike the real world, where there aren't these super powerful supernatural beings that you can call on to help you and all that kind of stuff inside your mind. Yucca: Oh, absolutely. Mark: there is, and you're, it Yucca: Right. Mark: you, you are the all powerful being that can actually make decisions about what's gonna happen in this thing. And so that's a very powerful kind of experience to have. Yucca: Right, and maybe, maybe you experience that by having characters, right? Maybe you come to the rattlesnake who swallows you or whatever that is going to be for you or the, the wise old, you know that that conversation with your grandmother who. Died many years ago or something like that. It's all you, but, but you get to, but you get to use whatever story and characters and anything that really is gonna speak to you on that real primal, emotional level. Mark: Right. And that doesn't mean that you have to deliberately, consciously choose those things. Yucca: Right. Mark: A lot of that choice is gonna be made for you. And that's good because that means the subconscious is talking. Yucca: Right, so the subconscious is making that choice for you. You still are the subconscious, but it's not your conscious self. Maybe Mark: Yeah. It's not your thinking. Yucca: it's not your thinky logical part going through and saying, Hmm, well what would be the next thing if this was a story that I was writing as a script, right? Just, you just kind of let it happen Mark: I think I'll put a rattlesnake here. Yucca: Yes. It's like, oh no, maybe, maybe that rattlesnake just is there. Hmm, maybe. Maybe I've been thinking about those. Maybe that's a powerful symbol in my life right now for someone else, you know, grew up in Alaska, you're probably not gonna think about rattlesnakes all that much, but it's really gonna be really, really personal to you experiencing it as the. As the journeyer or the practitioner. Mark: Uhhuh. Yeah. So, talk a little bit about ways that groups can be involved in that solitary journeying. As I mentioned before it can be really helpful, you know, that that simple drumbeat is something that a group can do together. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: And they will get all trad out too. They may take their own journeys. Just sitting there beating a drum repeatedly over and over and over and over again, and feeling the sound welling around them and through their bodies, they may have, you know, experiences to report out as well. Yucca: Right. So you might all choose to, okay, we're going to together. We're going to intern to a ritual space, and then we're each going to go and have these journeys and maybe report back to each other what you're comfortable sharing or maybe not, right? Mark: right. Yeah, and, and I, we should say at this point that this kind of activity is a universal human activity. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: Cultures all over the world have specific protocols around it. You know, particular symbols and particular practices that they do, that they've evolved over time in order to be really effective for them. And we don't wanna steal those. That's cultural appropriation. We're, we're, you know, we don't wanna steal those and we don't need to steal them. Yucca: right. Mark: This is something that people have done from time immemorial. And so you can have your own journey and practice in a way that doesn't steal culture from any other, you know, marginalized or oppressed people, and still have every bit as vivid an experience as someone else in another culture. So, so it it's about learning the skills and about Letting your mind be free in that way to, to go and have those kinds of experiences. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Thank you. I think that's really important to, to add into the conversation. Right. Mark: Right. Well, we were talking before we recorded and you know, I, I had mentioned that word shaman before, and that's, I. Kind of been glommed onto by social scientists as sort of a generic term for this kind of journeying. And the people who actually use that word, who have that word in Siberia are not happy about it at all. They don't feel that their practices should be lumped in with everyone else's. And people in other indigenous cultures don't feel that they should be labeled with a Siberian word. So the whole thing just gets really messy. So, We don't call it that. We, we call it journeying and, and path working. Yucca: Yeah. Yeah, and there's, there's a lot of examples of of places where things like that have happened and it gets tricky because then you're going, well, okay, how do we talk about it and how do we be respectful and, and. You know, there's, there's just so much to really think about and reflect on in these areas, so, Mark: Yeah. Yeah. So, I, I mean, I guess in, in summation, just really encourage you to check this out. You know, try this if you feel like you aren't very good at this sort of visual imagining thing for one thing, it doesn't have to be visual, it can be words or however your mind works. People's minds work in different kinds of ways. But start with guided meditations. You know, start, start with someone else helping you with imagery, and then see what comes up in the spaces that they leave for you to create your own things. You know, if a figure gives you a gift, what's the gift? You know, that's an important message from your subconscious. What is it? You know, is it a container? What's inside it? What does it do? You know? It's funny, when we talk about this stuff, I'm reminded both of us are Dungeons and Dragons players. Although here's a complete tangent, I'm probably moving away from Fifth Edition Dungeons and Dragons because I'm very angry at Yucca: SRDS shenanigans that Mark: Yeah, well that, and then this thing that happened recently where they accidentally released a set of magic, the gathering cards to a YouTuber who made a video about them. Yucca: that. Yes. And they Mark: And they hired Pinkerton detectives to raid their house Yucca: can you believe that the Pinkertons are still like, I can't believe they're arou. Yeah. Yeah. They got essentially hitman like, yeah. Mark: just what, what we, I'm not giving you any more of my money. I'm Yucca: Yeah. Wizards has made some real bad calls. I mean, they've got some folks there that I really like, but. They also have some executives making some really, really dumb choices. Mark: absolutely. I mean, I think the creative team is great, but yeah, anyway, Yucca: but there's plenty of other awesome systems out Mark: there are, there are, and don't get me started on those cuz then this gets too long.  Yucca: For that. Mark: Huh. So, but I'm reminded of role playing games, which is this collaborative storytelling enterprise where the imaginations of the participants fill in the blanks of what's gonna happen next, what the characters are going to do. And there's a rule framework, unlike in journeying, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: BEC, because that gamifies it, right? That, that creates more tension because you don't know whether events are going to, Yucca: There's risk. Yeah. You, you roll the die and what happens as a respon? Yeah. You don't, you aren't automatically successful, like in the make believe stories we all played when we were little. Right. I remember getting so frustrated with some of my friends because they'd never let anything bad happen. Right. And you're, you know, when you have the die, that's, that allows you to let bad things happen without it being someone's fault. Now, maybe that isn't necessarily what you want to be doing in your journey but you know, you've got, when it's just you, you've got the freedom to make it just the positive things happening that you want. Or you can kind of let some of those struggles happen and kind of, and explore what happens with those. Mark: Or some sort of a mid ground where you find a magic mirror and you look in the mirror and you witness events that are challenging or threatening or dangerous, but they're not immediately threatening to you because you're just watching them in a mirror. You're not actually there. Being threatened by them, right? So there are, there are lots of techniques that you can use in this imaginable landscape to keep yourself safe while at the same time addressing, you know, really very sensitive issues that you may struggle with or that are up in your life or that are up for your community, whatever it is. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, this was a lot of fun. Mark: Yeah. Yeah. I really enjoyed this one. Yucca: And you know, we actually Mark: like I always say that. Yucca: well it's fun talking with you. We talk about great stuff and we actually did touch on this this topic, but we were looking back through some of the episodes that we've done and we hadn't talked about it since 2020. Mark: Right. Yucca: So, yeah. And you know, I didn't re-listen to the episode before we did this, so I might go back and see, did we say the same things or did we say something different? Mark: Yeah. I mean, one thing, we've, we've been doing this for more than three years now, and that means that there are more than 150 episodes, and that necessarily means that we're gonna be repeating some topics. I. Just like we do with the holidays when they come around, we always do we always do an event a podcast for each of the Sabbaths of the Wheel of the year. So that's just something to be You know, it's part of the package, it's part of what we come with. And that way you don't have to go back all the way to episode one and listen to all of them to catch up. Although I know some people do that, which is really kind of amazing to me. Yucca: Yeah, but it, it kind of, it means that, yeah, there are some of, some of you who have, and some of you've just jumped in more recently or you've been with us for years, but maybe not three years, maybe two years. So, but it's also, it's fun to, to go, to come back around and just see how, how our perspectives have changed and. You know, because even on, in only three years, on the one hand, that doesn't seem like a long time. And on the other hand, there's so much that's happened in the world and so much that changes about us and you listening. And so I, I, I really appreciate the, we have the opportunity to revisit some of these topics together. So thank Mark: too. You're, you're welcome and thank you. All right, so, that's another in the can. And really thank you to all of you for listening. As always. You can reach us at the Wonder podcast cues@gmail.com and always appreciate your, your emails and suggestions and questions and all that good kind of stuff. Yucca: All right. See you next week everybody.    

Metal Nerdery
#182 PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH - Album Dive

Metal Nerdery

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 16, 2023 84:47


PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH, the third release from “Big Six” Bay Area thrashers TESTAMENT, is a bit of a departure from the more eerie, dark, and creepy signature sound represented on The Legacy & The New Order.   There's an almost upbeat, “good time thrash” vibe to it, with “more singy, less screamy” vocals and “more accessible” songs that radio stations could feel safer playing over the airwaves (especially during the daytime).  Some might say it's their “…And Justice For Black Album” album, others might say it's their “…And Black Album For All” album. We feel like it falls somewhere in the middle.  You be the judge.   Its time to sit back, relax, and enjoy a veritable “orgery” of quality “South American Adult Entertainment” the likes of which you've never experienced before. Prepare to learn some thought provoking Mario Bros trivia, discover why you should use a “gentle grip and a fast technique” when working the knotholes of naughty trees and JOIN US as we dive into the “un-darkness” of PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH.   Visit www.metalnerdery.com/podcast for more on this episode Leave us a Voicemail to be played on a future episode: 980-666-8182 Metal Nerdery Tees and Hoodies – metalnerdery.com/merch and kindly leave us a review and/or rating on the iTunes/Apple Podcasts - Spotify or your favorite Podcast app Listen on iTunes, Spotify, Podbean, Google Podcasts or wherever you get your Podcasts. Follow us on the Socials: Facebook - Instagram - Twitter Email: metalnerdery@gmail.com   Can't be LOUD Enough Playlist on Spotify Metal Nerdery Munchies on YouTube @metalnerderypodcast   Show Notes: (00:01): #theuncorking (“There it is…”) and a word regarding our #specialguest from #DrEviler / “Orgery?” / ***WARNING!!!*** #listenerdiscretionisadvised / #thisepisodesclinkyoftheepisode #FireOnTheMountain (“Tastes like Big Red…”) / ***WELCOME BACK TO THE METAL NERDERY PODCAST!!!*** / #RussellsReflectionsASMR and a word about our guest joining us in the #Bunkerpoon / “There were a couple of rooms…” / #thisepisodesbeeroftheepisode #CherryStreetBrewing #OasisImperialStout (Iron DC or AC Maiden?) / #buttonrub (“That looks like motor oil”) / “Its like when you get some good PCP…” / #10percentABV (at least it's not a #dietWhiteClaw) / #markthetime (“Eleven pounds down…”) / “You should wear a cape…”   (09:25): You still out there #pissingpost? / The ultimate #MetalNerderySuperGroup / “Boners and ASMR…” / ***You can email us at metalnerdery@gmail.com *** / #PastTheFall (WE'LL PLAY YOUR SHIT-TAH!!!) #crickets (“Should we?  Or did we?”) / “Mark ALL those times…” / “It's always awesome when I get to do the jingle…” / “It's just crude and we're fucking idiots…” / Scratch #PastTheFall, we're doing #MindEnemies INTO THE STORM (Doom meets #IronMaiden meets #Opeth) / “That's the smallest keyboard I've ever seen…” / The genre is #ProgressiveDoomMetal (“I'll bet that dude's got great relaxers…”) / “What's the deal with the #MarioBros?” / “I'm gonna Google it…” / #DoomGothicProgressiveMetal / “Matt was right…” / “That will never be replaced…” / Ever heard of #Slower? “Awwww Mannnn…” (Think #Slayer played at #doommetal speed) WAR ENSEMBLE / “A very gentle grip…” / #Grammys / #BestDeathMetalPerformance / #Seriously / “It's either racism or it's true…” / #boneyard vs #liquidmetal / “You're just all about the bone…”    (25:32): “Wait a minute, hold on…” / #bolth / #TheDocket #Testament PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH / “It didn't seem more mainstream at the time…” / “Especially during the day…” / “It's almost #TheBlackAlbum …” / The importance of hooks re:  #mainstreammetal / “Which one is the Enter Sandman of this album?” / #AndJusticeForBlackAlbum (“Does it have bass?  Does it not?”) / #BlackAlbumReflectionsASMR / “This goes down way too easy…” / #markthetime / Released August 4th, 1989 and mall memories / Reflecting on Testament tour memories / “You'll find it…” / “That's like cleanup day…” / #SouthAmericanAdultEntertainment    (36:21): “In the Bunkerpoon, it's all tentacles, all the time…” / #allthecokelines #killeropener PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH (“The solo goes on forever…”) / Thoughts on the bass tone / Flanger and chorus makes #Florous / PERILOUS NATION (#happymetal) / “They were getting blowjobs and free drugs…” / “I'm just saying, there's 2 different kinds…” / “That was a different Testament…”    (46:01): ENVY LIFE (and early #deathmetalvocals) / #TheBigSix and Testament's distinctive sound / “I hear it in a completely different way…seriously.” / “That was their Load…” / #TheBreakdown / #LightAndShade / TIME IS COMING  (“That went down way too easy…”) / More Justice than Black Album? #AndBlackAlbumForAll / “Seven is average…” / A side discussion regarding proper compensation    (59:55): BLESSED IN CONTEMPT #thisisthrash / “That makes you the bass player, bro…” / GREENHOUSE EFFECT / “That's what the knotholes are for…” / #lawsagainstnature or #crimesagainstnature?  / “Does anybody hear it?” / SINS OF OMISSION / “You can't say the rest of it…” (But you can have a conversation about it…) / ***GIVE US A CALL AND LEAVE US A VOICEMAIL AT 980-666-8182!!!***   (1:08:42): THE BALLAD (#moneytrack) and the typical “fourth track” #softintro in the 80's / #Yeahhh / And now, a completely different song… / “That could have been 2 songs…” / A side discussion regarding #TheAccused / NIGHTMARE (COMING BACK TO YOU) / “It was almost like…fun.” / “I don't think you should ever close an album with an instrumental…” / CONFUSION FUSION (#TestamentCreepy) / Tracking changes / Thanks to Ed for joining us / Old Mountain Dew memories and the impact of soft drinks on guitar strings / ***THANK YOU FOR JOINING US FOR THIS EPISODE OF METAL NERDERY PODCAST!!!*** #thelastword ***GO PURCH SOME MERCH AT metalnerdery.com/merch / #outroreel  

The Option Genius Podcast: Options Trading For Income and Growth
What to Do When You Have Tried Everything and You Are Still Not Profitable Trading - 139

The Option Genius Podcast: Options Trading For Income and Growth

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 5, 2022 85:27


Mark: Well, look, it's really it's a, it's a long journey. I've read your book, I've read many books, I've been in this game for a long time. It's very difficult to sum it up in literally minutes, I suppose. But after reading a book just recently, and listening to all your podcasts a lot lately, I've delved into a lot of it and taken many, many things out of each person's story, which I can resonate wholeheartedly with. But I probably got into Options back in 2006. And I've probably come and gone with it a lot. I've started and stopped, due to various reasons, obviously, life, I've got kids and family and work commitments and stuff like that. But it's always been, I suppose, a hobby. But trying to make that jump or trying to get into it. Full time is obviously difficult for lack of funds or lack of time and effort. I don't know, there's always seems to be something that comes up that stops me from progressing. Having said that, I'm a pretty committed person. I'm pretty disciplined. I've been doing it now for a long time. But like, if you look through him on the table here, I've got trading stuff sitting everywhere, notes. Mark: I've crunched the wheel so many times I've done the shiny diamond thing. I've gone from one program to another. I've spent numerous amounts of funds on various programs and different services such as yourself. I don't know this Option Genius has been around in my life, I suppose, on and off. So I don't know like I've all I'm a big advocate for what you say and what you do. I've wholeheartedly believe that I've been selling options for a long time I've done credit spreads, I've done strangles I've done butterflies, I've done covered calls, I've done a lot of those strategies, or centered around selling options. And I've been doing it for a long time. But for some reason, I just can't seem to break through the ceiling, I just cannot seem to be there to go from this hobby, like training interest that I seem to be involved with, to getting to that next level. I suppose I when I found out that we're going to do this call. Set last night I sat down I tried to write out things that would be good to discuss or to ask you. And I've got like all this paper sitting you have all these notes that I've made, as you would have seen in my email, it was quite lengthy. I think one of the assistants said all that email is probably the longest one I've ever received, that I really okay then.  Allen: Like, you know, because we get, we get lots of emails every day and some people, right? Some people write two paragraphs, but when somebody goes in deep, and they really share their, you know, their soul pretty much. It's like, Hey, I've been doing this and this and this, and this, and I don't know what's going on, then, like we you can feel it when somebody is really, really wanting to make it work. And so those most of those get passed on to me. And when I read it, I was like, alright, you know, we need to we need to talk about this. Because if you've been doing this for years, then like, I have not doing my job. I've let you down in some way that because you know, you shouldn't still be feeling that way. I know. But it's not uncommon. You know, we come across many, many people that come to us and say, hey, you know, I've been doing this for a long time. But you know, it never clicked for me. But you will.. Mark: Yeah, I can see that. So many people that you talk to, you know, have the same they're trying and trying to trying to find the right system, the right setup the right, whatever it is just can't seem like I feel to break through that ceiling. Like you're stuck underneath the water. You're swimming hard. You're learning this, you're watching that you're reading this you're researching. You're looking at the charts to pair with analysis, paralysis, all that stuff. And I've made lots of trades. I've done lots of trading. I've been I've been I won't say successful because clearly we wouldn't be on this call otherwise, but I've made money, but I've also lost money. I've got scars, I've got all that stuff I've had I've had losses, but still here I am battling looking at all that stuff that you talked about in the book in that book really resonated with me there's a lot of stuff in there that I thought I can do this. I know I can do it. Why am I doing it? Why it's just what why does it elude me so much? Is it just a pipe dream and more and more just a duck on the water swimming and just never gonna get there? I don't know. Allen: So you know, when we when we got the email, when they forwarded to me, they asked me like, hey, what do you think the problem is here? Does he not know enough? And my answer to them was No, I think he knows too much. He knows too much. That's part of the problem. I'm just guessing here and I wanted to try to get to the root of it. But you know a lot of the times when so there's there's different things that you need. Everybody needs different things to in order to succeed in anything. Obviously, you know, you need to know what to do you need to how to do it. You know, you have to practice you have to put in the time. You need somebody Do that can actually has doing it like coach that's teaching you, you need a team or a teammate or somebody to do it with. These are all different things that that can help. But a lot of times we come across people that have been, you know, bouncing around from program to program, like you said, they know all the different strategies, they know everything, they know how it works. Some people come and they know it better than I do. You know, so they're, they're telling me that, oh, the Vega this is this and the Gamma and the theta and the row and all this other, you know, they're touching on the Greeks, and they're managing by the Greeks, and they're doing all these complicated stuff. But they're like, it's still not working, why is it not working? So I think, if it can work for somebody else, it can work for you. And I firmly believe that in just about anything, except maybe sports, you know, should somebody else could dunk the ball, maybe I can't dunk the ball. But in trading, a lot of it is I think, 80 to 90% of it is menta. Mark: I've totally, totally, totally. Allen: So there might be something that is holding you back, or, you know, maybe like I don't know, so let's get into it. So now you've mentioned a couple of times that you haven't gotten to the next level. So tell me what is the next level? What is the goal that you're trying to get to? Mark: Well, I think the goal is the same for everybody's, you know, everyone's trying to make income, like, right, I have a I mean, I'm in I'm a cop. So I work in a profession that I see myself coming to a fork in the road. I've been doing this job now for over 14 years, for 10 years. And before that I was in a private industry, we had a family business. So I understand all the dynamics of running a business, how it operates. We had a family business for over 30 years. And long story short, we got out of that for various reasons. And then I got into the government sector, which is a totally different psyche altogether, which took me some time to try and come to terms with. Having said that, I've forever in my wife, and I've come from a family that has been heavily invested in property, shares, businesses, and stuff like that. So I've always had this belief that I can do something with my life that will be able to produce constant income money have investments, like I've had investment properties, and I've done the share thing now on the option things for a long time. And I'm not destitute, I'm not desperate, I have a house, I have three beautiful children and family sort of stuff. But I want to go to the next level I want to be able to provide, I want to be able to teach my kids trading, I want to be able to show them how to invest all the money stuff, like all that sort of thing. I feel as if I'm promoting this stuff, yet, I haven't really truly succeeded myself. I haven't got to the level where they can say okay, Mark, look at you've got all this great stuff, and that show me how to do it. And when they do ask me, I'm sort of thinking so I will not really, I can talk about it. I've read about it, and I'm doing it, but I really haven't got what you think I have. Having said that. Getting back to the trading side of it. I think I want to have this as a business, I can see the potential in it as you can do from home. It's all in front of you in the net. I don't have to go out I don't have to be injured tree. I understand that. I do know a lot about it. I understand all those things you just mentioned with the Greeks and what not right? And I probably do, I probably do know too much. And I do want to keep it simple. I do say to myself, when I'm doing it, just keep it simple. Why do you need to have this indicator? Why do we need to be having that? I totally agree with what you've promoted and talked about for so long. And I think I was probably watching on Option Genius probably before you even started doing podcasts. But over the years, I've come and gone. I've been involved with and I've been with other things. And I've on and off as we mentioned before, right? All right. Does that help answer the question? Allen: No. So what what what do you mean by the next level? Is it an income? Is it is it a certain amount of money in the account is a certain amount of money every month? Where it is it that you say okay, now I've arrived now I have achieved my goal? What what is that number so that you would be able to be like, Yes, I feel happy though. Mark: Okay, so I've sort of thought about that. And I've put a number down to 10k. Now that's a pie in the sky dream. That's a pie in the sky dream. I know. And that's a long way off being achieved. I would just like to be able to see some consistency, all that stuff that you promote consistent, being profitable, and I can do that. But then as you know, you get one or two trades that wipe you out, wipe it back to zero and then it got to start again. Right? So just not we're just not getting that constant. Right? What do they call it.. Allen: Okay, so 10k is the goal. Now, it's not a it's not a it's not a pipe dream. It's so 10k is the goal. If you got 10k every month, you'd be happy. You'd be like okay, I've made it you know I'm accomplishing And that this stuff is actually working. Finally, this stuff is actually working if you were making 10k a month. So tell me, what is it that you think is keeping you from doing that? Mark: Well, clearly a lack of funds at this stage. But I have had numerous accounts where they've had a substantial amount of money in there, but I've just brought it right back down to just doing one lots, until I can see the consistency and seeing that, the, that my trading works, it's consistent, well, then we can scale up. So I'd rather than that, so I'm happy to do just one month a month, which means I'm not gonna make 10 grand in the near future, right, those types of trades, but we can scale that up at a later date. Allen: But what do you so if you were to say, hey, Alan, give me this one thing, and I know I can make tons of money. What is that one thing? Mark: Well, I suppose it's like a business plan, isn't it, like a franchise to follow a step by step thing, do this, do this, do this, do that put it on, obviously, there's a little bit of, there's gonna have to be a little bit of a thought process and feel for the market. But I suppose I need a plan. Like I know how to put the trade on, I know how to do a credit spin on it, for example, but I suppose I need a set of rules or business plan or like something to follow. So that way, I can just follow the recipe for a particular day, not particular strategy, but it's very hard to identify it or pinpoint it down to one thing. Like I've written all these notes in the book and pages and pages of all these things that you're discussing the iPad and whatnot, and try to answer those questions myself. Like, what am I looking for? What's stopping me I've written here a recipe, a plan, a template to follow rules to follow or to abide by tools, treat it like a franchise, for instance. So that way, I'm not deviating to another thing. So I have it on my wall and write down Am I following those particular plans? Does that is that sort of answer the question?  Allen: So do you not have any trading plans right now? I mean, you said you were in different programs and everything so did you do you have any that you've been using as a guideline as a framework? Mark: The cover I've written things down in the past but I suppose sticking to it, or having it visible is difficult. I suppose someone to write one with me or for me to say right this is a trading plan. This is what you need to have in it to follow I suppose I haven't really been given a choice like if it says write a trading plan, write down this stuff, write it down, but I suppose I just want to try it like this is what's going on my head just put the trades on just put the trades on work with the probabilities. Yeah, it should work out. Allen: Okay, and are you conservative or aggressive? Mark: I believe I'm conservative in the sense where at the moment like with the one loss, so like, if I was aggressive, I'd be going right I'm pretty positive this trades gonna work of two or five, or 10 lot but at the moment, it's like let's just hold back and do one more being conservative. I think I can be aggressive if I need to be but on how Allen: And how much percentage return are you looking to make? Mark: I knew you're gonna ask me that question. And I don't actually have a percentage. I've just I suppose a bad way of saying it but I just keep putting the trades on and hope that the probabilities work out so I don't have a particular percentage amount that I've got Okay. When you ask that question Allen: obviously so obviously you know, just putting the trades on hoping they work out that's not working. So we're gonna have we're have to refine this What strategy do you think most appeals to you? Mark: Well, obviously I've been working on the credit spread that's probably the one thing that I've done the most of the credit spreads like I've done in many others, but that's the one that I've probably done the most so in the last few years. Allen: Okay, and are you keeping track record of all the trades that you've been doing? Mark: No, I don't. I have written them down in the past. I do try to follow that put it in a journal, but over time, it just becomes cumbersome I suppose like it's writing it all down. I don't I don't stick to it. It's probably the kind of problem there. Allen: So what you said is you want to franchise, and in the franchise are going to tell you the first thing is to document everything you're doing. Because we cannot tell what's going wrong if we don't know what you already did. So having a firm plan that says okay, I'm gonna put this trade on and writing down why, why am I putting this trade on? Because it's moving higher because it's got news coming out because it's high. It's, you know, very volatile right now or the IV is off or whatever their reasoning is, you put the rig, you put it there, you write the trade, you record what happened, why or why did not work out. And then after you do a whole bunch of these, you can go back and look at it and say, okay, every time I do a trade that's at, you know, 35 Delta, it works wonderfully. But every time I do any other Delta, it doesn't work. So I'm just going to do that 35 delta. So if you want to find your own trading plan, then this is how you do it. Now, this is a long way to do it, it's going to take a long time, because you're going to have to test different things and try different things and see what's working, what's not working. But it would be one way for you to create your own plan based on what you find you're more comfortable in, because some people they come in and they tell me, hey, you know what I want to do Credit spreads, and I want to do 2025 Delta spreads, some people don't want to do five Delta spreads, you know, so everybody's comfortable with different things. And then based on the amount of credit they get, then we can figure out okay, how do we how do we manage the trade, some people should be not managing the trade at all, they should just be getting in and getting out at a certain amount. Some people, they can go ahead and say, hey, my trade is going bad, I'm going to, you know, adjust it or do something else with it. So depending on what we're thinking, when we get in will dictate what we do when we're in the trade. Mark: So now that I know what I do for trades, there are particular entry signals that I looked for, like I don't just go and find a stock and then look up a chain and then play delta and put it on. I do have, like, for example, I think there's market volume, I use volume. So obviously, when volume is increasing, I'll have them put on a put trade, obviously, when the stocks turning or progressing. And obviously over the three averages, like you say, things like that. So there are particular indicators, and not too many I do try and keep it fairly simple, I believe, before I put anything on, so I do try and put the weight in my favor. And the advocate of that, of course, by using those some small indicators to try and get it on sideways or progressing in the in the direction that we think it's going. So I do look at that I'm not a big person, I'm gonna use a 35, Delta, or 45, or whatever. Right? Okay, I understand the Delta side of things. But it's more about volume, I suppose at this stage and what. Allen: Okay, so that that's good to know. Right? So I mean, what I would do is, I probably have a sheet, kind of like a checklist, you know, so get it out of your head, and onto an actual piece of paper, where every single trade you have to mark it off, you know, the volume is high, yes, you know, movement is this way or whatever, whatever your your things are, you check it off. One, two, three.. Mark: I actually have done that I can attest that I have done that I've written down, like when the bar gets lower than the level of bar, it's time to get in or when a turn when it points up. It's getting. So I have written most things down in the past. Yes. Allen: So that'll be your trade law right there. That's if you do if you have the discipline to do that, before you put in the trade, you'll you'll know at the end, okay. You know, just go back to that journal and be like, Okay, what worked and what didn't work? What are the patterns. And that's kind of the stuff that I was doing originally, when I was first starting to figure this stuff out, is look at every single one. And now I have my my checklist, where if there are two or three things that I cannot mark off, I don't put the trade on, because I know that hey, there's not enough, you know, these things are really important. I want them, I don't want to put a trade on without everything checked off. Allen: Now, that doesn't mean that I'm not going to lose, like you still lose on the trade with everything checked off. But like you said, you know, we're putting the odds in our favor. As many times if you have a checklist, like you said you did. That's your journal right there. And so before you put on the trade, you just mark it off, you know, check, check, check, check, oh, I can't check this one. Then later on, after the trades are done, you do 2030 trades, at least, then you can go back and look at and say okay, I lost on these three trades. What is the pattern I lost on these five trades? What is the pattern? And you might find a pattern, you don't have to but you might find something that say okay, these indicators, you know, they're not working or they are working. The other thing is, I mean, it's, it's really simple, right? You find the strategy that you want. And you said, Hey, I found the strategy. Second step is to find the trading plan, that you think you think will work and then is just test it and trade it and do it over and over over again. But the important part is that you have to stick to the plan. Do you think you stick to the plan, or is it? Is it a discipline? Mark: Tell me, tell me, what got you out? I've read your book or listen to your story. What part got you through that ceiling? Obviously, we're doing the same thing as we all do for such a long period of time. But there must have been something that clicked or something that you did or something did you get into? Was it a program for you? Was it someone that you got? Hold on What, what got you to that next level that we all tried to get to? Allen: It took time, it took discipline, there were a few things that really helped me. One was really sticking to the rules that I had set up. And really, it's about, you know, when it comes down to it, it's about putting the trades on with the odds in your favor as many ways as you can. And I learned about that later on, you know, having different different levels. But what I started to do, and the ones that I really started doing well on, and in the beginning, were iron condors. For some reason, that strategy really, really clicked with me. And I was like, Oh, my God, I gotta work. No, no, it doesn't work right now. But he's like, you know, that strategy really worked. And it was like, Oh, I can adjust it. So I might never lose money in the trades. It's just really awesome. But I still was having trouble following the rules. Because, you know, you have to work that. So there were there were a few ways. Number one is my wife got involved. Allen: So every day, she would, like I would have a list of all of my trades, and I would have all the rules, like when I needed to do what, so every day at a certain time, she would come upstairs because I was working from home and she wasn't she wasn't working. So she would come upstairs. And she would ask me, Okay, let's go through every single trade one by one by one. And so she'd be she'd have her notes. And she's, okay, this trade on Russell. Where is it now? And they go, Okay, this, it's up this much money, or it's down this much money? Okay. When are you going to adjust? Well, when this happens? And they said, where is it now? Say, Oh, it's right here. So do you have to adjust it? No, not yet. Okay, cool. Next one. All right. I did this. Okay. Why did you do this trade? And when are you going to adjust it? Should you have adjusted it? Yeah, I should have adjusted already. Why didn't you adjust it? Ah, I don't know. She's like, Oh, what the hell are you doing?  Mark: All that is basically you got your wife involved? Allen: I mean, not just involved, but she was holding me accountable. So I had to answer because she doesn't need to know anything about trading. But she just needs to look at my rules and ask me the questions like, hey, what's the trade doing? Is it up or down? Why have you not? What are you going to do about it? And if there is something to do about it, what are you going to do? So it's just asking yourself those questions every single day. And it helped. I used to do that on my own. But I would always ignore the answers. Because I didn't have anybody to answer to. It's like, oh, I'm a trader, I'm the boss, I make my I'll make the decisions. But when she came in, I knew I had to answer to her. And if I don't have a good reason, then I'm putting her money on the line as well. Right? I'm putting her future on the line as well. So we would have a discussion about that. So I knew in advance, I knew, Okay, she's coming at one o'clock, I need to make sure I got everything right. I'm doing everything right. Otherwise, we're gonna have an argument. And so I needed her. Like, in the beginning, I wasn't, I was I lost a lot of money. And so the only reason that I didn't have to go out and get a job was because she was patient with me. But it was part of it was like, she's going to be the boss, right? Until I turn it around. And until I break the ceiling, she's the boss. She's going to tell me what I can do what I cannot do based on how I'm doing. And so I call that my one o'clock, you know, fire drill. It's like every day at one o'clock, I still do it. I go through every single trade and I look at it and say okay, is this trade up or down? It's up. Okay, good. Allen: What happens if it goes down a little bit? Am I still going to be okay? Yes. Okay, move on to the next one. And so I don't have time to do that on 100 trades. So that's why I limit the number of trades I have. But every day I go in and I look at it and I monitor it I know where each trade stands. So that before it starts to get into trouble, I know and I can look at it and be like okay, this one I need to monitor this one I need to adjust early or this one I need to maybe just exit it because it's not acting right. It's not acting properly. So It kind of gives me you know, so having that while you go in every day and look at each trade, and everybody does that. But in order to you ask yourself the right questions, and then you have to do what you need to do. So just monitoring the trades, and just checking on them is not enough. You have to know, okay, this is my plan, and I have to do this, then you have to stick to it. And then if you have an accountability partner, or if you have a wife or a child, or whatever, if somebody comes in and asks you, hey, you were supposed to do this, well, why didn't you do it? And then you have to answer to them. So when you have somebody else there, that automatically, I mean, that instantly made me better, like instantly, the first day, second day she came in, you know, I just I just started following the rules, because I knew I had to, I had to give her an answer. So that was one of the things that did it. Allen: The other thing was that I realized that this is a long term game. And so you've read the passive Trading Book. So I wrote that book, because I saw that if you're only selling options, eventually, you don't like the options can go against you. So what I mean by that is, in the financial crisis, when we had the financial crisis in 2008, there was everything was just going up and down. And so if I had options on if I trades on those trades lost, and then I could never get that money back. That's when I realized that, okay, you know, if I want to play the long game, if I want to be in this forever, I cannot let something else knock me out. I cannot let a COVID 19 pandemic knock me out, I can't let the financial crisis I can't let you know, the President making some decision and sending the stocks down, knocked me out. And so I started building up the foundation of stocks, and using those to generate capital on those. And the idea is, hey, I want to own the stocks as my foundation. But I want to use options as basically like a rocket ship, you know, so I wanted to boost the returns. So I'm gonna have conservative stuff in the in the main portfolio, you know, where I have the stocks, and I'm making money. Mark: I totally agree with all right. Yeah. Allen: So, you know, that was now Mark: I totally agree with all that, definitely. Allen: So you can't start off that way. Because it takes a lot of money to own that stocks. So in the beginning, you do have to get good at picking one strategy, getting good at it, just following it and being disciplined, and saying, Hey, I'm going to do this, and I'm going to follow it along. Now, again, long term, picture wise, every month, you're not going to make money, every trade is not going to make money. So you have to have that in your in your mindset that, hey, sometimes it's gonna work, and sometimes it's not. So there's lots of lots of little little things that you can improve on it. But the biggest thing that I'm seeing is that you have to follow the plan. Mark: So Allen, do you think that I would benefit? Like I know you're selling plenty of courses, promote what you promote in the book. And I totally agree with all that, I get it on one side. But if I was to do another course, such as yours, I my fear is, and we're just going down that same rabbit holes, as I've done before, hence why I'm confused as to why I can't seem to break that ceiling. If I was to go into a course such as yours, this one that you're the passive trading and whatnot, I worry that I really fear that a year I am going into it again, I'm doing another course. But I understand the strategy. I think now I need more of a coach, maybe I need maybe that one on one, maybe maybe that's what I need. Or maybe there are things that I'm not happy to admit to that I do that I need to be changed. I need to be molded stead of going down this direction on to be heading over in this little bit direction over here with my trading. I understand the why thing. That's a great thing in my voice. She's a great supporter of me. I am trying to I'm trying to get out of work. She works. I'm trying to get her out, keep trying and trying and time is your course gonna sit me on that path to freedom. Allen: So it's like, you know, I mean, I'll give you an example. Like when people go to college, right? They everybody's told go to college, go to college, some people they go to college, and they just they just party the whole time and they don't get anything out of it. Some people go and they study, study, study, study, study, and they get a good job. Some people go and they make lots of contacts, you know, they they meet, they make lots of friends. They meet lots of teachers so that when they get out, they know a lot of people and they have a good network and then that helps them so it's really up to each person individually. Now I would love to say that yes, every single person that takes my course makes them million dollars. But that's not the reality. You know, people come in, life happens, they take it seriously, they don't take it seriously. And, you know, that's, that's one part I cannot control. So I cannot tell you that, yeah, you know what, it's going to work for you just because it's, I'm amazing. And I'm a wonderful person, and it's just gonna work. 90% of it is on you, I can give you everything I know, I can do it with you. But again, the markets have to cooperate. Number one, and then number two, it has to click for you, you have to do it, and you have to practice it. And you have to stick to the plan. A lot of times when people come into my programs, and they tell me Oh, hey, you know, I'm doing XYZ, I'm like, but that's not what I have in the plan. Allen: That's not what I have in the program. They're like, yeah, no, but I'm changing. I'm like, okay, but have you done it my way? No, not yet. But then why did you join my program, you could do your own way. Without my program, you don't need to pay for my program, right? If you're going to pay for something. And if you believe that, hey, yeah, this guy knows what he's talking about this thing works, I think it works. If you're going to pay for it, then just follow that step by step by step and don't change it. Unless it works.  Allen: When it starts working, then only then would you say, Okay, now I'm going to, you know, change it up, because I think I can, I can be a little bit more aggressive, or, hey, I want to be a little bit more conservative, or I want to change it up a little bit. But you don't do that until it's always working. So the problem is that people that have been doing this for a long time, they know all the strategies, they've listened to many other coaches, you know, they come in, and they're like, Well, you know, I don't like that one thing, I'm going to change, I don't like that thing, I'm going to change. And so they start doing it their own way and they don't listen. And so you can't take stuff from this course and this course and this course and mash it into a Frankenstein, and then tell me "Oh, it didn't work?" Well, because I don't know why that guy told you to do that. And I don't know why that other guy told you to do that. Or the only thing I know is if you do it this way, you'll get the similar results that what I'm doing. Now, if you add and change it, then I can't help. So, you know, like you're saying that we have, I think there's like four pillars that I tell people that people need. So if you want to learn how to do something, you need these four pillars. Number one is you need the right strategy, which you've already said is, hey, that's the credit spread, right? Number two, you need the trading plan that works. So number three, is you need other people to do it with because you're doing it all alone, like you said, you know, you might need a wife, if you don't have a wife or partner like that, then you can have a community or other students that are doing it the same way. Allen: And then number four, you need a coach that can actually show you what he's doing, because he's still doing it. And he's actually doing it right now, instead of somebody that said, oh, yeah, I was a market maker 30 years ago, and I don't trade anymore. So I think those are the four things and depends on which everybody needs. So the coaching part is the one that takes the most time. And that's why those coaching programs are the most expensive. Allen: In my passive trading course. You know, we give you the trading plan. It's like okay, here, this is the plan, these are the rules, you follow it and, you know, good luck. But there's no one on one coaching. There's no group, you know, where we are, where we're doing and looking at the trades. And so when we have that passive trading course, it's a cheaper course. And so people would join it, and they would go through the modules. And some people would have a lot of success, some people wouldn't. So I said, What, what's the problem? Why are they not? Why is it not working? And I realized that it would help if they could just spend a lot more time with me. And so we created that credit spread mastery course, where every week, we get on the call, and we're just looking for trades, we're managing trades, we're adjusting trades, doing it together. So the point of that is, here's the rules. Here's the trading plan. Now let's do it together, over and over and over and over and over and over. And so once you have that habit of doing it the same way over and over and over the other, the other ideas, the other habits kind of die off. So I've seen that that program does deliver results. So we back it up and we say hey, look, if you're in our program, and the program doesn't work, like you don't if you're not profitable in our program, then we keep you in the program. We keep working with you. We keep you in the class until you become profitable. And so even if the markets not cooperating That's fine, we'll learn how to manage it together. And then we'll stay longer in the program, if you'd have to be.. Mark:  So with your target trading alum, obviously, it does take a type of market. And obviously, that's why through the last six months with Covid whatnot, it would be easy Earth to do that type of training, because obviously, it just went straight up didn't keep they're still on put, credit spreads the load of was money for Jim, in a market such as what we're in now, which is up and down, up and down. It's far more difficult, isn't it? Allen: Currently it is more difficult, doesn't mean it's impossible. So we do have to dial back our, we have to dial back our expectations. So last year, the year before, you know, making 10% a month, 7-8% a month, not a big deal, it was pretty simple. You know, put the trades on most of them work out in anybody, and everybody was making money. Like any you know, you could buy anything, and it was going up any everyone is making money. This is a market where you have to be really good at selection, trade selection, and management. So you have to know when things are turning around, and when to get out before they get really bad. Allen: So the trade management, sticking to your stop loss is very important right now. And those are things that most people get afraid of, you know, so it's like, okay, I put the trade on, it should work. And then oh, no, the stocks turning around, what do I do what I do, and they don't do anything. So if your thing is part of, if you're doing as part of a group or in a program, then be like, hey, we need to get out, we need to get out, get out, get out. Some people let people know, Mark: There's that mental component, that's the biggest part. And as I've gone along this journey, if all these years, I've realized more so in the latest year, it's not about the strategy. It's not about all that stuff. That mental side of it, it's 80-20, Mark Douglas, the book, the trading zone, I listened to that over and over and over again, and various other podcasts and whatever other things, but trying to pull the trigger when you're in a loss is it wasn't so hard, we put this trade on, it was gonna work a met the probabilities, it was all looking good, it was under the over the top of the averages. I had volume, blah, blah. But all of a sudden, now I'm underwater again. And here we go again, and then I've got to pull a trigger to get out to take that loss. Mark: And I have taken some big losses in the past, I've had to pull the trigger, just recently with the weekly trading system. And when that I mean, there's Solomon says, I've been there for a couple of weeks, again, I've been on and off over the over many years. And all of a sudden, now I'm having to pull the trigger again to get out because we lose money. Like it's hard. It's another scar, isn't it another scar, not a scar, it's another get back down there. You know, I don't want to see you do any good. It's difficult, you know, and that's that mental side of it is arguments or trading? Allen: Yep. The emotions, you know, the emotions have to be kept in check. So there's different ways that you could do that, you know, one, one of the ways is people say that you divorce or divorce yourself from the outcome. So whether you win or lose, doesn't matter make a Mark: ..difference? Exactly what I totally agree with that. And that skill is very difficult. Allen: Yeah, your job is to just follow the plan and stick to the plan. And if you can do that, eventually, over the long run, it'll work out, you know, maybe you have losing trades, that's fine. But over the long run, it should work out. So too much of it, like you said, you know, like, oh my god, I'm, I'm going to be negative again, oh, my God, I'm gonna have to pull the trigger. And oh, my God, you know, when you have that kind of reaction, that compounds and it just makes it all, it makes it much harder to get out of the trade when there is a loss. The other there's one lady, she told me something that really worked for her. She goes, You know what, this is not my money. This is God's money. And what what are you talking about as God's money? She goes, Well, I use this money. And I use the gains from the money to do good. Because they use it for charity work. So she's like, I don't need the money to live. Because I have enough income I have enough. You know, I have I have money coming in that I live off of. But this is my trading money. And so I take the money that I make, and I give it away to charity, and I do good things with it. So it's really God's money, and I cannot lose God's money. There's no way I can lose money. And so if I'm if I'm going negative, that the trade is losing, I get out right away because I don't want God mad at me because it's not my money. So that's another way you could look at it. That you know, again, it's it's taking yourself out of the outcome, you know, and it's not like okay, it's not under my control. So you've got the wife coming in and asking you what you're doing and why it's working or why it's not working and being accountable. You have you know, not looking at the outcome just getting better as a trader, just hey, I need to do my skills, whether it wins or not, that's not up to me. That's up to the market, I can't control that. But I can follow my plan. That's up to me. The other thing is, you know, not looking at it in emotional point of view, like, Hey, this is not my, maybe this is my kid's mind. Maybe this is, you know, God's money, however you want to look at it, but it's not yours. So if you lose it, it's bad. Like, that's the worst thing to happen. You know. So there's, there's three different ways that you can mentally overcome the different obstacles. But again, I think one thing that we haven't talked about yet is to simplify, right? So you've done all the different strategies, and I'm sure, you know, some of it is creeping in. And, you know, it's like, oh, you know, I got to do this, or I'm going to, I'm going to wait for this indicator, or I'm going to wait for these Bollinger Bands, or the Fibonacci, or the technicals, or any of that stuff, the more you simplify it, the easier it becomes to actually follow through with it. And so I think, you know, just one strategy, not chasing after the shiny object, you know, it's like, Hey, make a decision. If it's spread, spreads, and that's the only thing you focus on, and you get rid of everything else, you stopped listening to everything else, you unsubscribe from all the emails, you know, whatever, whatever service that you choose, like, Hey, I'm going to, I'm going to follow this plan, I'm going to, you know, if you've taken a course, maybe you've already taken a course, you have a course that you've tak`en and be like, Okay, I like this course, I'm going to follow this course, we'll get rid of everything else. Just go through it. Master that and don't do anything else until you know what that is, until you get the results that you're supposed to get it. In the beginning, when I started screwing up, like I would learn something, and then I would do good for a little bit and then I would mess up. And then I would do good, then I would mess up. So I was like, What the hell do I do? Well, I would always go back to the basics. I would imagine that I don't know anything. And I would go back to step one. Okay. What is a call? What is the put? What am I doing here? What is the strategy? How am I supposed to put it on? What are the rules and I gotta follow them step by step by step, not like, oh, you know, I'm gonna, I think this stock is gonna go down or or, you know, there's a Fibonacci retracement level, and there's some support here. So I don't have to adjust. No, forget all that stuff. I don't know any of that stuff. All I know, is the strategy and my trading plan. And that's it. And so that was, you know, you go back to the basics. And that will change your mentality of it, like, Okay, how do I manage the trade? How do I deal with this? Allen: Again, if there's other things involved, like stress, you know, if you're under a lot of stress, you're going to make the wrong decisions. If it has to work. If I have to make money this month, from my trades, you're going to make the wrong decisions. It's not going to work out in the long term. So there was a there was something another trick that one of our one of our students taught me. And now everybody can't do this. Most people can't do this. But what he does, is that he takes whatever money he makes trading this year. He will live off that next year. So when he's trading next year, he doesn't have to live off that money. Because he already has the money set aside from the last year. If that makes sense. Mark: You need a big bankroll sounds like a real estate agent. Allen: Yeah, you need Yeah, he was. Yeah, he was. He was a politician. But, um, he has obviously, other people's money then. So I mean, he did have, you know, he had, he had a large account to do that. But eventually, that would be the best thing to do. You know, you have you already know your expenses are covered. Right? Now, you're only focusing on the plan and focusing on on just winning and just trading properly. It's not it takes the emotion out of so whatever you can do, whatever trick you can use to get that emotion out of it, that will make you a better trader. One, one more thing that that that that I've seen is happening to me is, the more you do it, the more of a habit it becomes. So if you do, you know, 50 trades, that's a lot better than five trades, but 500 trades is a lot better than 50 trips, if you do them properly with the right practice. So eventually, you get to the point where Oh, it's just another trade. It's not a big deal. It's just another trade. There's another one coming. So if I get if I hit my stop loss, yeah, it hurts. I hate it. But it's Just another trait, you know, I'm going to move on, move on to the next one, move on to the next one, because every month is a different ballgame. So you start over, you get to start over again and again and again. And so that is another trick that you would help in the long run. But again, you know, you have to, in before all of that happens, you have to have the confidence that this actually works. Mark: So what do I truly do believe in? Allen: Yes, you say that you say that. But then you also say that, you know, I can't do it. It's not working. It's not working. But you, you you've heard it that it works, you want to believe that it works. But I don't think you have that conviction yet that it works. And so the only way to get that conviction is to get it done for yourself. Right? And so it might be that you take a maybe you take a step back, and you go even simpler. And you say you don't want not the credit spreads, how about I do something like maybe a naked put, right, in a naked put, I'm going to make money if the stock doesn't go down. And it'll expire. And then I'll sell another one. And I'll sell another one. And I'm going to sell it far out of the money. So that I just when I just make that 20 bucks, or that $30 or whatever it is that small amount I'm just going to make month after month after month trade after trade I'm going to make and if the stock drops, okay, no fine, I can buy the stock, no big deal, I'll buy the stock. And then I'll sell covered calls on that stock. And so the covered call will expire, and I'll make something the covered call was expired, the next month will expire, and I'll make something so you build up that confidence that you know what, there is a way to do this. That's another option, you know, if you want to go that route, so you really got to figure out like, okay, you know, it's a, it's a personal thing, I wish I could just tell you that, hey, this is the one thing you need to do. But for everybody, it's different. And unless I spent a lot more time with you, unless I see all of your trades, unless I see you know, your emotion, how you handle the emotions, I won't be able to tell you. So that's kind of like in our in our program, what we do is we tell we give everybody a spreadsheet, and we say, hey, look, you have to fill out the spreadsheet, you have to put every single trade on the spreadsheet. And then they shared with me so that I can go in and I can look at them. You know, I could look at the tray. And I'll go in I'll see like, why did he do this trade? This doesn't make any sense to me. And I'm calling this Hey, John, why did you do this tray? Allen: And he goes, well, no, that's not gonna work. And he goes, okay, okay, fine, I'll do it. All right, done. You know, and if they're doing all the trades, right, then it's probably working. And most of the time, it's not working, like if they're not making money, then we can identify, Okay, what are what is not going right? You know, there was one of our current students, he was doing several trades, and he was still negative. So I looked at his spreadsheet, and I'm like, Okay, what's going on? What do I see, and his trade entries were great. You know, he was picking the right stocks, he was doing it properly. But whenever he lost, he would lose a lot more than he should have. He just wasn't getting out early on time. And so that was the biggest thing is like, you're not getting out. This is it, you know, your losses are too big. Doesn't matter how many trades, you win, your losses are still too big, you're still going to be negative. And so we worked on that. And then over time, he got better at getting out earlier and earlier and earlier. But he had, you know, he had somebody to look at that and to point it out, and to hold him to it. So that eventually he did it over and over and over again. And then by the end of the class, he was positive. He was like, Yeah, I fixed it. Again, that's all you need to do. That was he needed that one thing, everything else is simple. The training plan I could give you, you know, you could go do it on your own. But the discipline part of it, that's sometimes where we need help from somebody else. And so whether you know, it might be a wife might be somebody else, it might be a trading partner, somebody you work with, it might be a coach. So I think that might be one thing that you could implement. Mark: So just quickly, what what's the key points in a trading plan make like entry criteria, stop losses or that sort of stuff. Is there anything else that I can many points or rules should be in a trading plan? Like what I try and put a trading plan together, that is doable and simple to follow. To look at rather a complicated bloody list of all this crap, what would be a good trading plan? Allen: So, you want it to be simple and easy to implement. But you don't want it to be too simple, where it's just broad, like anything can happen. So, you know, I've seen people that have a trading plan that says, I'm going to do an iron condor on this stock 45 days to expiration, I'm going to sell a 10 Delta calls and sending out the puts. And that's it. That's my whole plan, and I'm just gonna sit and let it expire. That's a trading plan. It's very simple, right? You know, what you're going to do you know, what you're going to how you're going to do it, you know, what you're going to trade it on. And you know, when. And so now that pretty good plan doesn't work. So whoever's listening don't don't do that one. We've back tested that, and it didn't work. But there are, there are times there are several months where it does work, just because it has, you know, 80% probability, but over time, it doesn't. So that's the basics, you got to know what you want to trade, you need to know the strategy, you got to know what you want to trade. And then you have to know what constitutes a good setup. So when it comes to credit spreads, you mentioned credit spreads. So I like to do that, depending on the size of the of the trade, if it's a you know, maybe a $5000 $10,000 trade, then I'll go into I can go into a stock, or I'll go into an index ETFs are good, too. But they're their strikes are a little bit smaller. So you got to do a lot more contracts. But if I can go into a stock that has, you know, five point spreads, and I do 10 of them. That's a $5,000 trade. That'll work. Allen: So you can, what do you want to trade? And then what's the proper setup? So for me, again, I like to keep it simple. So if I see a stock that's trending, as moving up, or moving down, then I'm happy to trade it. Because I'm, I'm more of a trend follower, you know, so there's people that think, okay, if the stock is gonna go up, it's going up, it's going to keep going up until something big changes, there are other people that think the opposite. They're like, Oh, if it's going up, they just kind of come back down, because it's gonna do reversion to the mean. And sometimes that works. And sometimes it doesn't. So I don't really buy that I just like, hey, if it's going up, then it's telling me that it wants to go higher. So that's basically what I'm looking for. In a setup, I'm looking for the stock to tell me what it wants to do. So if I see a stock that's jumping up and down, no, I don't know what it's doing. I don't know what it's telling me, I can't understand the language, I'm not going to trade it. If it's going up, then I'm going to play it bullish. If it's going down, I'm going to play bearish. And sometimes, you know, it turns around and you get banked, but most of the time it's going to work out. So that's the kind of setup I'm looking for. And then over the years, you know, we've added other things to look at, you know, how do you make sure that all of your trades are not in the same sector? Right now, you know, right now, oil has been doing well. So all of the oil companies were doing great. But then they all turned around and went down all together. So if you have 10 trades on in different oil companies, that's not that's not diversification. That's the same trade. And so if they turn around, I'm going to turn on together. So that would be one way of putting the odds in your favor by having you know, only a small portion of your account in one sector. So you have to separate that. How do you diversify by time? You know, so not putting all your trades on on the same day. That's another way to do it. So you diversify by time. So there's so many different ways that you can do it, some of them might make sense to you some might not. And then, you know, we have other students that come in and say, Well, I do it, you know, I look for this also in my trade, like, Okay, if that's what you want to add to it, then add it. Don't subtract things that I've given you. But if you want to add to it, one student said that he likes to look at the weekly chart, I usually look at the daily chart, see how the stock is doing. He likes to look at the weekly chart as well. Allen: So I'm like, Okay, fine, you can add to it, you know, if it doesn't hit your criteria on the weekly chart, then just means you'll have less trades that qualify, but it's not gonna it's not going to put you into a trade that's going to hurt. So when you're basically you just have to figure out what you think is going to work. And then you have to test it. So back testing, and paper trading are really really, really helpful. Especially back tests, Mark: I find paper trading useless. To be honest. You lose interest very quickly. It's very easy to lose in that type of trading. Yeah, go ahead. I've done a little bit of paper trading and I've just found that I find okay, it's gone the wrong way. But I got it wrong. You just let it go. Because it doesn't mean anything. It has no significance, does it? Start with money trading? Yeah. You've got a connection heavenly with the with the live trading, because actually, it's not your money tied to it. Allen: It's not your money. It doesn't matter what the style of the trade does, you're only focusing on becoming a better trader, the goal is not to make more money, the goal is to become a better trader. Right? It's kind of like playing poker. It's like when you when people go to play poker, right? They'll professionals, they'll tell you that if they play their hand perfectly, and they lose, they're okay with it. Right? If they play, if they mess up, and they still win, they're still mad at themselves. Because I didn't play it right. I didn't play my cards, right? Even though I won, I don't care, because long run, it's going to hurt them. If they keep playing incorrectly in the long term, it's going to hurt them. So that's the goal to become the better trader. And the end results, the profits will take care of themselves. So paper trading is practice. That's all it is. Right? If you didn't need to take that on board. It's slow practice. Back testing, I prefer back testing way better than paper trading. Because you can go really quick. You know, if you if you come up with a plan, like okay, these are my criteria, I got these seven criteria on my trading plan. I'm going to enter when I see this, this and this. I'm going to exit when this happens. I'm going to adjust it this way If this happens, okay, I got that right and down, and that you can even just come up with your you can just guess No, I think this one's good. This one's good. That's my plan. Okay. You pick. You pick a stock, spy. Great, perfect. You go back to yours in time. January 1, put the trade on. How does it do? Oh, it made money. Awesome. Cool. February, how do you do made money? Great. March. Oh, we lost a lot of money. Doing it, huh? Okay. APR, how do you do? And then just do it month by month, I want back testing one month or one trade, you know, might take you five or 10 minutes. And so you can get years worth of practice in just a few days by back testing. And you'll find that Mark: It's something that I've never done is back testing. Is there a particular software that's adequate for that sort of stuff? I've never really looked down that line. I've heard about it. I've listened to it, but I've never actually really done it myself. Is there anyone ticular that would be worthy. Allen: The one that I use, the one that I use is called the option net explore. option that explore? Yeah, and I think I think they're based out of Great Britain. And so basically, it's, it's an options selling platform, you know, so it looks like your broker's platform, you put the trade on, and you go through it day by day by day. And it doesn't do it all for you, you actually have to look at it every single day. And if you want to make changes, you can make changes to it. That's what I like about it. There are other software's that you just put in the strategy, you press a button and it'll tell you "Oh, you made money or you lost money". That's not the point. We want to get better as a trader. Right. And so this one is like, Okay, I put the trade on, click a button. Oh, stock is down today. Do I need to do anything? No. Okay, next stage. Oh, stock is back up again. I don't have to do anything. Next stage. Oh, stock is down again. Oh, no, I'm at an adjustment point. Okay, what adjustment am I going to make? I'm going to do this adjust. Okay, cool. Let's see, did it work out? Go there forward today forward a day forward a day. Oh, expiration day stop. It worked. So it's, it's just, you know, there's no money, right? It's just about becoming a better trader. It's just about getting the practice doing it over and over and over again. So that I think would definitely help you as well. Mark: Okay, so one of the things obviously, we talked about discipline and the mental game, what's probably the best thing to follow, or to train your mental strength, like, as you said, like a paper trade or a live trade, you should be able to make that same decision, then in there without any emotional war. What's the best way to get to that level of trading where you whether you win or lose, it's just business as usual? Allen: Yeah, I've done to you have to divorce yourself from the outcome, whatever, whatever that takes for you. For me, in the beginning, it was getting my wife because I knew how I would have to answer to her. Mark: And scary Allen: I didn't have it. Exactly. It has to be scary. Because if you do it properly, she cannot get managed. Right? It's like, Hey, I followed the rules, babe. I did everything I was supposed to do. It still didn't work out and she'll be like, Okay, fine. That's no problem. But if you do not follow the rules, that's when she gets manage. And that's when it gets scary. So yes, you have to make it scary for you not to follow your rules, because a lot of us a lot of US traders, like, if we lose money, yeah, we don't we get mad about it, we're like, oh, man, I lost money, we feel bad about ourselves. But it doesn't hurt enough. You know, it's kind of like these people that say, Hey, I want to lose some weight. You know, so they make a goal, I'm gonna lose some weight, I'm gonna lose some weight, they tell everybody, and they do it for a few days, and then they give up. But then there's this website, that what, what this website, basically what it does is, you have to pick a, maybe a political party, or a person or some organization that you hate, you actually hate them. And you have to put up a lot of money and say, Okay, if I don't stick to my goal, this organization is going to get $5,000 or $10,000. So that makes you because it's now becomes a different level. It's not about just the money, or about doing the thing. It's like, okay, you know, let's say, for example, I don't want to give my money to anybody like the Save the whale Foundation, right? I don't want to, I don't want to give my money to the whales, I hate whales, I want them all to die. I don't want anybody to save the whales. So if I don't lose 10 pounds, they're gonna charge my credit card $5,000 and give it to the whales, and I hate whales. So I want to do whatever I have to do to lose that money to lose that weight. You know, because I don't want that well to be saved. You have to want something more than what you have. So there's, that's another psychological trick. No, in trading? We sometimes we get used to it, you know, it's like, oh, last? Oh, well, you know, we get used to it. And it just, we gotta it's just the mental part of it. Mark: Definitely, definitely, it's a huge part of it. Something I didn't I didn't realize, until much later down the track of trading, how big a part of mental side of it really is. Allen: I mean, if you find trying to avoid is difficult. Yeah. So if you find yourself having a problem with discipline, make it simpler, cut it down, make it as simple as possible. Find the trade that you know will like you know, the naked call or the naked put the covered call, these are very simple trades, they're really hard to mess it up. Right? On the naked put, if you get assigned the stock, hey, that's great. I just bought the stock much cheaper than it was before. And I'm going to own it. So you want to you want to do it on companies that you're going to own you want to own for a long period of time. That's the only way it really works. You can't you can't be selling naked puts on stocks that are just, you know, going crazy. That's the wrong way to do it. So you know, if you can simplify it, if you can find some way to have somebody else monitor you, and hold you to your fire, you know, hold your feet to the fire like, hey, you need to follow this, why aren't you doing this? Or, hey, it's not my money. Right? I'm doing it for somebody else. This is my kids inheritance, right? I cannot mess it up. So I have to follow the rules. One guy, when I was in, just after high school, I became an agent, a real estate agent. And as an agent, as a brand new agent, they tell you that you have to do a lot of things that you don't want to do. You have to talk to hundreds of people all the time, you have to cold call, people say Oh, Hi, are you doing? Do you want to sell your house? Oh, hi, do you wanna say, Well, you know, they have to keep doing things that you don't want to do. So it was like, okay, in the guy, the guy is like, hey, most of you guys are not going to do it. But if you want to be really, really, really motivated, what you need to do is go out and buy a fancy sports car. Sounds like what you're talking about, what do you do a fancy sports car? Because yeah, you need to go out and buy an expensive sports car so that you have that payment that you have to make at the end of the month. And so that is going to make you work your butt off because you have to make the payment. And as I go I mean, I understand what he was saying. I was like, No, I'm not doing that. But then eventually I didn't make it as a realtor. Maybe if I did do that, maybe I just didn't do the work that he told you to do. I just didn't do it. It wasn't the reward wasn't worth it for me. Mark: It was up to risk, I suppose. Yeah, Allen: I mean, you know, so with your training, you got to figure it out. Is it really worth it? Is the goal that hey, I want to quit my job. Is it I want my wife to quit her job. I want the kids to have this vacation or whatever it is. You have to burning. Yes, just eat you up every single day. You have to really really, really want it Mark: Explain to me how and it's burning me. Allen: Then the discipline has to stick. Because if you want it, but you're not disciplined, and your losses are too big, then it's it's not there yet. So I think, you know, if you don't have a trading plan, I'll just give you the training. You know, I mean, it's not that hard. It's not it's, it's the training plan helps. But it's up here. And it's the practice just doing it over and over and over again and having confidence in the plan. Because then if you have confidence, you'll stick to it. If you don't have confidence, you're going to change it, you're going to you're going to add things to it, you're not going to follow it, you're going to forget about it. Like with the paper trading, that's exactly what that is, you know, so it's not real. So, oh, well, I'm gonna ignore it. I'm gonna forget about I'm gonna do that.  Allen: That really resonated with me Allen's that that point, like, go back to the paper trading, treat it like it's somebody else's money, and then make it work. Don't look at it as just as being as a fake account, that doesn't matter. Allen: I mean, I wouldn't Yeah, I would prefer you do back testing, it'll be much faster. Mark: To look at that I'll get, I'll get onto that particular site that you've made. Yeah, Allen: That'll give you years of experience in just a few days. And so, to me,

Ultrarunning History
122: Ultrarunning Stranger Things – Part 11: Arrests

Ultrarunning History

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 28, 2022 22:35


By Davy Crockett You can read, listen, or watch Ultrarunners/Pedestrians of the late 1800s were a unique breed of determined and aggressive individuals who were in the sport primarily trying to cash in on the huge prize money potential and to get their names in the newspapers as “world champions.” They would gladly endure the torture of running hundreds of miles in a week for a perceived easy way to earn life-changing money. Such opportunities obviously attracted individuals that weren't necessarily the most outstanding citizens and had run-ins with the law. But the law and others at times wanted to bring down the sport and the athletes, and thus confrontations occurred. Please help the ultrarunning history effort continue by signing up to contribute a little each month through Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/ultrarunninghistory Race Accused of Disorderly Conduct in a Saloon In 1885, two female pedestrians, Emma Frazier (1861-1914) and Elizabeth Carr were arrested in Philadelphia at a saloon on Walnut Street, along with 25 spectators and the race manager, James B. Jamison (1830-1900) for disorderly conduct. A policeman visited the event and went to obtain an arrest warrant.  A raid was conducted, the race stopped, and arrests were made. It was discovered that Carr was a minor, aged 19. “The excitement over the match was at its height, some thirty persons being assembled in the bar and showroom. The raid had been carefully kept secret and was completely successful. Everybody in the house was taken out of it and marched in a melancholy procession to the Central Station where they were locked up to await a hearing the next morning. One of the young pedestrians had the good fortune to be wearing a calico skirt over her bloomer costume, but the other, in the regulation fancy dress tights and short jacket of red, was marched through the streets, to the amusement of the ‘groundlings.'” Walnut Street Theatre Jamison, who also had a retail store, had previous run-ins with the law and believed the raid “was a piece of spite work on the part of a neighbor with whom he was competing in business.” At the hearing, it was testified that the place was noisy and disorderly. “Mr. J. L. Grotenthaler, the owner of the competing business, said the place was interfering with his business, and he was losing his lady customers. Officer Watson said that he visited the place because of complaints that young girls were enticed into it. He saw a man guarding the entrance to the show room allowing nobody to enter without one of the checks presented by the barkeeper with each glass of beer or liquor sold. He saw both men and women drinking. Jamison was held for $1,000 to answer the charge of keeping a disorderly house and the other prisoners were released.” Mark All, the 60,000-mile Pedestrian Arrested Mark All (1828-1925), of England, was an interesting pedestrian character. He claimed to be one of the mega-mile “around the world” walkers of the time and claimed to be the “champion walker of the world.” Many stories are told about these journey walkers in episodes 38-45. Most of these professional walkers were taking advantage of the naïve Americans, but Mark All was a rare elderly walker who was entertaining the British. All was born in Greenwich, England in 1828 where he learned an electrical engineering career. For years he was employed by a firm of engineers. But during a great strike of 1897-98, he lost his employment. Since he was 72 years old, he made up his mind to start a walking tour and find employment wherever he could, to prove that a man isn't “used up” in old age. All claimed that he started a long walk on August 6, 1900, and walked 30,000 miles before his efforts were noticed by the sports newspapers of that era in 1904. He said that three of the papers raised a £500 prize for him if he could continue and reach 60,000 miles in a total of seven years. He was described as “a ruddy-faced,

THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E34 TRANSCRIPT:----more---- Yucca: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. I'm one of your hosts, Yucca, Mark: And I'm the other one. Mark. Yucca: and today we are talking about Cauldrons. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: yes, and welcome to October. We're here all in. The wonderful aut month, the our kind of spooky hollows is coming and here we are. So we're gonna have some great episodes this, this month. Mark: Yeah, I'm really excited about it. We've got a lot of cool stuff to talk about for the witchy month and can't wait to get started. Yucca: Yeah. So speaking of witchy, there's probably three symbols which are most associated with witch broomstick, pointy hat and cauldron. Mark: Right. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: No one will make any mistake about what you are trying to represent. If you've got those three things with you Yucca: Yep. And oh please. Mark: Well, I was gonna say, we don't have enough to say about a pointy hat to turn it into an episode, but there's plenty to talk about with a caldron. Yucca: there is, Yes. So I think a good place to start would probably be, you know, the history. What is a coldron, what's the history and why? Why it really matters, why we're interested in this symbol. Mark: Mm-hmm. well. From my standpoint, I, I think you, you really identified the main reason why we're interested in it. I mean, for those of us that gravitate towards Paganism and it's aesthetic and it's iconography in our ritual practice, those. Those standard symbols, like the cauldron become very potent. They become very influential when, when you're, when you're brewing something over a cauldron, there is very much this sense that you're doing magic, right. Yucca: Yeah. Well, and I, and I think that the association with the witch, a witch is a powerful figure. Right. And they're, they can be represented in different ways in terms of the morality of them in stories, right? Depending on who's telling the story, whether they're, you know, the good guy or the bad guy. But they're always powerful, right? They're always, they have agency. But that agency also usually is coming from them and the home. And the cauldron has this association with the home because it's a tool of the. , whether that's an outdoor kitchen around the fire or whether that was your kitchen in the home at the Hearth. Mark: Right. Yeah. I mean, Among the very earliest implementations of of any kind of cooking equipment that we're familiar with are ceramic pots that were used for cooking. Things in hot stones would be put inside a ceramic pot. And then Cereals or meat or and water or whatever. It could be stirred in that and it would boil which would sterilize it of course, but would also break down proteins in the food to make it easier to digest. And we have evidence of that going back thousands and thousands of years. Yucca: Right. Well, because there's a lot of foods that, There's a lot of plants that you might be digging up that you can't eat. Mark: right. Yucca: Right. It's not gonna, you have to cook them. And so if we were gonna be doing that, then we needed to cook them. Mark: Right, and we've had. Thousands of generations to do the experimentation to figure those things out. I mean, people talk about, you know, indigenous knowledge and indigenous healing. Well, think about all the trial and error that went into figuring that stuff out. It's like, all right, who's gonna eat the mushroom? All right, Bob's gonna eat. Oh, Bob's gone.  Yucca: Okay. Let's remember that measure. Mark: Right, But how did they ever get to the point of feeding the mushroom to reindeer and then gathering their urine? Yucca: Yeah. Mark: I mean, it's just Yucca: Well, I, We Mark: scale of Yucca: time, Yeah. The time we've been around. On the one hand, if you compare us to, Crocodiles, we've barely been around. Right. But compared to an individual human or an individual culture's memory, the, it's so, so long. Mark: Right. Yeah. 200,000 years since we really started developing culture Yucca: Or well human, at least our gen, our genius is older and you could quite, there's a lot of argument to be made that that other humans, not just homo sapiens had. Quite a bit of culture as well, Mark: Well, sure. They had the domestication of fire, which in many cases there are a lot of strong arguments to be made that the domestication of fire was. Kind of the, the launching pad for human culture. In many ways it also coincided with a rapid evolution of our brains because we were getting a lot more food value out of our food once we started cooking it. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: This is a tangent, but Yucca: Well, but we can relate it back though, because Fire and Cauldrons is that right? So we, This was planned, This was planned tangent. We can say Mark: So, yeah, the, the hearth, the, the home fire and the cooking pot sitting over it are very, very ancient symbols of of power of transformation. You know, you put those ingredients in and they, they, they come out different. They come out edible food, they come. Tasting different Yucca: smelling good. Mark: smelling good. There's, there's just all kinds of wonderful things that happen in the, the alchemy of that, that caldron. So historically, and, you know, we know that this has been a symbol for a very long time because it was already a trope when Shakespeare was writing about it. Right. You know, with, with the three witches and the double, double toil and trouble and all that. So now we inherit it today and it's become sort of a stereotype, but at the same time, a caldron is a really useful ritual implement, and we're gonna talk about ways that it, that it is useful for us. Yucca: Right, and we should say, The image that usually comes to mind when you think of a cauldron that rounded three-legged black, you know, big Iron Pot. That's one version of a Coran, right? This is, that's, we're looking at, that's coming from recent European history, but Qurans are much older and there's, you know, they're always kind of a pot shape, but we don't always see them as that round. Belly kind of shape. Sometimes we see other shapes involved. We're talking about that because that's what we associate with the witches and a lot of the kind of witch aesthetic is coming from a European aesthetic, but remembering that cultures all over the world had versions of this. Mark: Yes. Yes. And we should talk about some some variations that exist for the kinds of formats that people might. Experience as a part of you know, selecting a cauldron for themselves. We're in no way saying you need to go out and spend a couple hundred dollars on, on, you know, a pot beed, three-legged iron cauldron. They're out there, they're really cool, but Yucca: if you're into that, we're not gonna judge you on that, but yeah, you certainly don't need to. Mark: Yeah. And if we, and if we do a ritual with you and there it is, we'll go, Hey, wow. Cool. Caldron, Yucca: Yeah. Mark: But my caldron actually is not one of those, It is a Dutch oven that probably dates from the turn of the 20th century. It's got a lot of rust on it that I've never cleaned off because it's. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: And it has a wire bale that I can pick up and a lid. And I've used it in lots of caldron rituals and it's, it still, it still communicates that sense of antiquity. There's something that's lovely about having a lid for it because it's sort of mysterious. You know, you put the lid on and then some, something magical happens inside it. You take the lid off and things have changed. Yucca: I think that's really interesting because I, mine are also Dutch ovens. So mine are very used dutch ovens because I have a wood stove in the home and, and yeah, I have a little propane burner as well for cooking on, but as long as we've got, cuz we do heat with wood in the winter, as long as we've got that going. I love having things up on top of it and you can also stick it into the ashes of the fire. So we've got several different sizes and kind of different shapes there for them. And there's just something about that cast iron, right? Ours are probably are new Dutch ovens. They're probably made within the last few years, but they feel like something that could be around for a very long. Mark: Right, Yucca: They, you know, they could be passed on. My grandkids or great-grandkids could literally be using these. Yeah. Mark: that is the great thing about cast iron is that. It simply doesn't wear out. We use cast iron frying pans in my house and some of them come from thrift chops where they looked hideous. I mean, they're covered with rust and conclusions and just in the worst possible shape. But you get going on, taking all that stuff off, and then Yucca: take that top layer. Yeah. Mark: And it is a perfectly good frying pan once again, and it will be for decades, if not centuries, as long as you keep it from being eaten up by oxidation. Yucca: Yeah. That's what we use all of our, our pans in the kitchen, our, our cast iron, we've got. A couple of stainless steel for boiling, like a pot or kettle stainless steel. But that's, you know, they're just beautiful. And, and some people get very snobby about the exact correct way to treat them and wash them. And, but I think that they're just super forgiving and if you mess up, then you just it, right? You just re season it again. It's great. And enjoy the things you're eating that you're seasoning it with, you know. Mark: Right. And there are some things that you make that will take the seasoning off. Like if you cook a tomato pasta sauce, for example, the, the acids in that may very well take some of the seasoning off the pan. So you put a little oil on, stick it in the oven, heat it up for a while, and you've gotta see some pan. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So, and, and ode to to cast iron. We're big fans. Yucca: Right. Well, and so going back though to the cauldron, so we were saying that we use our, our cast iron Dutch ovens but there's a lot of Dutch ovens that are not iron. Right. And there's other things that, that would, that serve the same function that we use today. As a coulter would traditionally, So your big crock pots, right? Or your stockpot, right. We've got like this several gallon stockpot that, you know, is what I used to heat up the bath water with. And it's just, it's, it, it has that same vibe, right? And it, it's modern. It was made within the last 20 years probably, but it still does that same function and looks beautiful at the same. Mark: Mm-hmm. One of the things that is great about using a Dutch oven actually be is because they do have a lid. And what that means is that you have a little bit more control over temperature. Gradients. For example, if you've got a Dutch oven that is sitting on the fire or in the coals, the bottom of that is gonna get really hot. But the lid, you could put herbs on that to create a fragrance in your home. Or a little drop of essential oil to do the same thing. There are, if you just want to warm things, I mean, I know you can, you can warm bread and stuff like that on the, on the top of, of a dutch oven as well. So it's a very versatile tool for for a variety of uses. Yucca: and you can also put a fire right into it. Right? You could have your candle or something in that, and then. When you put your lid on afterwards, you can feel pretty secure that you're not, that you're not creating a fire hazard with that. Mark: Right, Yucca: So now it will, your lid will heat up too. So you need to be, be aware of that if you're, you are using it on the stove and, you know, not, not touch that with your bare hands, but it just, it, you could just use it in so many different ways. Mark: right. Right. And there is something about just the sight of that Dutch oven or caldron heating in a fireplace or over a stove that kind of says home and comfort and warmth and and magic, you know, the magic of the kitchen. We were talking before we were recording and I was mentioning that, you know, one of the things about about older times is that, you know, you, your, your medicines didn't come from a factory. They came from your kitchen, you know, and the caldron was a, a key. Tool for creating them. You know, you'd, you'd gather the proper herbs, you'd mash them up in a mortar and pestle, which is another classic alchemical sort of witchy, magical set of tools, and then you would brew them. Yucca: today too, Mark: Oh yeah, yeah. We, we use ours all the time. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: And then, you know, brew them or toast them or, you know, whatever it is in that hot pot. So it's, It's not an accident that a, that domestic tools like the broom and the cauldron are associated with the power of the witch because that kind of ritual magic, if you will, was really the purview of the home. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: That's where it happened. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: Very different than, Oh, go ahead. Yucca: I was gonna say, I still think that, I think that's still where a lot of it does, but in our very busy lives, we kind of forget about that sometimes. We're off running around, but when we come back, back home, back to center, then we go, Oh, I actually do have a lot of power from this place. Mark: Mm-hmm. . Yes. So, We've established that this is something that has been a symbol for a very long time, and it's been a, a useful tool for humans even going back into very, very ancient times. I'm sure we were heating things on hot stones long before we, you know, invented pottery or any of that kind of stuff. Yucca: Right. But as long as we've been in the neolithic. We've had something of the sort, right? Every, everybody who's doing that, who's doing the, the whole staying in one place thing, and even nomadic peoples as well could have things that they were, you know, packing up and bringing with them. Yeah. Mark: right. And we've established that cast iron is good. Yucca: yes. Yay for cast iron. Mark: Big fans of cast iron. Why don't we talk a little bit about the kinds of ritual things that you can do with a caldron Yucca: Hmm. Okay. Well I think we could start with the incorporating what you would be doing with it to begin with, just on a mundane level and adding some ritual and meaning into that. So in this case it, it might be your Dutch oven, but it also might be your stockpot on the stove. Right. What are you doing and why are you doing that? Right? So can you add something, Can you have a, a moment when you add in that salt or whatever it is that you're adding in, that you, that you take a moment and have just set an intention with that, right? Mark: Yeah, the adding of seasoning and spices I think is a great opportunity for metaphorically adding magic into whatever it is that you're cooking. Spices are. Spices are kind of magical substances when you think about it. I mean, they are the unique pesticides that various plants have evolved in order to defend themselves from insects mostly. And in some cases from fungal infections and stuff like that. Yucca: and small mammals and Mark: Sure, yeah. If they, Yucca: And us too. It's just, we're so big , right? They're, they're technically poisons, right? They're toxins that they produce because they don't wanna be eaten every, everybody wants to survive and reproduce and they can't get up and run, run away the way an animal can or bite you, but they can make themselves poisonous. Mark: Yes. And they can make themselves taste bad, but Yucca: But we ended up liking Mark: amounts, yes. In small amounts. You're, you're a regno and your terragon and your sage and your onions, and. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: All those wonderful things. Garlic, I mean, they, they give us wonderful, good feelings and very complex flavors that give us a lot of pleasure. So when casting those things into a cooking pot, we can be setting intentions, we can be stirring them in as meaning, you know,  Yucca: It would be lovely if you made your own labels and added them to the spice jars. Maybe not covering up what they are. If you need to know which is, which is your cayenne and which is your cinnamon, you wanna know the difference, right? But if you put your label on that, you know, Oh, well this one is love, right? And this one is creativity. You know, when you're putting in your love and creativity and all of those things that you see that every time. Reach for that spice jar. Mark: I love that idea. That's a great idea. And it would be a really fun project actually, to do with kids to create the labels. Yucca: Yeah. And you could do, You could put them on in ritual too. Mark: Right? Right. Yucca: And even, No even grown up kids. Right. Mark: Oh yeah. I. Yucca: kids of whatever ages. Mark: I would want to be a part of it for sure. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So we can do caldron magic in the course of just using the caldron for the purpose, for an ordinary cooking purpose. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: We can also dispense with anything in the cauldron except fire. We can, we can burn. We can burn fire, burn wood, or you know, whatever it is that don't burn anything toxic because then you're not gonna want to use it for cooking ever again. Yucca: and you wanna be able to be around. You don't wanna breathe and smoke in general, but you wanna be really careful about what it is that you're burning. So you don't wanna be burning like synthetic fabrics or something like that, that really could be very toxic to you. If you get a little wolf of whiff of wood smoke, it's not great, but you know, it's, it's not gonna be quite as much of an issue as burning plastics. Mark: Right, right. Yeah. So, a flaming caldron is something that we, I've used many times in rituals and you can, you can feed stuff that you want to destroy or dispense with in the form of. Little pieces of wood that you've invested your intention on or written the message on what you mean. You can do that with slips of paper. You can do that with Little symbols that are flammable of, of some kind. So that's sort of the destructive approach to a flaming cauldron. But you can also do it with wishes. You can inscribe something hope hoped for, that you want to, The smoke will go up into the sky and inform whatever powers are up there and, and they'll put in an order for you. Yucca: Or thinking of it as this is fuel, right? This is, this is the fuel for the fire. That, that whatever it is burning inside of you, right? What is it that you want to feed into your fire to, for you to continue to grow and do all of these, you know, passionate, wonderful things, whatever it is that you are focused on. Mark: Right, And in the case of a ritual like that, I really encourage people to use low tech methods of actually lighting the fire. So that it, it takes a little effort, right? You know, whether that's a flint and steel or I, I don't recommend lighting a fire with a bow because it's an incredible amount of work. And it, you can have disappointing results while you're trying to light your inspiration. Fire. Yucca: Yeah. Well if, if you do, you might wanna practice that ahead of time and be, and get really good at it. Right. Just knowing that it is a skill that takes a lot of work. Mark: Yes. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: But there is, there is something to be said to something more than just flicking a lighter and . Suddenly there is flame. Yucca: Yeah. Well, and it, and you know, if you don't have access to one of those matches, right? There's something more, I, I find there's something very satisfying about striking the match as opposed to just the lighter. Although there are some really cool lighters. We were given one of those arc lighters. Mark: I have one I use it for, for my alter, my focus all the time. Yucca: Yeah, I feel so sci-fi, whenever I use Mark: Yeah. Yucca: like, yeah. It's just really nice and it's USB chargeable, so we just like plug it in and don't have to, I've got lots of lighters and matches all over the place because I don't wanna ever. Want to be lighting a fire and be shivering and being like, Where are my matches? Where are my lighters? But those are fun, but you know, there's matches. And there's also, I don't know what they're actually called, but you know, the ones we'd use in lab class for bunsen burners? The, Mark: Oh, those little pizza, electric things that, Yucca: Yeah, there's silver and you Mark: spark. Yucca: Yeah. Those are, you know, when you have a more. Just an out of the ordinary or kind of fun way of starting the fire. There's a little something extra to it. Mark: Right, right. There are these striker, they're, they're sort of like flint and steel. They're these sort of striker sticks that you scrape sparks off of onto like cotton or something, which will light on fire. And those are pretty neat for starting a fire too. I don't know what they're called exactly either, but they're you can get them in camping stores. Yucca: Okay. Mark: add to a survival Yucca: Oh, I think I've seen them and they, You can like put them on a key chain or something like that. Yeah, Yeah. Now you gotta be patient with anything like that that doesn't have a sustained flame because you're trying to catch that. Spark, Mark: Yeah. Yucca: like if you have like a little cotton swab from the bathroom, like those are really good and you maybe half of it, you dip into olive oil and the other half you leave open so that then it starts to burn the oil. And there's a lot of, that's another thing that you could do fire related is little fat lamps, little fat, an oil lamps. Those are really fun. Mark: Right. Yucca: This year the kids and I So they're, they're softa. So my stepmother lives up on our, where we do as well and is really into finding the, the clay here and fire making things and firing it. So they made little oil lamps. Yeah, so they made little oil lamps and we've been using lard in them and they worked remarkably well and doesn't smell like a fast food restaurant. I was very happy for that. Mark: That's amazing. Yeah, we've used NAEA uses Tao quite a bit in cooking and Yucca: how, Mark: Yeah, so we've, we've, I've used that sometimes as sort of an accelerant for a fire to get started, but, okay, so that's the fire inside the cauldron. That's one whole set of things you can do. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: Then there's the adding ingredients into the cauldron kind of. The, the classic example of that is stone soup, where everybody brings an ingredient and you start with water or stock. Could be vegetable stock, could be chicken, Yucca: Mm-hmm. , b flam, whatever you have Mark: Whatever you Yucca: and whatever matches your, your dietary approaches. Yeah. Mark: Right. And then people add ingredients and the whole thing becomes soup. Which. Is a lot more satisfying than it sounds. There is, there is really something wonderful about the kind of ceremonial, adding by a whole lot of different people of what they in particular have brought to add to a given dish. And then it's all put together, it's cooked, and then it's distributed out to everyone to enjoy. There's something very poetic about that, that process. Yucca: Yeah. Hmm. Mark: And then you can also do sort of magical potions, which aren't meant to be ingested, Yucca: Right. Mark: With whatever ingredients you feel are necessary. Now, bear in mind, cast iron is a little bit porous, Yucca: Yeah. So if you're gonna eat from it again, you don't wanna be putting non edible things in there, Mark: right? Right. You know, no Mercury Yucca: Yeah. Or I, I don't know why this one's coming to mind, but shampoo. Right, because shampoo, like there's really good smelling shampoos that'll bubble up really nicely. Like you could do some really kind of fun smelling and looking things with, with soap shampoos and soaps and stuff like that. But you don't want, you don't want that in your mouth. Mark: No. Yucca: And that's gonna spoil whatever you try and cook in there next. Right? If you get it out cuz you, you're not feeling well and you need that good soup, you know, And then, Oh, shampoo soup. Mark: it's, this is Lemon Sented shampoo. Oh, dear. Yucca: Yeah. But if it's one that you are using only for ritual and decorative purposes, that's very different. Mark: Right? Yucca: Right. Mark: Yeah.  Yucca: I suppose you could put line it with foil or something like that, but it's kind of taken a risk. Mark: You know, if you really want a sort of bubbly, frosty effect I would just go for the dry ice, you know, put a little little layer of water in the bottom of the cauldron set in a block of dry ice. You'll get abundant fog pouring out of it. It'll look really cool. If you want to change the color, you can break a light stick and drop it in there. So that you've got like a green fog coming out or, Yucca: but that you cannot use for food again. Mark: Oh, I. Yucca: a light stick. Mark: I didn't mean to Yucca: Oh, good. Okay. You mean snap it so it activates? Mark: it so it activates Yeah. And drop it in there. Yucca: Well, and with the dry ice, there's nothing to clean up afterwards, which is really nice. Right. If when it come, it billows out, you know, might get things, you know, little damp, but not, you know, you're not gonna have to be mopping anything or cleaning anything up. Mark: right. Be sure you've got good ventilation. Yucca: Yes. Mark: Dry ice is co2. CO2 is poisonous. That's why we breathe it out because we don't use it. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: you just wanna make sure that you've got good ventilation in the room so that you don't get overcome by CO2 and pass out. Yucca: Right, Because if we, I mean, we breathe CO2 in and breathe it back out, but the problem is it's not oxygen. It isn't the same as carbon monoxide, which is really problematic for us because our bodies confuses that with oxygen and then it basically makes us suffocate. But co2, Yeah. That sort of thing you might wanna be doing either outside or with making sure you have the windows open, but yeah. And also when you're doing, going back to the fire, one being mindful about what size is your flame going to be, Right. If you're lighting a little candle inside of your little cauldron, The kitchen, you're probably fine, but if you're pouring something in Mark, you have a, Don't you have a story about a Mark: Oh yes, Yucca: flame that came out Mark: the flame vortex. Yucca: Yeah. That you wanna be outside for, with, you know, appropriate fire or safety equipment. Yeah. Go. So what happens with your Mark: Well, what What happened was we did a ritual where we burned some intentions for the coming year, and the caldron was sitting on top of. Coals and there was still some flame there. So the bottom of the, the cauldron was very warm. And what we did was afterwards we poured in two bottles simultaneously, two bottles of cheap red wine. And it was hot enough that the wine boiled on contact with the bottom of the pan, which we assumed was going to happen for the first little bit that we poured in. And then, Yucca: you gonna make mold wine or something? Is the Okay? Mark: Yes. And, and mold wide, which included the ashes of the Yucca: beautiful. Mm-hmm. Mark: had, you know, been. Been burning there, and then we could all have a sip. Well, what ended up happening was that the entire pot boiled, it boiled off the alcohol and the alcohol lit on fire, and created this sort of fire tornado that extended up maybe three feet above the, the lid of the, or the edge of the cauldron. And it did that for about 20 seconds. So what we ended up drinking had no alcohol in it for one thing, and it wasn't particularly tasty because it had been boiled also. But it's a pretty cool effect if you, if you wanna do that again, it just don't do it indoors. Yucca: Do it outdoors to have all of your, you know, your fire extinguisher or whatever you need Yeah. To put it out. Right. And maybe not, you know. Not near a bunch of, you know, brush and all of that. Mark: Yeah. Or overhanging branches, which is the thing that people often forget because the picture in their mind is of a fire that is, you know, a nice contained fire that only leaps up about a foot above whatever the container is. But sometimes fires get a mind of their own and they, they get bigger than that and then they can start to. The, the tree branches that are over the top. So you need to be, you need to be careful with fire, Yucca: Yeah. And you know, whatever the safety is in your area, check, check with your county regulations. Is there a fire ban on at the moment and all of that because you don't wanna burn your, your neighborhood down. So yeah, Mark: Yeah. Yucca: of those, those interesting. We have this lovely, beautiful relationship with it spanning back literally millions of years, but it's also extremely destructive. Mark: It's very dangerous. The fact that we were able to domesticate this incredibly dangerous chemical process is really a testament to courage in our, in our ancestry, honestly, because when we first got it, it was probably burning trees that have been struck by lightning Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: and you know, I would think you probably wouldn't wanna go near a tree that had been struck by lightning in case it got struck again. Right. Yucca: Yeah, and it's still, you know, can still be hot. The, the kids and I are reading some Greek mythology right now and we actually just were reading about Prometheus and my oldest asked, Well, mom, why was Sue so mad about fire? What's the big deal about giving humans fire? When we had to go through all the things that fire can do, how powerful Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: it made people, they went, Oh, okay. Still doesn't seem like a fair consequence. Mark: Well, yeah, e Eternal torment never seems like a fair consequence. . So, yeah. Yucca: they were very sympathetic to poor Prometheus, so yeah. Mark: So, the last kind of ritual that I can think of is the kind of potion making where. Where you're, you're mixing something up, which you're then going to pour off into jars or into, you know, like if you're making spell jars for example, and there's particular ingredients that you want in all of them. So you mix up sort of a, a formula of what all those different elements are, and then you can pour them off into jars and maybe add material items before closing them and sealing them. Yucca: What would be an example of a type of, of ritual that you would do with one of these s. Mark: I haven't done a whole lot of spell jar rituals myself, but I know of people that have done like spell jar protection symbols for their, for their land, Yucca: So they would bury it in the four corners or. Mark: Right. Yeah. Bury those, you know, at the boundaries in order to, well, realistically speaking in order to help them feel more protected.  Yucca: Well, that's the point of the ritual, right? Mark: that's the point of the ritual. Exactly. I mean, many of the magical rituals that have been implemented over human history have been to try to get control over stuff that we don't have control. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: It just helps us feel better and that's fine. There's, there's nothing wrong with that. There's, it's absolutely a great thing to do. So, for example, if you had You know, water from a particular well and maybe some river water and some ocean water and some wine and some, I don't know. I'm trying to think of, you know, a few drops of blood. Whatever you wanted to put in there. You could stir all that up together. Add in whatever other. Miscellaneous ingredients felt like the right thing to do and then could decant out of the caldron. But you, you get to do that big stirring motion on the caldron, right? That, that wonderful double, double toil and trouble kind of thing. And so you can chant over it, you can sing over it, you can you can do that solo or you can do that with a group. Everybody can get a turn to do the stirring. I've seen that before. And then you pour off into the jars and put in items. I, I know that historically spell jars have been found that are full of nails, Yucca: Okay. Mark: that are sort of meant to protect against stuff, right? Put these sharp objects in to protect people from from what they don't want to contend with. Yucca: Well, brainstorming as, as you were talking about that everybody putting something in. Maybe one thing you could do is if you're with a group or you could do it on your own, having a, a jar that you're preparing for later when you're having a hard time, Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: the, oh, you know, here's the, all the, the friendship and joy and, and sense of connection and, you know, there's gonna be a day when I'm feeling alone and I need to, to open that up. To remember that, you know, I have this connection and this appreciation for the community or, or a day where, where you put patients into the jar. So when you're all out of patience, you can, you have a jar, patience stored on that back shelf that you can open up, right? Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: Things like that. Mark: Yeah. You could pour what's in there as a libation for a, a plant or just onto the earth as a way of releasing its power. And then you have a jar that you can refill again and do another spell with, I have patients in knots. Yucca: Ah Mark: so when I really need it, I can untie one of the knots on my patient's string and let some patients out. Yucca: hm. Mark: It at least gives me something to do other than reacting angrily in the, in the immediate term, cuz the knots are pretty tight, so it takes a while to get 'em undone. Yucca: Mm-hmm. . And do you have a time when you go back through and retie everything Mark: I haven't had to do that yet. I think I've got four or five knots left on my, on my patient's string. But yeah, we did that in the, in a ritual of the Saturday morning mixer, Atheopagan mixer that we do on Zoom. So. I found it useful. I've actually used it twice but I'm sure there will come a time when it's empty and I've gotta refill it. Yucca: Yeah. Hmm. Well, these have been, these have been fun to think about different ideas to do with Colton, and of course there's, you know, there's so many more that we didn't mention.  Mark: Right. Yeah. The, the wonderful thing about having a, a ritual practice is that it's re it's everything that your imagination can come up with. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: And of course, we like to swap our ideas so that we can take advantage of others imagination as well. And I hope that some of the ideas that we've talked about here today are helpful to you. But if you don't have some kind of a. Big cooking receptacle really encourage you to, to consider adding that to your magical tools. It's it, it really is a, a very useful thing both for individual work and for group rituals. Yucca: Right. And beautiful. Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: Right? Depending on your style, I know some people like to. Put their, their ritual tools away and wrap them in the beautiful cloths and things like that. And, and some people like to have them out on display because they like looking at them and they make them feel good when they see it. So it's both completely valid approaches. It just depends on what, what works for you. Mark: Right, Right. Yeah. So there you have. Caldron in non FIAs pagan practice. Pretty cool. Yucca: Yeah, Mark: I'm so glad it's October. Yucca: me too. Well, thank you for another great discussion and we will be back to see or talk with all of you next week Mark: Yeah, thanks everybody. Yucca: I believe. Mark: Oh yes. Talking about death. Yucca: Yes, it's October, Mark: Gotta do it. Yucca: All right. Thanks everyone. Mark: Bye bye.

THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism
Harvest/Fall Equinox

THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 12, 2022 23:23


Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E31 TRANSCRIPT:----more---- Mark: Welcome back to the wonder science based paganism. I'm your host mark. Yucca: And I'm Yucca. Mark: And today we are celebrating the autumnal Equinox, which goes by various other names. I like to call it harvest myself. And the. The holiday is one of the roughly equivalent length of the day and the night around the 20th of September. And so it's a time when we celebrate many metaphorical meanings of that. And we also observe a lot of what's going on in our natural environment. At this time, as in the Northern hemisphere, we moved from summer into. Into the autumn. So we're gonna be talking about that today and celebrating the holiday, Yucca: Right. And as always, it's just amazing that we're here already. Mark: right. Yucca: is just, just flown by. So, Mark: It really has. It's. Well, it's extraordinary. I mean, a as you know, Yucca, I've been unemployed now for almost 14 months. Yucca: wow. Mark: And I mean, on the one hand, it seems like all the time in the world, but on the other hand, it's like, well, that's kind of flown by in a way it's involved a lot of struggle, but it's. leading to some good things. Now that I'll talk about later on. So I'm, I'm feeling like this is the harvesting season. It's the time when I'm, you know, reaping the benefits of stuff that I've had in the ground for a long time and have really been working to tend. Yucca: Hmm. That's exciting. Yeah. So for us, and we should mention being in the Northern hemisphere, this is the autumn for us. Although we do see that there are quite a few of you listening from the Southern hemisphere. So for everybody in the Southern hemisphere, it's the other side of the wheel, Mark: Happy Yucca: So happy spring. But for us to September. We're talking about how fast the year goes, but September seems to just really fly by for, with us starting September. It's still summer by the end of September, it's we're full in autumn. It's winter's right at our doorstep, right? It's a, we get a very kind of short autumn and it's says, Nope, here we are. It's fall. And this is actually one of my very favorite times of the. And I know a lot of people really, really love this time, but let's actually start with what is this holiday often represent in the broader pagan community. And then we can get into our individual practices and, and observances around it. Mark: Sure. That sounds great. Well, traditionally, this is viewed as the second harvest of the three harvest festivals. The first being the holiday at the beginning of August which is. The grain harvest and so beer and bread and all those kinds of things. Well, this is the second harvest and it it's often conceptualized as the overflowing corn utopia of vegetables, right? The vegetable gardens are pouring out all of the winter squash and the tomatoes are still really going. And there's all these Yucca: zucchini. So many zucchini Mark: so many zucchini, same numbers of zucchinis. You've got, you know, people door ditching zucchini to everyone else. And so it's a time of a great abundance of food. Much of which is perishable and is not really gonna last into the winter. And so traditionally it was a time when you ate a lot, right? You, you, you put as much, you stored as much of that stuff as you could, like the winter squashes and so forth, but what you couldn't, you ate, you put on your body as, as much as you could in order to kind of fatten up for the winter. Yucca: Right. This is also the, the time of year where they're the most babies born. So you would think that it would be pretty evenly distributed throughout the year, but we actually see in the August, September, right in this area, right before we're going into the, the season is really switching into that cold time when we see a lot more births. Mark: that kind of makes sense. Because if this is the time of year, more than any other this in the ne into the next couple of months, when food is really abundant, right? So it makes sense that the time when you would be having births would be the time when mothers could be as nourished as possible. And there would be as good a shot as possible for the babies to survive into the next year. Yucca: Right. And when you count backwards to the time when you're feeling horrible and having terrible morning sickness, it's the time of the year when there's the least food. Anyways. so you're okay. Right.  Mark: Never thought of that, but Yucca: the, yeah, it's, it's how it works. It's so, you know, we, we can forget sometimes in our modern world, how part of. The rest of nature, we really are. Right. We really are seasonal creatures that have figured out some clever things in the last hundred years or so to, to help us kind of forget that. But, but this time of year is, is, is lovely because it is a reminder that no, this, whether we like it or not, the season is changing and might as well like it and embrace it because it's happen. And it's it just feels like this tipping point time period. Mark: It, it does. It feels, I was saying before we started recording, it feels kind of like the hinge of the year. There's a lot of preparation that has to happen before winter starts in earnest. For, and for me, This time of year is always a time for sort of taking stock of the last year's cycle. You know, what were my dreams? You know, of my, my dreams from UL, my plans from From brightening at the beginning of February, you know, how did I implement those and how are they going? And is there something to harvest from those now? This year I'm, I'm hopeful. I, I believe I have a job I will know in about a week. but I believe I have landed a job, which was, will be a wonderful position. And I'm happy to talk more about it. Presuming that it happens. I'm also. Most of the way done with writing the second book, the second athe paganism book and Yucca: which is a publish. Mark: which as a publisher, yes, loyal and worldwide is publishing it. And I have to deliver a manuscript at the end of November, and I'm still figuring out what the last 10,000 words are going to be. But Yucca: But you've done a huge, I mean, you've done all the other words, so you've done a huge chunk of Mark: I'm at 45,000 words now. So that's, that's a lot, there's a whole lot there. And it's involved a lot of days of sitting at a desk with a laptop, just tapping away and researching and pulling things in from other sources and synthesizing ideas. In, you know, as, as I see them. So it feels like this fall will be a, a real time of. Of accomplishment. And the, the completion of some, some long held dreams which kind of goes along with my other conceptualization of this holiday. We've talked about this before, how I map the arc of a human life onto the wheel of the year. Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: Uh, this holiday is the holiday of being elder. so it's sort of the moment of reflection about, okay, well, I'm kind of at the end of this, but What has, what has life been like? What, you know, what have I learned? What have I experienced sort of running your fingers through all those amazing moments of your life. And so I don't think of myself as elderly quite yet, but I still see that process happening for me this year with the, the things that I'm harvesting. So I, I find that exciting. Yucca: Hmm, that's Mark: How about you? How do you celebrate this time of year? Yucca: Well, this season terms of how, how we see the wheel of the year this is the celebration of the decomposers. This is the, the fun guy and the microbes. And of course there are microbes involved in. All parts of the cycle. Right. But, but the, the, the little ones who are just breaking things down and, and getting the, the compost ready and that, again, that shift that we're talking about, and it's really the, the entering into fall or autumn and getting now is time to be getting things. Right. That's a big getting things ready for the winter and it's just, you know, winter's coming, winter's coming. We can feel it in the air now. It's still hot during the days. And the monsoon season is just finishing up, but you can feel that chill and it's okay. Well, do we have enough firewood? Let's start stacking that and. Our, our solar panels, we switch them. Cuz this is there's no, there's no grid out here. Right. We're way too far away for that. And so, you know, we've gotta switch the, the panels, the angle now it's like, oh, okay, let's start. You know, we've had 'em down since the sun has been so high in the sky that, but now it's starting to, we can tell it's it's moving down on the horizon. We gotta move those panels up to be able to catch that light. And. BA all that buttoning up. Right. Okay. Are there cracks that need to be sealed? And what do we have to worry about for this? Not gonna survive the cold? What do we need to bring in all of that kind of stuff? And it's just a, a lovely, it's a lovely time of just shifting and transitioning and, and there's a nice anticipation, but there's kind of a calmness to it. Mark: Mm-hmm yeah, there's a Yucca: Satisfaction like what's done is done. Mark: and there's sort of a stillness, especially to early autumn. In my experience, we don't get very much wind here at this time of year. In the evenings when the heat finally dies down the it's just sort of very mild and there's. There's this kind of it's something in the air. There's. Sort of presence in the air that I feel at this time of year. I'm reminded of it by our wind chimes. There's just something about the wind chimes, faintly tinkling in the little bit of air movement that's going on. That reminds me that it's fall. The other thing that I hear a lot at this time of year is. Single crickets instead of a huge chorus like you have in the summertime, there will be one or two crickets outside kind of doing their thing. And it's in the, the warm late, late, late summer night. And it, it really reminds me of this time of year going back all through my life. Yucca: Yeah. Yeah. You say that and I go, yeah. We have that too here.  Right? It's the, and there's a, there's a different quality to their, to their song. Mark: Yeah. Well, almost all their fellows have been eaten by now. Yucca: yeah. So if they're there Mark: Yeah, if they're there although if they still haven't made it, then that, that's why they're, that's why they're doing their, their noise. Trying to find somebody to hook up with at the very last minute. But I mean that deafening chorus of crickets that you get in the, you know, at the peak of summer is long gone by now. And it's just a few holdovers that are, you know, kind of holding down the Fort there every night. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Yeah, I have such a fondness for this time of year. I just, even though we don't. Changing of leaves very much until later in the year, because it's gonna stay warm for us until October. know, we'll have, we'll have days in the high eighties and early, you know, low nineties even into October. But we may get a rainstorm or two between now and say November, Yucca: And when is your, when's your first frost? I mean, not till later, Mark: January. Yucca: Okay. Yeah. So you, you really don't get much in terms of frost Mark: Well, we've got that huge buffering Pacific ocean right near us. So that keeps it warmer. The air has to get very, very cold coming in from the east, from, from landward and, and the north in order to drop us down into those frost temperatures. And really it's mostly at the bottom of valleys most of the time, unless we get an Arctic storm. Yucca: yeah. Mark: The Arctic storms will put a little snow on top of the Hills sometimes. And, that can be pretty yeah, but this time of year is once again it's, as you say, it's an anticipatory time. This is the time when everybody cleans their gutters because they don't, when, when the rains finally come, they don't want them to be jammed up and overflowing and doing damage to their houses. Yucca: right. Mark: All of the vegetation has started to slow down. So, there's much less in the way of mowing and so forth, which I'm thankful for. Not because I do mowing, but because I have to listen to it and Yucca: Yeah. Mark: I, I'm not, I'm, I'm such a non of lawns and all that they represent.  Yucca: We don't have lawns here, but when I have visited them, I quite liked the smell of the cut grass. Mark: it's Yucca: That's a lovely, yeah. Mark: That's the smell of spring to Yucca: Mm. Mark: having grown up in suburbia. When, when the when the lawns are no longer swamps, Yucca: Okay. Mark: And, and can actually be mowed Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: um, long about March or so. That's when you can start start mowing the lawns and it's a wonderful, you know, spring smell to me. So yeah it's a little early for me to focus on decomposition. I do that later in the year around halls and then kind of going into, I, I think of decomposition and recomposition in new form as kind of taking place between halls and But I'm in a very different climb than you are. I mean, we're just, we're not gonna freeze for a long time and when we do, it's not very much, Yucca: Yeah, by the time we get to hollows are we've already been freezing for several weeks at that point. So we, I mean that still, it still has that decomposition theme, but now it's, it's, it likes to get started when it's still warm. Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: enough, you know, you've got enough of your mixes of the greens and Browns and, and also for us, we're coming out of, we don't get a lot of moisture. We get maybe 12 inches in a good year, but we haven't done that in the past two decades since we're in this, you know, mega drought. But with, after the monsoons is when we do get the mushroom. And so we'll get the popup of the mushrooms or you'll turn over a log and you see the MyUM and and you know, we get the warnings every year because we have several mushrooms that you definitely do not want to eat. Just a reminder of know what you're doing, everybody, because we've got a few here that, Mark: As Yucca: really don't want to try. You won't make it to the nearest hospital. That's two hours away. Mark: As the late great Terry Chet once said all mushrooms are edible. Some mushrooms are only edible once Yucca: Right. Yeah. But of course, most, I mean the vast majority are, are, you know, not a problem. They're just, there's a few that are, but you know, they're, they're popping up and they're just doing, and all of that is just getting ready to do its thing because we have the moisture, we're getting the chill nights. It's not baking and, and throughout the winter, It'll slowly, it'll slow down, but that decomposition is happening down there in the soil. It's happening underneath the pine needles, you know, it's, it's working away. So Mark: Yeah. Oh, there was something else. What was it I was gonna touch on. Oh this is a big time of year for feasting. Yucca: yes. Mark: Because of all that, all that garden production and all that perishable food that you, you gotta get into yourself and share with your neighbors before it goes bad.  Yucca: Get put up if you're doing drawing or canning Mark: do any of those Yucca: do. Yeah. Mark: preservation processes, this is the time and around here where I am. You know, people are canning apples and, and making apple sauce and apple butter and all that kind of stuff from our apple crop and the the, what we call the crush, which is the grape harvest has started. It's always, you know, right around this time of year, starts in late. August and extends into early October. So that's a very seasonal thing as well. If you drive around the rural roads in the west county, they all smell like, like wine. They smell like rotting grapes, right? So, so it's a good time to have a feast, you know, invite your friends you know, focus on local produce and, you know, local, local food stuffs. I was I was mentioning when, before we started to record that this is when the salmon run. One of the, one of the salmon runs comes up the Russian river in our local area. And so we will have fresh local salmon here available, which is delicious. And sustainably farmed or sustainably caught wild caught. It is part of an industry that is doing a lot to conserve and improve riparian habitat and breeding grounds around here. So I, I feel that's an important thing to support. Yucca: Yeah, that's really important. Mark: Yeah. I mean the salmon runs of north America and they still are in Alaska, but the salmon runs of the California and Oregon and Washington coasts used to be millions and millions of fish. There are reports of tributaries to the Russian river during spawning season where you could walk across the tributary without getting. Feet wet because there were so many spawning salmon in these creeks and of course development and deforestation, tation, and climate change, and all those things have had a huge impact, but they're still living runs. And so this it's something that we like to appreciate this time of year. Yucca: Yeah. Oh, that sounds wonderful. Mark: Yeah, it is. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: So, We wish all of you the, the best of the season really invite you to go out and find out what's growing locally, you know, find out, you know, what does your neighbor's garden have in it?  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: See what, what stuff is coming up, check out the farmer's markets they're overflowing right now. It's a great time.  Yucca: This is also a time where, where folks are often cutting back herd numbers. So that's another one can get as well. Yeah. Mark: right. Yeah. Traditionally that's sort of more associated with, with Hallows, with the October holiday as the, the so-called flesh harvest, but realistically speaking, I think you're right. I think it's probably earlier in the year uh, Yucca: it really? Yeah. Well, and this is when you get, you know, if you, you. Talk to the rancher and you kind of figure out there, this is when they're figuring out, okay, what do we, you know, taking account? What, what do we have? What are, what are we gonna need to get through the winter? Mark: How many, how many of these animals can we get through the winter? Yucca: mm-hmm Mark: if we try to get them all through, they're all gonna starve. So, you know, hard decisions have to be made, Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And. You know, cycle of life. So it goes. Yucca: And that's, you know, each point in the wheel of the year there. There's something going on. Right. And oftentimes there's an overlap, right? We talk about the, in the spring, we're often talking about these, this planning and this anticipation. And yet here we are in the autumn thinking about the anticipation. And yet we're planning for winter, right? In the spring. We're planning for summer and the fall. We're planning for winter and then the winter's for the next year. And it's just all overlapping and continuing and continuing. Here we get to be our little moment getting to be part of it with everybody else. Right. Mark: Right. And that's one of the things that I really appreciate about this time of year is that because I think of it as a reflective time, you know, the, the, the time of culminations of harvests it, it does give me a chance to sort of sit back and, you know, look at where I've, where was I? Where was I? 12 months ago. And how has that changed? And, you know, how do I feel about how I spent that time? What did I learn? You know, what would I, what do I wish I had done differently? What am I really glad I D I did that. I didn't think I was going to like all those things, right. A a life reflected on is a life well lived. Yucca: Well, we'd also love to hear from all of you, if there's special traditions that you have this time of year or anything that you wanna share with us, we always love getting your getting your emails and feedback. So Mark: And you know where to find us the wonder podcast cues at. Yucca: Gmail. Mark: Yes. Yucca: And that's QS. Mark: QS, gmail.com. And we would love to hear from you. Thank you so much for your comments and your, your questions and your topic suggestions. We appreciate all of them. Yucca: Happy autumn, everyone. Mark: Happy sol-Equinox! Sorry.

THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism
Midsummer/Summer Solstice

THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 13, 2022 34:59


Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E22 TRANSCRIPT:----more---- Mark: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. My name is Mark, and I'm one of your hosts. Yucca: And I'm Yucca.  And today we're talking about the upcoming atheopagan or a neo pagan Sabbath, which is mid-summer or the summer solstice which is an important station on the wheel of the year. That's celebrated by many pagans all over. Yucca: Right. And as always, it's amazing that we are here already, right. That also marks the halfway through the year.  Mark: Right, right. And this is the third episode that we've done on the mid summer holidays. So, if you're really hungry for lots more content on. On Midsummer, you can go back into our archives and look for those other episodes as.  Yucca: Right. And will probably echo many of the things that we've said. No, both of us have been doing our practices for a long time. And this is one of the big ones that we're that we have a lot of experience and time in. But of course, every year there's going to be something new. There's going to be something fresh to say as well. So we're going to assume that folks haven't heard the past ones, or if you have fit, whole year has gone by. So we're going to talk about all that again.  Mark: Yeah. Think of it as a refresher, if you've heard the other one. Yucca: Well, that's, one of the lovely things about the wheel of the year is that you get to do it again and again, right. You do it. It's not one. time only. And then that's it, right? It's not like one of these rites of passages where, you become an adult once, that's it,  Mark: Yeah. And you've got to get the ritual, right. That one time, right? A little forgiving. Yucca: But this, this is something that happens again and again, and every year there's things that are similar things that are a little bit different. So let's, let's actually start by talking about what is the solstice and Midsummer and all of that.  Mark: Well, let's start with the word. The word solstice means the sun stops. And what, what that means in this particular context is that from the perspective. Being on the surface of the earth, the sun's movement towards the north,  Yucca: From the Northern hemisphere  Mark: the Northern hemisphere reaches its peak on the summer solstice. It gets as high as it's going to go and it kind of stops there for a couple of days. And then it starts to retreat back to the self on its way towards the winter souls. Yucca: Right. And of course, if you are in the Southern hemisphere, it's going to be, the solstices are going to be reversed from the perspective of the Northern hemisphere. Right.  Mark: Right, but it still moves. It still moves to the north end to the south. It's just that moving to the south actually means rather than  Yucca: Yes. Yeah. Just because of think about the, the equator. And so part of what's happening is the, when we zoom out, right? So that's our explanation from being here on the earth, right. As part of the earth, but, just imagine yourself pulling out the camera, zooming back, and we're looking at earth as this planet. Orbiting around our star and we're orbiting around it on a plane, but that plane doesn't match with the tilt of our planet. And that's where we're getting all of our solstices and equinoxes. And all of that is from the relationship between the two planes from there, the ecliptic and the equatorial plane  Mark: So what ends up in of course, one of the effects of that is seasons  Yucca: Yes.  Mark: because climate is dramatically affected by the amount of sunlight and the intensity of sunlight that reaches the surface of. And of course, the heat conviction from that drives weather. It's a very important part of our evolution as life on earth. It's almost unimaginable. What, how different life on earth would have to be if it, if we didn't have those seasons. Yucca: Right. And it's particularly noticeable for those of us who live in the temperate regions. Right So, In the tropics there's, there's going to be less of a temperature swing. There may still be rainy and dry seasons and all of that. But in the temperate zones, we're going to have these extreme differences between. Summer and winter. And that's something that here where I live I'm, at about 36 north or so, I was just noticing as I was walking outside, I didn't put any shoes on and was going, walking across the the ground, which six months ago. I would be, running cause my feet would be freezing on the ground and it's just a, complete. Different experience to be in the exact same place on the planet. Just six months different. Mark: Right with Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: with a temperature swing that can sometimes be a hundred degrees Fahrenheit or more,  Yucca: Right.  Mark: which is. It's not very much in the cosmic scheme of things in terms of the temperatures of stars and the relative temperatures of the surface of other planetary bodies. But for us, it's a huge shift, requires us to be able to adapt to dramatically different temperatures. It makes perfect sense that over the course of human history, people have recognized this day. As a really important day. We have all of these stone age technology observatories, which we have we've we've observed like Stonehenge, for example, which line up precisely would be the sun on the summer solstice. Yucca: And That's all over the world too. right Stone hinges is one of the most famous of them. But in all of the the populated continents, we see that. Mark: That's right in the Americas, both north and south America in in Europe and Asia and Africa everywhere, we, we find these where rocks have been arranged so that they create. Little Ray of light that comes from the rising sun at the summer solstice, which tells us that marking this moment was really important for those early people. Yucca: Right. Cause that was a lot of work to pill those things to plan them too. And year after year to make those observations. One of the things that, that I think we fall into this trap of in modern society is thinking about our ancestors as though. Weren't sophisticated and not very intelligent. And that's simply not the case. They didn't have access to the internet and steam engines and electric cars and all of those things that we do today, but they were just as much if perhaps thought more clever resourceful and. And really observant, right? They had to have been for, to be able to create these things. And we only see this tiny sliver of what's left because the wind and the rain and the forests and all of that have had washed away and grown over the, the records of, of these people who have our many grandparents who came before.  Mark: Yes. Exactly. So, and among other things we don't tend to recognize. The amount of time that it took to develop the observations that would drive the building of an observatory like that. Because when we think about history, we think, especially as Americans, we think in terms of centuries, right. A century or two, well, it may have taken 15 generations for people to finally figure out precisely that the sun was moving. Yucca: Hm.  Mark: And where it was moving and when it was reaching the peak of its movement and how to arrange some sort of an observatory to capture that, that experience Yucca: And record that for the coming years to get it built in just the right place. I mean, it's a, it's amazing. Mark: it is,  Yucca: that's one of the many things I wish we had a time machine for just to be able to watch that. Right. So many things, it would be great to have that for, so it would be. Yeah. What a field to go into and study. I'm sure. I'm sure some of our listeners, if any of you actually are in that field, we would love to, to bring you on and pick your brains on that kind of stuff.  Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Archeology generally is just really excited.  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: This was an important date. It was important for the people that made these observatories for whatever purposes they had, whether it was marking the migrate that the migration periods of prey animals, or whether it was marking the the planting and growth cycles of crop vegetation. This particular holiday or, or even if it was just, well, this is a really great time because the days are really long. can, we can be a lot more productive because our, Yucca: Right.  Mark: because, enjoying ourselves, we tend to think of as a sort of extraneous human activity because we live under capitalism, which doesn't value it. If it doesn't get painted. But actually just goofing off and having a good time is a fundamental human behavior.  Yucca: And really hits.  Mark: we do it alone. And it's good for us. Yucca: Yeah. And I would argue that that's a primate thing too, right. That, that, that became part of us long before we became human, because we see it in our cousins and all of them. Right. So, Yeah, And so this is, this is a day that, many of us don't live in. Hunting societies anymore, or we don't live where many of us live in an industrial world where we're not participating in the agricultural cycles and all of that, but it's something that. When we are paying attention and that's something that, that we, as atheopagan appreciate doing, right. That's part of our practice is being part of, of the world around us and nature that we're part of, this is something that we can recognize as well. That really helps us to be tuned in with our world because. Mark: Right. Yucca: It's there it's happening. We're part of it, whether we recognize it or not, but we get a lot from the recognition of it and the act of participation in it.  Mark: absolutely. The and this is one of those circumstances, like the winter solstice, those long dark nights. These these bright long days with the, with the lady evenings and the, the, the sort of long golden hours at the end of the day, I think we all recognize how much we value that time. In the temperate zone, when those of us that do experience that whether or not we understand that it's the summer solstice, we know that the days get long in the summer and then it's, it's something that we can really enjoy. So why don't we talk a little bit about what this means symbolically what, how, how we how we apply, meaning to this astronomical phenomenon that happens to us every year. Yucca: So there's of course the. The kind of traditional stuff that many people who are influenced by Gardner and all of those that that's kind of taking up after what's happening in Britain. Right. And then in Britain, it, it is kind of getting into mid stage. Right for where I live. This is the beginning of summer. This is our first summer. It really didn't feel like summer here until last week really is when it, it felt like it shifted. Sometimes it'll shift a little earlier. It'll will shift in mid may, sometimes the by June. Yeah, it's summer, but it's certainly not the middle of summer. But in our practice, we look around it, Hey, what's happening in the world? What's happening in our ecosystem and this is the time where insects have just really. Just woken up. And we have cicadas here and they are cicadas have different sounds in different places. But here they, they sound like the Dalek from doctor who, right. Th they're not shouting exterminate, they're shouting, like Sam made with me. It's just really It's quite entertaining. And then the whole night is the crickets and the bees are out and just life is just, it's bloomed and it's amazing. So they, they definitely play this really central role for us. I know a lot of people use like sunflowers and symbology like that. Those aren't ready, where I live. Right. Sunflowers are not until later on in July and August. And, and, and we were talking about before about, this is kind of like a calm before the storm of, before the harvest starts for us. It's finishing, getting everything planted because our last frost isn't until mid may. Right? So now we can finally, everything's getting in and it's, it is kind of a busy time, but there's also that. Stretched out long laziness, not just appreciation of the laziness.  Mark: Yeah, that's really one of the main things that I associate with Midsummer is the it's, it's a, it's a leisurely time in many ways. The gardens are mostly in, around here. Sunflower is still haven't bloomed though. They won't bloom until, late July, something like that. This, this is the time of year when people go to the beach and have a barbecue kind of, it's just, the days are long and it's, it's. It's a time when it's very tempting to play hooky and just go and do something enjoyable. Lots of sitting around on decks and patios, drinking wine and visiting with friends and just, just enjoying life. And so I've sometimes called this holiday, the Sabbath of leisure because it, it really feels like that to me in the agricultural cycle. Around here and to some degree in the British Isles as well. This is the time when all the planting is done and it's not, nothing is ready to harvest. So it's mostly just kind of waiting around, and, and enjoying the early fruit, the peaches and plums and apricots and cherries and things like that. We have a lot of that going on right now. But from a meaning standpoint, I also associate the wheel of the year with the life cycle of a person. From conception to full composting. So the, the whole, the whole life cycle, not just the time when we're alive and I consider this to be the holiday of adult vigor, maybe in the thirties or so. Thirties to early forties, not middle-aged yet really kind of at the height of your powers before your body starts to hurt. And  Yucca: You're getting lots of stuff done in your life, whether it's the career family or both, all that stuff.  Mark: yeah, there's, there are plans being executed and you're really kind of on top of your game. So I, I consider this a time to celebrate those spokes in the same way that Mayday or belting is a time to celebrate young adulthood. This is the sort of full adulthood holiday. And then dimming or summer's end at the beginning of August is the time to celebrate the middle east. Yucca: Okay.  Mark: when we're starting to tip down towards elderly men. So it's a good time to do rites of passage into, out of young adulthood and into full adulthood. If that's something that's meaningful to you. And also a time just to celebrate pleasure to celebrate the, the, the joy of just being leisurely and. Enjoying these long golden days. Yucca: Mm.  Mark: So, let's talk about some projects that we can do that help with celebrating these holidays. I know that you decorate your house. What, what sorts of things do you put around your house? Yucca: We do. So we do a lot of insect and arthropod themed things. And we have a solstice, the summer solstice Garland that we put up that is like honeycomb and bees, the bees that we put up. So that really makes the it's very playful. And they, the kids So this year, we're going to try and make some big kind of like papier-mache ones. But in the past, we've just had like big paper, just like cut out and have them color it in and learn about the different parts in lifecycle and all of that. So we'll do that kind of thing. And then we also do do gifts for similar solstice as well. And it's very cute this year. My oldest is really into it and has been making the gifts, but they're not, we might buy a couple things like a book or something like that, but it really is about making gifts for people. And so she's. Everyone that she couldn't think of in her life that she's sick know, she's like, I'm going to make it and wrap it. And, and and then she wants to hang it with the Garland and all of that. So that's a a big part for us and then bringing in the plants and things that we're finding in nature. So yeah. Mark: That's really great. Is there an equivalent to hanging up a stocking for the summer solstice,  Yucca: Well, that's  Mark: in 10. Yucca: the, yeah, we don't, I mean, that's a good idea. I like that. We've definitely been, I mean, we've been hanging things from the, the honeycomb with the bees. But I, maybe we should make something a little bit more formal because I think in the feature it's gonna start to get a little bit heavy as they add different kinds of things. And. Maybe hats. Yeah. Ooh, that would be good. Right? Like the big, because we were the, the big straw hats, because we are We don't have a lot of melanin. We have very little, and we live at 7,000 feet with a UV index of about 10 every day. So yeah, there's, we've got hats all over, but maybe that's a great idea. Well, have we, maybe we need our special solstice hats or straw hats. So, yeah.  Mark: Was just thinking something at the opposite end of the body from the toes. Yucca: Right. Well, and that might be able to fit something, but then not encourage you to have too big of a thing. Some stockings to people have are good fit. My whole body practically in those stockings are impressive. So.  Mark: Yeah, that's true. People do get carried away with that sort of thing.  Yucca: Well, and that's actually, one of the reasons we wanted to do presence at solstice is to take a little bit of the commercial power away from the winter of the Christmas. right. And go, yeah. So this is a sort of the, it's not all about that. There's other times of year. And then it works out quite lovely that birthdays and our family are all spread out on like each season has a birthday. So Mark: Oh, Yucca: Yeah. So we try and kind of spread that and make it just smaller things and try and make them a little bit more meaningful rather than just like all the presents you can get, still working on the grandparents, like getting that it's hard for the grandparents to, to accept that. But yeah. So what about any house or are you doing particular decorations or themes that you have. Mark: Not so much decorations. We have a little altar space. I mean, I have my personal focus, which I decorate for the seasons. And so I'll put a. Kind of seasonal things, sun symbols and stuff like that on my personal focus. Sometimes we have a reef on our front doors sometimes not I don't know whether it will do that or not this year. I, I have a ritual tool that I up date every year at summer solstice, which is my son broom. Which starts with a, a piece of Oak branch that I found at a local state park. And then it has long strands of wild ride that I've cut down bound around it to make a big shaky sort of brew. And what I do every year is I cut down some new strands and add those to the brew and then retire everything. So it's got all this accumulated summer souls to see by magic woowoo stuff in it associated in my mind. And I leave it out in the sun all day on the summer solstice and it becomes my son.  Yucca: Hm.  Mark: I can use, like at the height of winter, when things are feeling really sort of dismal and cold and dark, I can wave that around, inside my house to bring some of the vibe of the warm days back. And it works, it works it's it it's, it's one of those wonderful spicy psychology things that we do. And so, that is a tool that I have always put on the focus for Midsummer celebrations as well as, seasonal fruits and other sorts of symbols of just this leisure time. We're doing a, the, the affinity group, the atheopagan affinity group for Northern California, that I'm a part of is meeting in person to do a mid summer ritual next weekend. And we are going to scope the, the maximum point of, of the sun to the north. And market market with chalk on the ground. And then also do the minimal point all the way, all the way to the south, which is where the winter solstice would be, so that we can see the difference, mark them on the ground with chalk so that we can see the difference. And then what we're doing is we are all bringing water from our homes and we're going to pour all of those integrated. And then dance a circle, dance, and sing a chant around that, and then use that water to water the garden. Yucca: That's beautiful. Wow.  Mark: So, it's, it's definitely the time of year when you need to water the garden. It was a hundred degrees here yesterday.  Yucca: Oh,  Mark: So it's it's time to be taking care of our plants in that. Yucca: yeah. Mulch  Mark: Yeah. Yucca: That nice protective cover mulches kind of like the. You can in the summer it's that, sweet, cool relief. Although I don't know how cool it gets for you during the summer when we, if you have your a hundred degrees, how much does it drop at night?  Mark: Typically into the fifties last night, it dropped into the high sixties. Yucca: Okay, so you have a nice, a nice swing there cools down. You might need to bring a sweater with you,  Mark: we don't have a lot of, of humidity, although to you, it would probably seem like we do.  Yucca: Yes.  Mark: And I got back from the century retreat that the air was not only like syrup, because it was so dense here at sea level, but also because it smelled, everything smelled like water. There was water. And even though we're in this Mediterranean climate, but that's not the same thing as being up at Alpine elevation in the desert west. Yucca: I've been in your area twice, but it's both times has been during your wet season. That was in February, March kind of. And I remember it feeling very wet.  Mark: it was very, very, very wet in February. Yucca: yes. In fact, I remember the, the afternoon rains, which were scheduled to be getting ours here. When I was a child, June was the beginning of the monsoon season. But that has been changing our monsoon season as being, compressing and pressing. So, hopefully we'll get something, but you're what you were talking about with the. Reminded me of was that idea. My oldest had, who likes to make up holidays, I think a few weeks back, I told you about the sneak holiday and all of that. But she wants to do the first rain, which I think is such a beautiful idea of, we could go out and catch some from the first monsoon rain and have like a special bottle. And the two of them could pick out their bottles to store it in. And of course we, we live on rainwater, right. We don't have a well or anything like that. So we're drinking rainwater all the time, but just the act of catching it and having it be like the special thing Mark: I do that. Yucca: season.  Mark: I do that with big storms.  Yucca: Hmm.  Mark: We have a really big storm that pours six or seven inches of rain on us. I could put out a basin to collect it, and then I pour it into a fancy bottle and keep it.  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: And the reason that I do that is that in the fall at Hallo. One of the things that I like to do is to pour water from a big storm, into a dry Creek bed to call the ringback,  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: Which sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't like all of those things, but it makes me feel better that I'm something in quotes about our, our drought situation. Yucca: Well, and it gives you something to emotionally touch in with, right. And that's what these items, that's for us, that's what the decorating the house is about. It's what the wood, all of that is for is. The state of mind, the emotional state that I feel and the family feels and the whole house, when we see those things just for a moment, right. We see the, the oversized, child drawn be on the wall and that means something right. And that pebble that we picked up outside and, it just brings us back and just keeps us. Grounded as part of this planet, not just on this planet, not just living off of it, but part of this system,  Mark: Sure. Sure. Yeah. And there's also this very childlike sense of wonder that comes with it. Like, oh, it's that time again? And there's, there's always something special. W with a new holiday and that's, I mean, to me, the, the way that we can enrich our lives just by celebrating these, these passing seasons is so important. It just, it helps us to be happier,  Yucca: Right.  Mark: being happy, a good. Yucca: And it's. Helps to slow things down just a little bit. So if you remember when you were a kid a year lasted forever, right. And part of that was because your life experience was so short, right. From seven to eight, that was a huge chunk of your life. But as we get older, things become more and more the same every day. And one of, and, This realization was distressing me several years back. And so I did a lot of research on it and found that one of the leading ideas is that it's because of the lack of nuance that when we add new things in, we add those new experiences that helps slow down our perception of, of how quickly the years are just flying by. And that's something that I've intentionally tried to add into my life. And. It feels like it's working, right. I mean, it's kind of, it's a back and forth. It's sort of like, there's the, the clumping of the galaxies and yet the expansion of the universe, gravity and dark energy fighting each other. So it's like, I think I'm making progress, but maybe not, I'm not sure. That's one of the things that our, that our practice can help do is bring some of that novelty. And so bringing that back to the holiday. So this is a point in the year that we come back to every year and there's going to be those things that are similar every year, but there is the opportunity for the, oh this year, I'm going to go on a walk and I'm going to notice, the particular. Mosses that are every mosque that I can find on my walk and celebrate that. Or every, can I find a new insect that I have no idea what insect it is, let alone what family or order it even comes from. Right. Just do things like that. I think that that, that can add a lot to, you're gonna have a tradition of doing new things, right.  Mark: Yep. That's very well said. That is certainly consistent with the reason why I do this practice. It lends a sense of meaning and a sense of joy and playfulness to my life. And all of those are, are good things. And then in. In the broader sense with the atheopagan community. It also gives me a sense of community, a feeling of belonging, and of being a part of a group of people who are of generally like-mind and values and who like one another and like spending time together. So that's a cool thing. I'm still thinking a lot about the century retreat. And I was on the Saturday morning mixer that we do on zoom. Every Saturday morning and three, I think four, four of the people, five of the people that were on that call were people that had been at the century retreat. And all of us were talking still about how we're integrating that. And particularly the feeling of. Not having as deeper connection with people in our day-to-day lives and wanting more of that. And how do we build how we find friendships and, build them, develop them.  Yucca: Right,  Mark: So that may be something that we'll talk about in a future episode. Yucca: right. Yeah. And we also did for future episodes let's get some really wonderful suggestions through the email. So we really, we really love that and we'll, we will be talking about some of those and appreciate when you reach out to us about that. So thank you everyone. Yeah.  Mark: Right. And if you haven't heard it before, way to reboot is the wonder podcast. Q S. gmail.com. So the wonder podcast queues@gmail.com and we really enjoy getting your feedback and your topic suggestions. It's very helpful to us. So happy Midsummer, Yucca. Yucca: Likewise, mark. Happy summer happy first summer have MOUs myths. What else people call it litho sometimes, right? Yeah, there's another one of those. There's a bunch of names for it. But at least it's one of the ones that, has the astronomical name that we could say. And everybody knows what we're talking about. Solstice. Yeah. So, and Dawn is very early. This time of year, right? This is this next few weeks. It's going to be the earliest of the year where I live. It's five 30. But if you do do some sort of ritual where you wake up to greet the Dawn the visible planets are in the morning sky right now, and it is it's so beautiful there, like Juul is hanging in the sky and definitely worth worse. Getting up for. If you can manage, or some people might find it easier to stay up for depending on your personality. But that could be a lovely idea for, For the solstice, right. Greeting the sun in the morning. And then in the evening, bidding at farewell for the solstice. Mark: For sure.  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: All right. Well, thanks everyone. And we will see you next week on the wonder science-based paganism.

THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E21 TRANSCRIPT:----more----   Yucca: Welcome back to the wonder science-based paganism. I'm one of your hosts Yucca.  Mark: And I'm the other one. Yucca: And this episode, we're talking about adversity. So some of what's going on in the world right now, personal adversity, how we can deal with that, address that, and, really all those topics surrounding that. Mark: Yeah, every week as we talk about what we're going to discuss. The, the challenge of these times really comes to us. And it's not that other times haven't had their own challenges because they certainly have, but the challenges that face these times that we're living in right now are so extreme and so severe. And so ubiquitous that even, even. People who are generally pretty privileged are still impacted by them. Only, only the, the fabulously wealthy are able to sort of skate on being impacted by the things that are, that are putting pressure on us humans, as we try to live our daily lives. And so we thought. That it would be good to kind of come at this head on this week and talk about adversity and approaches to it and how our spiritual and ritual practices can help us with that. And just kind of trying to map out the territory a little bit on what it feels like when you feel threatened, when. When bad things are happening and they hurt and they scare you. And and you're, you're challenged in knowing what to do.  Yucca: Yeah. So one of the things that we could start with is thinking about when you are faced with adversity, with taking a look at. And really honestly, examining what's going on and what components you have control over and which ones you don't, because we can take things really personal sometimes that, you had no control over that forest fire or that hurricane or. Realistically the, the state of the economy, you as an individual, that's what the Stoics would call inconsequential. Right? Not that it doesn't matter, but that you don't control it. You don't have direct influence over it. But there are some things that you do have control over, your responses. Yeah. Mark: Right. And being able to make that differentiation, having the discernment is really important. And some of what's required for that is to be able to step back emotionally a little bit, kind of call them the, the, the panic feelings and, or, or the hurt feelings.  Yucca: Which takes practice. Mark: It does take practice. And, you know, the grounding procedures that we've talked about here on this podcast, many times are super useful for that meditation entering into ritual, trance states. All of those things can really help you with. Being able to step back and take a dispassionate, look as much as possible at the circumstances that you're in and then really try to sift out, Okay. this is stuff I have some impact over. This is stuff that I can influence. This is stuff that's beyond my control. And I, I either that, or it's only very marginally within my control. And so as I approached this adversity, I'm going to put most of my effort into the things that I actually have a lot of influence over. Right. I can affect my own behavior. I can affect my own mentality. And part of what, what is required to get to that decision is to abandon narratives that have to do with personal failure, personal lack of worthiness or, or a general sort of despair at the nature of the world, because all of those are very disempowering. You know, if, if you're, if the place that you're stuck in confronting an adverse situation is why does this always happen to me or It's hopeless. The world is just like that. Then it's very difficult for you to be able to make any changes that are going to improve your situation. So that involves working with that inner critic voice and with your own, self-esteem all the kinds of things we've been talking about throughout this podcast. You know, relationships feed us and the relationship that feeds us more than any other is our relationship with ourselves.  Yucca: Yeah. It's comes from a Christian tradition, but I've always been quite fond of the serenity. And modified it. So the, it goes may have the serenity to accept the things that I can not change the courage to change the things that I can and the wisdom to know the difference.  Mark: There it is  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: Reinhold Niebuhr.  Yucca: Right. And so that was a slightly modified version. Cause I don't want to start with oh God and heavenly father, because I don't think it's coming from anyone else. Right. This is, this is coming from inside. This is coming from us and our, our view on the world and our view on ourselves. But I think it's a really useful framework for that. Mark: And part of what it does is it. It calls on certain capacities within us, that all of us have, right. We all have the capacity to be serene and dispassionate. We all have the capacity to be courageous and we all have the capacity to be. Right. And those are the kinds of things that. we need to bring to bear when we're in an adverse situation. So really at the very beginning, there's that, there's that winnowing out of what can I do and what is unlikely to be influenceable by my actions. And this is a place where we differ quite a bit from. Rest of the pagan community because in the, in the mainstream pagan community where people believe in gods and in literal magic, they think they can influence stuff like decisions in Congress by having, or a decision at the Supreme court, by having a ritual and praying to their gods.  Yucca: Now, I think those things can be influenced, but with act with action, right? Not necessarily ritual.  Mark: Right. And we, in our naturalistic non-ferrous pagan science-based pagan traditions do not believe that we have super powerful beings to appeal to. It's all about us. We're we're here on earth. And when, when these things happen or change, it's going to be because we make them do that. We meaning humanity writ large.  Yucca: Okay. Mark: So this is an important distinction, Right. And to my mind, it's an empowering distinction to often have I heard in the pagan community? Oh, well, that's up to the gods. Which is a dereliction of responsibility. In my opinion, we do have a responsibility for the kind of government that we have. We do have a responsibility for for the kind of world and culture that we're building. And that from everything from the way that we treat one another, all the way to. Our specific activism in favor of policies that are more kind and more inclusive And more just. Yucca: Right. going back to what you, to what we were talking about before, though, another way of talking about this, that is all true, but none of us are the chosen one. Right. There is, there's not a chosen one who we individually are going to make that happen. And because the Supreme court makes the decision that we don't want, that doesn't make it our individual fault that we need to have shame about because we didn't work hard enough. We didn't do enough. We didn't, you know, we weren't enough, enough enough. This is something that we as humanity, we as a community have influence over, but we're members of the community. We are. All of humanity individually. Mark: Yeah. That's the flip side of this is not over imagining the degree of power that you have. Each of us is a powerful person, but we're also just. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And so not having exaggerated or inflated ideas of your own personal influence or underestimated and discounted ideas of your own personal influence, I think is very important. We talk a lot about paying attention. In this podcast, paying attention to the cycles of nature, paying attention to what creatures are, are thriving and living and going through their life cycles at any given time of the year, paying attention to what's going on inside you so that you can grow and learn and and become happier and freer. And. You know, a more actualized person and that kind of paying attention is also necessary when it comes to understanding our limits, as well as our capacities.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Where are we now? We we've talked about adversity and the discernment process. Do we want to go into, then what we can do, having, having sifted out the things that we have influence over?  Yucca: Yeah, I think I mean, there's definitely, there's so many different directions to come at this from there's different kinds of adversity, right? There's, there's personal, kind of individual challenges. There might be the interpersonal relationship between you and your partner or family member, but then there's kind of, there's other scales of things. There's job loss and sickness and. Those sorts of things. And then, and then really big scale things that are impacting everybody with like climate change and fires and hurricanes and, global economics war. So there's all of these different scales. But a lot of the things that we can do. On an emotional kind of spiritual level are going to be very similar responses to those in terms of how we can take care of ourselves. But one of the places we could start with is talking about preparing oneself to face adversities, because we're going to, you don't know what it's going to be in your life. Maybe, maybe you're going to be lucky and it's only going to be. The challenge, interpersonal challenges, right. But maybe you're going to have to evacuate in two years. Maybe there's going to be a car crash and not to be fear-mongering here, but these are, these are possibilities to think about.  Mark: Right. These are things that happen to people. Yucca: yeah.  Mark: And they're the reasons why people buy insurance. The. Where was I going with this? The, the step I think we can take after having made that discernment is to having identified what we don't have much influence over. We don't abandon that. We put it aside. So when an issue like climate change, yes, we don't have much influence as individuals over it. And. Believe me, if you've been sold this idea that it's all up to the consumer to solve carbon in the atmosphere, please disabuse yourself of that because there's about 500 companies in the world that produce something like 70% of the carbon pollution in the world. It's their fault. It's not our fault. And we really need to be active to be reducing those emissions because that's where the big problem is.  Yucca: All right. So, so focusing. Where are the points, where are the places that's going to make the biggest impact, whether it is looking at something like, okay, how do we tackle carbon emissions? Where do we put the majority of our focus? But that could also be okay. My family is going through financial struggles right now. Right? Where can I put my focus in a place that it's going to be the most impacted? Right. There may be some things that you'd normally wouldn't do you normally wouldn't let them have screen quite as much as they're having or something like that, but what what's going to make the big impact. So if I may on just a very practical level, something that actually, this is what we were doing in the house this week. This was our inventory week where we were going through and looking at all the stuff that we have. And we'd like to have about six months worth of, if we couldn't go anywhere for six months, would we have enough water? Would we have enough food? Would we have it? And you know, that took us years to get to that. We didn't just, buy six months of stuff all at once. Cause we, we're low income, tick a lot, but going through and going, okay, what do we need to, what do we need to be preparing for? Right. Do we have, we live in an area that has forest fires. So do we have a bag in the car? That has stuff for everybody, do we know where the, do we know where all our documents are? Do we know where there's cat food? All those things and getting all of that together so that, we don't want there to ever be a situation in which we'd have to stay home for. But Hey, that actually just happened right. years ago, we couldn't go anywhere. Or, we don't want to be in a situation where we'd have to pack up and leave. But if we are, we want to be prepared for that. And not like from a fearful place, right. We don't want to do it as like, oh no, we're scared. Or, that sort of thing, but from a place of, of wanting to take care of ourselves, but also. Wanting to take care of our community from a social responsibility place. Because if, if we don't have to take the resources, there's a limited number of resources for when disasters happen. There's only a limited number of first responders. There's a limited number of that. We don't want to be taking those resources that could be for somebody else who needs it more than us. So I really encourage people to have a little bit, you know, even if it's just a few, just look at. Whatever it is for your situation. Maybe it's just four or five days of water and food, things like that. Do you have a flashlight, those sorts of things, just to be prepared in the case that something happens, you're going to be in a better place. So you have that physical side that we talk about a lot in terms of self care, we talk about the health side, how do you take care of yourself and your household and your, and your community and your, your loved one. Before that all happens. Mark: Right. And I think it's important to notice as we talk about that kind of preparation. That means you're already in adverse. The disaster hasn't happened, but the pressure that the possibility of the disaster puts on you means you're already in a situation where you're dealing with adversity, right? Because if, if unlike either of us, you lived in an area where there wasn't a danger of wildfires, then you wouldn't have to do that kind of prepper. Right. There might be something else like tornadoes or hurricanes or  Yucca: floods  Mark: earthquakes or. whatever. But you you're, you're not concerned about wildfires because that's just not something that happens in your area. So I think that. Being aware of the places where we feel those pressures is really important, you know, understanding, Hey, it's, it's wearing on me that in the back of my mind all the time is this possibility that w is really negative for me. So. I've been talking about this almost a year ago, I lost my job and I've been looking for a job ever since. And just this past week had another job where there were two final candidates and I'm not the one who got the job. And I'll be talking more about that later in the podcast in terms of what I can do relative to what's out of my control. It is in my mind all the time, all the time that we're broke, we don't have money. We, we, we don't know where the money is going to come from to pay for July's rent yet. We, you know, we're in danger and that danger is in the back of my mind all the time. And that's stressful. It puts stress on us. So be aware of the stressors that are in your life, even if they feel like maybe long shots, you feel enough urgency to do some preparation against something happening, it means that it's stressing you. That it's possible.  Yucca: Yeah. So we've been talking a little bit about some of the. Practical things one can do, but there's also the practice side, right? So there is the practice of practicing grounding, right? Really just taking those deep breaths, kind of letting that tension out or whatever it is that you do. Some people use visualization with that, you know, imagining a tree or things like that are very, are very common ones. Getting in the habit of having something like that or having a meditation practice or having your daily moment in front of your focus, those sorts of things can start to build up some emotional resiliency so that when you are facing, whether it's those, those Those kind of in the background, low key ones that we're just talking about, that pressure in the back of your mind of, is there going to be a forest fires are going to be, this is the, the food prices, whatever it is you can be addressing those, but then if something does happen, if you do have to evacuate, if you have lost your job, if you do have that, blow out, fight with your spouse or whatever it is, you've got something that you've been practicing. That you can, that you can go to, that you can use. Mark: It can help bring you back to see. Yes, because we don't make good decisions when we're not centered. And often that can compound a bad situation and make it worse. So you really want not to make decisions when you're in the heat of the fear or the anger. That's just not a good time to be making decisions about how to approach the challenges in your life.  Yucca: Right. Mark: I find that my atheopagan practice serves me in three different ways. As I contend with the adversity in my life. The first is that it helps me feel better connected with nature. And nature is a tremendous solace to me, even though it is, you know, so beleaguered and besieged by all the damage that has been done still, the fabric of life on this earth at some level is thriving. It's, you know, there's still life everywhere. It may not be the life that we would like to be there in terms of endangered species of invasive species and so forth. It's still life and it's still turning its leaves to the sun and making sugar and feeding those webs of life all over the world. And to me, that's a very beautiful thing and it helps give me some perspective about the temporary and small nature of my problem. The second thing that it does for me is direct psychological calming. The, the ritual practices that I have, like, seeing my atheopagan rosary, for example, it's, it's good for my self esteem. It's good for my sense of the world. It's good for my relationship with my fellow humans. It just helps. Those kinds of practices and then the third method. And I think this is something we should expand on a lot is because it makes me a part of a community and. We talk a lot in the United States, especially about how alienated people are in this culture, families, splinter and scattered to the far corners of the country or the world. Families are not particularly intimate with one another. And often in fact, they're really at one another's throats. People don't tend to make friends after school, after college, which is something that was shocking to me because I have lots of friends that I've made after college. But in fact, I don't have any friends from college that that chapter has come and gone, but The sense of being alone against it all is really prevalent in our society. And that's just terrible. The way that humans have contended with every adversity historically through our evolution has been collectively as a group, you know, we've solved problems together. And we've supported one another in solving those problems. And so being a part of the atheopagan community, even though we mostly meet online, that has provided a tremendous sense of belonging and support and shared worldview to me, you know, a common set of values that really. It helps me to feel held and valued and seen all of which are just so important for us psychologically. So, and, you know, being a part of the pagan community generally, which is a, you know, a larger subculture similarly helps me to do that. The. The, the upshot of what I'm saying is that if you, if you're alone, if you're really alone, if you don't have people in your life with whom you can talk about your deep experience, that's something to work on because honestly, that's your lifeline. That's, that's the. That's, those are the relationships that will save you when you need saving and that where you can save them in turn. You know, this is what people go to mainstream religions for all the time. You know, there are plenty of people attending churches out there who are not necessarily believers in either the supernatural stuff in their holy texts or or in the values that are being espoused from the pulpit. But. It gives them a sense of belonging to a group of people who share something in common and can therefore speak a language that alludes to those things that they have in common and share cookouts and picnics and potlucks and study groups. And. All those kinds of things. You know, belonging is so important for us humans and American culture has just shattered us into these individuals. And individualism is a, it's a particularly pernicious aspect of our culture. It's not that it's not that we shouldn't develop ourselves and actualize ourselves. Individually to the greatest degree possible, but we need to do that in the context of a group.  Yucca: Hmm, it's a, how do they say a mixed can, right? It has some really really very helpful, positive things to it. And there's some others, like what you've been talking about this isolation there's, there's a lot that we lose from it too.  Mark: Right. Right. And, and, you know, in its extreme, you know, like political libertarianism, that kind of stuff, it turns into this very adversarial us versus them. You know, kind of mean-spirited, I don't care about you. You've got to take care of yourself, sort of mentality. That honestly doesn't serve anyone. It doesn't serve the people who espoused and it doesn't serve the people who are around them. It doesn't serve the society as a whole. It's just not, it's not helpful.  Yucca: Hmm. So that's one of the things that we can do though, is the seeking and building really growing and cultivating community. And that's something that can be helpful. Before during and after. Adversity. Because some, sometimes there's a lot of, of trauma that you're going to come out with and healing that in recovery that is needed and ritual practice, we talk all the time about ritual on this podcast, right? That's an incredible tool. And then also having that love and support and that sense of belonging that in itself can do so much to. Help with the process. Mark: Absolutely it, and what's amazing is that it can help with the process, even if it's not helping with any of the practical considerations. Like if I go to my community and I say, You know, I'm desperate and I can't find a job. There are some practical things that they can do, like increase donations to my Patrion, which people have been doing lately, which is a wonderful thing. And I'm so grateful to all the people that have pitched in on that. A lot of the things that they can do or things that aren't practical and they're still absolutely important just simply by saying, I see you. I understand your struggle. I, I empathize with where you are. I'm here to hear your, your, your struggle, your sorrow, your fear. I'm here for that. And. Too few of us have that in their lives. I think even within intimate relationships, certainly for men. I mean, I, you know, heterosexual men, I don't think are going to their partners very often and saying I'm scared,  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: or I really need  Yucca: done as a culture to our men, I think is just so it's so painful. Mark: It's tragic. It really is. And as somebody that works very hard, not to be a part of toxic masculinity and that's always a work in progress it's like trying to be anti-racist right. It's like, it's you never get there. There's always more to be learned and done. But one of the things that I am very grateful for is that I. I have many people in my life that I can go to, you know, with my deepest feelings and tell them and know that they will be received well. And in the spirit in which they were intended.  Yucca: Yeah, what a difference. Yeah. Mark: it, it makes a huge difference. And I think. You know, I was reflecting on this about the century retreat recently because I've particularly a couple of men who were there, were talking about it afterwards as an unprecedented experience for them. And I believe that part of the unprecedented experience was the degree of personal disclosive, Venice. The people were sharing their, you know, the degree of emotional openness. And I just think that's sad and what's w and what's hard is then they have to go back to their lives where they don't have that.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And I just feel like there's so much work to be done. But it can be done so much more effectively if we do it together. And that's why I invest a ton of effort in building community. Like-minded community, because if we can rally around a set of understandings of the nature of the world and values that we consider to be just in kind and, and right. And practices that we share together in order to enjoy and, you know, contend with this complicated life, then I think we're really getting somewhere. And that's why I do this podcast. It's why I do a lot of things. It's, it's why I'm in the nonprofit sector. Professionally, because I want to contribute to a society that is kinder and more just, and more sustainable rather than making widgets or selling widgets or transporting widgets. So. Processing widgets. So I just drew a complete blank. I had something and it left. I hate it when that happened.  Yucca: You had mentioned wanting to talk about your bigs. Mark: Oh yeah. This is something that occurred to me. It's gotta be more than 10 years ago now. I was thinking about wisdom and wisdom is an awkward word. I've, I've actually, I'm working on I've been working for more than a year on a blog post that will eventually be published about wisdom. Wisdom is an awkward word because it's kind of cringy. When we talk about wisdom, people get uncomfortable. They're like, oh, wisdom, you're going to whip some wisdom on me. It's used more sarcastically than anything else, but the truth is that as we age, as we grow, as we have experiences, as we learn things, as we discover more about ourselves, we become wiser. We become. Better able to make the Right. decision to say the right thing at the right time to extend the right kind of kindness to another person and to live our lives in a manner that facilitates our happiness and our growth rather than contravening it, or fording it. It occurred to me that much of my perspective on the world comes down to three axiomatic, big things. And I'll explain what those are now. And I, I just believe that if you can really get at a deep level, these three big things, your life just gets a lot better. So here they are. The first. The big. Okay. And the big, okay. Is simply acceptance of the world as it is. This world is filled with beauty and horror and everything in between. And at some level we have to stop resisting it saying, oh, I wish it were this way. Or I wish I'd done that. Or. You know, you didn't do that. You did something else and the world isn't as you wish it is as it is. And at some level we simply have to accept it in order to be able to encounter it and navigate through it. Now that doesn't mean that we have to accept all conditions. We can still struggle for justice and for equality and for kindness and for sustainability. All of those things are important. So I'm not saying, you know, that in this very Buddhistic sort of sense. We should just, you know, have universal acceptance of everything as it is, but we have to at least acknowledge the fact that that's the way it is. Right. We have to, you have to at least cop to the fact that, you know, like it or not, Donald Trump was elected president. You can argue about what the electoral college process is and all that, but like it or not, that's a fact. So that's the big, okay. And the next is the big, thank you. Which is gratitude for having been gifted. Highly improbable life that each of us has, the odds are astronomically against any one of us in our unique genetic combination and epigenetic experience of being raised would become the person that we are. And it is a treasure. It is the treasure of our existence. And so being able to get to a point of gratitude and seeing all of the many, many, many gifts of beauty and grace and generosity and kindness that we experience in our lives, everything from somebody moving over on the freeway to let you into a lane. To the blooming of a rose in your flower garden in, you know, on a given day.  Yucca: Well, and all the billions of things that you have, that, that died for you to be alive. Right? All the, every little sprout you ate every animal, every egg, every, all of it. Mark: All those sacrifices. And so thank you. Thank you to all of those things. Thank you to everything that contributes to my being here and thank you for all the things that helped to make it beautiful. So that's the big, thank you. And then the last of the three big lessons that I think that if you get them deeply, it helps you to be. A happy person on a path that that will help you to grow consistently is what I call the big. Wow. And that's just all at the nature of the universe. It is in and of this world, particularly the biosphere, it's just all inspiring that this is going on.  Yucca: Yeah. Look at your hand. That's exploded star.  Mark: Yep. It is.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And it's got a a condensed ring of exploded star around it, of supernova product, because you don't get gold without those kinds of pressures. Yeah. The big, Wow. is something that I come back to again and again, and that feeling of awe is. Well, we named the podcast after it, the wonder, right? If you're missing that in your life, go find it because this is amazing. All of this that's going on is just amazing. And you know, I was a pretty depressed kid, but I remember at four years old going to the grand canyon because. Oh my God. Oh my God. The grand canyon. And there's no image that can do it. Justice.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: It's just simply our inspiring. It. It is, it is breathtaking.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So those are my three big keys to finding a way to settle into life where you don't feel like. Where you don't spin your wheels on hypothetical's. You know what, if I had done this, what if, what if life weren't like this? What if this person wasn't like that? You know, that's a lot of energy that you can burn on stuff that just makes you feel bad.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And my atheopagan practice helps bring me into contact with those three lessons a lot. I feel a lot of gratitude in relation to my connection with other people in the community and my my conversations with you and my The, the welcoming that I receive for my, the products of my creative gifts there, and just the simple listening and being there, and the fact that I can help to hold a space where new people coming in feel welcome. And at home. There's this something really lovely about all of that when I'm doing my daily ritual or celebrating one of the Sabbaths around the wheel of the year. A lot of what I reflect on is that, that sense of, okay. Thank you. Wow. Yucca: Yeah. Well, I think that, that those three big, those three bigs, the, okay. Thank you. And wow. Are a good place to wrap up for today.  Mark: Okay. Okay. There's, there's so much more to be said about circumstances of adversity and we're all feeling it. Honestly, we've got COVID we've got the rise of this. The mean-spirited right-wing, which has infiltrated our Supreme court and is threatening to take our rights away. We've got severe economic dislocation and many people are really struggling economically, including me. We've got We've got issues of systemic racism and systemic homophobia and systemic transphobia that continue to burn in our culture and stubbornly do not go away. There, there, there is adversity in the world there and it's  Yucca: of that. Okay.  Mark: yes, yes. Not okay. In that, I think this is acceptable.  Yucca: We're not condoning it. Mark: No, but okay. As in, yes, I recognize this as true.  Yucca: All right here. It is right  Mark: now. What, are we going to do? Yeah.  Yucca: yeah. What, what, what can I do as an individual and what can I not? And the part that I can't that's okay. Right. Not as a way of making an excuse to not be active, but, but understanding that we're, again, we're part of this community, we're part of the system. We are the entirety of it. Mark: Yes. Yes. And when I, I, I will say this when contending with adversity that threatens your survival, it. isn't reasonable to expect somebody to drop everything and go advocate on climate change. Because you have to eat, you have to be sheltered. You know, you, you have to take care of your family. We understood, you know, we understand all of that. It goes to Maslow's hierarchy of values and all that kind of stuff. Right. S creature, and that includes humans will pursue its survival before it pursues other goals. And that is part of what is really challenging about the climate change issue, because in late stage capitalism, where all the resources have been sucked up to the 1%, everybody is struggling and they don't have the bandwidth to address the crisis that's in front of us.  Yucca: Yeah, which ironically is what it's going to make it a lot harder down the line for all of us. Right.  Mark: so kudos to everybody. That is a climate activist. Thank you. Thank you for all the work that you do and to the elected officials that are on the right side on that issue worldwide. But also don't beat yourself. That you're not solving the world's problems when you have your own problems directly in front of you. it's not helpful and it's not kind to yourself. And if, if you don't take anything away from this podcast episode, other than this be kind to yourself. So thank you, Jaco. Yucca: Thank you. Mark: a good conversation. Yeah.  Yucca: next week we will be back already with our it will be our souls to sewed, right. Mark: Yeah. The Midsummer episode, for sure.  Yucca: Cause we always try and get it the week before. So it's not the episode isn't coming out the day of. So, that gives people time to kind of think and reflect on what they, what they want to do and all of that. So, We're halfway through.  Mark: Yeah. Amazing. We've reflect we've remarked on this before how the last two years seem like they're simultaneously 30 years long and like, they just went by in an eye blink. It's  Yucca: yeah, Mark: very odd. Weird. Anyway, folks, thank you so much. We'll see you next week. Bye-bye.  

Retirement Planning - Redefined
Ep 47: Understanding Financial Jargon: Investment Terms You Should Know

Retirement Planning - Redefined

Play Episode Listen Later May 10, 2022 20:49


There are some important terms you're going to come across as you prepare for retirement. Having a basic understanding of these will help you achieve financial success, so we'll cover what they mean and what you should know on today's episode. And don't worry. We won't go quite so far down the rabbit hole where we expect you to be able to explain how a company's P/E ratio meshes with it's Alpha and Beta ratings to determine how much stock you should buy. Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is a registered investment adviser. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investment involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Transcript of Today's Show: For a full transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/ ----more---- Mark: Hey everybody welcome into the podcast. Thanks for hanging out with John and Nick and I, as we talk about Retirement Planning Redefined here on the podcast. As always, don't forget to subscribe to us on whatever platform you like to use. Find all the information you need at pfgprivatewealth.com. That's the guys website pfgprivatewealth.com. Lot of good tools, tips, and resources to be found there. We're going to have another conversation today about some financial jargon. This is more kind of investment terms you might want to know or have heard and maybe you want to get a better understanding on, especially if you're sitting down and you're shopping for a professional or something like that. You want to kind of understand some of these things that you're talking about. Now we're not going to go super deep. We're not going to get into PE ratios and alphas and betas and all that kind of stuff, but we're going to keep it kind of high level. So we'll jump into that this week on the podcast, Nick, what's going on, buddy? How you doing?   Nick: Pretty good. Pretty good. Staying busy. We're recording this, just kind of closing up tax season. So happy that that is over for-   Mark: I bet.   Nick: Everybody that is at least not filing an extension.   Mark: Yeah.   Nick: But yeah, it's obviously a lot going on in the world. So it's been keeping us pretty busy.   Mark: Yeah that's true. Very true. John, what about you buddy? You glad tax season's over?   John: Yeah. Yeah. It's a fun kind of hump to get over.   Mark: I like that little pause. It's fun. Yeah.   John: Yeah. So, no, it's good. It's kind of a mark that people have on their calendar, so that's over with, and really we start to kind of get busy afterwards.   Mark: Yeah.   John: Because a lot of people kind of delay meetings until after tax season, so excited to get back at it. And then also excited that NBA playoffs started. So Boston Celtics are playing the Nets right now.   Mark: Alright now, there you go.   John: Gearing up for that, so-   Mark: There you go. Very good. Well we probably should have done a show really on tax planning versus tax preps right after tax season because really tax planning is something you should be doing all year long with your retirement professional anyway, but we're not going to do that this week. Maybe we'll do that here in the next couple of weeks, we'll come up and do something.   Mark: But for now let's talk about some terms that people hear and probably should know. Maybe you know, maybe you have that kind of cursory high level view, whatever the case might be. Maybe you don't. So let's talk about a few of these. Let's kind of start with fiduciary guys. And this is a term that I think people should know. They should know what it is. I kind of wish, and I was thinking about this before we started that our politicians had to do what fiduciaries have to do, right? They have that legal, moral, ethical responsibility to do what's right for their client AKA us as American citizens. I wish our politicians had to be fiduciaries, but either way explain what it is and maybe a little bit of the difference between that and like suitability.   John: Yeah. So fiduciary, especially in our world's investment advisor, it's where the fiduciary is obligated to put the client's best interests ahead of their own. So really looking to do what's best for the client, regardless of any other factors. And what you mentioned there with as far as, how does that compare to suitability, where kind of like a broker has to recommend something that's suitable for the client, so there's a big difference when you start to kind of analyze that is something might be suitable for you, but it might not be the best thing for your situation.   Mark: Right.   John: Or maybe there's other things out there that are better. So fiduciary has the due diligence and say, "Hey, I'm making this recommendation. And based on my expertise, my knowledge, everything I've compared it to this is what I believe is the best for you." And also if there's any conflict of interests for the advisor as a fiduciary, they must disclose that to you upfront.   Mark: Yeah.   John: So one thing, what people really need to do when they're interviewing advisors or kind of taking that step to try to find someone to work with, it's really one of the first questions should be asking. I'd say the good thing is the industry is really going in this direction-   Mark: Mm-hmm (affirmative).   John: Over the last, decade or so. It's really been kind of going, fiduciary, fiduciary, so that's.   Mark: Making that the standard, making it more the standard?   John: Yeah. Yeah, no, I think that's a great point. So if I'm getting this right, then maybe to kind of break this down for people, and Nick feel free to chime in, but so if there's three options available, suitability would say, "Hey, any of these three technically work for my client, but this one actually pays me better or there's a reward of a trip or something like that attached to it." You're not doing the wrong thing by picking that. It's still suitable. Whereas a fiduciary has to go with the absolute best thing for the client period. Is that a fair way to break that down in layman's terms?   Nick: Yeah, I think that's a pretty fair way to kind of break it down and it can get tricky because when you really get into the nitty gritty in theory, people can argue about what's better now versus what might be better down the road and that sort of thing.   Mark: Right.   Nick: But if anything, I think what's important for people to understand is the conflicts of interests, the potential conflicts of interest and where they come from. So, if you're working with an advisor that is tied in with a parent company that has proprietary products, then they're probably not able to function as a fiduciary. So-   Mark: Gotcha.   Nick: Understanding that there's a conflict of interest, a potential conflict of interest, there is just something that people should ask about so that they understand it. It can be from experience just kind of chatting with people. It can get a little overwhelming for people to kind of really drill down understanding the difference between fiduciary and standard versus a suitability standard. But people oftentimes understand conflict of interest. And just to kind of piggyback a little bit on your short little rant earlier about politicians, many people would be shocked to know that many politicians are able to invest in companies even though there may be conflicts of interests.   Mark: Yeah.   Nick: And the fact that's able to happen. And there's some websites that track those sort of things, but oftentimes they're privy to information that will impact a company in the marketplace and they're able to take advantage of it even though, the rest of the country can't do that, so-   Mark: Yeah, I was just even talking financially. In just their basic decision making when they pass laws.   Nick: For sure. For sure. But that's a good example of them not passing laws that-   Mark: True.   Nick: Aren't good for everybody.   Mark: Well and to John's point, so there's nothing wrong with asking, right? When you go in and sit down with someone, you just say, "Hey, are, are you a fiduciary?" Right? That's a fair question, and there's nothing wrong with asking that.   Nick: Agreed.   Mark: Yeah. Okay. All right. So let's move on to the other big term right now that everybody's getting hit over the head with, on a regular basis, and that's inflation. At the time we're doing this podcast guys, the CPI numbers came out a couple of weeks ago for March, pretty ugly. Gross is a term that has been thrown around quite a bit some of these numbers, 8.5% on the inflation, we're talking what 48% on gas, 35% up on used cars, food 13 to 17% up. So inflation break it down a little bit.   Nick: Yeah. So inflation has to do with spending power of money. And so one of the easiest ways for people to kind of think about it is, you mentioned food for example, one of the things that we kind of joke around with people is they were able to a couple years ago, do you remember when you could walk out of Publix and get everything you needed for 70, 80 bucks versus it now costing 100, $120 for the same amount of stuff. And the tricky thing with inflation is that it's there on a consistent basis year to year, but every 10 to 15 years, it kind of creeps up on us. And then we realize, Hey, this is kind of annoying.   Nick: And then obviously we have times we're in right now where there's some hyper inflation and kind of pocket books are getting hit. The one thing that I would say just to kind of pour some water on it is that although there are some real substantial issues that people are dealing with, there are some kind of, I guess, what we would almost call acute factors that are having an impact on it, that we would hope subside to a certain extent within the next year or two. But also there are going to be ramifications that we're already starting to see where the FED is doing things to try to combat inflation, like increasing interest rates, which we're kind of already on the docket, but has been getting pushed down. The cans been getting kicked down the road for a while.   Nick: And so things like mortgages, mortgage rates are now I think mid fives I read, whereas a year ago, closer to three. And I was just having a conversation with somebody to kind of put that in real world numbers. A half a million dollar mortgage at rates a year ago, a half a million dollar financed amount is from a monthly payment standpoint is equivalent to around 370,000 now, or if you look at it inverse half a million dollar mortgage at current rates is going to cost you around $700 a month more than it was a year ago. So that's going to have a real impact on housing prices and a lot of other things as well. So those are some real world examples of how inflation kind of impacts our life.   Mark: All right. So yeah, obviously we're hyper aware, we've talked about it before a little bit, but inflation we always kind of think of, at least I do it anyway, like calories, right? We know it exists and we don't often put a lot of thought into it until it's slapping us in the face, so to speak. And it's definitely doing that right now, so a lot people very concerned about that. So when we are talking about that, what happens is you start thinking, well maybe I should take a little more risk or whatever the case is with my portfolio to try to outpace inflation or keep up with it or whatever the case is, especially in these crazy times. So that leads us into risk tolerance guys. So what is your risk tolerance? And is that a wise move to try to take on more risk to combat something? Usually it's not.   John: No, it's not. And this is one of the most probably important things in building a portfolio that someone should really take a look at, and it's often overlooked. So risk tolerance is, to kind of bring it down to the simplest form is how much loss is an investor willing to take in their portfolio? How much volatility can they tolerate? So one of the things that we do when we are building a portfolio for our clients, the first thing actually is we have them go through a risk tolerance questionnaire to determine, are they conservative, moderate, aggressive? And from there we really help us design the portfolio so that way we can kind of match up the expected volatility of the portfolio with kind of what they could bear.   John: Because one of the worst things you could do investing is jumping around. And I hate to say it seeing a little bit right now I've already kind of feel a few phone calls I'm like, hey what should we do with the market? And if this volatility's already got you nervous and it hasn't really, it's been a pullback but it hasn't been anything too significant.   Mark: Right.   John: You really need to take a look at am I invested correctly because as we all know, as you shift to conservative or to cash, and then the next week the market just rally up and all of a sudden you just lost all. You realized your losses and didn't get to recover from it.   Mark: Yeah, knee jerk reaction is not the best right now. Right?   Nick: Yeah. And I would even jump in with that too going along with what John said where I think we have hit that point where people have forgotten what it's like to have bad markets, or even a normal market cycle of having a negative year. Even during COVID when the markets pulled back, 35, 40%, they bounced back by the end of the year. So it was never really realized. There was a short period of panic, but the recovery was quick, but.   Mark: Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Nick: There's a lot of people that don't remember that hey, there are going to be years where the market is down 10% for the year, the whole year. 12 whole months, so that's something that's interesting that's happening right now that we're seeing. Plus, historically where people would shift would be to fixed income or bonds. And that's not necessarily a safe place right now, either. So we're kind of in this, almost unicorn phase that only comes along every 50 or 60 years where there's not a lot of opportunities in many places. And so there's going to definitely have to be some patience involved-   Mark: I like that.   Nick: In the next 12 to 18 months.   Mark: Yeah. I like the unicorn phase. That's a good way of putting it. It's definitely been interesting, that's for sure. So do you guys kind of with the risk tolerance, is it kind of that number kind of system? Do you guys do that risk tolerance kind of thing where you kind of give someone almost like sleep number, if you will. If you're 100 or if you're a 20, how does that work?   John: Yeah. So how we do it and I've used actually some programs that do that. They give you a risk number based on how you answer questions. We have a set of some pretty good questions that give us an idea of what that person can kind of stomach.   Mark: Okay.   John: And what their expected return is. It's really, when you start to break it down, it's a lot of the same questions just asked differently to really kind of understand how the person ticks.   Mark: Yeah.   John: So we do a real good job of figuring that out. And then as advisors, part of our job is to make sure we put them in the appropriate portfolio based on how they answer.   Mark: Yeah. Because it's pretty easy to say conservative, and you go, what does that even mean? Right? Or I'm moderate.   John: Yeah.   Mark: Well what does that mean? That's probably a wide window, right?   John: It is.   Nick: Yeah. And then I would say one of the things that without it sounding like a commercial for ourselves, one of the things that we do that's a little bit different than some places that we do have what's called like a tactical tilt to how we manage money, where if we do have significant concerns, we will tamp down the risk. So maybe if somebody's normally in a portfolio that's a 50/50 mix stock to bond and what we would consider a moderate portfolio, if we have significant concerns in the market, we may drop them down to 30% on the stock side of things in certain cycles where we have high concerns. So sometimes what we found is that helps allay some fears for some people that there's some proactive potential changes, where if we really feel like it's going to hit the fan, we will make that change.   Mark: Right. Okay. So risk tolerance, another big one then definitely making sure that you're having that proper risk tolerance for yourself, especially in these inflationary times. When it becomes, it's hard to not feel, I think as humans, we feel like if we don't do something, we're doing something wrong or we have to take action or therefore we've made a mistake. And sometimes doing nothing can be a smart move. Especially in volatile times when it comes to a financial standpoint, if you don't know the correct answer, making no move might be a good place to start at least. That way you're not having that knee jerk reaction. And then of course, talk with a professional. Get some advice, and get a good strategy in place so that you know the right moves to make at the right time. Let's do another one here, guys, another technical one, dollar cost averaging, what is that?   Nick: So dollar cost averaging is the easiest example that most people have exposure to on a regular basis. And they don't probably realize that they're doing it is when people are contributing to their 401k. So every two weeks, a certain amount of your paycheck goes into your 401k and you have a set allocation and you are buying in to that allocation at whatever price it's at that point in time. So the thought process with dollar cost averaging is that you are balancing, you're investing over a period of time. Where sometimes you'll be buying at a premium, sometimes you'll be buying at a discount, but the objective is to continually invest and make sure that you are not trying to time the market.   John: And part of that is also what we're finding with the current market where it's at, with people with money on the sidelines, it could be a good way to kind of take some of the risk of putting all your money into the market and all of a sudden it dropping. So there's a strategy to basically say every, if I have 100,000 I want to put into the market every month or so, I'm going to be putting in 10 grand into it. That way, if it does dip down immediately, I only have $10,000 at risk. So dollar cost averaging, as Nick mentioned, most people are doing the 401k, not knowing it, but if you have money on the sideline in a volatile market, or if you're nervous, it is a good way to kind of get money that was on the sideline into the market.   Mark: Okay. All right. Well let's do one more guys and we'll wrap it up this week. Asset allocation, another big term we hear. We probably get that tossed around a little bit. Give us the kind of high level view of what that is. And because often I think people wind up feeling like they have a whole bunch of one thing and they're diversified because they've, I don't know, for example, I've got a whole bunch of mutual funds, so therefore I'm good. So explain what asset allocation is and is that correct? What I just said, is that really diversified or not?   John: Yeah. So asset allocation's kind of taken diversification to a different level. You could have seven different mutual funds, but if it's all the same type of funds, for example, like a large cap growth fund, they're going to do the same thing in reality when the market goes up or down. So when you do asset allocation, you're spreading your money, your portfolio within different asset classes, such as large cap stocks, small stocks that Nick mentioned, fixed income earlier, cash, some alternatives.   John: So what you do there is when you're building a portfolio and again, starting with your risk tolerance and your goals, you determine, hey my risk tolerance is X, here's my goals. I should be in a, let's just call it in income in growth portfolio. Well, what's the right mix of asset classes to make that work and to kind of bring it down to layman's terms here? Imagine kind of cooking, you're making recipe for a pie. The pie has certain ingredients to make it work and make it taste good. And that's basically what you're doing in your investments. It could be 20% large cap, 5% small cap, 20% fixed income, and our job as advisors and wealth management is we build that portfolio for the client if they hire us to do so.   Mark: Gotcha. Okay. All right. That's a good way of breaking that down. You just think about like a pie. So, and who doesn't love pie? So there you go. All right guys, thanks so much for the conversation this week. Good stuff talking about these technical terms, some jargon here. Hopefully we kept that pretty high level and it helped out with some of the things that you might be thinking or hearing. And if you've got questions, definitely reach out to the guys.   Mark: As always, before you take any action sit down. If you're already working with them, maybe share this podcast with someone who might benefit from it. If not, if you've been listening for a while, just reach out to them, have a conversation, and chat with them for yourself. You can find all of it at pfgprivatewealth.com. That's their website pfgprivatewealth.com. They're financial advisors at PFG Private Wealth, which makes a lot of sense. So make sure you subscribe on Apple, Google, Spotify, all that good kind of stuff. That way you can catch past episodes as well as future episodes. For John and Nick I'm your host, Mark. We'll catch you next time here on Retirement Planning Redefined.

THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism
DIY Ritual Tools and an Invitation

THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism

Play Episode Listen Later May 9, 2022 52:50


Join us on Zoom next Saturday for a LIVE recording of THE WONDER! The link is https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85648189246?pwd=a21Wb1RmMXJ3VVFFWG5mZit5cHhLZz09   Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E17 TRANSCRIPT: ----more---- Yucca: Welcome back to the Wonder: Science-Based Paganism. I'm one of your hosts, Yucca.  Mark: And I'm the other one. Yucca: And today we're talking do it yourself, ritual tools. So we've got a pretty big list of fun kinds of things that you can be doing. But before we do that, we actually want to get into the why maybe, why would you want to be making these tools yourself rather than just buying the really gorgeous one that you see? Don Amazon or wherever it is. Mark: Right. The the, the first reason is obviously expense. You know, there are some very beautiful, a cult ritual tools that are made out there and they they cost. If you have that money, then it's fine to spend on those. But beyond that, there's the environmental concern about the. Putting one more thing. That's eventually gonna find its way into a landfill into the, the material stream and all of the associated packaging and shipping and all of those kinds of things. So those are, those are things to be cognizant of, but also there is that when you make something for yourself, you feel more deeply connected to. When we talk about sentimental value, that's what we mean. We mean that something has a personal meaning to us. That's associated with the story, you know, the story of how you made it or where the materials came from or what was happening at that time in your life. All of those kinds of stories that sort of cling to the object and help you to to have a deeper emotional relationship. All of which is. rich material for doing rituals.  Yucca: Right. Yeah. And they, and these are things that can. They can build on each other. Right? So you have the ritual in which you're making the tool and then the first ritual that you use it in. And then the next one, then the next one, and it starts to have this, this long relationship that you have with it that you have that association every time you pick that up, that, Ooh, it brings you back to those right. Mark: Right. Yeah. So. I'm a big believer in this. And maybe some of that is because many times in my life I've been really broke. But. It's also, I mean, I've, I've said this quote before, but it really stuck with me, which is probably why I've said it a bunch a morning. Lori Zell once said to me, you know, if you can't do it with a stick, you picked up on the way to the circle. You can't do it at all. And that may be a little broad, but I do think that rituals that are effective are a function of skills. Just tools, you know, the arrangement of a bunch of physical objects doesn't make for any emotionally powerful ritual. And so the tools that we make, if they're meaningful to us, they can be more impactful and can help us to enact a more, a more compelling, powerful ritual. Yucca: Right. And we should note, you said skills, right? And skills are things that we build through practice. You don't start skilled at anything. Right. Humans start with a few instincts, you know, we can cry and we curl when we fall and we know to, to nurse and, blink, if something's coming our way, that's about it though. Mark: Yeah.  Yucca: The everything else, walking, talking, all, everything. Those are all skills and ritual is skill too.  Mark: Yes.  Yucca: And, and building your tools, creating, crafting those that's a skill as well. And you don't have to be some incredible artist or craftsman for that for you to still be able to build that relationship into your, your items that you're using. Mark: Right. Right. And so. We've talked about the various kind of core ritual skills in podcasts before skills like drumming And movement and public speaking and singing those kinds of things that can be powerful. Movers of emotion in a ritual. Right. That's not really what the focus of this episode is. This is more about, you know, what about the material stuff that you use when you, when you lay out a focus or alter in order to do a particular ritual? Well, what's there and. What does it say to you to see those items there? And one of the things that can help those items to speak more loudly is for them to have a real association with you. So making it yourself can be a really cool thing to do. And in some cases, making it yourself can be as little as peeling the bark off a stick, you know, That's it. That's all that there is, you've got a stick and you like the shape of the stick and you, peel the bark off it and now you've got a want, it doesn't have to be, you don't have to put silver inlay in it. It's, it's just a stick. You like. Yucca: And you, and it can be something that everything is meaningful to you to write in, because if you buy that beautiful silver inlaid one, maybe it has some particular symbols on it, or it's got some runes or something in it that. It doesn't mean anything to you or it does. And it means something very different to you than it meant to the person who made it. And that doesn't quite have the right association, but that stick could be just the right curve for you. it could be the right species, or it just, just felt good in the moment. Right. Or you're designing when you're laying that out. Maybe you've got your cloth in and you can put it the way that is meaningful to you. And it's going to be completely. To someone else, but it gives you that, that freedom that you wouldn't necessarily have, if it wasn't you crafting and creating it yourself. Mark: Right. Right. And I do want to put in a shout out for artists.  Yucca: Absolutely. Mark: You know, it, it, if you want to contract with somebody that, you know, has a lave and turns beautiful WANs and have them do a bespoke wand, that's Exactly. you know, the way that you want it to be out of the materials that you want it to be, you know, more power to you. We, we need to support our local artists. I'm I'm all in favor. But you don't have to have a sort of professionally crafted wand in order to have a wand that will feel good And work in the context of your ritual practice.  Yucca: And you don't really need a wand either. Right. But if you do want one then awesome. Right. So, so don't think that anything we're saying here says you have to do this. You don't have to have a wand. You don't have to have, you don't have to anything. Yeah. Mark: That's that's really kind of core to what our whole practice is about this. It's not science-based paganism is not authoritarian. You know, we, we think of religions very often in that context because the big mainstream religions are authoritarian, but that's not our orientation to things. Our, our spirituality is creative and expressive and so. You know, doing something creative or contracting for something creative that expresses something that you feel that's all to the good now. If you want something that feels good in the hand and you can kind of point, you know, directing energy, it feels like or, you know, March around in a circle, cutting A line between what's inside the circle and what's outside the circle to define a safe space. Then something like a wand can be a really nice thing to do. I have several of them that I use for different purposes. I have one that is just a stick from red, from a Redwood, and it's a very nice stick. I've had it for a long time. And there it is. It's a stick. I have one that is a piece of dried kelp from the. And I mean, you can still kind of sea salt crystals on it and stuff. You know, when I'm, when I'm wanting to invoke that sort of primal power, like the ocean has that, you know, the, just the sheer force and, and power and history and life bringing capability and all those things that we associate with the ocean and with water, then that's generally what I use it for. I have one that's a human feet. That I, that I've used as a wand in in Hallows circles ceremonies. And I have another, that is an Oak branch that has a little silver dragon kind of twisted on to it that I, I put onto it. But it's a very special Oak branch to me because. It was part of a larger piece that I found in a state park and I took it off of that piece and I've seen the rest of it on hikes many times. So it feels like it's connected to the land here. And so you. see me telling these stories about these, these items. You can make items that have stories like that too. So, Something to consider.  Yucca: Right. And just with wherever you are. So ones, aren't something that I do a lot, but I do have one that's actually made from a choice skeleton. So in the Southwest there's, we've got lots of different kinds of cactuses. And one is this one that they often grow these straight long stocks. And then when they die, it leaves behind this hollow wooden tube with holes in them. And they're just, they're just. Beautiful. And we've done all kinds of things with them. One of my favorite things is actually to fill them with a sewage and give it to the birds. So they have a fun time with that. But one of these ones I took and it was a walk that I had done. Well with my, one of the first walks that my daughter was able to do, and she was big enough to do one of those and we brought it back and we boiled it. And when you oil it up, it just becomes just so beautiful. And there are a couple of little spines left to take the mow those off. And so now that has that all of that association of the. The walk and the land and the birds, and then the oil, which was the tallow from one of our cows. And like, that whole thing there. So it's just, it's nice to hear you talk about, redwoods and things that, your experience with that, because we're doing the same thing in very different places. Mark: Right, right. Yeah. That's a wonderful story. And, and that's a great example of, you know, Part of what we always talk about here is paying attention and getting better connected with what's happening in nature. What are the, what are the, the natural artifacts that are sort of characteristic of where you live? You know, what are the trees? What are the. The plants you know, if you're in a coastal area, are there seashells that are particularly characteristic? I have an abalone shell that I've used for many years for offerings, pouring libations, burning, incense, all those kinds of things. And that brings me to the next kind of thing you can make, which is a concavity that will hold a liquid.  Yucca: So a cup or a vessel  Mark: A cup or a vessel of some kind. whether it's a dish or a chalice. Generally speaking, it's, it's very common for people to put something liquid on there. Ritual focus. I mean, it might be a glass of wine. It might be a bowl of water. It might be a it might be a potion that you make, right. That you stir up with herbs and essential oils and, you know, whatever, whatever else needs to go in there in order to. Put all the associations together, you can do that. In, you can do that in a large sense with a cauldron which is another thing that many of us want to have it, unless you're a really good black Smith. I recommend purchasing  Yucca: That particular one. Mark: that, that particular thing rather than making it, but you can also do it in a bowl or in a chalice one freaking. Activity in many pagan rituals is a period of eating and drinking usually after the main working. And it's kind of a, it happens during the time of gratitude when you're, you're enjoying the fruits of the ritual and of being alive. You're sharing, breaking bread with the other people that you're working with, if you are. So there's a very community oriented feeling to that. So having some sort of cup or chalice or wine glass or whatever it is is another thing to have as a ritual tool. I have a chalice from a local Potter that I've used for many years. It has a motif of grape leaves on it for the,  Yucca: What's your region is. Mark: Yes, very famous for so, but you can make your own you know, you can, you can mold it And fire it, or you can Yucca: And if you can dig the clay up too, if you happen to be somewhere. Yeah. We have several bowls that we've made from the clay that we dug up and then fired it. So we pit fired it on our own land as well.  Mark: very nice.  Yucca: Yeah. And so that, but you can also make things now, this won't work for holding liquid, that you can still make clay. You can still dig up clay and just not fire it and use that maybe for, and we should talk about this one as well, for things to hold your fire or your incense or your candles or things like that. Mark: Right, right. And that is another thing that. very frequently goes on a ritual. Altar is some, some form of fire. There's something about adding fire to a ritual alter or focus. Kind of says this is alive. Now it has, it has this active dynamic chemical process happening. It's not just a static arrangement of objects. It's something that is dynamic And alive. Yucca: And what it does with the light, it just makes it look like it's all it's dancing and, and it can, it has that ability to just pull you back. At least to me, it feels like this pull back through time of the thousands and thousands of generations before us of just of us being. Gazing into fires, looking at fires, being around buyers, cooking, it's just, you know, back inside the caves and there's this really powerful, just instantly can transform the feeling. Mark: For sure. Yeah. I, I, I feel the same way. I mean, we've domesticated fire ever since homo erectus, which was well before modern humans and there's just, there's something very. And very we have we have a symbiotic relationship with fire in the same way that we have one with dogs in, in many ways. We would not be where we are now, if it wasn't for our domestication of fire. So bringing that into the ritual space becomes very powerful. And especially if you're doing your ritual after dark, which which I tend to do for personal rituals and Not so much for seasonal observations. I like to do those during the daytime more except for Hallows. And you'll the rest of them. I like to be during the day.  Yucca: Yeah. You know, I share that and I wonder if it's like this for you for me the night, field's a little bit more intimate.  Mark: Hm.  Yucca: a little bit more, I feel a little bit more vulnerable, a little bit more open. And so when I'm doing any personal work the night, just, I just feel more. Present with it. Then during the day, there's so much happening there. So, you know, I'm still able to create the separate space in this, away from it to do a ritual, but there's just something about it at night or at the transitions to the Dawn. And dusk are also time to  Mark: right.  Yucca: I'll do a lot, depending on what the ritual is. Mark: Of course. Yeah. I think that's very well said. I, I feel the same way. There's something about, you know, standing naked in front of my altar with the candles burning and no other light in the room and it's just flickering and there's this sort of other worldly liminal space that gets created Bringing us reeling us back in from that long tangent. That means you need to have a candle. Right. You need to have something. And that can be as simple as a flat stone that you melt wax onto so that then you can stick the candle down onto it, or it can be as elaborate as a candelabra or something like that. But you can make it. It's entirely possible to make your own in, in a bunch of different ways, sometimes people will use like a shot glass and Mount that onto some sort of a base to use as a candle holder. You just have to be careful that you don't let the candle burn down too far, because if it's not Pyrex glass, then, then the glass can break and that's no good.  Yucca: Yeah, which is something that going back to the fire, just as a note if you are having some sort of fire, like a fire circle, something to be aware of is to be careful about putting rocks into your fire or next to the fire.  Mark: Oh, yes.  Yucca: if there's moisture in them, depending on the type of rock they can actually burst and you don't want to get hit by that. So just as like a quick little aside there, that reminds me of it.  Mark: That's a really good point. And my, my experience with doing fire circle festivals has been that yes, you have rocks in the fire, but you let them burn for 24 hours before you have people gather around them. Right? So that if any of that exploding that was going to happen has already happened and you definitely don't want to be pulling. Boulders out of a stream or from a, from a stream bank that's  Yucca: Yeah, right. Cause it could seem like I see it being like a beautiful thing of putting the rock in and then you come and get it the next day. And it's more whatever, but like with all of these things, especially when fire is involved, whether it's on your, your altar inside your bedroom or whether it's out around a circle, you just, just to be. Have that part of your brain still on, that's thinking about, Hey, you know, what's, how is this all connected?  Mark: well, and you can help your, you can help yourself to feel less anxious and focused on that danger question by having the proper equipment to put a fire out. Immediately to hand. So, you know, if, if there's a fire extinguisher in your house, bring it into your room. If that's where your, your altar is and that's where you're going to do your work. Just sit it against a wall somewhere. It doesn't have to do anything.  Yucca: And you can get those little mini fire extinguishers. We actually have one in each room. I'm gonna, you all are listening, but I'm going to hold it up and show mark right here. That was right within here.  Mark: There it is  Yucca: is a little one and they have little not very expensive. I think this was like a $15 thing that, you know, you can hang them in your rooms and they're there. They last for a long time. A lot of these you can get refilled. And if they are starting to go down, then you can save and you can look up some safe things that you can do with them in terms of making dry ice and things like that, which could be very fun for a ritual to have your dry ice to work with. Mark: Yeah, I've used dry ice in rituals before. It's really fun because you, because I mean, you, you put it in sort of a a deep vessel  Yucca: And  Mark: and the fog just. Billows. up.  Yucca: And the way it moves across the floor. Yeah.  Mark: so cool.  Yucca: So you could do some wonderful things with that. Going back to the candles though. Another thing that we've done now, this might not be the, a seasonally appropriate time, but we've done ice candle holders, so you can make ice. And what we've done before is we've taken the. Like the muffin liners that are the silicone ones so that you can get it off really easily. So you fill those with water, you put it on a little trace, that'll then fit in your freezer and then take the, the silver line liners that come around tea candles and put something in them and weight them down so that it is in your. Muffin liner that you filled with water, and then you put that in the freezer  Mark: An ice freezes around.  Yucca: freezes around it. Yeah. And then you bring that out, take the little silver liner out and you put the actual candle in there and then it it's beautiful. The way that the light dances in the ice. And you would, if you're using it on an altar, you're going to want to have a little plate underneath it because it does melt eventually. But if you're having it like in an outdoor they could see people using this for like solstice or for February holiday. Right. And just out with the snow or the cold. And you've got the little tiny light in that vast darkness. And that's a really fun one too. If you've got kiddos and you can freeze things into the ice as well. Mark: Ooh.  Yucca: So that's a good one to do. Mark: nice. I like that idea a lot. That reminds me of another thing that you can do With candles, which doesn't require a candle holder. It just requires a paper bag, which is to make luminaria which can be really kind of dramatic looking. If you make a bunch of them like to line a passageway or a path up to a place where you're doing a ritual you know, you, you put the little team. In the bottom of the paper bag. Wait  Yucca: SIM with sand at the bottom or dirt.  Mark: Yes. Some sand or dirt to weight it down so that you know, a wind doesn't blow it over and then light the bag on fire, all those kinds of things.  Yucca: And those are also known as farolitos. So you might've heard them called either way.  Mark: ah, little lighthouses.  Yucca: Yeah. The Illuminati say like, at least here that's like a Southern term and then in the north we call them  Mark: Ah,  Yucca: so  Mark: I like little lighthouses. That's great. But I lead.  Yucca: yeah. They're the little ones. They're beautiful. So. That's something that might for Christmas Eve, my city does, it's an old tradition and of course it's got all the, like the Christian associations of leading Marianne and all of that, but it's still, it's still really very magical to be in the cold dark. And hopefully that'll start back up over the next few years. It was kind of, it wasn't much of it the last few years.  Mark: Well, I hope so.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So you've got your fire container. Got your liquid container. You've got your pointer slash cutter. And we should talk a little bit about knives because a knife is something that is very commonly used in rituals. Almost always used symbolic. Just as sort of symbolically cutting the connections between two things or between a person and something in their life or something like that. But sometimes you also use the knife to inscribe a symbol in the wax of a candle, for example, or a. Maybe to do a craft project in ritual space where you're carving a piece of wood in the shape of something particularly meaningful. So having a ritual knife is a good thing. I actually have two of them, one of which is my sort of utilitarian knife that I think. Cut things with, and the other of which is a, an obsidian knife with an old candle that I made. And the, the point is sharp, but the edges are not. So it's definitely just a, just a symbolic knife.  Yucca: I've seen someone I know had a, I think it was actually like a little letter Oprah. But it was a fancy, it was like an Excalibur, like repaid, but it's beautiful, you know, it's this little and it's not very sharp. So you could have, your knife could be an actual sharp knife, or it could be something that's just shaped like a knife or a sword or something just kind of in that, that vein, just depending on what your comfort level is with it and your purpose. Right. So I would imagine the two knives that you described, you'd use those in very different circumstances, right? Whether you choose the obsidian versus your, your utilitarian one,  Mark: Right, right. Yeah. The utilitarian one doesn't even live on my focus. It it lives down with the supplies, cause it's just this sort of crappy old life that I use for this stuff. But the but the, the obsidian knife is on my focus and has been for 25 years or something. I don't, I don't remember when I made it. Maybe it's a little bit less than that.  Yucca: Now this isn't in the realm of making, but I could see someone having like a real nice Leatherman on their focus. Right. I can see that as being a real, having a real strong association for them, especially if they were using it for its intended purposes. And then you're also using it like, oh, this is the thing that I used to cut this, or to get it into this can or whatever it is. And when, oh, and the car broke down, I had it. And here it is now I'm bringing all of that with me, into my ritual for this thing that I'm fixing in my life or I'm working on. Mark: Yes. And it, it means I have all the tools available to do what I need to do. Right.  Yucca: Right. And I've invested in. And I've invested in the really good ones, right? Yeah. Mark: Yes. My Leatherman tool is a miniature one. It's about four inches long made by Winchester. Actually, it's the only thing I've ever owned made by Winchester, but it's very well machined as you would expect from a firearms maker. And it's, but it's identical to a Leatherman tool. It has the pliers and all that kind of.  Yucca: Right. Yeah. And just, we are, we have no brand affiliations. We're all sponsored none of that stuff.  Mark: no,  Yucca: So that would be a strange twist.  Mark: that would be a really strange twist. Yeah. Yucca: some other things kind of classics is a broom.  Mark: Yeah.  Yucca: Okay. Mark: I make a. Every summer solstice. I make a sunroom. I go out and I find a place where there's some tall, wild ride rowing and that that can get like five feet high, four, four feet, five feet high. And so I cut it off at the bottom. And then I use, and I, I unwrapped the cord from the existing sunroom and I have a handle that is this kind of natural piece of Oak that I found. And then I use the new. The new rye and bind it with the cord, same cord again, and tie it off. And it makes this broom. I do this on the, on the summer solstice and then it sits out in the sun all day on the longest day. And the rest of the year, it lives in my house. And you know, along about January when it feels like there's never going to be sun again, I can pick it up and wave it around. And. Symbolically bring the feeling of some sunshine into my house.  Yucca: Nice. You have another kind of similar thing. Don't you have a. That you make an burn at you make one time of the year and you  Mark: Yeah. Yeah. I use corn shucks to make a little doll. That's called the rain baby and that the rain baby is born. At river rain, which is the February holiday it's like in bulk or Bridget. But where I live, it's the time when it's raining cats and dogs and will be for a month, or at least when we're not having a drought, it will. And so I make this little figure out of corn shucks, and it sits on the focus for all of the Sabbath. Going forward until we get to Hallows and then it burns in the fire and dies. And then it's time for another one when we come back around to February. So, and people make little corn dough, little dolls or puppets for any of a variety of different kinds of reasons. Some people make them to represent their family, you know, because. Feel really connected to their family and want their family members with them when they do rituals others do them to represent people they don't like, so they can do mean things to them. Just all depends on what you're trying to get done.  Yucca: Yeah, so those are things right. And also going back to the. You know, the broom can be used for sweeping things away in ritual, right. For cleaning up or for breaking the ritual. Let's say you did like opening up the, the circle. Let's say you, you literally put something down like salt or a colored sand or something like that, where you drew in the dirt where you're standing, then you can take the broom and sweep that away. Mark: Sweep it away. Exactly what works really well for that. If you don't have sand, I mean, sand works really well and it's obviously completely benign, so that's a really good choice. But baking soda is it's very, it's it's, it's cheap. It's brilliantly white and it's harmless it. Won't.  Yucca: well, and in this case, if you're working inside and you're on a carpet, then you can vacuum that up. Isn't that supposed to be good for cleaning your carpet?  Mark: it's supposed to be good for the smell for any smells that have soaked into your carpet. It's supposed to be good. yeah. Yucca: So if that happens to be the time that the landlord who should not be coming into your house without asking, but if that, if they are, and they find you sprinkling something on their carpet, you're you're cleaning, right? Yeah. Well, what about other things that you can mark with? Because that's something that you're often going to want to do, right? You're going to be wanting to mark the ground or Mark A. Good candle, or maybe even your skin. Mark: a sigil. Any of those kinds of things. I do have a old fashioned Squibb type pen, you know, with the Stephen. You know, the, that you dip in an inkwell and, and run and rub with. And, and the shaft of it is a bone. I bought it at a Renaissance festival a long, long time ago. And it's really cool. So that's what I use when I'm doing like ritual inscriptions on parchment and stuff like that. I find that just having really. Quality materials makes a difference when I'm doing rituals. So I wouldn't use, you know, a legal pad. Instead I would get some good quality paper from like an art store to do that kind of work. And there's something that's just wonderful about, you know, dipping the pen into the ink and, you know, That's scratching sound on the paper and, yeah, it's great.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: But besides that, like, if you wanted to write something on yourself, for example, first of all, make sure you've got washable Sharpies that you're using.  Yucca: Or Mada. Niemi not a Sharpie. I mean, what's your skin, but think about, you might want to use something like face paint or henna or something like  Mark: Sure  Yucca: Right. Because remember.  Mark: the head is going to stain though.  Yucca: Yeah, that that would be purposeful, right? If you were doing something like a sigil. But yeah, don't, I wouldn't suggest writing you. Your inner most vulnerable thoughts on your arm and then go into work the next day with everybody reading that. But if you could, if you can put that into a single form or put it into, you know, something like that, but face paint is a great option or for a less toxic option, like the children's markers, there's still not  Mark: That's that's what I mean. That's what I mean, the washable. ones.  Yucca: Okay. My  Mark: not a regular  Yucca: like a Sharpie, like a permanent marker, cause that  Mark: no, no, no. That's, that's a really bad idea.  Yucca: yeah.  Mark: I'm glad you clarified that. Thank you.  Yucca: Yeah. but, but some of them, so yeah, your, your kids markers, or you can actually get face paint markers still, they're probably not fantastic to be putting on your skin.  Mark: Probably  Yucca: But then you could also, you might not be able to write very well with these, but if you're thinking about trying to be connecting with your land where you live or the park near you, there's all kinds of plants and things that you can use to make little dyes with. Mark: Yeah. They'd make pigments for sure.  Yucca: And that can be just a fun rabbit hole to go down. Right. It's find out, you know, what are the  Mark: just be sure you got the right? plants. Yucca: right? Yeah. Well, it's better if you're, you know, you want to be careful when you're, if you're consuming any, any of those, but if it's just, if you're going to be staining paper or cloth, that's another one we should mention, right? The fabrics.  Mark: Yeah. Lengths of fabric that you can use to establish the surface for your alter or focus. And those can be a various different kinds of patterns and colors depending on the season or the purpose of the ritual. I have some that are, you know, sort of spiderweb pattern and black others that are, you know, red and colorful and more springy in summary. It just, it depends on what you're working to do, but having those different lengths of fabric is a good thing to sort of stock up on.  Yucca: Yeah. And you can use them in, in so many different ways. You're seeing putting it on the altar, but you could use it in dance or as a symbolic curtain that you're pulling back, or, I mean, all kinds of things. Mark: Right. Right. And they don't have to be super expensive. There are remnants at fabric stores for one thing. And also even. Sarongs for example, can be really affordable cotton sarongs and they have beautiful patterns on them. So that's another direction to look. If you have an international store somewhere near around you,  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Another thing that I have that I really like using is a seashell, an abalone shell because we have abalone that are native to the coastline near here where I live. But also because abalone. Widely treated throughout the Americas. It was very prized by indigenous votes for use in various kinds of decorations. And it's been, you know, Pacific abalone. I'm pretty sure was found in the dig at Cahokia in the St. Louis area, you know, Southern Illinois So obviously it was really prized and really valued. Otherwise why would you transport it over all that distance and, you know,  Yucca: Yeah, you have to carry that, that somebody walked it there. Mark: That's right. That's that's exactly right. So, I, I really enjoy having one of those shells. I can use it to burn herbs in or to burn incense. Abalone actually have little perforations in them, so it's not very good for holding a liquid. There. are little key hole things. In the surface. But other than that, they, because of that opalescent surface that reflects green and blue and all those wonderful colors. They're So pretty. They, they really make a nice thing to have on an altar, but there are lots of different kinds of shells that would also make, you know, really be a nice thing for an altar.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And I find that they are. Symbol of nature. Generally just have the beauty that nature can produce.  Yucca: Yeah. So, are there any other kind of big categories because it's gonna often depend on what kinds of rituals and the purpose and your specific, you know, individual tastes, but are there other big categories that people would be likely to, to want a tool in, Mark: Well, another thing that we talked about that isn't really so much a ritual tool as it is kind of a seasonal marking that we talked about before we started recording is a reef.  Yucca: right. Mark: People often make Reeves on a seasonal basis, maybe for the five stations of the wheel of the year. What I find to be a useful approach to that is to go to an art supply store or a craft store, but not hobby lobby some somewhere  Yucca: We don't go to hobby  Mark: We don't go to hobby  Yucca: We don't go to hobby  Mark: Yeah.  Yucca: We have a Michaels, but. Is there a little bit better, but they're not,  Mark: they're not, they're not  Yucca: they're not actively homophobic. They might actually be, but they're not actively  Mark: They're not pouring money  Yucca: people over. Mark: into hurting LGBT people. So, but back to the  Yucca: Yes. Mark: you can you can buy a Wicker ring. It's a woven ring of Wicker that is serves as the base for a reef. And then you can decorate that wreath with seasonal flowers and with ribbons and with all various kinds of nice things that remind you of the season. And then you can hang it on your door on your front door, or you can hang it up in your room or in. Living room in a prominent place, whatever, whatever seems appropriate to you. But what's nice about that is that it gives you a project to do every season and and it's sort of a declaration in a way, you know, okay. Spring is here,  Yucca: Yeah, but the new one Mark: where I'm putting the new one up It's no longer late spring. It is now summer. So.  Yucca: and you can having that, that pre-made ring is really nice, but you can also. Make your own initial ring, right? So take your, the different trees that are meaningful to you and take some branches and, you know, do whatever that particular tree is going to need to, to treat it and then wrap that with wire and then you just swap out each season, you swap out what you have on it. So you could, you could start with the, with that initial pre-made piece, or you can make it depending on what you were. Finances. And what materials you have,  Mark: right.  Yucca: It might make more sense just to buy it than to buy the wire that you would then need and the Clippers that you would then need and all of that. So, yeah. Mark: And we, we almost forgot the most important thing. Something to sit on.  Yucca: Right. If you're going to be there for awhile, you might want your nice your cushion or your, what was the one who was the name of the. Mark: Oh, the, the. Buddhist meditation cushions are called zafu,  Yucca: Yes  Mark: for sitting Zaza in. Right. And they are very comfortable to sit on there. They're densely packed layers of cotton. As I get older, I find that sitting like cross-legged on the floor is increasingly painful. So I have generally gone to a chair at this point. But it, it is nice if you're, if you're laying something out on the floor, it's nice to be down on that level and with all the stuff that's around you. So, you know, There are so many different ways to do rituals and so many different purposes for rituals that it's hard to generalize about what kinds of tools you might be likely to need. But these are tools. The ones that we've been describing are the kinds of tools that you might come back to again and again, they're, they're they're multipurpose and they, they serve, they serve good uses in a lot of different kinds of rituals.  Yucca: It's like building a kitchen, right? It's you know, your cutting board. You're not going to need your cutting board for every meal. You're not going to need that particular knife for every meal, but Ooh, probably a few times a week. It's going to be real nice to have the one that does the job that you want it to do just right.  Mark: right. I haven't bought or made a ritual tool other than. And a femoral craft. That's going to be destroyed at some point or burned or something like that in many, many years, but there is a real satisfaction in knowing that you have all that stuff so that if you need to, if you feel the need to do a particular kind of ritual, you don't suddenly find yourself. Oh, but. This really requires a special knife and I don't have a special knife.  Yucca: Yeah Mark: That kind of feeling. Oh, I did think of one other thing that you can do with a chalice. There are, I have two, I have two fun things to do with fire. So remember the part of, remember the part about the the fire extinguisher? The first one. And you can do this indoors. You just need to be careful. I, so propyl alcohol, 90% alcohol, not the 60% alcohol, but the 90% alcohol burns beautifully, and it burns at a very low temperature. So if you have a chalice or, you know, something else that can withstand heat, you can. A small amount of that in in that container and light it on fire and flames will leap up and make a beautiful dance until all the alcohol is burned away. It's, it's really pretty dramatic. And especially for banishing work for dispelling things. I've done rituals for other people where they really want something to go away. And boy, you know, you, if you slip the symbol of that into the, the chalice or, or font or whatever it is, pour that alcohol and then light it up and it's all leaping and going, they can really see that it's going away.  Yucca: Oh, that sounds lovely. Mark: Yeah, it's cool. And the second trick, don't do this one indoors. Is the use of a handful of instant coffee creamer like coffee mate, which is basically just fat and sugar in a powdered form. And of course, powders and dusts are highly explosive because they have a lot of surface area. It powders and dust that are made of flammable material are explosive because they have so much surface area. They burn very, very quick. So tossing a handful of coffee creamer into a campfire we'll make these sort of fireball that will burst up from the flames. And, you know, if you're, if you're in the midst of invoking something important and it's time to, you know, here's the climax of the ritual and then boom, you throw this into the fire and Kapow, the giant burst of flame comes up. It's really dramatic. So it's one of my favorite ritual special effects.  Yucca: Yes. Oh, that sounds fun. And again, I just cannot emphasize enough. My, my state is on fire right now and very right next to the. One of the largest fires we've ever had in the history of our state. So I'm just, just remember your fire safety, everybody fire is wonderful and incredible, and it can also just consume everything. So make sure that whatever you're doing, you thought out and you're doing safely. Mark: Right, right. Yeah. And candles candles particularly can be deceptive because the flame is so small, but you don't want to get them too close to anything else. Or the flame gets a lot better.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Right. If you, if, if there's anything hanging over it put your hand. If, if there's anything over, you know, above The candle, put your hand underneath it. If you can't stand the heat. From the candle that you feel coming up, then move the candle because it's too close. There's too much heat coming up. That's a trick you can use to be safe. I usually use chimney candles on my focus because they're stable. They're enclosed inside a glass cylinder. And they burn down and get farther and farther away from the lip of that Yucca: The chimney are those like the St scandals.  Mark: well. It's at these don't have any saints on them. They're just call them columnar  Yucca: but it's the same. I like, you would often find them with saints, but this is, it's the same kind of concept.  Mark: Yes. Just a glass, you know, a tone narrow cylindrical glass filled with wax and the WIC.  Yucca: So one of those was sagging on them once,  Mark: Oh, I know  Yucca: make him roll and roll in his grave. Mark: there's a whole series of saints of science. And you can get other people to you. Can you get Ruth Bader Ginsburg? You can get Martin Luther king. There's a whole bunch of those. And I think that's pretty cool. I wouldn't mind having Ruth Bader Ginsburg on my focus right now.  Yucca: Thank you. Someone gave my kids a little story book about her and they're really into it right now. They want to read, they want to read the Ruth book. So it was like, cool. Awesome. Mark: Nice.  Yucca: So, we didn't, there's so much, there's so much more, we should probably wrap up because we've been gone for a while now, but just thinking about all the different, like types of things that you could use and rituals and things that you can make. And we didn't talk about braiding things and books and all kinds of things. Mark: Yeah. There, there is a lot to talk about. But the. core point of this podcast is, you know, look around and see what are the things that attract you? You know, a lot of times when we're pagans, we collect a lot of natural things, pine cones and bones and all that kind of stuff. Well, what can you make with those? What, what, what might you put together, or maybe you don't need to make them, maybe you just use them as ritual tools by themselves. Like my Redwood stick. But, you know, be, be imagining in a different way, what those things. are. Maybe they're not just decorative. Maybe there's something that can have a symbolic meaning for you as well. So, we need to tell you that next week is a very unusual Episode of the wonder, because we are going to be recording this at the century retreat that Yucca and I are going to next In Herson.  Yucca: we'll only be a few feet away instead of a few thousand miles. Mark: It is, it is hard to imagine, but that's actually going to happen. And  Yucca: of you listening, we know are going to be there as well. So really excited for that. Mark: You can, if, if you're in the atheopagan is on Facebook group, there's an event there for the Saturday mixer, which says, you know, pay attention. There's a different time for this particular week for the, for the 14th of May. And what you'll do is you'll log into the zoom. And you can participate with us as we record the podcast, we're going to do a Q and a session and kind of a report about what's going on at century retreat. But mostly we're going to interact with people who call in and just have a good time. So, and then the audio from that will be posted on Monday as usual, or maybe a little later, because we may not have the ability to do that until after you get home yet.  Yucca: Well, yeah, so it might, it depends on what, I don't know what the technical setup is. You said that there's pretty good wifi there. Mark: There's pretty good wifi in the dining hall. Apparently it's a little spottier in the other buildings.  Yucca: Yeah. So I'll, I'll bring everything and we'll, hopefully we'll get it up at our regular time. But if not, it'll probably be you know, Monday night when I get a drive back home. So it's, it'll be, hopefully it'll be the same time, but we'll, you'll get that. You'll get your little lit pop-up when it comes. So depending on what app you're listening on, so. Mark: All right. Well, I am really excited for that. It's been coming for a long time. We've been talking about it and it's finally upon us.  Yucca: Yeah, you're about to leave too. Aren't you? Cause you've got a ways to drive to get, since it's in Colorado, near in  Mark: In California. Yeah. I leave Wednesday morning early. So I've still got a little bit of time. We're recording this on Saturday as usual. So I've, I've still got a little bit of time, but there's oh, there's just so much to do between now and then it's it's very exciting. I'm just, I can't wait. Okay.  Yucca: thank you so much, everyone. Mark: Yep. Thanks everybody. And hope to see you on this, on the live zoom call next week. We'll post it in the in the podcast notes for this podcast,  Yucca: Cool. Mark: how to join next week.  Yucca: Great. Yeah. So just look at that. It'll be right above the transcripts since as usual. And we look forward to seeing y'all  Mark: Yeah. All right. Have a wonderful week.  

Retirement Planning - Redefined
Ep 46: The Most Important Birthdays In Retirement Planning

Retirement Planning - Redefined

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 26, 2022 21:32


There are certain age milestones where you should really pay attention to your retirement planning progress. On this episode, we'll look at the most important birthdays as you approach retirement and cover the exact things you should be checking off your to-do list at each age. Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is a registered investment adviser. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investment involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Transcript of Today's Show: For a full transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/ ----more---- Mark: Hey, everybody. Welcome into another addition of the podcast. This is Retirement Planning Redefined, with John and Nick and myself, talking investing, finance, retirement, and birthdays.   Mark: We're going to get into important birthdays in the retirement planning process. As we get older, I don't think any of us really want birthdays, but these are some things we need to know. They're pretty useful. Some of this is pretty basic. Some of this stuff's got some interesting caveats in it as well. So you might learn something along the way. It can go a long way towards that retirement planning process.   Mark: We're going to get into that and take an email question as well. If you've got some questions of your own, stop by the website, pfgprivatewealth.com. That's pfgprivatewealth.com.   Mark: John, what's going on, buddy? How you doing?   John: A little tired. Got woken up at 2:00 in the morning with two cranky kids.   Mark: Oh yeah.   John: So if I'm a little off today, I apologize.   Mark: There you go. No, no worries. You get the whole, they climb the bed, and then you're on the tiniest sliver?   John: I got one climb into bed, I think kicked me in the face at one point.   Mark: Oh, nice.   John: Another one climbed into bed missing out on the other one, because they share a room. Then I had the sliver. I woke up almost falling off the bed.   Mark: There you go. And usually freezing because you have no blankets.   John: Yeah, yeah.   Mark: That's usually the way it goes. Nick's sitting there going, "I don't know what you guys are talking about."   Mark: What's going on, buddy. How you doing?   Nick: Yep. No. Pretty low maintenance over here.   Mark: Well, that's good. Hey, don't you have a birthday coming up?   Nick: I got a couple months still.   Mark: Okay, a couple months.   Nick: Yeah, I just got back from a trip a few weeks ago. Some buddies that I grew up with, a group of us have been friends for a really long time, I guess, going back to middle school. We're all turning 40 this year, so we rented a house in Charleston, and all survived.   Mark: Nice. There you go.   Nick: Yeah. It was good.   John: This is how you know Nick's turning 40. He came back with neck pain.   Mark: Exactly.   Nick: Yeah.   Mark: Hey, when you start to get a certain age, you start going, "When did I hurt that?" It's like, "I didn't even do anything." Yeah. You don't have to do anything.   Mark: Well, you know what? That's a good segue. Let's jump into this.   Mark: We're going to start with age 50. I turned 50 last year. First of all, the thing that sucks is you get the AARP card. I don't know about all that. That's annoying as a reminder that you're 50.   Mark: But the government does say, "Hey, let me help you out a little bit here if you need to catch up on some of the retirement accounts, help building those up." Talk to me about catch up contributions, guys.   Nick: Yeah. Essentially what happens is when you hit 50, there's two types of accounts that allow you to start contributing a little bit more money. The most basic one is an IRA or a Roth IRA, where the typical maximum contribution for somebody under 50 is 6,000 a year. You can add an additional thousand to do a total of 7,000 a year. The bigger one is in a 401(k) or 403(b) account, where you're able to contribute, I believe it's an extra 6,500 per year.   Nick: This is also a good flag for people to think about where, hey, once that catch up contribution is available, it's probably a good time, if you haven't done any sort of planning before, to really start to dial in and understand your financial picture a little bit more. Because if you talk to anybody that's 60, they'll tell you that 50 didn't seem too far back. So that's a good reminder to dig into that a little bit.   Mark: Yeah. It adds up. It's not necessarily chicken feed. You might hear it and think, "Well, a thousand dollars on this type of account over a year, or 6,500 on the other type of account, whoopedidoo." But if you're 50 and you're going to 67, let say, for full retirement age, and we'll get to that in a little bit, that's 17 years of an extra seven grand. It's not exactly chicken feed, right?   Nick: No. It's going to be big money down the road.   Mark: Yeah, exactly. So that's 50.   Mark: John, talk to me about 55. This one's really similar to 59 and a half, which most of us are familiar with, but most people don't understand the rule at 55. So can you break that down a little bit?   John: Yeah. We don't see people utilize this too often, but an example would be let's say you're 50, 55, 56, and for whatever reason, you leave your current job. You have an opportunity, at that point...   John: Let's give a bad scenario. You get laid off. If you didn't have a nest egg saved up in savings, there's an opportunity to actually access some money from your 401(k) plan without penalty. What you'll do is, basically, you take the money directly from the plan, and you just have it go to your bank account, and the 10% penalty's waived.   John: Now, some people need to be careful with this. Once you roll it out to an IRA, this 55 rule here, where the 10%'s waived, ceases to exist. It has to go from the employer plan to you directly in that situation. It's a nice feature if someone finds themselves in a bad situation, or they need access to money, and the 10% penalty's gone, but you still have to pay your income tax on that money [crosstalk 00:05:03]   Mark: Of course. Yeah. That caveat being, it's only from the job that you've just left, right? It can't be from two jobs ago kind of thing. It's got to be that one that you've just walked away from, or been asked to leave, or whatever the case is. That's that caveat.   John: Correct.   Mark: It's basically the same rules, Nick, as the 59 and a half. It's just is attached to that prior job. But 59 and a half is the more normal one. What's the breakdown there?   Nick: Yeah. Essentially what happens is, at 59 and a half, you are able to take out money from your qualified accounts while avoiding that penalty without any sort of caveats. One thing to keep in mind is that usually you're taking it out from accounts that...   Nick: For example, if you're currently employed, the process of taking it out of the plan where you're employed can be a little bit different, but it's pretty smooth and easy if you have an IRA or something like that outside of the employer plan.   Nick: One other thing that happens in most plans, for people at 59 and a half, is, and we've seen it a bunch lately, where a lot of 401(k) plans have very restricted options in fixed income and those sorts of things, where most or many plans allow people to take inservice rollovers, where they're able to still work at their employer, but roll their money out of the plan to open up some options for investments outside of the plan.   Nick: That's not always the best thing for people. Sometimes the plans are great. Fees are really low. Options are great. So it may not make sense, but oftentimes people do like having the option to be able to shift the money out without any sort of issue.   Mark: Okay. All right. So that's the norm there. You got to love that half thing. You always wonder what the senators or whoever was thinking when [crosstalk 00:06:56]   John: Finally, they got rid of the 70 and a half [crosstalk 00:06:58]   Mark: Yeah. They get rid of that one. Yeah. We'll get to that in just a minute as well.   Mark: John, 62, nothing too groundbreaking here, but we are eligible finally for Social Security. So that becomes... I guess the biggest thing here is people just go, "Let me turn it on ASAP versus is it the right move?"   John: Yeah. So 62, you're now eligible. Like you said, a lot of people are excited to finally get access to that extra income. You can start taking on Social Security.   John: Couple of things to just be aware of is, any time you take Social Security before your full retirement age, you will get a reduction of benefit. At 62, it's anywhere, depending on your full retirement age, roughly 25 to 30% reduction of what you would've gotten had you waited till 66 or 67.   Mark: They penalize you, basically.   John: Yeah.   Nick: Yeah. Actually, if you do the math, it ends up breaking down to almost a half a percent per month reduced.   Mark: Oh wow.   Nick: Yeah. It really starts to add up when you think about it that way.   John: Yeah. We always harp on planning, so important if you are thinking about taking it early, once you make that decision, and after a year of doing that, you're locked into that decision. So it's important to really understand is that best for your situation.   John: Other things to consider at this age, if you do take early, Social Security does have what they call a earnings penalty slash recapture. If you're still working and taking at 62, a portion of your Social Security could be subject to go back to them in lieu of, for a better term, [crosstalk 00:08:27]   Mark: It's 19,000 and some change, I think, this year, if you make more than that.   John: Yeah.   Mark: Yeah.   John: Yeah. Anything above 19,000 that you're earning, 50% goes back to Social Security. [crosstalk 00:08:36]   Mark: Yeah. For every two bucks you make-   John: 5,000 goes back to Social Security. So that's really important.   John: Something that I just want to make, last point on this, is that earnings threshold is based on someone's earned income, and it's based on their own earned income, not household. That comes up quite a bit, while people say, "Well, I want to retire and take at 62, but my husband's still working. Am I going to have a penalty if I take it?" The answer is no. It's based on your own earnings record.   Mark: That's where the strategy comes into play too. Because if you are married, then looking at who's making more, do we leave one person's to grow, as we're going to get into those in just a second, to grow towards that more full number.   Mark: Again, that's all the strategy. It may make sense for one person to turn it on early, and the other person to delay it. That's, again, part of the strategy of sitting down and talking with a professional, and looking at all the other assets that you have, and figuring out a good move there.   Mark: Nick, let's go to Medicare. 65 magic age.   Nick: Yeah. Actually, my dad turns 65 this year. So we've been planning this out for him. He is a retired fireman, so he has some benefits that tie in with his pension.   Nick: One of the things that came up, and just something that people should think about or remember, even if they are continuing to work past 65, is it oftentimes makes sense to at least enroll in Medicare Part A. You can usually enroll as early as three months before your birthday. The Medicare website has gotten a lot easier to work with over the last year or two.   Nick: Part A, the tricky thing is that you want to check with your employer, because usually what happens for the areas that Part A covers, which is usually hospital care, if you were to have to be admitted or certain procedures, it's figuring out who's the primary payer, who pays first, who pays second. So making sure that you coordinate your benefits. Check in with HR, if you're going to continue to work.   Nick: If you are retired and are coming up on that Medicare age, make sure that you get your ducks in a row so that you do enroll. Most likely you're going to start saving some money on some healthcare premiums.   Mark: Technically, this starts about, what, three months early? It's a little actually before 65. I think it's three months when you got to start this process, and three months before and after.   Nick: Yep. Yeah. You can typically enroll three months before your birthday, and then through three months afterwards. There can be some issues if you don't enroll and you don't have other healthcare, at least for Part A. There can be penalties and that sort of thing.   Nick: Frankly, with Medicare and healthcare in retirement, this is a space that we typically delegate out. We've got some good resources for clients that we refer them to, because there are a lot of moving parts, and it can be overwhelming, especially when you start to move into the supplements and Advantage plans, and all these different things.   Mark: Oh yeah. And it's crucial. You want to make sure you get it right. A lot of advisors will definitely work with some specialists, if you will, in that kind of arena. So definitely checking that out when we turn 65.   Mark: Again, some of these, pretty high level stuff, some of this stuff we definitely know. But we wanted to go over some of those more interesting caveats.   Mark: Let's keep moving along here, guys. Full retirement age, 66 or 67. John, just what? It's your birthday, right?   John: It is your birthday. That's the time that you can actually take your full Social Security benefit without any reduction, which is a great thing to do. Then also that earnings penalty we discussed earlier at age 62, that no longer exists. Once you hit your full retirement age, 66 or 67, you can earn as much as you want and collect your Social Security. There's no penalty slash recapture.   John: When that happens, people have some decisions to make. If they're still working, they can decide to take their Social Security. I've had some clients that take it, and they use that as vacation money. I've had some other ones take it, and they take advantage of maxing out their 401(k) with the extra income. Or you can delay it. You don't have to take it. You get 8% simple interest on your benefit up until age 70.   John: So full retirement age, you got a lot of big decisions to make, depending on your situation. But you want to make sure you're making the best for what you want.   Mark: Definitely.   Nick: Just as a reminder to people that that 8%, and you had mentioned it, but it does cap out at age 70. So there's no point in waiting past 70, because it doesn't increase any more.   Mark: Right. Thanks for doing that. It wasn't on my list, but I was going to bring it up real fast. So yeah. People will sometimes email and they'll say, "Hey, I want to keep working past 70. How's that affect Social Security." It's like, "Well, you're maxed out, so you got to just go ahead and get it done." You can still work if you're feeling like it. Your earnings potential is unlimited, but it's just a matter of you're not going to add any more to it. So I'm glad you brought that up.   Mark: John, you mentioned earlier, they got rid of the other half. Thank God. The 70 and a half thing, just because it was confusing as all get out. They moved it to 72.   Nick: Yeah. Required minimum distributions, as a reminder for people, are for accounts that are pre-tax, where you were able to defer taxation. 401(k), traditional IRA, that sort of thing. At 72, you have to start taking out minimum distributions. It starts at around 3.6, 3.7% of the balance. It's based on the prior year's ending balance. It has to be taken out by the end of the year.   Nick: An important thing for people to understand is that, many times, people are taking those withdrawals out to live on anyways. So for a lot of people, it's not an issue at all. However, there are a good amount of people that it's going to be excess income.   Nick: Earlier mentioned, hey, at age 50, really time to check in and start making sure that you're planning. One of the benefits of planning and looking forward is to project out and see, hey, are these withdrawal going to cause you to have excess income at 72, where maybe we're entering into a time that tax rates could be higher, tax rates could be going up, which is fairly likely in the next five to 10 years. So if we know and we can project that, then we can make some adjustments to how we save, should you be putting more money into a Roth versus a traditional, and how we make adjustments on the overall planning.   Nick: So making sure that you understand how those work, and then the impact that it has on other decisions to take into account for that situation, is a huge part of planning.   Mark: Definitely. Those are some important birthdays along the way. You got to make sure you get this stuff done. 72, there's the hefty penalties involved if you don't do that. Plus you still got to pay the taxes. All this stuff has some crucial moments in that retirement planning process, so definitely make sure that you are not only celebrating your birthday, but you're also doing the right things from that financial and that retirement planning standpoint along the way.   Mark: Again, if you got questions, stop by the website, pfgprivatewealth.com. That's pfgprivatewealth.com. You can drop us an email question as well, if you'd like. That's what we're going to do to wrap up the show right now.   Mark: We got a question that's sent in from Jack. He says, "Hey, guys. I've thought about meeting with a financial advisor to plan my retirement, but I've never used a budget or anything like that before. So I'm wondering, should I budget myself for a couple of months before I meet with a professional?"   Nick: Based upon experience, putting expense numbers down on paper is one of the biggest hurdles for people to get into planning. But with how this question is phrased, I would be concerned, because it's kind of like the situation of starting a diet. You start a diet. You're going to eat really good for two to three weeks. You're trying to hold yourself accountable. You're functioning in a way that isn't necessarily your normal life.   Nick: One of the things, as advisors, that we want to make sure that we understand are what are you really spending. It's great to use a budget, but if you're budgeting to try to look good in the meeting, which we've seen happen, you're painting a false picture, and you're not letting us know what the finances actually look like.   Nick: So I would actually say to put down the real expense numbers in place, let's see what it really looks like, and then if we need to create a budget after we've created a plan, then that's something that we can dig into.   Mark: Yeah. John, let me ask you, as we wrap this up, sometimes people associate seeing a professional financial advisor with a budget. Also, people have a cringe to the B word. They think, "Well, I don't want to live on a fixed budget," or something like that.   Mark: That's not necessarily what we're talking about, right? That's not probably what Jack is referring to. He's just trying to figure out, I guess, more income versus expenses, right?   John: Yeah, yeah. The first step is to analyze your expenses. That could be what he's referring to as far as, "Hey, should I take a look? Should I get my expenses down before I meet with someone?"   John: I'd agree with Nick, even if that's what you're looking at, versus the budgeting, I would say no. I think the first step is sit down with an advisor, because they can assist in categorizing the expenses correctly based on today's expenses, versus what expenses are going to be at retirement.   John: I think it's important just to get going rather than trying to prep. Because we've seen a lot of people that have taken ... They've been prepping for years to meet. That's years where they haven't done anything, and they've, unfortunately, lost out on some good opportunities, otherwise, if they just said, "Hey, I'm going to sit down first, see what's going on."   Mark: Yeah. It gives you that built-in excuse.   John: [crosstalk 00:18:26]   Mark: It gives you that built in, "Well, I'm not quite ready." Well, you might never be ready if you play that game. Especially a lot of times when it's complimentary to sit down with professionals, have a conversation. Most advisors will talk to you, no cost or obligations. So why not right? Find out. Just get the ball rolling. That's the first step. It's usually the hardest part too.   Nick: Yeah. One thing that we typically tell people is that we are not the money police. We are not here to tell you that you can't use your money the way that you want to use it.   Nick: The way that we view ourselves, and what our role is as an advisor, is to help you understand the impact of decisions. Whether those decisions have to do with spending money, saving money, whatever, it's to make sure that you understand the impact of your decisions so that you make better decisions. That's it.   Mark: There you go. Yeah. It's your money, at the end of the day, your call, but certainly having some good, well, coaches in your corner, if you will, advisors to help advise, that's the whole point. But I like that. Not the money police.   Mark: All right. That's going to do it this week, guys. Thanks for hanging out. As always, we appreciate your time here on Retirement Planning Redefined. Don't forget. Stop by the website.   Mark: If you need help before you take any action, we always talk in generalities, and try to share some good nuggets of information, but you always want to see how those things are going to affect your specific situation.   Mark: If you're already working with John and Nick and the team at PFG Private Wealth, fantastic. Then you already have a lot of this stuff in place. But if you have questions, or you're not working with them, or you've come across this podcast in whatever way, or maybe a friend shared it with you, definitely reach out and have a chat. pfgprivatewealth.com. That's pfgprivatewealth.com. Don't forget to subscribe on whatever podcasting platform app you like to use.   Mark: We'll see you next time here on the show. For John and Nick, I'm your host, Mark. We'll catch you later here on Retirement Planning Redefined.

THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism
Crystals, Herbs, and Other Magical Treasures

THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 28, 2022 46:11 Transcription Available


Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E11 TRANSCRIPT:----more---- Yucca: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. I'm your host Yucca. And this week we're talking about crystals, herbs. Other magical treasures. Mark: Right. Yeah. These are things that are very important in the practices of many pagans. We have a different take on what that means from maybe the mainstream pagan view. So it will be talking about. But also about what we can do to create aesthetic objects and materials that help us to get into the right mind space, to do effective ritual work and and how we can best equip ourselves with all those kinds of things.  Yucca: Right. And also not just in the ritual space, but in our everyday mundane life and environments that we create. Mark: Sure because they work as talismans. And we did do a, an episode on talismans a long, long time ago. The, they, they, you can carry an object with you or wear a piece of jewelry or anoint yourself with a particular scent, any of those things. And if it has a strong association for you, it will remind you of that characteristic or quality. And then you have that with you in your ordinary life. And that can be really great, really empowering and and supportive of success.  Yucca: Right. Mark: So for a minute, let's, let's just talk in the big picture about all of This What do we think about magic crystals? Yucca: This will probably not be a surprise to our long-term listeners, but my take and I'm guessing this is the as well Mark, is that they aren't inherently magical. They don't have super special powers. They're not supernatural. They're natural, just like everything else. Some of them are really. Some of them are beautiful. Their stories are amazing in terms of how they were made and the interaction between the biosphere and the geosphere and all of that is just incredible. But there's a lot of big claims about crystals that I don't buy. Mark: Yeah. me neither. There, although we might aesthetically appreciate a quartz crystal more than we aesthetically appreciate A lump of granite, there's no special quality that makes the crystal any more special than the lump of granite. The lump of granite has an amazing story behind it, too. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: But that being said, and we're going to talk about the provenance of these things in a while, presuming that you have something that was, was brought to you in an ethical manner, there's nothing wrong with having beautiful stones on your, on your focus, your altar, or, you know, carrying it with you.  Yucca: of jewelry  Mark: jewelry One thing that I will tell you though, not to do, which is something that I saw a photo of on the internet that really terrified me. Someone had taken a whole, whole bunch of sacred stones and crystals and had hot glued them to the center of their steering wheel,  Yucca: oh, yes, don't do that.  Mark: where their airbag is,  Yucca: Yes. I've seen. People do that with their dashboards too, but the airbag is even a Mark: Yeah. I mean, that turns the thing into a Claymore mine. It's just, it's terrifying to think about the damage that that airbag would do if it deployed. So don't do that.  Yucca: Yeah to a lesser degree. That's why I, when I did have long hair, I haven't in years, but I never liked using like the chopsticks or the clippies or anything like that because I always thought, oh, what if I fall backwards? But an airbag that's a lot more intense. Mark: Yes. I have been on the receiving end of a face full of airbag. And I was really glad it was there, but it happens very, very fast and it hits you hard. So please don't put anything hard between you and it  Yucca: yeah. Yeah. So that's,  Mark: kind of a special case,  Yucca: let's say you have in common.  Mark: Yes.  Yucca: that the stones that you have are on the gyms that you have are not the mind in a way that is with slave labor and all of that. And that they're not, it did, it came to you in an ethical way that great, right. Mark: Which is a steeper standard than you might expect. Mineral specimens and particularly crystal specimens are mined in extremely environmentally destructive and unsustainable ways often by people living in slave like, or in, in truly enslaved conditions, including children. In many places in the world. Many places in south America, for example, Brazil places in Asia as well and there and South Africa. There are there beautiful stones and it's lovely to have them, but to be honest, my take is if I didn't find it myself, I'm not going to buy it. I, at this point I will buy fossils. If they have good provenance, but when it comes to just mineral specimens, I just don't do it anymore. I have a few that I acquired over the years and that's enough.  Yucca: Yeah. So this is something that, that if you really enjoy crystals, that we would encourage you to look into and do some research on. Because there certainly are ways to, to acquire them that aren't based on those things that we just talked about, but it's really, but it's, if you're just getting a random one, it's really hard to know what that history is. And there's a good chance that, that it really does come, is supporting the system that is so exploitative on just every level. Mark: And you just don't want to be part of increasing the suffering in the world. Right? I mean, that's, that's a pretty simple standard. It's like,  Yucca: There's enough of that  Mark: Yeah. don't, don't make things worse. It's it's it's not too much to ask. That said getting a good Providence. Mineral specimen from an ethical source also lets you know that the mineral itself hasn't been monkeyed with because one thing that happens in mineral specimens a lot is that they get cooked. They're heated to high temperatures to change their color. And so you may not even be sure exactly what you're getting. This happens with quartz a lot. There are lots of different colors of quartz because of trace elements that are included in the quartz as the crystals form. But if you bake  Yucca: that's what a Ruby is, right? It's just a little bit of chromium in it isn't it? Mark: No Ruby is corundum which is the second hardest naturally occurring mineral. After diamond corundum is a, a mineral of its own. It's the same mineral as Sapphire rubies and sapphires. And then there's also, what's called common corundum, which is used in making specialty sand papers and things like that. This is, this is one where I learned this at my daddy, the geophysicists ne so, yeah, corundum is number nine on the most hardness scale. And then diamond is 10. But there are pink quartz is in and even red quartz is that I, pink quartz is their natural. I've never seen a natural red quartz. It may exist, but I've never seen one.  Yucca: Mm. Okay. Yeah, just looking up just a real quick, it looks like that chromium is in a.  Mark: Is it.  Yucca: yes.  Mark: I, Yeah, I'm I'm sure because corundum corundum is a particular molecular structure, but then the color comes from whatever associated trace minerals. I would imagine that it's probably cobalt or copper. That's the trace for sapphires.  Yucca: yeah, yeah. We'd have to look into that. Yeah, just little bits of just a few little bits of different elements. Completely changes the whole look of it.  Mark: That's the wonder of chemistry, right? You take oxygen, which is a colorless, tasteless, transparent gas and hydrogen, which is a colorless odorless, tasteless gas. You bond them together and you get water, which is none of those things.  Yucca: Yeah. Okay, I'm going to go down a rabbit hole. I've got to stop looking at  Mark: Yeah. yeah. I invite You to do it cause it's really cool, but maybe not during the recording. Yucca: yeah. Mark: So  Yucca: were talking about cooking, right? That sometimes they will be  Mark: they they will be heated and modified in the lab. And it's also very common for example, to take mineral specimens and to grind a point onto them so that they look like a crew of quartz. The natural cleavage pattern of a court's crystal actually does lead to those beautiful faceted points that we're familiar with, but people will take like a piece of Topaz or a piece of Aqua Marine and they will grind a point onto it so that it looks more like what people think of as a crystal.  Yucca: Right. Mark: So. you want something that reflects the, the amazing nature of the natural world as it assembles these cool crystal instructures. You want something that hasn't been too? What's the word I'm looking for? Compromised by those artificial processes to try to make it look a particular way so that you'll buy it.  Yucca: Yeah. Well, I mean, it depends on what your, what your goal is though, right? If you're buying it, just because you like the way it looks, but it might not really matter to you what the history of that is. But if it's something that's, it looks, if it's important to you, that it be a specific. Mineral that it'd be the specific history. Then you might not be getting that unless, you know, unless you trust who you're buying it from and the process that it was produced under. Mark: Right. And speaking of rabbit holes, if you really get into crystallography and you start looking at All. the different geometric forms that different chemicals will take when they form crystals, that is. That is this unbelievable, cool world. I mean, when you think about it, water creates crystals in six sided, highly intricate crystal forms that we call snowflakes. Right. He light, which is salt forms in cubes. Sometimes the cubes are kind of skewed like a parallelogram, but they're still basically just, you know, six sided figures. So one of the things that can be really very wonderful about exploring the world of rocks and minerals is actually. You know, digging into the geology itself, you know, the stories of how these rocks came to us, you know, the ones that formed in in pockets of, of air that were filled with hot liquid. Supercharged with minerals and then crystallized, and then the water drained away leaving these geocodes inside filled with crystals cracks that had hot fluid injected into them and then grew crystals out so that they created veins. Which is the way that many metals and metal ores are laid down. Geology is very fascinating. Set of topics. And if, if you really get into the rock world, you can have a really good time there.  Yucca: Yeah. And there's a new field, which is geo biology, which looks at the overlap between mineralogy and biology and how those two things we like to separate them into these two different, totally different categories, but they're not, there's this wonderful overlap and, and On earth when we compare it to what we know about the other terrestrial planets, we have far more in terms of order of magnitude more mineral species than our sister planets too, even though we're made from the same starting material, because we've got life, that's mucking around with the chemistry here. And so there's just so there's so much that happens in both directions. So that's a, that's a whole new field. It's only started in the last, you know, 10, 20 max years. Mark: Yeah. Well, when you think about it limestone, for example, or chalk, that is entirely deposition of the skeletons of living creatures compressed down into sedimentary layers. It's nothing but that that's all that it is. So you're talking about rock that has been constructed by the biosphere.  Yucca: Yeah. And all of those types of minerals that can only form in high oxygen environments or things that can only form and specifically acidic environments, all sorts of things. Mark: Yeah, so I'm kind of a tangent, but geology. Cool.  Yucca: Yes.  Mark: it out.  Yucca: Yes. Very much. So. Mark: So that's crystals and what we have to say about it. And I guess I'd like to click out a couple of layers now, before we move on to other things like herbs and tools and bones and feathers and all the wonderful things that we like to use in our ritual practices, because they create a particular. Ambiance a particular aesthetic feeling. And that's to talk about consumerism,  Yucca: Right. Mark: which is an issue in the broader pagan community.  Yucca: Well, not just the bacon community, but that's one of the, the, the struggle, the challenges of our modern society today.  Mark: Right. The commodification of everything, including spirituality, where it's like in order to be really a, a good pagan, you have to dress a particular way or one of a small set of particular ways. And you have to have particular kinds of ritual tools and. Not all of that is rooted in the, I must have ethos of capitalism, Yucca: Great. Mark: you know, and not, not only I must have, but if I can afford it, I deserve to have,  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: I mean, we never even asked ourselves the question, you know, should, should this product even exist?  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Not talking specifically about like your here's. Here's a good example in my mind, Botox, should this product even exist? It is used as a treatment. For a non-problem that culture tells mostly women that they have, which is they are aging, which is natural and normal. And then it is sold at considerable expense. It's derived from a poison and then sold at considerable expense. it wears off. So you have to use it again and all this kind of stuff, but nobody ever really asked the question, should this product exist? It was just assumed that if people would pay money for it, then the product should exist. And. I go back to a very wise thing that morning glory Zelle once said to me, she was a friend of mine, a lover of mine and just a dear, dear, dear person in my life. And I'm so sorry she's gone. But she once said to me, if you can't do it with a stick, you picked up on the way to the circle. You can't do it at all. And to me that just speaks volumes about how you don't need expensive trappings. You don't need 4,000 tarot decks. You don't need exotic feathers from south America. And You know, crystals from all over the world and all the many, many, many things that we tend to accumulate around ourselves as pagans, because we want to be able to create that, that feeling and then to carry it out with us into our ordinary lives. So I just encourage you think about it. Think about. You know, it's one thing. If you're buying something from an artist whose, you know, whose individual living is being made better by they're assembling something that looks very beautiful and they're doing it from materials that are not unethically sourced, that's one thing fine, you know, support that person. That's Great. But it's another, if you're just kind of. You know, ordering stuff from Amazon because you feel like you're supposed to have it.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: You're you're not supposed to have it. You don't have to have it. I have four ones, none of them was made by a person. One of them came from a Redwood tree. One of them came from an Oak tree, you know, and these are fallen branches, Right. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: From dead. One of them is an extruded piece of kelp that's dried into a rod shape. And the final one here, I'm going to peer over and look at it. Now is a bone is a deer bone. And all of those have very powerful associations for me. And I use them in different ways when I do rituals, but I didn't have to buy any of them. And no nothing was harmed.  Yucca: Right. Mark: You know, no carbon was made transporting stuff from one part of the world to another part of the world in order to bring me this thing. And more and more as I get older, I think that doing no harm is the very, the very least we can do. I mean, doing, you know, making things better, obviously. Before us on the table. That's that's the work, but at the very least we can reduce the harm that we do.  Yucca: Yeah, I think that's, that's very well said. And, and to, to build on that, I want to say that none of this is to try to make somebody feel guilty about what they have or about, you know, wanting to have the beautiful thing or something like that. But to encourage you that, to think about, you know, whether you need it. And, and if you don't being okay with that, right. It's okay to not have the incredible velvet robes and the, this and the, that, and the like, like you were saying, Mark. Yeah. You've got a branch from a tree that meant something to you or a bone from an animal that meant something to you. And that, that works. Right. And that can be, that can be just as if not far more meaningful than the thing that was purchased and the thing that was just part of the commodity chain. Mark: Right. Because when something is delivered to you as a part of the commodity chain, you have no story associated with it. Right? The story is I gave them money. They gave me.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: when you make something for yourself or you find something or you buy something from a person, or it was a gift. you buy something from an individual person whose work you appreciate and you know something about them. Then it brings the story. And the association of a story with an object is core to what we think of as charging a magical idea. Right.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Cause that's what it is. It tells you a story when you see it or when you hold it in your hand, it says, I come from, I come from this Seychelles islands and I am a piece of volcanic rock that has sharp edges on it. And Lay on a beach for many years, you know, having those sharp edges rounded down so that now all these little pores make this wonderful sort of sponge like a piece of stone. I just made that up. I don't have a piece of rock from the Seychelles, but anyway, Yucca: but it's unbelievable. Right? It sounded like you were describing, you were looking at a particular rock and describing it. Mark: Sure. And if I did have a rock from the Seychelles and I had been to the Seychelles, then it. would tell me stories about all of my experiences in that place and why it was magic to be there. And, you know, remind me of of people that I knew that were there and,  Yucca: Or the relationship with the person who went there and brought it back to you and keep it to you over the coffee that you had or whatever.  Mark: Right. Right. so long story short, we just really encourage our listeners as we do ourselves to interrogate our capitalist assumptions because they're there they're soaked into us. We can't have. You know, we were, we were raised in this particular over culture, which we've talked about before and asking questions and challenging assumptions is the way that we start to become more free. And it's not just about undermining a system, which is destroying the earth and causing a tremendous amount of suffering. It's also about becoming more liberated ourselves becoming more free and that we want that for you and for ourselves. It's something we want for the world is for people to be more liberated and feel like they have more choices about what they do  Yucca: Right. And to be, have that. Richer more colorful life. That isn't because of what you have, but because of what you do and experience,  Mark: and the relationships, you know,  Yucca: right. Mark: Yes. Yeah. Including with the world itself, with the biosphere and the, all the various creatures that, that are a part of it. So that, that it's w it wasn't really a tangent, but it was sort of a long sojourn. Yucca: Yeah. Well, that's the framework that we're going into talking about the rest of these items with,  Mark: Yes. That's true. Yeah. So let's talk about herbs, which are somewhat different because many herbs do actually have medicinal qualities. Also many herbs are claimed to have medicinal qualities that don't really.  Yucca: Well, so many herbs are sprayed with a lot of stuff that you probably don't want to actually be eating and a may have been grown in a monoculture, you know, there's, there's a lot of levels to it. So just like, just like we were talking about with the crystals, you want to be really mindful and aware of the story of what it is that your. Mark: Right. Yucca: using Mark: The good news about herbs is that you can grow your. own. And then you know, what condition they were grown in. And you have a personal relationship with the plant because you fostered it, you helped for it to grow. I don't find that I use a lot of different herbs in my work. I've got, you know, the reliable ones, the Rosemary and the time and the Sage and the sweet grass, which doesn't actually grow locally where I am, but it smells so beautiful when it burns. And I mostly use them in the manner of an incense because I but the other thing that you can do rather than burning them is just a heat. And then we'll still make this beautiful scent as the, the essential oils in the earth evaporate and go into the, into the air column.  Yucca: Right. And some of them, you can, you can simmer and water and do like the like put it on the stove top and you'll get that beautiful smell. Some of them that does not work out for. So you got to kind of experiment with that. Mark: Don't do that with pepper. I have bad experience in system cooking things with a lot of chili flakes or a lot of black pepper.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: you, you basically create tear gas. It's not very good.  Yucca: So once again, common sense, right?  Mark: Yeah.  Yucca: A little bit of common sense in there, but.  Mark: but. there is something very wonderful about having bundles of dried herbs hanging around your kitchen. There's something about it. That's evocative of that. Archetypal hovel of the wise woman in the woods you know, who has a plant for everything, Right. Who, who knows the lore of the plants and. Not thoroughly versed lore of the plants kind of person, but I know people who are in our community and I think that's a wonderful path to pursue. Now I stop at the point where we start talking about the energies of plants that are magically going to influence something or other that are going to bring luck or money or relationships or those kinds of things, because I don't believe that stuff, but. Certainly, you know, elderberry, cough syrup works pretty well when you've got a cough and Rosemary or mint or a combination of the two, if you steam them and breathe the steam, when you're all congested, your nose will clear up. These are compounds that really work  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: and you know, they smell beautiful. The plants have. Fascinating histories of how they've been used or transported or transplanted around the world. So. That's that's kinda my take on, on the herbal thing. I can't speak to whether a particular plant has a medicinal power or not, because I'm not an expert in that way. But we're, we're talking about things now from the standpoint of their, their ritual qualities or their so-called magical qualities rather than their, their literal qualities. And just, just the aesthetic presence of those bundles of herbs, you know, it, it really can make a big difference. I mean, in the Southwest, you see people with chili peppers  Yucca: Okay. Yeah,  Mark: around the kitchen,  Yucca: there's some outside our door. Yup. We're almost out though, because you're actually supposed to be eating. Most of those people hang it for decoration, but there's drive so that you can break it off and you can put it in with your food. But yeah,  Mark: So, are you going to make it to the next harvest?  Yucca: No, we will not. Nope, we're out almost. But maybe we're in the new house now, so, and this'll be our full year, so we'll be growing a lot more of around stuff this year. But but we do, you know, with, we have a lot of herbs in the house and it's a lot of them are more just based on smell and associates. Right. I know that there's, that there are medicinal properties of certain things, but a lot of them, I think, you know, there's probably something in Campbellsville and lavender, which chemically interacts with our bodies in a certain way. But I just associate that with calm down. Relax just, oh, this is wonderful. Have the warm cup of tea or the smell or the, and because we use them that way intentionally, then it immediately brings us back to that since I. Mark: Yeah. And, and. I, I agree with you about cam and particularly because I have a very strong association of camomile as being very calming as well. And I don't know how much of that is just sort of the reputation and how much of it is an actual chemical interaction with my body. And how much of it is it just the flavor of camomile is so subtle. It's like, it's, it's not like. Beer or wine or, you know, something that really just makes a huge explosion in your mouth, right? It's this very, very subtle flavors. So you kind of have to slow down and pay attention, or it'll just seem like hot water  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: in order to taste it. It forces you to slow down, which is part of what's lovely about the Arab. So, yes, I'm sorry. I saw you stutter there? for a second as well. So I think we lost connection for a second. So by all means, you know, explore the world of plants. It's, it's a fascinating world. And  Yucca: Especially if you can grow some, even if it's just. And sometimes this is wonderful, but it, if there's just as a south facing or north, if you're in the Southern hemisphere, a sun facing window and just a few little pots. Mark: Yeah, just, just a couple little pots And you can grow, you know, you can grow your, your time. You know, there's nothing like fresh time. It really, it, it doesn't dry. Well, honestly, I mean, however, freshly you get your dry time, fresh time is just so much more powerful. And it there's  Yucca: Bazell  Mark: in Bazell  Yucca: we can. Yeah. There's just something about, about fresh Bazell and it's so expensive if you buy it, it's  Mark: if you buy it by the bundle. Oh,  Yucca: Well, if you want, if you buy fresh Bazell I mean, I know you can get like the, the dried stuff, but if you go to the grocery store and you buy like a few little sprigs, I mean, you're paying at least where I am like five bucks for something that's like the length of your hand and that's it. Mark: Yeah.  Yucca: So, Mark: yeah. We definitely have our basal plant in the kitchen and. One of the things that's really lovely about that is that the minute that you start picking leaves off of a plant and throwing them into a cooking pot, you're doing Witchery you absolutely are. There's just, there's something about it. You know, about drawing from the wild and, and putting. Drawing from, from the biosphere, from life and mixing something into your, your pot of food. There's just something that's very magical about it. And you can do it with intention and then you're adding that layer into your cooking. So.  Yucca: And then as you take the bite, let's say you're doing basal right? When you take that bite, you can, if you can remember that intention each time you take that bite, right? So you did it as you were cooking and then as it was going into your body, Mark: Right. And over time that will build an association between that taste and a particular feeling, a feeling of being well-nourished and taken care of at home. For example and those are powerful things because if you really need that, if you're far from home in a sterile hotel room going to a conference and you suddenly feel like you're. Ungrounded and wondering why the hell you went to this thing and how you're going to manage to do your presentation tomorrow. If you brought a little bottle of Bazell leaves with you and you can take a nice sniff of that, maybe that brings you back home, maybe that maybe that reestablishes, that sense of solidity inside yourself.  Yucca: Right. Or if you needed to be at the hospital for some reason, right? That's the time that you really want to be just present and grounded and in your, because you're probably why ever you're at the hospital, unless maybe it's for a birth. Right. But in most other cases it's a tricky time. Like you're usually not very happy to be there. Mark: right,  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Yeah. So. I mean, we're, we're talking about these things in the context of how you can use them in your so-called spicy psychology. You know, the what said no, we'll called a little red adding a little razzle-dazzle to the. The things that you do in life so that you can be more effective, you can be happy Or you can be more focused. You can be more calm push away, anxiety rise up from depression, all of those things. And those are real effects. You know, we've been talking a lot this episode about how crystals don't really have magical properties and so forth, but the effects that we're talking about when we talk about ritual work are real effects. They, they affect your consciousness and that means that they affect your life. So we were. Finish by talking about some ways that you can go about charging magical stuff. So let's say you got yourself a beautiful rock specimen. Doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be a crystal. It could be I don't know, one of those lumps of native copper, beautiful things, there, all these strange sort of configurations of, of copper that you find them in the desert sometimes. Whatever it is, what  Yucca: your business.  Mark: oh,  Yucca: seen those. Those are yet.  Mark: really cool. Yeah. I have a couple of them.  Yucca: Yeah. So first of all, Again, our take is that you're not actually taking some sort of magical power and storing it inside of that object. But what you're working on is your relationship with that object, your S you are immediate association that association, that relationship that's underneath that thinking part. The thing that you're going to experience instantly, right. Mark: Right. Which when you think about it is kind of like charging something it's like, it's like storing it's like storing a particular quality, like a battery so that when you take that object out or you hold it or you put it in your pocket or whatever it is, you can feel some of that quality leaking out metaphorically speaking, and instilling you with that. Right. I won't say who this is, but I have a friend who has a stone sex toy that she has lots and lots of very pleasurable associations with. Yucca: Sure.  Mark: Yeah. Because that's what it's for. And so she brings that with her to conferences. Not because she's going to use it, but because it just kind of brings happiness.  Yucca: Hmm. Mark: just, you know, I'm putting happiness in my suitcase, so I'm going to tote it along and it's going to keep me happy. So I think that's very cool Yucca: So that would've been something. It was just kind of built naturally, right. That  Mark: over time. Yeah.  Yucca: But, you can also do that very intentionally in ritual. You can, you can plan a ritual, you can sit down or go into your sacred space or whatever. However, you're going to structure that and. And try to bring whatever that is with you, right? If this is going to be something that say you're working on the feeling of comfort and relaxation, right? So do a bunch of things. That's going to get you into that state.  Mark: Right.  Yucca: Do you know, are there songs that get you there really quickly or certain smells or, you know, did she want to put on your, your fluffy slippers in your bathrobe or whatever it is, right. And have that object with you. Right. And start to, you know, if you're a word, see person, then, you know, maybe talk to it or, you know, what are the things, can you think of Mark? Mark: Well, in terms of talking to it to start with, I mean, you can literally say to it, I am now putting comfort into you. I am pouring that cuddly feeling of being on a winter's morning, under enough blankets, where everything feels warm right down to the tip of your toes. And that is going into this stone. It's going into it and it stays. And that's, what's going to be there every time I pick up this stone, I'm going to feel cozy and safe and taken care of. Say you have an issue with consistency that you, and you know, this is a thing for folks like me who have ADHD. It can be very, very difficult to be consistent. And it's taken me a long time to develop The kinds of systems that I need for constantly reminding myself of things so that I can do what I've said. I'm going to do. One way you can do that is if you have a daily practice, incorporate the charging of this object into your daily practice so that you are being consistent, inputting this consistency into your object. Right. So if it's, Yucca: The stubble helpful then. Right? Cause you've practiced the consistency. And then you have the thing that associate you associate with consistency. Mark: And what you've done is you've proved to yourself that you can be consistent and it doesn't have to be a hundred percent, you know, that's, that's, that's not how things work. You know, it's  Yucca: Yeah, Mark: the, I, the idea of perfection is like the idea of virginity. They don't exist. they're made up they're made up ideas. Yucca: they're made up to shame people into, into behaving or obeying. Mark: into obedience. Exactly. That that's not a real thing. A real thing is. Being more consistent, Right. Being more consistent than you were otherwise. If you miss a day of your daily practice, go back to it the next day. That's fine. But you do that for two weeks and now you have an object which has a, a story before. I did this ritual for two weeks, you know, where I was putting consistency of, of action into this object, into you know, whatever it is, a feather wand or a, a stone or a bundle of herbs that you might want to burn. So that at a time when you really need to be consistent and. demonstrated that you can be consistent in the course of doing that. So think creatively about how these rituals can go, you know, the best way to develop an association between an object and an experience is to have that object with you while you're doing the experience.  Yucca: Right  Mark: So, whatever it is you're looking for, if you're looking to goose up your love life, well, you know, have that on your bedside table. If you're looking to increase your capacity for focus maybe on your work desk or someplace where you really have to pay close attention. Yucca: Right for gratitude on the table or, you know  Mark: Great one. yeah. Great one. Yeah. So I, I guess sort of to summarize what I would say is, we're not saying that there aren't magical things. But what we mean by a magical thing is different than what a lot of people in the broader pagan community, me, we don't, we don't mean that there is some inferior quality radiating out from a particular kind of crystal that causes your liver to work better or something like that. What we mean is you can come to associate an object and pick the object that you think is a fitting. One Right. when it comes to being focused and precise, a really sharp edged. Perfect. Court's crystal might be the Right. object for you to use for that because it has its own kind of precision and perfection.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So we can come to ritually imbue. These objects with a kind of a power to speak to us, a narrative to speak to us and in doing so we can enhance our lives. We can enhance our ritual practices and we can be happier, more effective people, which of course is, as we say so often, That's the goal happier, more effective, make a better world. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So, do we have anything else? Yucca.  Yucca: No, I think that this is a good place to wrap up.  Mark: Okay. Good. All right.  Yucca: I think that we covered quite a bit here and really, you know, covered the points that we wanted to about starting with talking a little bit about the consumerism part of it. You know, what's really the function of these and what is it mean for it to actually be magical in those relationships? And so we've, we've gone through quite a bit, actually with a few tangents here and there, little branches growing  Mark: Rocks. Check them out.  Yucca: Yes, Go down, go down that, that a Wikipedia rabbit hole. So,  well,  Mark: great. Yeah. thank you, so much, Yucca. It's been a pleasure as always. And boy, we are sure. Getting close to century retreat it's  Yucca: yes. Mark: six weeks away, seven weeks away, something like That  Yucca: That is yep. It's just around the corner. It really is. I mean, I don't know how it is for you, but the last couple of days has been pretending to be spring here. It, we will get a few more freezes, but it's just making it seem like, oh, well this retreats happening in the spring, right. It's spring. So is it now, can we go yet? Can we go? Mark: We just had all the wisteria growing on our back fence bloom and it's so it's beautiful and it smells so good.  Yucca: I love that  Mark: spring is really happening here. The trees are leafing out and it's just really, really going on. Yeah. So happy spring to all of our listeners, except the ones south of the equator.  Yucca: yes then happy. Mark: in which case, happy fall. Happy autumn.  Yucca: Oh, one more thing. My daughter came up with a holiday and it's Snake Celebration day, and so we need to draw pictures of snakes or make little models of them. And when we see the first snake out, that gets to be snake celebration day,  Mark: Okay.  Yucca: but we have to, we have to prepare ahead of time, have everything ready to put up so that, you know, because we don't know which day it's going to  Mark: so you draw the pictures and make the models in advance.  Yucca: And then we can put them up the day. That is snakes celebration day.  Mark: That sounds like a great holiday.  Yucca: Yes. So, all right. I'll let you know when it happens  Mark: All right. Cool. Please do well. A pleasure as always  Yucca: thanks Mark.  Mark: have a great week, everybody.

Retirement Planning - Redefined
Ep 44: Do You Have A Money Bias? And How Much Is It Costing You?

Retirement Planning - Redefined

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 15, 2022 23:06


On this episode, we'll breakdown a recent CNBC article that analyzes a recent Morningstar study. The study found that most of us have at least one money bias, some of us more than one, and that those biases are very possibly costing us money in our checking, savings, investing and retirement accounts. Listen to see if you might be impacted by a specific money bias and for strategies to get it back under control. Helpful Information: CNBC Article: https://cnb.cx/3KKXSHf PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is a registered investment adviser. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investment involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Transcript of Today's Show: For a full transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/ ----more---- Mark: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. It's another addition of Retirement Planning - Redefined with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth. We got to fun and interesting podcast this week to talk about, money biases and what those are, and are they costing you a little bit? If you have a money bias and you're going to be probably surprised to find out that you indeed do most people, I think do have biases about a lot of things. So, that's going to be on the podcast this go around. And of course, if you've got questions you need some help, always reach out to theguys@pfgprivatewealth.com. That's p-f-g, private wealth.com. John, what's going on, buddy? How you doing?   John: Hey, doing good. How are you?   Mark: Hanging in there. Doing pretty well. We were chatting a little bit off air and just talking about life, moaning and groaning a little bit, but overall you're doing okay? Hanging in there?   John: Yeah. Yeah. We, we just wrapped up a golf tournament that we hosted with Bern's Steakhouse. It's our second one.   Mark: Nice.   John: Yeah. Finalizing the numbers, but looking like a pretty decent donation to a couple of local Tampa charities here, which are Blue Star Families and then Jackson In Action, 83 Foundation, both a military base. So, so we're excited. It was a great event and we look forward to delivering the check soon.   Mark: That's fantastic. Awesome. Nick, how you doing my friend?   Nick: Doing pretty good. It's been a little bit of a crazy month, but have some vacation coming up, which will be nice, although I'm going to Key West and it'll be my first time going there, so...   Mark: Okay.   Nick: I'm looking forward to seeing what that's like.   Mark: Well, I don't know how you're getting there, but I filled up my truck yesterday and it cost me triple digits for the first time. It was over a hundred bucks.   Nick: Yeah. Luckily I'm flying. So...   Mark: All right.   Nick: We're good to go.   Mark: Well, the inflation numbers came in for February 7.9%. I don't know if you guys saw that at the time we're taping that they just came out this morning, so yay. Right? So people are definitely frustrated and we're kind of concerned. There's a lot going on, obviously the stuff in the world and the market's been reacting to that inflation is up. And so I thought it would be interesting to kind of have this chat. And we were talking about these money biases and how we feel about some of the different things. And I thought maybe it'd be a good idea to share some of this stuff with the listeners. So what we'll do is we'll also put a link to the article. This was a CNBC article guys, that was based off a Morningstar study. And I'll let you guys talk about Morningstar if you'd like to, just to explain that to the folks in a second.   Mark: But the study found that most of us have at least one money bias, some of us more than others, and that biases are very possibly costing us additional money in our checking, savings, or investing in retirement accounts. So, we'll see how this kind of impacts you and you'll kind of learn a little bit about this along the way. So a couple of key points before we dive in is that everybody has different attitudes about money. No real shock there, right? We know that, but that new behavioral financial study from Morningstar found that 98% of the respondents exhibited one or more. So when we say just about everybody has one, that's pretty true and that they are likely costing them some money. So we'll jump right in and get going here and with take away number one. Nick, what are the four main biases that they talked about and that you guys see?   Nick: Yeah, we really wanted to kind of focus on this with this chaotic as the beginning of the year has been. we think that people taking a little self inventory on, on how they might make some decisions would be beneficial. So right. The first bias is called a present bias or really kind of like present time. So really what this focus is on is kind of the tendency to go for immediate rewards over long term goals, or, the good old instant gratification. I would say that, what's interesting is, this can definitely be different for different age bands. So for people that, kind of like in that baby boomer era, they have their toes in this, for sure, whereas younger clients definitely. I would say it's a little bit more dominant just because of the things that they're used to and convenience and instant gratification.   Mark: Sure. The world we have. Yeah.   Nick: Yeah, for sure. And I think this is something that's real important because this become a stronger and stronger bias just with things that we're used to like news cycles and stuff like that. So, so that's, that's the first one.   Mark: Well, let, let me ask you a follow up on that real quick, Nick, before you move on. So with that present bias basically like it's that idea of, I feel like I need to do something now. Right? So like we'll use the market falling as an example. Right this minute we're down about 10% I think in the S&P or into a correction, I guess officially. So I must... I must need to do something now, so I can see the response, the immediate response. That way I feel like I've done something that's really what a present bias is.   Nick: Yep. Very much reactionary.   Mark: Okay.   Nick: Typically, and usually for most people, taking action at something like this, it's oftentimes too late. So that can really turn into this kind of yo-yo effect of, waiting where this is one of the things that lead people to buy high in sell low, which is kind of the opposite.   Mark: Which is the wrong. Yeah. Okay.   Nick: Yeah.   Mark: So that's the first one.   Nick: Yep. And then second one, is what's called base rate neglect. So really what happens is, this is kind of focused on how you judge the probability of something happening based upon new information, while you essentially ignore your original assumptions. So this is something where, for example, the whole concept of best laid plans. So this is where planning can really come into play, where might get a call from a client that, maybe it's a certain sector of the market. Hey, I want, I really want to jump into this certain sector of the market and they're not taking into consideration that maybe they already have exposure to that.   Nick: Or again, maybe it's a little bit too late and they're forgetting all of the effort and all the time that has been put into kind of creating the overall plan and then overreacting to good or bad news. And, this is definitely something like, for example, for myself, right. That I have to have, people remind me, I know that this is something that happens to me where it's like, because I do try to consume a lot of information and process, a lot of information and news where, dependent upon what's going on. This can kind of throw me a little bit for it.   Mark: I gotcha. So let, let me, John, let me of get you in here on this for a quick second. So for example, what I'm hearing then, so the NASDAQ for example, is technically into bear territory now, cause it's down 20 plus percent. So people calling up and saying, Hey, I need to get out of tech might be an example of this base rate neglect because they're seeing the current situation and they're reacting to the news versus does it make sense for their overall long term strategy?   John: Yeah. A hundred percent. It's the whole, kind of going into behavioral finance where it's, you're selling out when, when you shouldn't be, in reality, now's the time you know, if, as Nick mentioned, it's probably too late at this point.   Mark: Sure. Right.   John: It may be best just to stay of the course and stay in it, but a hundred percent that's kind of what we typically see.   Mark: Okay. All right. Go ahead Nick, what the third one for us?   Nick: Sure. So third one is overconfidence. This is an interesting one. Also, one that I know that I have a bias, where it's the whole concept of putting too much weight in your own abilities to make good financial decisions.   Mark: Sure. Yeah.   Nick: So, another way to think about this can be, is wanting to be right. And we tend to all want to be right. But then sometimes we will, double down or not take into consideration a concept of like a sunk cost where Hey, we're not always going to be right. And sometimes it's okay to make mistakes. You just want to learn from that. Oh definitely. And not double down, triple down, that sort of thing. So understanding that there's law of large numbers and there's efficiencies in different areas of the market and or planning. So being over confident, and again, this is something where if you look at the pie, you want to have your plan, your investment strategy, all that you want that pie to be, around 90% or so of the very strong part of your fundamental long term plan.   Nick: So sometimes having some of these biases on a small portion will help you really learn, usually people don't, they try to do it on a much larger portion. So that's a little bit of a takeaway too, is in moderation. Some of these things can be good because there are places where you can have a lot of upside that if you do it with the right amount of money and you take a little bit of risk with a smaller amount of money can help you kind of work through some of these biases without over overacting over correcting.   Mark: Oh, definitely. And if you think about the overconfidence bias here, Nick, I mean, we've basically been on a 12 year run, 12 plus year run with the market. So everybody's been feeling pretty confident. I mean, 1920 and 21 all finished up with double digit years.   Nick: Right.   Mark: So it's easy to feel confident when, when everything's going up, everybody's a genius, right?   Nick: Oh yeah.   Mark: So it's when it's going down that you start to get a little more concerned and maybe that overconfidence comes into play. And since we mentioned down, go ahead and go to the fourth one, which is the final one.   Nick: Sure. So the fourth one is going to be loss aversion. So a classic case of this is, because there's different types of risk as well. And one of the risks that we talk about sometimes are inflationary risks, which we're seeing now. So in other words, for people that might be way too heavy in cash over prolonged period of time, or they're afraid to take any sort of risk, they don't necessarily think about the trade off. So they, again, this is the concept of having a plan and having balanced, not only in your investments, but in your strategies and your overall planning is really important because as we see, sometimes people's thought processes, well, hey cash, if I'm in cash, it's okay. I just don't want to lose my money while, in times of massive inflation or just compared to other areas of the market, there can be significant downside to, the concept of what some people may think is no risk can actually have quite a bit.   Mark: Okay. So those are the four biases then. So you've got the present bias, the base rate neglect of the overconfidence bias and the loss aversion. So John here's the interesting part to me about this whole thing is take away number two, is that 98% of people are exhibiting at least one of these, what they found was the lower, the level of bias, the better your overall financial health. So if you only have one let's say of these four, then you're probably in better shape than someone that has two, which again, it kind of makes perfect sense, but there was some interesting statistics and information in this. So why don't you talk to me a little bit about that?   John: Yeah, yeah. That is pretty interesting. Basically the lower level of bias you have, the better financial health you end up having. And it's one of the ones here is like the present bias where basically research showed, if you have a low level of present bias, you were three times as likely to spend less than the money you that you make. So basically you're going to be saving more money. So again, it's kind of... You kind of look at this in life. You don't have that instant gratification. You're kind of looking at the long term of, Hey, I don't need this today. You know, if you go to the store and buy something, do I really need that now? No, I don't. I can hold off on it. You know, just making better financial decisions all around when you kind of break it down. Another one that was interesting with, with that, with the present bias was there's seven times more likely to plan for the future.   Mark: Yeah.   John: So, so I get... [crosstalk 00:11:36] go ahead.   Mark: I was trying to say, so what I'm hearing there is then, is if they don't re... If you don't react, if you don't give into the instant gratification bias, you typically were a better saver. Sounds like.   John: Better saver, better planner, just not reactionary to what's going on. So it's really the long term goal seems to be in mind with these type of people.   Mark: Seven times more likely. That's pretty good.   John: Yeah. It makes me think I need to... I need to be a little less into gratification for myself.   Mark: There you go.   John: You know, it's, I'm getting off topic here, but it's funny. I was talking to my wife the other day with, we got Disney plus for the kids.   Mark: Sure.   John: And it's like, oh, I want to watch this. And I started thinking, I'm like, man, I just remember just sitting there looking at the guide until, a TV show would finally pop on or a move I wanted to watch because you couldn't watch things right away. You back in the late eighties.   Mark: And in those places, it's great. Right. We enjoy that kind of stuff. But then what happens to this kind of this point is next thing you know, you've got 12 subscription services and you're not using them all. So yeah.   John: Yeah. So anyhow, starting off on a tangent.   Mark: No, you're fine.   John: But yeah, another one would be, overconfidence, lower level bias there. They found that people would have basically more savings. So again, back when Nick was staying with overconfidence in and I fall into this quite a bit, it's like, ah I have some time I can build that up or whatever. And I've seen this quite a bit with some retirees. So, if you're not over, you tend to save a little bit more and last one is the loss aversion of having lower 401k balance, the less bias you have towards that, the more apt you are to take a little more risk and save more into your 401k. And just as Nick mentioned here, not sit in cash and try to outpace inflation.   Mark: I gotcha. So yeah, if you, if you're a bit more overconfident, you feel like you can kind of well, I'll take some chances, right. Because I can get it back. So therefore I can build that savings back up or whatever the case is. So really interesting takeaways from that standpoint, when you think about it, because we all fall into one of these, whatever it might be. And so the lower level of money bias, typically the better financial health. Nick, so talk to me about some of the solutions Morningstar offered because they called it build a money life that fits your priorities, which makes a lot of sense for what you guys do as advisors to kind of find that right mold or fit for the individual.   Nick: Yeah. So it's pretty interesting in... We joke a decent amount of time with clients and among each other that, our business is probably 20 to 30% finance and 70 to 80% therapist. And really it's helping people with these sorts of things. So some of the things they talked about as far as what they call building a money life is kind of put some speed bumps or have a process in place for your decision making. So, one of the things that we try to get our clients to do as an example is that we have the... Because we are a planning focus firm and we use planning tools and software to help people model out different scenarios, we try to get them to start thinking through that realm because a lot... People have often like the quite, well, what about this?   Nick: Or what about that? Or should you know, one of the most common is, do I put extra money towards the mortgage or do I save some money? And the answer for everybody is different based upon what they've done up until that point. And so, for those that work with us, what we try to get them to do for those speed bumps is to say, number one, number two; number one, if there's something that you're concerned about, walk us through, what is the scenario that you're concerned about? So for example, if you're concerned about, the cost of fuel, cost of inflation, those sorts of things, in what way are you concerned about how that applies to you specifically? So not just the world and everybody on the news and all that kind of stuff, but how does it involve you specifically?   Nick: And so, okay. So, sometimes what people realize is that it's not going to impact their life in a dramatic way. It could have some sort of impact on, the economy and those sorts of things. But most of the times it's not going to have a massive impact on their life. And then we take it. So maybe, we figure that it could have some sort of impact. So then we can kind of go to the planning software and kind of model it and say, okay, well, if these things happen, let's take a look and see what it looks like. And okay, so now that you see what it looks like, here are some of the decisions that you can make to bring that sort of risk down and have a little bit of clarity. And then we can go ahead and try to implement those decisions.   Nick: So instead of just these open-ended concerns of things that are not in anybody's control, let's look at the things that we do have in control. And those decisions that we can make to impact and make it easier. And kind of referring back to what we talked about earlier, where that kind of high level of base rate, and then the overconfidence for lower savings and checking, sometimes what ends up happening is that, and we try to remind people of this is, having a solid base of savings, cash savings is your permission slip for a lot of different things. So when people look at and realize like, Hey, that this is... These are exactly the times that we emphasize having this cash handy because we can deal with these fluctuations in the market. We don't have to make irrational decisions because you've built this buffer and you've given yourself this permission slip to deal with these different sorts of circumstances.   Mark: That's a great point. Yeah.   Nick: Yeah. So that can be interesting. And then if, you're doing it on your own, maybe making some sort of process where, hey, you've got a couple of rules that you take into consideration where once you get to certain gains on an underlying investment, you're okay selling, or you sell with half and maybe you let the rest of it ride. Or you just kind of give yourself a buffer time. You know, sometimes people will joke that they have rules for emails, like when they're mad. So, give it an overnight, you're ready to fire off an email, maybe it's to a coworker it's to a family member, whatever.   Mark: Right. Yeah.   Nick: Or text message.   Mark: Wait till you cool down.   Nick: Yeah, wait to cool down. And, or maybe haven't had an adult beverage and give it a little bit of time because oftentimes, when we sit on it, we see that maybe even though we didn't think we were, maybe we were a little over confident in what our thought process was previously.   Mark: So yeah. I like that idea, John, what do you think? Like one of the things they had on there, and I think this is a good idea was the whole, wait three days to make an important decision. I'll use an exam... I mean, you've got the little ones there. That's great advice to try to, raise kids on as well. My dad used to do that with me. Hey man, if it's a good idea, on Monday, it's still going to be a good idea on Friday. Right. But if something changed or you don't feel like it's a good idea, then it's good that you waited before you took action. I've been thinking about buying a muscle car here recently. And of course, gas prices have got me second guessing that. So I went and looked at one last Friday and I still haven't made a decision because I wanted to take that time to make sure I was making that right choice. Right. Don't... That's that instant gratification, I guess, take a few days... [crosstalk 00:18:48]   John: [crosstalk 00:18:48] A hundred percent.   Nick: [crosstalk 00:18:49] Or you might be getting a really good price right now. I mean...   Mark: Well, that's true too, but.   Nick: So if you really want it...   Mark: What do you think, John?   John: I think it's always best to wait a couple of days to see if that's something you really want. I think, like you said there, it's going to be there, and the price could jump up in three days in this environment. But I think it's always best kind of way it a little bit before you make financial decisions. So you ultimately feel comfortable with decisions that you made. That it wasn't kind of an impulse buy or decision...   Mark: Right. [crosstalk 00:19:20].   John: That could affect the rest of your life.   Mark: So, well, the speed bump idea was really good, right? The Morningstar, they called it speed bumps to place your... Slow down your decision making as Nick alluded to. And if you think about the stock market, right, they've got those circuit breakers in place. We saw that with COVID right. When the circuit breakers would kick in to prevent any more trading because it was falling so fast. So if you want to kind of use that same analogy, have some speed bumps or some circuit breakers in place for your decision making process. So lots of different ways we can look at it.   John: Yeah, another one in the article I was reading through is really, and it goes back to what we're saying here, and what we always say is having a plan, a sense of direction and to tune out the news and really stop taking advice from your friends where it's basically, "hey, I did this", or "I'm buying this." And especially with, we don't advise on crypto, but you know, "I'm buying some crypto" and stuff like that. It's really, have your plan and stick to what your plan is for versus listening to what other people are doing. That was also in the article, which I thought was an interesting point.   Mark: Yeah. Very good points. Well, I tell you what, like I said, we're going to link this into the, to the show notes and information there. So if you'd like to check that out, you can. And as always, if you've got some questions, we'll wrap this up this week about a money bias, your own money bias, which one you may be affected by. You should be able to tell if you suffer from the present bias that give me now thing, that base rate and neglect where you just react to the news, the overconfidence of feeling like you've got it all figured out, you've mastered it all. Or maybe just the loss of version where that fear of losing money, just really kind of cripples you either way, it could be costing you money. So reach out to the guys, if you've got questions on how to control this.   Mark: And I think that's some of the value that an advisor brings to the table is they're not going to have those biases about your portfolio plan because it's not their money, right? So they're there to help guide you and be that sounding board and be that coach. So reach out to John and Nick, if you some questions at PFGprivatewealth.com, that's PFGprivatewealth.com. Before you take any action, you should always check with a qualified professional, like the guys, they are financial advisors at PFG Private Wealth. Don't forget to subscribe to us on Apple, Google, Spotify, or whatever platform you'd like to listen to. And if you'd like to learn more about some of those charities that they were... John was talking about earlier in the show, or maybe attend the next time they do one of those events, again, reach out to them at PFG Private Wealth. For John and Nick, I'm Mark, thanks for hanging out with us. We'll see you next time here on the podcast, Retirement Planning - Redefined.

THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism

Abby Spinner MacBride: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/abbi-spinner-mcbride/267315505   Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E9 TRANSCRIPT:----more---- Yucca: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-Based Paganism. I'm your host Yucca.  Mark: And I'm Mark.  Yucca: And today we're talking about rituals and the ritual toolbox. So, yeah, there's a lot of different tools that we can use to help us in ritual. But before that, we wanted to talk about what ritual actually is, is something we talk about a lot on this podcast, but it's so central that it's really important to come back to. So what it is, what's the goal. And then these things that can help us in that process. Mark: Right. Yeah. Because one of the things that is different about paganism and this is true of science-based paganism as well, is that. Kind of just going to a church or a temple Or a mosque or something like that. And listening to somebody else, do the ritual mostly as a passive as a passive observer, except when you sing a hymn once in a while or something like that. Yucca: Or you go up for communion or  Mark: Right, right. Pagans create their own rituals and they engage everybody that's involved in the ritual, in the activities of that. ritual. And so we need to have our own ritual toolbox set up so that we have the skillsets necessary to be able to do effective ritual with ourselves. And then also with groups of people.  Yucca: Right. Yeah, because we're the ones doing it. It's not being done to us. So, yeah. And so these tools they're like any tool, there's something that you get good at when you practice it right. In the first time. It's, the first time you try and hammer that nail in, it it's harder than it looks. Right. So that can be the same with some of these. Mark: Yeah, for sure. And of course, when we talk about ritual, what we're talking about as a, as a goal is to reach what I call the ritual state, which is also often called trance it's it's a state of, of the mind that is dominated by the limbic system. So it tends to be very emotionally open and vulnerable. And also very much in the present moment. So not thinking about what's going to happen next, not worrying about what happened last week, very focused in the present  Yucca: Right. Mark: and that trance state is very powerful because it's a state that once we get into it, it's sort of like the admin condition for a computer and start changing things in your, in your consciousness. And changing stories that you tell yourself and memories that you have, you can, you can tinker with that stuff when you're in the trans.  Yucca: Yeah. It's like you've gotten past all of those walls that are built and all of the filters that you have and, and just kind of gotten back to that more raw place. Mark: Right, right. Which is a two-edged sword, right? Because on the one hand, it's very powerful and we can have very, very powerful, spiritual and emotional experiences by doing this. But it also means that if something goes wrong, it can really wound someone. So we want to be very careful when we do our rituals, that we create very self safe space and that we have good ritual etiquette, which we'll be talking about later  Yucca: Okay. Mark: and, really pay attention to the well-being of everyone that's in the circle.  Yucca: Exactly. Yeah. Including oneself.  Mark: Yes. Yes. So why don't we start in understanding that these are tools to help us to get into and to stay into trance and go to our first one, which is  Yucca: Well chance.  Mark: chanting.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Chanting is something that people have been doing for at least tens of thousands of years, if not hundreds of thousands of years. And it's you, it's all over the world. You find people who sing for religious reasons. And typically those songs have certain characteristics. They tend to be repetitive. You repeated over and over and over. Because what happens in a trends is that once you've got that that's little song kind of myelinated into your brain, you can sing it automatically without thinking about. And so you're able to keep in the trance state while you're making this chanting.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: There are some chance that are very famous in the pagan community and are used a lot. Like we are a circle and we all come from the goddess. Those are a couple real favorites.  Yucca: My body.  Mark: Earth my body. water, my blood. There's there's probably 10 or so that get used a great deal. And which I personally, after 32 years of paganism really use a break from  Yucca: Sorry. I bet there's some great ones in there, but yeah, but then they're the same ones over and over again. If we could get more chant writers out there, then that would be appreciated.  Mark: Yes. Well, let's talk a little bit about what makes a good chance.  Yucca: Yeah. Now before we do, I wanted to mention, I was watching my five-year-old this morning, who was working was doing some art and doing clay and they were in the zone and they were, they just started doing Right. They just were like, hyping themselves up about like the, what they were doing and repeating it over and over and over again, and just super, super focused. And I think that that was like a natural slip into what we're talking about, doing something that we can do as humans that is very natural, but we are choosing in our rituals to cultivate that and to use that thing that we do just instinctually. Mark: Right, right. That's really interesting. Yeah, because one of the things that we can see in crafting ritual behavior is that a lot of it ends up looking kind of childhood. In a way, we do things that children kind of do naturally, but we sort of get them worn out of ourselves as we get older, the culture discourages us from doing those things because they're childish or they're embarrassing or whatever it is.  Yucca: But remember that what children do is instinctual. They're doing it's programmed into us. And the, what we do as children is play and practice the things that we're going to need as adults. And so, even though we. We train ourselves out of doing it with our, how many ever years of sitting at desks and doing all of that. But that's, but you see that it's not just the children all over the world do it.  Mark: That's Right.  Yucca: Right. We we're doing it everywhere. And so there's something to it. If all children do something like this that says something about humans, Mark: Yes. Yes. And so when it comes to chanting, there are multiple elements that make for a good chant. And so I'd like to.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Kind of run down a few things that can really help to make a good chance. And then I'll sing an example of one that I wrote a few years ago. The most important thing about a ritual chant is for it to be simple and repetitive. So maybe four lines. Six lines tops, maybe, maybe with a word switched out in every iteration. So. You couldn't, you can imagine, like if, if you work with the Greek classical elements, maybe you have one verse that's air and another that's fire and another that's water and another that's earth. But basically you want those, those verses all to be the same for a couple of reasons, the first is that repetitiveness really encourages the trance state. When we, when we hear repeated like techno music, for example electronic dance music. Is really good at putting people into trances because it's got that very, very repetitive rhythm going. Right. And it's not a big surprise when you start thinking about ritual technologies. When you look at what a dance club is like, well, it's dim lighting with flickering light, just like the campfire. Right. And you  know, if I  Yucca: colored lights too. Right. Different than our normal everyday lights. Mark: Right. Right. And so in toxicants to kind of lubricate the way, and then this, this loud pounding, incredibly  Yucca: in your body Mark: repetitive music and it makes you go and  Yucca: some incense in the, in the form of cigarette smoke,  Mark: Yes.  Yucca: strong sense. Yeah. Mark: So you want it to be repetitive. You want, you want it to repeat itself and to be easy to learn? I, I once went to a ritual that was one of the worst rituals I've ever been to. And the reason it was so bad was because the person that designed it wanted to use every bell and whistle that she had ever heard of in ritual technology. And it went on all. And it was just every Chan w had like diminished chords in it. And it was, you couldn't learn them and people couldn't hear one another across the fire from one another, everything went wrong anyway. So you don't want to do that. You want something that's simple and easy to learn so that people can pick it up on the second or third time through.  Yucca: Right. And remembering that people have different relationships to music. For some people picking up the words is really easy for other people. It's, it's a struggle. Right. So you want to make it as accessible as possible to the people in your group? Mark: right. For sure. So you want it to be repetitive and simple and easily learned. Hopefully it's something that can be harmonized with easily because people who like to harm it. Really liked to harmonize and when they do it, it makes for a more beautiful sound that contributes to our going into trance.  Yucca: Mm. Mark: So that's, that's just a helpful piece, don't, don't do things around 11th chords. That's just not, that's not a thing. So. And then finally come the words, the poetry, right. And they can run, but they don't have to ride what's most important is the, the cognitive meaning. Of those words, because remember this is a religious activity. The, the meaning that we put into the song that we're singing in the circle is something that we want to resonate deeply with our personal values. So that's really important. So with all of that said I'll sing this chant. Now it's called, we believe in a better world. It's a non theist science-based paganism chant. And I hope you enjoy it. It goes like this. We believe in a better world. We believe in justice. We believe in a better world. We believe in . We believe in a better world. We can heal our upline. We won't about de. We won't about so that's that's a chance that you can do, you can harmonize to it. You can sing it it around it's got words that are meaningful and impactful. It's the kind of thing that you can do and creating your own chances. A very powerful practice.  Yucca: Yeah. And that had some nice, like stretching out too. Cause there's different kinds of trance. Right? So you might have a, like a dun dun dun dun dun dun chant, where, I don't have the music vocabulary to talk about that, but that's, very, more like a drum beat. And then there was what you were doing, which is more of a. There's more song to it. There's more flow. There's stretching out. People could, I could, as you were singing it, I could hear, some of the higher pitched voices coming in and doing those notes at the same time. So there's different styles of chance, and that's going to be dependent upon what you're trying to do in the ritual. Mark: There is a woman named Abby spinner that I'm sure some of our listeners have heard of who is very active in the Vegas vortex, pagan community in LA. And she has a number of chant albums out she's published, and these are all her chance. She's done tons of them. She's got a disc that's actually nominated for a pagan music award this year. So we wish her good luck with that, but Abby's stuff is really good. would encourage people to get some of those. Discs and we'll put the, we'll put a link in the, in the notes. But I would encourage people to grab a couple of those discs and listen to them because she really is a master at creating those, those wonderful chance.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So that's chanting and singing and people have used song to create translate. For, as I said, thousands and thousands of years, when you think about Gregorian chance, for example, those are very Transy. You sit and listen to those in one of those Gothic cathedrals, and you go har away very quickly.  Yucca: Yeah. And one of the things about transit. And when you were talking about the techno music, it reminded me of this too, where, when you've been in a trance state using that chant before the chant can immediately take you back, it can be like that touchstone or that key that just transports you right into that state very quickly. So that's yeah. Mark: That's a really good point because what can happen is these experiences can anchor in your mind. And so they become sort of trigger, switch. You hear that particular song? And it's like, oh yes. Just like when I was around that fire in, 2012 and these wonderful things happened and you just go right back into that state.  Yucca: Great. Mark: So that's chanting. And the next tool that we wanted to talk about the next tool in the box was public speaking. Now we have to start by acknowledging that there is. There's an issue here when you pull people at least in the United States and ask them what the thing is that they are most afraid of. It is not deaf. It is public speaking.  Yucca: Yes. Mark: That said if you're going to be a significant participant in a group ritual or lead a group, rich. In a kind of clerical capacity as the priest or priestess or priest decks of of the circle. You're going to need to become reasonably comfortable with talking in front of people and not just, reading something in front of people, but actually talking improvisationally in front of other people.  Yucca: right? Mark: And the only way to do that is to practice it.  Yucca: Yeah. Now there are certainly things that you can do to. To try and make that a little bit smoother for you. And it's, this is going to be personal experience, but for some people just jumping right into it, just like, don't have time to think about it. I just have to do it is helpful, but for someone else, maybe if you know that that's going to be part of it. And you want to relax doing the chants, starting with chanting, starting with some of the breathing, getting yourself into a different state that isn't all worked up about the speaking, and then moving into that. So the design, the shape of the ritual, you can create an way to support you in the things that are uncomfortable. Mark: Yes, that's very well said. And you can also. Bring along an index card, some small piece of paper with points on it that you can refer to because the thing that people are most afraid of when it comes to public speaking is they're afraid that they're suddenly going to go blank and there's, and there's the audience waiting for them to say something. And they're just standing there with their mouth hanging open. You can prevent that by having an outline with you.  Yucca: Yeah, well, and here's a, a kind of cheat that you can do is on your forearm. If you have, you can actually write on your forearm, don't write the whole speech, but maybe write some symbols that gives you the order of what you want to do. And then you've put your hands. And you have a reason to have your hand up is you're, doing the, the speech with your handout or whatever it is, and you can be looking at it and not feel awkward that you're pulling up your little note card. Mark: That's  Yucca: So yeah, just  Mark: that. That's great,  Yucca: so you can do your ritual to prepare for your ritual.  Mark: right?  Yucca: Yeah. And we're chuckling, but this is, this is real right. This is at least for me, I mean, I speak for a living, but I, I have a hard time with it. Right. I got to work myself up to be able to do it.  Mark: Huh?  Yucca: So Mark: yeah. I mean, we're, we're going to the Sentry retreat in may and it looks like they're going to be at least 60 people there and I'm starting to think about, well, we're going to do these rituals, 60 people. Wow. That's a lot of people, and we want to get them involved and we want them to feel included and we want them to feel participatory. There's there's all this stuff that's so important in a group. But being an effective public speaker is actually one of them. And to be honest, it's such a powerful tool it's really worth investing in some, some effort for yourself in order to become comfortable in front of an audience.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: There are groups like Toastmasters and so forth where, people, what they do is they, they learn how to give speeches together. That's what they do.  Yucca: Yeah  Mark: and it's, it's well worth it. There's there's no career you can be in maybe maybe a longer, there are few. there  Yucca: few. Mark: few careers you, you can be in that. That wouldn't be benefited by your being able to be a very effective communicator.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So public speaking is is often in a sort of poetry verse sort of style in rituals, but it can also be it can also just be speaking in regular sentences. The key point is make your speech a lot. Don't speak in a monotone, bring, bring the feelings in the words, into the circle with you.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So our next was  Yucca: Should rhythm. Yeah. Right. So rhythm drumming or rattles or, whatever it is in, in your particular ritual or, or style. But it, this is, this is connecting again with the. With the chanting and the speaking. And it's like, there's the meanings behind it, but there's also recreating these patterns that are repeating over and over, and that are just helping to move us deeper and deeper and keep us in that. Trance state cause it's easy for something to happen that the dog over there starts barking and you get startled or someone, comes or goes or so keeping us in that state is, is really important. Mark: Right. Right. And rhythm is probably the oldest technique that we have. For that kind of maintenance and, and induction of trans the oldest musical instruments that we have are Neanderthal flutes made out of bone. But my bet is that the oldest actual musical instruments were hollow logs  Yucca: Yeah, Mark: and drunks that made a good resonant sound. You know that early humans could hit with a stick or would their hands, or with another rock and make a sound?  Yucca: well, and there are caves where there's the. I don't know whether they were still like tights or mites, but they go all the way from the ceiling to the floor of the cave that were painted on and worn away, where it was clear that what they were doing with it was using it as drums. Because when you hit that same spot, you get different notes. And so, so our ancestors were using the. Came formations to create these incredible sounds that, oh, just imagine being a mess with the fire light and the drumming on the cave itself is vibrating. Mark: yeah. Wow. Oh, I would love to experience that. That sounds so cool. So this is one of those where it's great to have a good sense of rhythm to start with. The only thing that will get you there is to practice and you don't have to become a phenomenal drummer because the thing that will really put people into trance is a steady drum. It doesn't have to be really fancy. I mean, great middle Eastern or African drumming is, is, is extraordinary. And it's wonderful to listen to. And I, I love it. Just a simple boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. We'll take you down that hole into trans.  Yucca: When designing a ritual, that's going to have other people doing drumming or rhythm in it. It's important to, to have it so that people who don't have great rhythm can drum as well. So just having them be able to do the heartbeat or whatever it is, have a spot that they don't have to feel uncomfortable because. They aren't great at the rhythm part. Just let them be able to, to do that, that base that is still going to just like you're saying, mark is going to really work without having to get fancy. And if someone wants to be fancy on top of that, great. Right. But allowing it to be accessible to everybody. Mark: Yeah. that's really important. And it's important. Not only because there needs to be a place for everyone in this circle, but also because that's how you start,  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: I mean, it, it is drumming is one of those things where you don't just pick up a drum and be a genius at it because it's all around muscle memory. Right. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And so you, you have to develop the muscle memory for the patterns that you are drumming. also really addictive once he started, you will spend a lot of times,  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: cause it's fun. It's really  Yucca: Yeah. Well, and back to what you were saying though, about practicing, just like we were saying at the beginning, these really are tools and you aren't good at any tool. The first time you use it, or at least something of its style, you've got to, once if you, if you've gotten really good at drums, then maybe some of the rattles might be easy to transition to because they're so similar, but, but you've got to build that skill to begin with. Mark: Right. And when we say rattles and so forth, that includes things like bells, gongs, or, steel triangles cowbells. There's so many different things that you can make a wonderful rhythmic sound with And rattles are great. Cause they're really easy. They're cheap. they travel well because they're small. Yucca: And they can be made from so many different things, too. You can grow, different chords in your garden and make them, and it can be real. They can be really personal. Mark: right, right. I have, I have a ritual rattle that has probably been around a fire. 10,000 times maybe I'm going around and around and around and shaking that rattle. And it means a lot to me it's all beat up now, but it's my, it's my extra precious rattle  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Noumea gave it to me at our first fire dance festival. It was.  Yeah. So rattling is a great alternative. If you don't feel comfortable picking up a drum, just, just that sort of that a rattle can make as you go around the circle does a couple of things. The first one is it means your plugged into the overall process. So you're not outside. You're not extraneous. You're not a spectator. You're helping to create this experience. And that is so important for, in a pagan circle for everybody to feel like they are a co-creator what's happening within the circle. The second thing is that stuff is transient as hell. I mean, especially if you shake it next to your years, it will really send you places.  Yucca: Yeah, well, it's that white noise. It's that, that's we, can buy like machines for you call lucky babies, make that noise. Right. For when you get so exhausted that you just can't, you can't keep doing it with your mouth. Right. So, but it's the same thing. And some, some people say it's because it sounds like. The what it might've sounded like in the womb, right. Listening to the, to your mother's blood from the inside, as listening to her arteries and veins and all of that.  Mark: Right.  Yucca: But, but it's very much like the ocean, like the wind it's it's wonderful. Mark: Yeah. So if you don't have one already, at least one, I highly recommend picking up a rattle. Even if you're not going to plunge in and do a drum, if you are going to do a drum, do a hand drum, a smaller drum, like a doom, Beck, or a frame drum  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: to start with, because you can do wonderful things with those drums. They don't cost as much and they're easy to transport,  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: but at the very least get yourself a rattle or two, or, a few of those percussive instrument. And play around with them.  Yucca: Or make them too, right. Is that something you want to work on? Yeah. Mark: Yeah. I have, I have one that's made out of bullwhip CELT kelp. There's a, a kind of kelp that it's kind of a long and hollow and it's got sort of a bulb on the end. Put sand in it from the beach and then court to the end. And it makes this very, very soft. So serration kind of like the  tide. It's really beautiful.  Yucca: Oh, that's wonderful. And it's from the beach itself.  Mark: It's from the beach. Yeah.  Yucca: So rhythm in, we're talking about rhythm with rattles and drums, but there's also our bodies. Right? And so the dance element is another wonderful one. Mark: Very much so, and this is one. that can really scare people because it's vulnerable to jump out there and dance. Right. But when the drums are going and the rattles are going and all, and the fire is flickering and all that kind of stuff, it is the thing to do. And the good news is generally you don't have to be the person to say. But if you are the person who is leading the ritual, you may be the person to start it. That's okay. The main thing is just feel the beat, make a sort of motion of some kind. It doesn't have to be, professional grade and then lead others into the circle so that they can dance as well.  Yucca: Yeah. And just, you can start by finding that beat a simple beat that's underneath all of it that we were talking about. Move, whatever part of your body you're comfortable moving, right? That could be just swaying your shoulders back and forth or your hips or whatever it is that where you're comfortable starting. And then once you're there, the rest of your body can start following. And just however, whatever feels right for the ritual that you're doing, because it's going to be different depending on what ritual you're in. Mark: Yes. Yes. And I should also say at this point that some of the most beautiful dancing I've seen in. circle has been by people who are in wheelchairs. So you can still dance, even if parts of your body don't want.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: You can, you can still participate in that way. And it's important when we create our ritual spaces. If we know that there are going to be people that have those needs, that we create a space in the circle for them to be, so that they're included.  Yucca: Yeah. Or someone who on that note that often these many of these circles will be standing for a long period of time. That might not be feasible for everyone. Right there. It might be important to have a chair for whichever member it is. Who's going to work that you never know. Or you might write a fit to your small, personal circle that you meet with constantly. But if it's a larger group, You really don't know what, what is going on with other people's bodies and, and energy and all of that. So it's, it's nice to think about that as, as providing that opportunity of maybe we can have a situation where there's chairs or sitting or things like that. Mark: Right. It's, it's a way we can be inclusive and that's important. Similarly with people who are sight impaired find someone that can lead them into the circle and bring them around the fire. Making sure that they stay safe because they can still participate. They just need to.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So in, in the case of movement, I mean, I've seen people do wild, dramatic ecstatic sort of dancing, and I've seen people do very sort of methodical foot, one foot after another, to the base beat, kind of marching around the circle and a very determined sort of way, way blissed out on trance, singing to themselves or humming to themselves or playing those rattles or whatever. And all of that is great. It, it depends on what works for you And what you feel comfortable doing. Yucca: And again what the ritual needs, cause like you were telling the story earlier of being at a ritual that was trying to do all of it with every possible to and not every tool is going to be a fit for every ritual. Mark: Right. Well, in this case, it was just that she had loaded too much stuff on. She had all these various herbal potions that we were supposed to be passing around his teas while we were doing this very complicated geometric thing in the circle. And it was just, it was just too much. I think there were probably about six good rituals in there. If she had pulled the whole thing apart,  Yucca: And yeah. So, now the ones that we've been talking about, these are pretty, these are pretty core things, but just still think about what, what the ritual that you're in is, and we've been talking about this from a group perspective, but these tools. Apply, whether you're looking at a group or an individual, or, a couple doing a re a ritual, any, it can be scaled. Mark: Right, right. When you're doing the Rite of passage, you can pick one of these tools and assign it to the person that's going through the right. I went to a ritual once where a young man who was becoming an adult, had to keep a heartbeat going all night. And so, that was his responsibility. It was, to keep the rhythm going in the circle of. So, taking on responsibility was a clear relationship to the Right. of passage that he was going through. And it was, it was a good thing to assign him to do. If you don't feel like You're the most confident public speaker, find someone who is and have them do the greeting, and then you can coordinate from there. Leverage people's skill. Their strengths. I am, I'm not a big movement person. I grew up switching from overdose over medication for ADHD, and I'm kind of an awkward person that way. Also, my sense of balance is terrible. So I have this problem with falling over but still.  Yucca: good with words though.  Mark: Yes. Got the words down. I'm I'm good with words. So, But still I will find something that I can do in that circle that will feel as though I'm a part of it and I'm moving and I'm going into it. And the longer that goes, the less inhibited I feel about it and the easier it is for me to do it. So that's kind of how it was. So let's talk about the application of these tools in a in a solo setting. Yucca: so. The chanting, the rhythm, these things, whatever it is, that's going to get you into that state. And if you are a verbal person, maybe the spoken word component, not everyone is going to con. private rituals. I don't use words, but I'll use dance and rhythm and all of that. But, but words, my brain, my brain is not thinking words when I'm in that state. Some people's brains are though. So if that works for you, it can be really powerful. Mark: What I find is that. The composed sentences and paragraphs brain doesn't work well in ritual at all, but the poetry brain works really well in ritual. It's, it's a different, it's a different thing. It's a different way of accessing words and using them. And that can be very transmitted. So, so Chad, when you're working by yourself, chanting can be as little as humming. It can just be humming a melody that you find soothing or calming or motivating, or that reminds you of a good time in your life. Whatever, whatever the need is.  Yucca: Right or something very short, just a few, a few words. You have an example would be, I think I can maybe if that is what you're working with, but that's an example of, of a chant that can be used.  Mark: Right. Right.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So, and so that kind of blends the musical into the spoken word. Both of those, you can use as much or as little as you like in the case of rhythm. I find personally that my, my own rituals really benefit from playing some recorded music that has a good Transy rhythm to it. I like candles turn off all the lights, not in that order. Put on the music, light some incense. And then I start being in the temple of myself. I start it. I feel myself kind of sink down into this comfortable, juicy place, full of potential, where all, where, where everything's possible or nearly everything is possible. So, what I've done is I've collected music that, that works for me that way. I still do it through CDs. Because I've got a CD changer in my room and I just use it that way. But  Yucca: Well, you don't need to worry about if the Internet's down or anything  Mark: right. I don't  Yucca: you lost access to your account or. Mark: yeah, I don't recommend cloud playlists because there is so much that can go wrong and it's really disturbing when something gets cut off in the middle.  Yucca: Or if an ad comes on  Mark: oh  Yucca: you're right in the middle of. Mark: no, no. So, but MP3s are fine, load those up on a stick and play them through your computer or through a stereo system, whatever through a Bluetooth speaker.  Yucca: If you are doing it with your computer or your phone, you might want to put, do not disturb on before you start so that you aren't in the middle of getting the little email or, things. Yeah.  Mark: That's a very good point.  Yucca: Because that at least for me, that takes me right out of the state.  Mark: Yeah.  Who's calling me and how can it be that important?  Yucca: Or who, who liked my post or whatever it is, right. It's an immediate this, if the sound is there to get your attention, whatever it is, it's there for your attention.  Mark: That's right. That's what.  Yucca: And of course, there's all of this stuff that we've, we've talked about many times before about creating a physically safe environment so that you can be in an emotionally safe place for that. Work that you're going to be doing because you, you do, you are entering into a, a more vulnerable, raw state. Mark: and all the other various techniques that we've talked about in other episodes, the breath work, for example, the various kinds of ways of calming and soothing ourselves And kind of opening ourselves based with based on deep breathing, holding for a few seconds and then releasing Slowly letting yourself sink to the earth and be present in the moment that you're in. Those are very important techniques for the beginning of rituals. And you can use them either in groups or you can use them by yourself, Yucca: And we're coming back to that idea of practice. Using them by yourself is a way of practicing. A little bit for the, the group ritual  Mark: right?  Yucca: dynamics are always going to be different in groups, but the, the movements themselves can be familiar and practiced if you've been doing it on your own. Mark: Right, right. Yeah. And what will happen over time? I promise is that you will get more comfortable with these things. They'll, they'll be, they'll come more readily to hand when you need them. Because sometimes at first it feels really awkward. I think we talked, was it last episode or the episode before? About in the west, we just aren't equipped with ritual tools, and the mind doesn't come with a, with a maintenance manual. So we kind of have to figure this out on our own, but these tools really can help you work with your mind. They can help you improve your mental health. They can help you. They can undermine depression and anxiety and help you to feel greater self esteem. They can help you to transform feelings of shame from past events. There there's a lot that can be done in the ritual space and really what we're here for is to. Advocate that you take on those tools, learn those skills because it'll help you to be a more effective person, both on your own sake for your own sake and for the sake of others.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: 'cause. I know it hasn't happened very often, but I've had people come to me in my life where they're like, I'm really stuck in this thing and I'm feeling this and it sucks. And can you help me? And my answer has been well, are you willing to do a ritual with me? And if, in the case of people who are saying, well, I met withstand, I'll try anything. We've had some very powerful experiences where things have transformed, they've shifted for them. And, I've heard back from them six months later and things it's still shifted for them and wonderful things that happened in their life and they were off into a new chapter. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So it's a, it's a good, it's a good set of tools to have that toolbox. And, and it's it honestly, it's our birthright. This is. These are all things that we do because our brains are built that way, you  Yucca: Yeah. And we don't need someone else to do it to us. It's something that we can. That we can do not to say that there aren't times in our life when we don't need help, because there certainly are times, and there are people who, who can help in in many ways. But there's a lot that we can also do.  Mark: Right.  Yucca: Right. And that's, that's, that's a wonderful place to, in thing to recognize. So, Mark: Well, thank you, Yaka. This has been wonderful.  Yucca: yeah. Thank you. Mark: Really enjoy talking with you. today. Next week, we're going to talk about the spring Equinox.  Oh, star or high spring or whatever that is.  Yucca: we're there already. Mark: Yep. We are. We should mention we just passed the two year anniversary of the podcast.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Well on the 2nd of March. So we really thank all of our listeners. We are, we wouldn't be here without you. And we really appreciate that. You take the time to listen to our stuff and hope that you really get a lot out of it. So thank you.  Yucca: Yeah. Thank you everyone.  Mark: All right, we'll see you again soon. Bye-bye.  

Retirement Planning - Redefined
Ep 42: How “The Great Resignation” Could Impact You Or A Loved One's Retirement

Retirement Planning - Redefined

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 14, 2022 22:37


Droves of workers are retiring early or taking a break from work as they change career paths. It's become known as The Great Resignation. On this episode, we'll highlight some of the key takeaways of a recent Forbes article and explore a lot of the impacts on retirement planning from across different age groups in the wake of this massive workplace shift that's underway. Forbes Article: https://bit.ly/3JtbbeQ Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is a registered investment adviser. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investment involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Transcript of Today's Show: For a full transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/ ----more---- Mark: Hey everybody, welcome in to the podcast. Thanks for tuning in to another edition of Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick, as we talk investing, finance, and retirement. And we are going to discuss the Great Resignation on this podcast. And if you're not familiar with that, well, that's been all the mass exodus of people leaving work over the last three to four to five months. And we've got some interesting key takeaways here to talk a little bit about this. Droves of workers retiring early, or taking a break as they consider this career path, that's been called now the Great Resignation, and there's a Forbes article, we'll probably take a link and put that in the show notes as well. But guys, what's going on? How you doing Nick?   Nick: Good, good. Staying busy, kind of getting rocking and rolling to start off the new year. So, you know, I think a month or two ago we had hoped that maybe it'd be a little less chaotic from the standpoint of the whole pandemic thing, but I think everybody's just kind of plugging away and recovering from the holidays.   Mark: Yeah, definitely. John, how you doing my friend?   John: I'm good. I'm good. Doing good.   Mark: Yeah. Nothing, nothing too crazy going on. Into the new year all right?   John: Yeah. Yeah, it was quiet. So just hung out with family locally here and in Tampa area. So it was just a nice little break and like Nick said kind of excited to be back to doing some work here and the holidays it's always nice, but at the same time, I'm kind of ready to get back at it.   Mark: Yeah, exactly. So have you guys heard this term, the Great Resignation, are you guys a little bit aware of this and what's your thoughts? We'll get into it here, some data here in just a second, but just have curious if you've heard it or not.   Nick: Yeah, I definitely have. I think it's interesting. I think depending upon who you talk to, their interpretation of it is a little bit different, but in my mind it's really, it's kind of, to kind of think about it from the perspective as almost like a real estate market, there's a buyer's market and there's a seller's market. And I think that really what's happened is not all, but many companies have been slow to kind of improve wages and pay and benefits and things like that and so this has kind of put things into kind of the worker's hands a little bit more and given them a little bit of leverage from the perspective of competitiveness from a company standpoint. And that obviously, that doesn't deal with the people that are in between or are waiting to kind of figure out what they want to do with their whole life, that sort of thing, but more specifically, the people changing jobs and how difficult it's been for employers to keep employees.   Mark: Yeah. I mean, it's definitely all over the map and John, we're going to talk a little bit about it from the different age groups, but for the most part, we're going to look at it as it affects retirees and pre-retirees, but have you seen some of this stuff? Are you familiar with it?   John: Not necessarily the term itself, but yeah, we've seen a lot of this with our own clients that are basically doing some job changes or just outright, just retiring early which I know we're going to get into. But yeah, we're seeing quite a bit of this. And then we see it when we're trying to personally and work wise trying to get service work done. It feels like-   Mark: Big time.   John: Feels like no one's working anymore. My local Dunkin' Donuts here, I can't go in to get a coffee because they don't have enough workers, so everything's drive through. But it just [crosstalk 00:03:23] seen across the board.   Mark: And that's part of it. Yeah. And that's part of it. So a lot of times, I think, when we think about this what's happened in the pandemic, we automatically go to the lower paying scale jobs, the fast food type jobs, and that's definitely a big piece, but for an example, 4.2 million people quit their job in October of 2021. So just a couple of months ago and there's been a lot of other people quitting. So there's been, I think somewhere now around six, six and a half million, I think over the last four to four and a half months. And it's not just the lower end stuff. And of course it's also unknown how long these people will stay out of work. Some of it could be retirees or pre-retirees that are just like, you know what, I'm not going back.   Mark: I'll use my brother as an example, he's 63 and he's like, as long as they keep me working from home, I'm going to stay. But the minute they tell me, I have to go back to the office. I think I'm going to pull the trigger and retire early, even though his plan calls for him to wait till 60, his full retirement age, which I think is 66 and seven months or something like that. So let's talk about it from that's kind of standpoint, guys.   Mark: I've got three takeaway categories here, or actually four. I'm going to kind of give you guys the headline and let you guys roll from there a little bit on this. Okay. So we'll dive into it, hit it however you'd like, not just the lower income scale, but also the upper end, or people just closer to retirement things that you might be seeing or hearing. So number one, if you are going to step away early, taking a break from Social Security, whether it's short term, long term or whatever, don't sell short that, the impact that, that can have to your long term benefits.   Nick: So, depending upon how long you are out of work, it's important to keep into consideration that when you're not earning an income, you're not building up your Social Security credits and so that's something that can impact you down the line. And I've actually had this come up a little bit lately where people don't quite grasp the impact, the positive impact of Social Security, or how much, or how important it is to their overall plan. So it is a big deal and you want to make sure you still have your 10 year minimum work history. It's important to remember that, really the benefit that you receive is a cumulative kind of record of your highest 35 years of income.   Mark: Right.   Nick: So every year that you have a higher year than a previous year, adjusted for inflation, that's going to knock out the other years and you really kind of help bump that benefit up.   Mark: Right. And if you're stepping away in your fifties because of this Great Resignation type of thing here, that's some prime earning years. So that's where I say you could be putting a big dent in that.   Nick: Yeah, absolutely. And realistically it always does kind of go back to the whole plan concept of that we really try to harp on people about, is we have had some people retire early because we have had a bull market for the last 10 years and they've done a good job with saving and those sorts of things, but we kind of verified it through the planning, the whole retire really early on a whim or not really looking at it from an analytical standpoint can definitely be pretty, pretty dangerous.   Mark: Yeah, for sure. So you definitely want to make sure that if you are stepping away from Social Security, you're looking at what it could do to your long term strategy, six months, a year, retiring early, whatever the case might be. Just make sure you're strategizing that with your advisor.   Mark: John, talk to me a little bit about takeaway number two, the 401k isn't a rainy day fund, is kind of the category I had. Because over the last two years, and even the last six months, there's some pretty interesting stats about what people are doing with their 401ks.   John: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, during COVID 2020, there was some ability to actually access for 401k funds or retirement funds without any penalty.   Mark: Right.   John: And not even have to do a loan and that's gone away. So now, not that... Fortunately for our clients, and I think we do a great job educating them, we haven't really seen too much of this where clients are taking out 401k loans. But I have had conversations with some individuals that have done that. And it's just kind of like, "Hey, how much can I pull from my fund? I did this, what are the impacts of it?" So it's just important to fall back to the plan. And we do a... One of our biggest recommendation's to make sure that people have an emergency fund and whether it's three to six months or a year of emergency savings, because, as you know the pandemic hit in 2020 and no one saw that coming and you just don't know what's going to happen in the future. So it's important to have an emergency fund to help out in certain situations like this, so you avoid pulling from the 401k loan because you really want to let those assets grow for your retirement and not access it for rainy day funds- [crosstalk 00:08:10].   Mark: Kind of a stop gap.   John: .... on things like that.   Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's some negative impacts of doing that though, John? I think one of the things people get lost on is just the compounding of it over time, right?   John: Yeah. So you take out 40 grand out of it, basically, especially, let's say you did that in 2020, let's say you took out $40,000 there, you just lost the compounding over the next year and a half, two years of which has been really excellent in reality [crosstalk 00:08:33] with what the market's done. So not... You're just not losing that $40,000, you're losing what that $40,000 could have grown to, which is the importance of having, again, the rainy day fund, so you can let that money in there, let that money grow for you and earn and work for you.   Mark: Yeah.   John: And then nevermind then you're paying money back into it that are after tax dollar. So there's a lot that goes into it that you really need to evaluate it. Sometimes it's you have to because you have nothing else to pull from.   Mark: Right.   John: But it's always important to plan and make sure that you... This is the last resort.   Mark: I hear a lot of advisors say taking that loan against it is usually the later, like if it's kind of like the last in the line, if you really need it, okay, here's where we can go. But let's try not to. Just simply from a multitude of reasons, especially with the resignation, right? If you take a loan against your 401k and you leave the job, you have to pay that back. Correct?   John: Yeah. That's a great point that you bring up. Most companies will give you 30 days to pay it back. So example, you take out that $40,000 and all of a sudden it's, "Hey, we're downsizing," and you get a pink slip, and not only you got, now you all of a sudden you got to pay 40 grand back to your 401k within, a 30 day period, maybe 60 day period. And if you do not pay it back, you're going to be paying taxes and penalty on that, on those dollars.   Mark: Pretty stiff. Yeah.   John: Yeah.   Mark: Yeah. So that's another takeaway for that. And Nick, let's stick with the 401k for a minute for the next one. If you are in this kind of nomad thing where you're jumping out of one job, you're waiting a bit, maybe going into another, looking for a better option for yourself, seeing who's hiring, whatever the scenario is, take that 401k with you, right? Don't just leave it back behind at the old place.   Nick: Yeah. It can be, realistically the more accounts people have, the more places, the more often things are overlooked, not checked up on, not taken care of, so we definitely are fans of consolidating. Whether it's rolling it into the plan at your new employer or rolling it into an IRA where you can control the assets yourself or work with an advisor to manage them for you. Just like so many other things, it's one of the things that former or past employer 401k plans are oftentimes one of the most overlooked and non-adjusted things that we've seen people kind of not take care of.   Mark: Yeah.   Nick: And then they lose a lot of long term money on it because of that.   Mark: Well, you got to think about the vested portion too. Right? So if it's, let's say you're 50 or something like that, and you're pondering this, make sure you under... that you're getting the fully vested part before you jump on. There are some people that could say, well, all right, maybe I'd better stick this out a little longer or whatever the case is.   Nick: Yeah, absolutely. There are some people that... It's much more common for people to move from one employer to the next these days. Especially in certain industries where they can be almost more of a tech role or consultant role, things like that. And sometimes, because of that, their employer has put in a decent amount of money, so an employee's contributions are always vested, it's always their money, but they could have substantial employer matching that vests over three to five years. Or some other sorts of benefits, even if it's not exactly the 401k, but maybe there's a stock plan that has vesting. It's important to take those things into consideration because we've seen people leave tens of thousands of dollars on the table.   Mark: Right.   Nick: Not realizing that it was a factor they should have taken into consideration before they switched employers.   Mark: Yeah. Don't leave that behind. Right? So definitely take it with you, whether you're rolling it from the old one into the new one. And if you do it properly, it's not going to, it's not an issue, right, Nick? So if you've got it in the old one and you roll it to the new one, you just go through the proper channels and there's no taxable event and so on and so forth. Same thing if you move it to an IRA, correct?   Nick: Correct. Yeah. The goal is always to make sure that it's rollover, it's not taken as a lump sum distribution-   Mark: To yourself.   Nick: Yeah. So you always want to make sure that when the rollover happens, it gets paid directly to the new custodian. So it's not written out to you. It's written to the new custodian, whether that's a Fidelity or a Vanguard or whoever it may be, it's paid directly to them, the funds go over and that avoids there being any sort of tax liability or penalty if somebody's under the age of 59 and a half.   Mark: All right. So let's go to the fourth takeaway here, guys. I'll let you both kind of jump in and out on this. John, I'll start with you. It seems like this whole resignation thing is kind of tailor made for those early retirement dreamers. Kind of go back to my brother's conversation there about, Well, if they... I'll retire a couple years early, if they make me go back to the office kind of thing, but I'll work from home." So it's enticing for sure, but point out some challenges to just ponder if you are retiring early, ahead of what you originally planned, you guys kind of divide up a few of these, if you would, but John go ahead and start with a couple of bullet points to think about.   John: Yeah. One of the things that I think about is qualifying for Social Security. The earliest you can draw Social Security is age 62. So, if you're retiring at let's just call 57, you got a decent gap of where you can't take any Social Security. So you really have to evaluate are there any other income sources coming in like a pension or maybe some real estate income or whatever it might be. And then if there isn't, is your nest egg able to sustain your plans. [crosstalk 00:14:06].   Mark: Five years, yeah.   John: Yeah. Is it able to work if you're using your nest egg to basically live off of for that period of time. So those are one of the things. And then you always want to of look at as one, we've had situations where one spouse might retire early and the other one's still work and they say, "Hey, we could live off of just one income for the time being. And if we need any extra money, we have the nest egg that we can pull from as needed." So that would be a big one to really look at.   John: Another one that we come across quite often is healthcare coverage. I'd say one of the main reasons that people don't retire. From our standpoint, what we see is really healthcare. So they wait till they're 65, so they can draw on Medicare. And prior to that, they just kind of look at the cost of going to the Marketplace and say, you know what, this is probably a little too rich for my blood, so [crosstalk 00:14:55] kind of hold off.   Mark: And if you use your example of 57, I mean, you're talking eight years, what are you doing in that gap? Right.   John: Yeah. And we've seen everyone's situations different in what their premium is, but I've seen some premiums for individual at that age at $10-11,000 per year. Nevermind, the coverage isn't as good. So that's [crosstalk 00:15:12]-   Mark: And that's not per person too. Right. So if you and the spouse.   John: Yeah, yeah. Yep. That's per person.   Mark: Can your retirement accounts handle that for that setup that we just talked about or whatever the case might be and then realizing that that's also, that your retirement is now going to be longer, right, because you've retired early, so it's the kind of great multiplier. So those things just kind of compound and go up from there. Nick, do you agree with that and what's some things you see?   Nick: Yeah. For sure. It's definitely a slippery slope when you start to factor in. We've got some clients who work for large employers, their total health premiums for the households can run $2-3,000 a year for both of them. So when you go and you take... You go from $2-3000 for both of you while you're working to somewhere between $8-20,000 a year before Medicare age, it can be pretty substantial. And oftentimes, for many people, there's going to be a price increase, even when they're on Medicare from if you were working for a company that was a larger employer and had pretty inexpensive health benefits. So that makes a huge, huge difference.   Nick: And one way that some people have managed things from that perspective are with some of the Marketplace options out there will kind of connect people with specialists that can help on the medical insurance side of things. And you may be able to take money from taxable accounts that don't have large gains to put your income lower so that you don't pay as much, but in reality, to be frank, usually the only people that can do that are ones that have saved substantial amount of money into a non-qualified account, which usually means they have a lot of money. So, it's less of an issue. So really looking at that, looking at the different types of accounts, when you create your withdrawal rate, and figuring out, hey, how can we keep your income taxes low, not a only for a short period of time when you're in retirement, but kind of building flexibility throughout your retirement, where you're not just letting this tax bomb grow, or you're not using all of your Roth money first or leaving it all for the end.   Nick: It's usually kind of a bit of a balance. So we harp on it a lot, but this is really where there's so many factors and things like this. That this is where kind of software and the tech tools that we have today really help us tailor make a plan, come up with a really good income and liquidation strategy, help us figure out what kind of gaps are we going to have between the time that you retire and when things like Social Security are going to kick in to help supplement the income, and then when Medicare's going to kick in to help reduce expenses. So, it's definitely a puzzle and fortunately we enjoy putting the pieces together.   Mark: Right. Well, look, if you're on the fence, well, if you already did the resigned and walked away, hopefully you had a plan in place, but if you're not, if you're among some of those folks that are still considering, I've heard some interesting stats that they think that's going to happen. Again, early on the first half of 2022, make sure you're talking with an advisor about all the different things that could happen if you do step away early. Most people, hopefully do, but sometimes you just get frustrated or whatever the case is. And a lot of it does have to do with this kind of going back to work, staying working from home, it got good to us, we really kind of, in some ways, very much so enjoy being able to work from home, in other ways we kind of missed the camaraderie. So there's a lot of different things to just kind of take into account before you pull the Great Resignation.   Mark: And with that, we're going to wrap it up this week. We're going to knock out an email question here real fast. Whichever one of you guys want to tackle this, but we've got one from Rebecca who said, "Guys, every six months or so I tell myself, I need to start saving more for retirement and I pretend like I'm going to get serious and actually do it. But then I can't stay motivated to increase my savings. I'm putting a decent amount in the 401k and I have a pretty nice balance there, but it feels like I could be doing more. It's the beginning of the year, I want to be more motivated. How do I do it?"   John: This comes up quite a bit. And I'd say the easiest way to save is probably the 401k, because it's done through payroll and you really, once you start saving in to it, you really don't miss the money coming out into it and you can always adjust it. And we've had some people where they say, "Hey, I'm putting enough into my 401k, what else should I do?" And the first step is just really just setting up an account and you can start with as little as $25 a month, or $50 a month, but once that account's open, it's much easier just to say, hey, let me up this. So I would say the first step is look at the 401k and if you don't want to continue contributing to that, just open up an account somewhere with your advisor or on your own and just set it up monthly, and then you can always adjust it as needed.   Mark: Yeah. Or maybe a Roth, right? If she wants to look at a tax, something more tax efficient. So...   John: Yep.   Mark: That's another way to look at it. But yeah, I think if you automate it and you just put it in play, Rebecca, that should hopefully get you... You just, if you don't see it and you don't think about it and it's just happening in the background, then that's the beauty of it, so then you don't have to worry about necessarily getting motivated. But another way might be to sit down with a professional and start getting some advice. It doesn't matter really on your age, the sooner, the better. So if you got questions, need some help, reach out to John and Nick, go to the website, pfgprivatewealth.com. That's pfgprivatewealth.com.   Mark: Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on whatever platform you like to use, Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart, Stitcher, just type in Retirement Planning Redefined, or again, just find it all at their website, pfgprivatewealth.com. If you got questions, need some help, John and Nick are here for you.   Mark: Guys, thanks for hanging out. I appreciate it. Talking to me about the Great Resignation and we'll talk about it in a couple of weeks here, we'll see what's going on.   Nick: Thanks, Mark   John: Thanks.   Mark: I appreciate your time as always. Guys, thanks for hanging out with me. We'll see you next time here on the podcast, with John and Nick, this is Retirement Planning Redefined.

Manager Minute-brought to you by the VR Technical Assistance Center for Quality Management
VRTAC-QM Manager Minute: Get in and Get er' Done! How California Makes VR Work for Customers!

Manager Minute-brought to you by the VR Technical Assistance Center for Quality Management

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 11, 2022 38:18


Joining Carol Pankow in the VRTAC-QM Studio is Mark Erlichman, Deputy Director, Vocational Rehabilitation Employment Division, California Department of Rehabilitation. In this episode of Manager Minute, Mark covers the idea of Rapid Engagement. The idea behind it is to get customers in and move as quickly as possible to succeed. The California DORS Team has a variety of initiatives that they are working on. Mark and Carol will chat about a handful of those projects.   Learn about California's expedited enrollment process, resource navigators, and the sector-based service teams.   Listen Here   Full Transcript   You can find out more about VRTAC-QM on the web at: https://www.vrtac-qm.org/   Please stay up to date by following VRTAC-QM on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @VRTAC_QM   About VRTAC-QM Partnering with State Vocational Rehabilitation Agencies (SVRAs) to enhance service delivery and maximize outcomes through quality program and resource management. The purpose of the VRTAC-QM is to provide training and technical assistance that will enable State VR agency personnel to manage available resources, improve effective service delivery, and increase the number and quality of employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities. The VRTAC-QM provides TA and training in VR program and performance quality management, fiscal and resource quality management of the VR program, and general quality management of organizations. You can request technical assistance from the VRTAC-QM by contacting your TA Liaison directly, contacting any member of the Center you wish, or by filling out the information on our main websiteand clicking on submit. While on the main website, join our mailing list to receive updates on training and new activities occurring within the Center.     Full Transcript   VRTAC-QM Manager Minute: Get in and Get er' Done! Making VR Processes Work How California Makes VR Work for Customers!   Speaker1: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAAC for Quality Management, Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host Carol Pankow.   Carol: Welcome to the manager minute, joining me in the studio today is Mark Erlichman, Deputy Director, Vocational Rehabilitation Employment Division with California Department of Rehabilitation. So Mark, thanks for being here. How are things going in California?   Mark: Thank you so much for the invitation. Things in California are going about the same way they're going across the country. We're coping, we're managing, but I'm excited that we're continuing to look at improving. So in spite of the pandemic, we've been able to stay open and we've been able to sell, serve our consumers.   Carol: Glad to hear it. I'm glad to hear that. Well, today's topic covers this idea of rapid engagement, and the idea behind that is to get customers in and move as quickly as possible to succeed. You'd spoken to me a couple of weeks ago about the saying you like to go by. Our customers are and must feel more important than the process. And I hear a lot of Joe Xavier in that statement and eager to talk more about the variety of initiatives that you have in California. I believe that you have a list of over 20 projects that you and the California DOR team are working on, and so we're going to just chat about a handful of those today. So Marc, can you tell our listeners a little bit more about you, your career, the agency, like how many customers you're serving?   Mark: Sure, thank you. As you mentioned, I'm the deputy director and our employment division here. So we provide services to the general consumers when you have a blind field services division that worked with individual or blind, but we work with pretty much everybody else. And so in any given year, we probably serve somewhere between 80 to 90 thousand participants. So that includes our potentially eligible students with disabilities. So we have about thirteen hundred staff. We work out of about 80 dedicated offices and dozens of other locations, including one stops now called American Job Centers. So I started my career as a counselor way back in nineteen ninety four the dark ages pre-internet and it was right out of college, got my degree in rehabilitation counseling. But since I started, I've been very fortunate to move up within our department and I became a supervisor, a manager, then a district administrator. And then I joined the executive team in about 2012 as an assistant deputy director. And since 2019, I've been the deputy director and like I mentioned and responsible for VR Student Services and also our Business Services team.   Carol: I love to hear that I love it when people are kind of grown up through the system, and I think it's really cool. We've got that good opportunity working with Joe Xavier. I think a lot of him and his really awesome leadership style and his innovativeness.   Mark: Yeah, he's great. It's actually kind of fun working with him because typically I felt people try to be cautious and push back when you're trying to be innovative. Joe actually pushes us in the other direction. If we're not being innovative enough, we hear it.   Carol: Oh yeah, that's Joe for you. He pushes all of us, even if we don't work for him, makes the whole country better. I love it. So you told me when we were having our conversation before that consumers never more motivated in their life than the first moment that they engage us. So can you talk a little about your expedited enrollment process and what that entails and how that's impacted your data?   Mark: Sure, absolutely. And you're right. Our approach to customer service really starts from day one. When I was a counselor working with consumers, I realized, like you mentioned, that there never really are going to be more motivated than that very first time they make the decision to go back to work or return to work. They look us up or they find a department, they make an appointment, they make arrangements for transportation. They may need to make arrangements for childcare. They may take two or three buses to get to our office. Then they sit in the waiting room. They may sit through an orientation and then they're given a stack of forms to fill out and told to come back later. And they go through all of that just on faith alone because they don't know where there's actually anything in it for them. And we did ask that question is when is that individual ever going to be more motivated than at that point? So rather than putting them off by telling them we have 60 days to find you eligible, so don't expect to hear from us, what we do is we actually try to do everything we can that very first day. So we really look at what a consumer or an applicant wants. They really want answer to the three questions, which is how can you help me? Can you help me at all? And when can we get started? So what we decided to do, recognizing that we want to keep that momentum going is that we wanted to make an eligibility determination and start the process, keep that forward progress and keep their momentum going from the very beginning. So about three years ago, we began rolling out what we call expedited enrollment. This process supports our train rehabilitation counselors and they are all trained. All our counselors have master's degree. We use their professional judgment to make a determination about somebody's eligibility, and we started with the understanding of the federal regulations. Support this, then there's never, ever been a requirement for medical or school records to be put in the case file. There's never been a requirement for additional evaluations or sending somebody for testing. So what our counselors do is whenever appropriate, and it's almost quite frequently appropriate, our counselors make a determination based on a readily apparent decision. Ability that they have a disabling condition and through a skilled interview that they can benefit from services for us, one of the things we took a look at is what is the inherent risk in doing that? We found out that less than two percent of our consumers have ever found not eligible for services due to the severity of their disability. In those cases, we would have to do a trial work experience anyway. And the vast majority of individuals come in and are great historians about their disability. So we did a statewide rollout to all of our offices that included staff training and set the expectation that expedited enrollment or finding somebody eligible based on counselors observation is our standard method of determining eligibility and requesting lengthy records or ordering testing or further evaluations will always be the exception here. So we did statewide training. Like I mentioned, we included Joe and we conclude our directorate. Many of US executives went participate in the training, and we even had a staff attorney come out to assure staff that this is consistent with the regulations and nobody's going to get in trouble. We reinforce the message and continue to reinforce the message through a couple of things. We changed our services application form to reflect the enrollment process, recognizing the consumer is the best historians. So we asked them How can we help you? We generate reports of utilization and expedited enrollment, so we see how many individuals are found eligible using this process throughout the state. And we're also going to be updating our regulations to clearly and unmistakably reflect that this is the process that we use. As I mentioned, the counselor has always been able to make that eligible determination on relevant professional judgment. And if they have a readily apparent disability, we just help define that. So how are we doing? You asked.   Carol: I did ask, How's that going with the data?   Mark: All right. So even though cultural change and changing old habits is really difficult, we are actually in that as of the end of December of 2021. So as of this last December, about two thirds of all of our applicants are being determined eligible for services using expedited enrollment, and we're defining that as being found eligible within five days of application.   Carol: Wow!   Mark: In fact, 40 percent of the consumers that apply for services in December were found eligible on the actual same day of application. So they're actually everything was put into the system, including their eligibility determination. And for us,   Carol: that's fantastic!   Mark: Again, from where we were to having two out of three consumers are found eligible within the first five days is tremendous and we did look at the data. I do believe that that's fantastic. But for me, that really isn't enough because a consumer doesn't really care about eligibility determination. That's our process. And like we mentioned, the person should always be more important than the process. It really is about how quickly can we get somebody from interest to services? And so we've also been keeping track of planned timelines, how quickly somebody gets from eligibility to plan, and we've seen a reduction in that as well. So not only people have been found eligible more quickly, but their plans are also implemented much more quickly as well.   Carol: Well, I want to underscore what you're saying because I know a lot of agencies are really struggling with this area. There's a lot of old practices and I remember it even being at Minnesota Blind and people were requesting this medical report and all of that. I'm like, Listen, like you are a trained professional rehabilitation counselor. You can see this impairment as individuals coming in the door. You're going through that skilled interview, you're being able to assess that. We're able to benefit them. Like, why are we running people through these other paces? Because I think sometimes in VR, we're almost exhausting. Like it's exhausting for the customer, right?   Mark: And I don't think any one of us would want to go through the process that we put our consumers through. To me, that's always the best test of where you need to go. Would you accept that for yourself or a family member?   Carol: Absolutely. So how staff have they embraced this? Like, are people really like they're seeing what a change this has made?   Mark: I mean, universally, no. But the vast maj ority of our staff are seeing this as a tremendous boon to their jobs. I mean, they really like making that consumer feel like they're the most important person that they're working with. And really those individuals that are hesitant in this counselor and sometimes have been hesitant. It's been really around habit and it's been around fear. And so as we address those, we're seeing more and more people embrace this, and we did learn some lessons from the very beginning. We thought that everybody would be excited. And after a while when we recognize that there are some counselors that weren't, we went back through and generate a report. Change your application to really got communicated clearly that it's the expectation so people should feel comfortable.   Carol: That's excellent. And I feel like it's putting back kind of that professionalism into VR that counselors may have felt was stripped away from some of the more case management aspects of WIOA and all the data entry and all of that. It's like, this is a classic example of using your skills and what you learned in your graduate degree and making something awesome happening and making such a connection with that customer right off the get go.   Mark: Absolutely. And would also really help was communicating to the counselors that we're trusting your professional judgment and the operative word here is trust, and you're not sure that you can still request. Records, you can't still work with the consumer and do further evaluations. You don't have to and you shouldn't have to. But once councilors understood that it's their judgment and so for us, two out of three is great. I'm looking for more than that. We don't know what the exact right percentage is, but we do know that whenever possible, that momentum that we talked about, that momentum should continue for all of our consumers.   Carol: That's awesome. I love it. So let's shift a little bit to talk about another project you have cooking with your councilors, and that's the councilors getting in and working immediately with those customers at risk of losing their job or needing to retain their employment. So what does that look like? Are you seeing some success with this?   Mark: A great question, actually. I think what you're referring to is what we call our Rapid Engagement. And so I think that's kind of the theme of this, and we just try to find a catchy name for it. But in simple words, it's kind of keeping with Jo's message and Jo's message to us and we've ever heard, and it's been very, very clear that we need to meet our participants where they are. It doesn't matter where we are, we need to meet them where they are. And we're not just talking about physically because that's important too, but we're really are talking about where they are in their lives and in their job search and or in their employment. And so recognizing that not all applicants are at the same place, some could be employed right now. Others may have been unemployed for a long period of time, but they're all in a different place. We wanted to stop making everybody go through the same linear sequential process, which is again, process shouldn't Trump person. And so our pilot involves assigning a specialist counselor within a district to what we call a Rapid Engagement Caseload. So their primary responsibility is to assist individuals that will meet at least one of the following criteria. There were a former QR consumer. We still have available that information from their former case, so we're not starting over or is a referral from a public or private organization that serves individuals with disabilities like a kind of behavioral health program or a rehabilitation hospital or an agency serving the Blind or the Deaf and Visually Impaired? Clearly, they've already been determined that they have a disability or they have a readily apparent disability, which is that we have then go through Expedited Enrollment. So it's one of those conditions, and they either require assistance in regaining employment because they just recently lost their job due to a reduction in work hours or to a layoff. They require some type of job retention services because their personal conditions have changed or their employment conditions have changed. They may have an exacerbation or they may have gotten promoted, or the job duties may have changed and they need some assistance or that there require some services from us to promote within the same business. And so they clearly are eligible for services and they need services immediately. Why wouldn't we treat them a little differently and really expedite their services? And so what the counselor does is using Expedited Enrollment, they are found eligible and typically at that same time, they write the plan because what do you really need to know if somebody wants to keep their job? There's not a lot of planning involved. The effort in the it should be OK, what services do you need? But you're not doing job search. You're not doing research into the occupation. Where you really are doing is you're helping somebody, as you know, if you need to keep your job, you probably can't wait two weeks, three weeks or three months.   Carol: Right. Process shouldn't Trump, person? I love that. I just have to say that statement.   Mark: Absolutely.   Carol: That's awesome.   Mark: And the consumers have been extremely grateful. I mean, the feedback that we've gotten from the counselors and the notes and the thanks not just from our participants, but some of the employers have reached out as well that to thank us for how should I put it in a nice enough way because I'm government, we didn't act like government,   Carol: Which should be the goal of all we are. We don't want to be that bureaucratic government, even though we're in the government. Very cool. So are you seeing some good success from that then with people as far as your numbers, then with helping individuals to retain employment or regain employment, is that playing out in your data?   Mark: Well, we're not seeing anybody drop out pre-plan, which is always fun because it's always so discouraging when you see somebody who comes out to request for services and then before anything even gets started, they change their mind or they go away. So we don't see that for somebody goes online right away. And we're not seeing people drop out of their plans due to lack of contact or which is typically the most common. And so the success rate. And again, this is relatively new, relatively new pilot. So I can't say, look, we have a 65 or 85 percent success rate, which is I'm guessing that's where we're going to end up because of what we're seeing. But what we're seeing is the consumers are much more engaged and the services are getting at the consumer much more rapidly. So we're hopeful. And from what we're seeing, this isn't going to be a pilot for long.   Carol: Well, that's half the battle. I mean, I think the whole country is struggling with this because artists say they will hold up their statistics in a fall or spring CSAVR conference. And you're like, Oh my gosh, you know, all the people exiting before playing and people closing because you can't find them unable to locate and all of that. And so how do you get at this piece? I think there's going to be states definitely clamoring for your number later to try to talk to you about what you're doing because I know I've talked to many people and they're really. Struggling around this area,   Mark: And we continue to as well, that's where we're trying, and we don't expect that out of the 20 plus efforts that we're trying to modernize, that they're all going to work and I hope they don't because if they all work, then we're not trying hard enough and we're not being creative enough and we're not pushing the envelope. We're hoping that some of these do stick for us. It's important to keep data and to track these. In the past, we would try these efforts and never ask the question, is it working? And we're trying to approach these projects totally differently. They all have project charters, they all have evaluation plans, and the expectation is that we do more of what's working and stop doing things that aren't.   Carol: I love that. I love that. I think that's the message right there. Underscore VR, end of our conversation. Listen to Marc, let's do this. I like that you guys are trying a lot of things. I think sometimes people are really afraid and they've been stuck. You get stuck in patterns of doing things. It's taken that step back and taking a look and going, Why are we doing it that way? It is not working. It's not working out. So that's really cool. I know you have another newer pilot, you have a million of them, but this one with some positions that you added to your five districts, I think you called them Resource Navigators as part of a response team. So how does that pilot work?   Mark: We're calling it our Community Resource Navigator position, and we've got 14 districts in the state, and so we're piloting in 5 of them. And these are 5 districts that were particularly hit hard by 1 of our many or a couple of our our many disasters in California, particularly some of the fire impacted counties. And so these Community Resource Navigators and gauge applicants can eligible participants really early on the process. And again, that early engagement, we may not be able to do a Rapid Engagement in terms of providing them plan services because there's still some planning that needs to occur. For us, it's important for the consumers to continue that momentum. And so when our staffing engage with our applicants and our or eligible consumers, the plan is to help them gain the support and assistance that they may need down the road. It's not just telling them, here you need to go. Apply for financial aid if you want to go to school or here's the county welfare program. Or here's the Medicaid office apply for health care services or here in Snap or Food or Nutrition Assistance Program. These are the things you may benefit from. These are the supports that we think would help you matriculate into your employment program. There's no reason to wait to apply for them. And by the way, we're not just referring you there. The Sierra has actually walked the individual through and help them with the application process, and so they get to know your local welfare staff. They get to know the nutrition, the food stamp. When we call our peer the Snap program and they get to know the housing authority staff and they work with our consumers or applicants to help them apply for those services, they'll connect them with Independent Living Center. And so the idea is if somebody is coming to us because they absolutely have immediate needs and we know the hierarchy of needs, you know, if you don't have shelter or food, employment seems really far off. So we have some consumers that'll come. We'll help them. They'll actually get get on some financial assistance, then we'll get some housing assistance and they'll say, OK, let me stabilize and I'll come back so they don't start a plan, then decide that they're not ready for employment. They get the support they need right away. And those individuals that continue with us will have the support and the wraparound supports. And really, it really is what we call the application that whole person approach, which is it's not just about employment, it's about the whole person. So when we're talking about evaluation for us, we're evaluating the crowds by the number of individuals that are closed unsuccessfully. We want to see a reduction of applicants that go through the process just to drop out. And we are we're seeing, I think for us started this about a year and a half ago. So we're starting to see some of the first evaluations. And what we're seeing is there is a dramatic reduction in the number of individuals that were closed out successfully that received the CRN services because they didn't drop out because, well, they didn't have a place to stay. They didn't drop out because they had an exacerbation to their health and they became dependent on family support again and they connected them in the living services. So we are seeing that and I think we're optimistic that that's one of these things that we're talking about and say, Yeah, we'll do more of that.   Carol: I think that's going to be exciting. I think when you look longitudinally at that data and you go, you take it out now you're out a year and a half, you start taking that data out two and a half, three, four, five years. I think you're probably going to see some probably amazing results because like you say, the person doesn't have food. It's hard to worry about. Like, I'm going to get this job, but I don't even have anything to eat and I'm starving, and I have to go to an interview and try to be on my best foot. Or I didn't have a place to wash my clothes or I couldn't take a shower or do any of that. It's getting back to that. Yeah, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, like you said, very important. That is super interesting. You also have staff that are embedded in business. I thought this was really cool and you were talking about some staff embedded within an HR department. Can you tell me a little more about that?   Mark: Absolutely. Recognizing that business is a customer of our system, again, that was have been, but it's really emphasized through WIOA. We reached out to employers and said, OK, ask them, what do you need? So we. And one of the things that came back is that they wanted our assistance, they wanted to ask questions, but they wanted a single point of contact because they don't have to call a new person every day. They don't want to hear from multiple people reaching out to them. So we said, Great, will for this business, here's a single point of contact, and that's where we're talking as we were brainstorming. One of my managers pointed out saying, Well, we really are looking at more outstations and we really are looking at more of a mobile workforce and this is pre-COVID. So we actually were meeting people in person. And so the single point of contact and approach that employers saying, would you be interested in having a person come out and spend time with you? And they said, Yeah, that would be great. I mean, would you be willing to give them some office space and say, yes, we would be happy to do that and give her some office space in their HR shop. And this is a really, really very large employer. It's a military contractor. They've got thousands of employees in their facility in that county. And for us, that's ample opportunity to kind of make a difference there so that started with two days a month of office hours. And it's kind of quiet start because nobody knew she was there. And then when she introduced herself, they have a disability affinity group.So she started attending that and talking about rehab and rehab services. And so their employees with disabilities or family members of employees with disabilities became informed about what we did and why we were there. Managers who had issues or questions about disability or accommodations, they would have started approaching her. And so in the first 3 months after about the first 6 months, then COVID hit and then now we've been providing that same support virtually like the rest of the world. But in the first 3 or 4 months, we got six referrals from that employer. There are other self-referral or they're referred by one of their managers. All 6 were found eligible. Developed 5 plans within just within a few days of application because we just met them there at the employment side there, right and the 6th applicant that we didn't write a plan for or we worked on a plan, but we didn't actually implement. The plan was because their supervisor and the employee said, Oh, we can do that. We don't need you. We don't need your help. Thank you for the information. And they went ahead and provided the accommodation as the employee and that employee didn't need our services and the other 5 were serving. And really, we offered them services, job retention, job promotion, but really marketed in two ways. One, we can help them with their hiring needs because this counselor can also set up hiring events, and we want to help your employees remain productive for you as the employer. And so they really appreciated that.   Carol: Everybody's looking for that. I mean, they're looking at ways to retain their employees. And if they're struggling, you may love that where your counselor is able to go in and maybe they're struggling, they don't know the right thing to do. And even though they might have like a disability specialist on staff, sometimes I find those folks really aren't, you know, the people that are kind of charged with that role. So you're bringing this other lens in and really helping support those individuals so they can keep their employment. That is excellent, really awesome.   Mark: You're totally right because we found that most of the time where their disability expert is typically somebody who is a diversity person, and so they've got a wide range of responsibilities. And for us, we like our niche. We are really good with disability and they don't have to be experts because they have access to that expert and really become a really good partnership. In fact, that employer has several other sites in California, and they're asking for the same. There was another really large employer in the Southern California area that we started talking with right before the pandemic, that we have a follow up meeting later this spring to do that as well and were literally looking at having somebody there every week.   Carol: That is super cool. I bet that has to be really rewarding for that counselor again, looking at ways of developing work differently so the counselors they feel engaged in and excited about their work and want to keep working for VR and not leaving us for the VA or whatever else. But that's gotta be super Rewarding.   Mark: And absolutely anybody is thinking of this for us. Just bringing in the employer was really enthusiastic and we actually had to sign non-disclosure because the military contractor, there's a background check. But just offering that free, you know, free service to them and free support to them, they're extremely grateful. And if you want to change an employer's culture, make it really easy for them to hire, promote and employ and recruit individuals with disabilities because that's what changes it isn't wanting to be more disability accessible and more disability friendly. It's actually having the experience and having the employees that reflect the world for us, the rest of the state.   Carol: Yeah, you're spot on. I know when I talked to joe on a previous podcast, I love Joe because he was telling me the microscope and the telescope, you know, be looking down and looking ahead. But he mentioned something really cool that you guys were looking at Sector Based Service teams. So how do we learn a little more about that and how that works? Do tell.   Mark: Really excited about this. We have this concept. We've started working on identifying how we would roll something like this out, and we actually applied for one of the Disability Innovation Fund grants and we got it this year. And so we have a five year grant. And so this allows us to not just take the concept we wanted to try out, but actually create a real research study and bring technical assistance and tools to bear on to see how this may impact really our. And our consumer success, the grant name is the Pathways to Success program, but it is that Sector Based strategy.   Carol: Are you doing it alone or are you in a collaborative with another state?   Mark: Oh, we're doing it on our own.   Carol:  Ok.   Mark: We figured we had ample consumers to work with in California.   Carol: Yeah, that's awesome.   Mark: And we started laying the foundation because we started working on the process. But having the ability to have this a set aside with a study and web have the university partner with San Diego State University and we have other partners as well. We got 15 letters of support across the state, including from our labor agency and our workforce partners, so we're really excited about that. The way I explain the sector based strategy is this typically a consumer is served by somebody from our program based on their proximity. So it's a consumer zip code that typically dictates who they're working with and sometimes through specialization. So you may have a counselor for the deaf, or you may have a counselor that works with supported employment caseload, but typically that's it. If I'm your consumer is because you're my zip code or because you're specializing in the school caseload. And so I remember working as a counselor and I had a transition aide, youth caseload of some migrant farm workers, justice involved individuals and those in support employment. So I had a variety of consumers in my zip code. So I was expected to be a disability expert. So, you know, went to school, you know, got that and learned that the consumer is the best expert in their disability. So, you know, so I didn't have to be an expert in every disability, but it was also my job to help the consumer prepare for employment, and I needed to then know about all these occupations. So at one time, I think I had a butcher, a teacher, a janitor, a software technician, a security guard, dental hygienist and a bank teller. And I think maybe even a line cook. Those are all plans that I had. And so I was expected as a brand new counselor to figure out how a cook gets a job and how a teacher gets a job, or what does a dental hygienist have to go through to get a job? And what is the security guard need? And I did it every time we had to do research, and I was never, never became an expert in anything. I became a generalist but never became an expert. And so writing a really, really good IPE with someone really is a challenge. And so we said, what have we have rather than the proximity? Because that's not really that important, particularly not nowadays, because you can work with people remotely and that's part of our sector based program.   Carol: Absolutely.   Mark: So we said, OK, what if we look at what are the high wage, high demand sectors in California? There were employers are clamoring for employees and why don't we prepare them a workforce by understanding exactly what they need, developing relationship with the sector employers and then having everybody that is interested in those specific occupations work for that same counselor. And so since we can use technology that can be located anywhere in the state because, for example, we have a health care specialist who's working with consumers across the state and helping guide them through how the Irvine Medical Center hires or how Kaiser Permanente hires. But actually doing it because they know somebody for Kaiser. They know somebody at Irvine Medical Center because they've told them this is how we hire. This is how if you want to get in the door, this is the credentialing or this is the training that you need. And here are some programs. So they become experts. So this pilot or this actually this grant now, so we have five specific sectors. One is health care, advanced manufacturing and green energy with information technology and communications and with biotechnology. Those are high demand, high wage sectors in California, and we have one specialist counselor that works with each of those sectors. We call our sector the business consultants that actually work with the employers and develop paid work experience. And we wrote in a component that almost everybody, if they don't have experience in the field already, they're actually all going to get paid work experience in their field. And the employers are willing and we set aside funds to do that because there's nothing better than try it before you buy it on both ends because we know how great our consumers are. We want our employers to find that out as well.   Carol: I love that. I love that. So that's only probably been going a few months now.   Mark: This summer, we put a framework together. We got the grant started October one. We're actually working on our contracts for some technical assistance because we want these jobs to be available to everybody, regardless of disability. So we're working with some specialists that are going to provide technical assistance and training to work with individuals on the spectrum and also individuals with intellectual disabilities. Because we believe skilled manufacturing is skill. I mean, that high wage here in California, we want to make sure that everybody has that opportunity. And it was really interesting. Even though it's been a few years, a few months, we're already seeing quite a few exciting things happen. They've really built up their reputation with the employer. So we're actually seeing some of the employers referring people to us to prepare them for that employer so they know somebody. And so one example is there's actually we actually got a consumer who wanted to go to medical school but didn't have the resources she was working. And so she going have the resources to go to medical school. She heard about us and actually, it's really fun because the question we're getting now is we understand that you're looking for people to work in health care or a nurse and not have a disability. I want to go to work. I hear you're preparing people for these types of jobs. And so when that consumer or that, well, now she's a consumer. But when she applied to us, she didn't really know about it, except. For we prepare people to get into the medical field. She has a significant disability, so clearly right in our wheelhouse, and we wanted to work with her, so we actually found her eligible virtually. They have never physically met. They met virtually through Zoom. The counselor worked with the consumer and actually wrote a plan for a doctor. And so she's actually a medical school now. She wrote a really nice note to her accounts. They're saying for the first time, she actually feels like she belongs somewhere.   Carol: Oh man.   Mark: I got chills because that's exactly what we want. We want people to feel like they belong.   Carol: And you're talking professions, too, that are not food, filth and flowers. You know, it's you're talking above that and really family sustaining wages careers. That's what VR is all about.   Mark: I can't think of a more fantastic role model if going to a physician with a significant disability and recognizing yourself in that physician because, well, I've been going to doctors for a long, long time and I've never really seen somebody who reflected the people that I work with. Absolutely. That's really cool. This cancer, her experience now she can work with anybody in the state, is interested in medical school, nursing a school or other careers in the health care sector. Because not only does she know about it, she also has the connections now. And one thing that's really cool about this when we talk about sector based, if you align all these consumers by their vocational goal in their sector, there's another thing you can do that's kind of fun. And for us, part of the project part of the grant is we're developing some electronic tools, and one of them is a web based online learning management system where the consumers that are, you know, let's say, health care consumers, they're all we've got twenty five individuals looking for nursing jobs and they're nursing. They can actually sign up, become a cohort and like a classroom, and the counselor can share information and job leads with them. But they can also speak with each other and kind of create their own network because we know that's how people get jobs. They can voluntarily put in their own name and communicate to the degree that they want. They can share resources, they can share their experiences and hopefully they build their own network and we're going to allow them to continue to be on that forever. Even though a case is closed. If you're somebody who worked through that and you're a nurse, maybe you can be a mentor. Maybe you can be a reference, maybe you can be a resource, or maybe some day, maybe an employer, one of the consumers that is going through that process. So we're going to roll that out this year. We're going to try that as well as some other things, and we have five years to try this out. We're hoping that over the five years that we're going to serve these 13, at least 13 other individuals that we're going to see if this makes a difference and we really believe it will.   Carol: I know we'll see you at a CSAVR conference down the road talking about all of the outcomes from this very cool project. I do want to get to one other thing because I know you have like maybe 14 more, but I wanted to talk about how you are opening up your operations to serve customers seven days a week and you're looking at outside of kind of the normal eight to four or nine to five type of hours. Tell me a little bit about that.   Mark: Yeah, thank you. And now it's great because we're looking at some of our future initiatives and we've actually started having the conversations and looking into and putting together the proposal to roll this out. And really, this is just one of our continuing initiatives to improve our customers experience with us. And so since we have now through October, we had this force evolution where the world of work has changed and we have technology and we have a great percentage of our staff works at least part time from home. For us, there's no reason to believe that that concept won't allow us to do something else. And even though we are huge state and we've got hundreds of miles in each direction where consumers could live and interact with our staff, the ability to work virtually allows us then to cover the whole state for somebody that could be located in the middle of the state or in the north part of the state. And so currently we're serving participants predominantly between eight and five p.m. a Monday through Friday. Sometimes, you know, there's some wiggle room. We have some offices may start at seven or seven thirty, but typically it's between eight to five. But we know that people who are in school or they're working, that's probably at the same time as they're in school or working. And so it's really hard to connect. And we also know that emergencies, they don't keep an eight to five schedule either. And so using technology and recognizing that people are able to work from home, they can text, they can use FaceTime and Zoom. We want to expand the availability. So we're putting out the option for our staff, for counselors and for our support staff to change their schedules, to work Saturday and take a weekday off so they can work Tuesday through Saturday, or they can work Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. So for us to start with opening Saturday and having five or six or seven, depending on utilization, we'll figure out what the right number of staff are. And through our website and through what we're building our portal out and through our portal or through our website. Anybody who has a need or a question can actually connect with a counselor and actually get services on Saturdays as well. And so we're going to take a look at that Saturday in terms of getting the technology and the systems to work and see what the utilization is. Plan is, whether it's seven or seven thirty in the morning to seven o'clock in the evenings, and again our staff would be able to work from home. The idea, again, is that if somebody needs something that they should be able to get a hold of somebody, an actual person next month. Actually, we're rolling out our consumer. Payment card is instead of having checks or other processes to get services to consumers, they'll actually going to have their debit card that we issue them. And the way we set it up is that upon ordering it, we can refill that card within 30 minutes of us requesting it from our vendor that if somebody needs books, supplies transportation or they're starting to work on Saturday and they need their work boots, or they need to get something for a work uniform that they can contact us, the counselor, like our counselor of the day, would during the regular week would be able to do the authorization, work with our office technician and then sponsor the card so they can get services on Saturday as well. And the goal for us really is and all these efforts is to both modernize and to improve our customers experience with us because we need to meet them where they are. And this is another one of examples of where we're trying to do that.   Carol: Well, I'm sure many of the things that you talked about today are going to pique some of our listeners interest. So I just wondering what is the best way for someone to get a hold of you if they just want to get a little bit more information about one or more of the things that you've mentioned today?   Mark: I'd be happy to connect with anybody. I mean, we started meeting with several other states, both we're taking information from them and we're sharing with them about some of our initiatives. If anybody else has any questions, probably the best way is, you know, just shoot me an email and I'll be happy to respond. And likely I will connect you with the experts in this because I'm talking like, I'm doing all this hard work is really my team and my team is phenomenal, and I connect with the experts and people are actually living this and be happy to participate as well. Anything I can do and any information I can provide or answer any questions. Really happy to do that. And we recognize that even though we're California, we're all one family. So across the country, we share resource information and we hope successes with all our other programs.   Carol: I've always appreciated that about California. You guys have always been really willing. I know I reached out many times in my time when I was Minnesota. I would reach out for different ideas and just to get more information. And I've appreciated that you guys have been super open and really responsive because I feel like when we lift each other up like it lifts up the whole country. So can you give us your email address?   Mark: Yeah. So it's mark m A r k period Erlichman e r l i c h man at D as in dog o r C A dot Gov.   Carol: Well, I appreciate that Mark. I really appreciate you spending time with me today. I know you're super busy, so thanks for being on the show. I'm definitely going to check back to see how some of these new initiatives are going down the road. You'll have more metrics and fun things to share, so I hope you have a great day.   Mark: Really appreciate it. Thank you. And have a good  day.   Speaker1: Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time, brought to you by the VRtAC for Quality Management, catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening!

You're Doing it Wrong with Mark Henderson Leary
The AND Asset - Caleb Guilliams

You're Doing it Wrong with Mark Henderson Leary

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 24, 2021 69:58


Mark brings Caleb Guilliams on to deconstruct what has become the “norms” of wealth building. Purpose has a lot to do with it, especially when it comes to the notion of retirement.Caleb is one of the most compelling (and youngest) speakers in the wealth discussion world today. He is also the author of “The AND Asset”. His book shows how you can earn uninterrupted compound interest for the rest of your life and utilize your capital for other things.You can earn uninterrupted compound interest and buy your vehicles, and buy real estate, and trade stocks, and invest in private placements, and start a business, and engage in any profitable activity that you can dream of!Buy it on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Asset-Secret-Save-Your-Money/dp/17327249032:50 CALEB: We assume we know what wealth is5:10 MARK: All conversations lead to purpose6:25 CALEB: “I want to make over $1 Million per year.” WHY??7:45 CALEB: Time is your true wealth, don't devalue it9:15 MARK: Looking out for borrowed or stolen goals12:00 CALEB: The value of your life is measured by how much of it you've given away15:15 MARK: What prevents you from killing yourself right now?22:00 CALEB: Money can only do two things...29:10 MARK: How does giving play a role in an intentional life?35:55 CALEB: A majority of business owners don't know their numbers38:50 MARK: You are no more identified with your business than you are with your kids39:45 CALEB: Unpacking “The AND Asset”50:10 CALEB: Working with a mutual company54:00 CALEB: Retirement = taken out of service“Most Entrepreneurs know their true numbers.”GET IN TOUCH:https://calebguilliams.com/MARK LEARY:www.linkedin.com/in/markhlearywww.leary.ccProduction credit:Engineering / Post-Production: Jim McCarthyArt / Design: Immanuel Ahiable

Screaming in the Cloud
The Mayor of Wholesome Twitter with Mark Thompson

Screaming in the Cloud

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 28, 2021 41:18


About MarkMark loves to teach and code.He is an award winning university instructor and engineer. He comes with a passion for creating meaningful learning experiences. With over a decade of developing solutions across the tech stack, speaking at conferences and mentoring developers he is excited to continue to make an impact in tech. Lately, Mark has been spending time as a Developer Relations Engineer on the Angular Team.Links:Twitter: https://twitter.com/marktechson TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Vultr. Spelled V-U-L-T-R because they're all about helping save money, including on things like, you know, vowels. So, what they do is they are a cloud provider that provides surprisingly high performance cloud compute at a price that—while sure they claim its better than AWS pricing—and when they say that they mean it is less money. Sure, I don't dispute that but what I find interesting is that it's predictable. They tell you in advance on a monthly basis what it's going to going to cost. They have a bunch of advanced networking features. They have nineteen global locations and scale things elastically. Not to be confused with openly, because apparently elastic and open can mean the same thing sometimes. They have had over a million users. Deployments take less that sixty seconds across twelve pre-selected operating systems. Or, if you're one of those nutters like me, you can bring your own ISO and install basically any operating system you want. Starting with pricing as low as $2.50 a month for Vultr cloud compute they have plans for developers and businesses of all sizes, except maybe Amazon, who stubbornly insists on having something to scale all on their own. Try Vultr today for free by visiting: vultr.com/screaming, and you'll receive a $100 in credit. Thats v-u-l-t-r.com slash screaming.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by something new. Cloud Academy is a training platform built on two primary goals. Having the highest quality content in tech and cloud skills, and building a good community the is rich and full of IT and engineering professionals. You wouldn't think those things go together, but sometimes they do. Its both useful for individuals and large enterprises, but here's what makes it new. I don't use that term lightly. Cloud Academy invites you to showcase just how good your AWS skills are. For the next four weeks you'll have a chance to prove yourself. Compete in four unique lab challenges, where they'll be awarding more than $2000 in cash and prizes. I'm not kidding, first place is a thousand bucks. Pre-register for the first challenge now, one that I picked out myself on Amazon SNS image resizing, by visiting cloudacademy.com/corey. C-O-R-E-Y. That's cloudacademy.com/corey. We're gonna have some fun with this one!Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. Anyone who has the misfortune to follow me on Twitter is fairly well aware that I am many things: I'm loud, obnoxious, but snarky is most commonly the term applied to me. I've often wondered, what does the exact opposite of someone who is unrelentingly negative about things in cloud look like? I'm here to answer that question is lightness and happiness and friendliness on Twitter, personified. His Twitter name is @marktechson. My guest today is Mark Thompson, developer relations engineer at Google. Mark, thank you for joining me.Mark: Oh, I'm so happy to be here. I really appreciate you inviting me. Thanks.Corey: Oh, by all means. I'm glad we're doing these recordings remotely because I strongly suspect, just based upon the joy and the happiness and the uplifting aspects of what it is that you espouse online that if we ever shook hands, we'd explode as we mutually annihilate each other like matter and antimatter combining.Mark: Feels right. [laugh].Corey: So, let's start with the day job; seems like the easy direction to go in. You're a developer relations engineer. Now, I've heard of developer advocates, I've heard of the DevRel term, a lot of them get very upset when I refer to them as ‘devrelopers', but that's the game that we play with language. What is the developer relations engineer?Mark: So, I describe my job this way: I like to help external communities with our products. I work on the Angular team, so I like to help our external communities but then I also like to work with our internal team to help improve our product. So, I see it as helping as a platform, as a developer relations engineer. But the engineer part is, I think, is important here because, at Google, we still do coding and we still write things; I'm going to contribute to the Angular platform itself versus just only giving talks or only writing blog posts to creating content, they still want us to do things like solve problems with the platform as well.Corey: So, this is where my complete and abject lack of understanding of the JavaScript ecosystem enters the conversation. Let's be clear here, first let me check my assumptions. Angular is a JavaScript framework, correct?Mark: Technically a TypeScript framework, but you could say JavaScript.Corey: Cool. Okay, again, this is not me setting you up for a joke or anything like that. I try to keep my snark to Twitter, not podcast because that tends to turn an awful lot into me berating people, which I try to reserve for those who really have earned it; they generally have the word chief somewhere in their job title. So, I'm familiar with sort of an evolution of the startups that I worked at where Backbone was all the rage, followed by, “Oh, you should never use Backbone. You should be using Angular instead.”And then I sort of—like, that was the big argument the last time I worked in an environment like that. And then I see things like View and React and several other things. At some point, it seems like, pick a random name out of the air; if it's not going to be a framework, it's going to be a Pokemon. What is the distinguishing characteristic or characteristics of Angular?Mark: I like to describe Angular to people is that the value-add is going to be some really incredible developer ergonomics. And when I say that I'm thinking about the tooling. So, we put a lot of work into making sure that the tooling is really strong for developers, where you can jump in, you can get started and be productive. Then I think about scale, and how your application runs at scale, and how it works at scale for your teams. So, scale becomes a big part of the story that I tell, as well, for Angular.Corey: You spend an awful lot of time telling stories about Angular. I'm assuming most of them are true because people don't usually knowingly last very long in this industry when they just get up on stage and tell lies, other than, “This is how we do it in our company,” which is the aspirational conference-ware that we all wish we ran. You're also, according to your bio, which of course, is always in the [show notes 00:04:16], you're an award-winning university instructor. Now, award-winning—great. For someone who struggled mightily in academia, I don't know much about that world. What is it that you teach? How does being a university instructor work? I imagine it's not like most other jobs where you wind up showing up, solving algorithms on a whiteboard, and they say, “Great, can you start tomorrow?”Mark: Sure. So, when I was teaching at university, what I was teaching was mostly coding bootcamps. So, some universities have coding bootcamps that they run themselves. And so I was a part of some instructional teams that work in the university. And that's how I won the Teaching Excellence Award. So, the award that I won actually was the Distinguished Teaching Excellence Award, based on my performance at work when I was teaching at university.Corey: I want to be clear here, it's almost enough to make someone question whether you really were involved there because the first university, according to your background that you worked on was Northwestern, but then it was through the Harvard Extension School, and I was under the impression that doing anything involving Harvard was the exact opposite of an NDA, where you're contractually bound to mention that, “Oh, I was involved with Harvard in the following way,” at least three times at any given conversation. Can you tell I spent a lot of time dealing with Harvard grads?Mark: [laugh]. Yeah, Harvard is weird like that, where people who've worked there or gone there, it comes up as a first thing. But I'll tell the story about it if someone asks me, but I just like to talk about univer—that's why I say ‘university,' right? I don't say, “Oh, I won an award at Northwestern.” I just say, “University award-winning instructor.”The reason I say even the ‘award-winning', that part is important for credibility, specifically. It's like, hey, if I said I'm going to teach you something, I want you to know that you're in really good hands, and that I'm really going to do my best to help you. That's why I mention that a lot.Corey: I'll take that even one step further, and please don't take this as in any way me casting aspersions on some of your colleagues, but very often working at Google has felt an awful lot like that in some respects. I've never seen you do it. You've never had to establish your bona fides in a conversation that I've seen by saying, “Well, at Google this is how we do it.” Because that's a logical fallacy of appeal to authority in many respects. Yeah, I'm sure you do a lot of things at Google at a multinational trillion-dollar company that if I'm founding a four-person startup called Twitter for Pets might not necessarily be the same constraints that I'm faced with.I'm keenly appreciative folks who recognize that distinction and don't try and turn it into something else. We see it with founders, too, “Oh, we're a small scrappy startup and our founders used to work at Google.” And it's, “Hmm, I'm wondering if the corporate culture at a small startup might be slightly different these days.” I get it. It does resonate and it carries weight. I just wonder if that's one of those unexamined things that maybe it's time to dive into a bit more.Mark: Hmm. So, what's funny about that is—so people will ask me, what do I do? And it really depends on context. And I'll usually say, “Oh, I work for a company on the West Coast,” or, “For a tech company on the West Coast.” I'll just say that first.Because what I really want to do is turn the conversation back to the person I'm talking to, so here's where that unrelenting positivity kind of comes in because I'm looking at ways, how can I help boost you up? So first, I want to hear more about you. So, I'll kind of like—I won't shrink myself, but I'll just be kind of vague about things so I could hear more about you so we're not focused on me. In this case, I guess we are because I'm the guest, but in a normal conversation, that's what I would try to do.Corey: So, we've talked about JavaScript a little bit. We've talked about university a smidgen. Now, let me complete the trifecta of things that I know absolutely nothing about, specifically positivity on Twitter. You have been described to me as the mayor of wholesome Twitter. What is that about?Mark: All right, so let me be really upfront about this. This is not about toxic positivity. We got to get that out in the open first, before I say anything else because I think that people can hear that and start to immediately think, “Oh, this guy is just, you know, toxic positivity where no matter what's happening, he's going to be happy.” That is not the same thing. That is not the same thing at all.So, here's what I think is really interesting. Online, and as you know, as a person on Twitter, there's so many people out there doing damage and saying hurtful things. And I'm not talking about responding to someone who's being hurtful by being hurtful. I mean the people who are constantly harassing women online, or our non-binary friends, people who are constantly calling into question somebody's credibility because of, oh, they went to a coding bootcamp or they came from self-taught. All these types of ways to be really just harmful on Twitter.I wanted to start adding some other perspective of the positivity side of just being focused on value-add in our interactions. Can I craft this narrative, this world, where when we meet, we're both better off because of it, right? You feel good, I feel good, and we had a really good time. If we meet and you're having a bad time, at least you know that I care about you. I didn't fix you. I didn't, like, remove the issue, but you know that somebody cares about you. So, that's what I think wholesome positivity comes into play is because I want to be that force online. Because we already have plenty of the other side.Corey: It's easy for folks who are casual observers of my Twitter nonsense to figure, “Oh, he's snarky and he's being clever and witty and making fun of big companies”—which I do–And they tend to shorthand that sometimes to, “Oh, great. He's going to start dunking on people, too.” And I try mightily to avoid that it's punch up, never down.Mark: Mm-hm.Corey: I understand there's a school of thought that you should never be punching at all, which I get. I'm broken in many ways that apparently are entertaining, so we're going to roll with that. But the thing that incenses me the most—on Twitter in my case—is when I'll have something that I'll put out there that's ideally funny or engaging and people like it and it spreads beyond my circle, and then you just have the worst people on the internet see that and figure, “Oh, that's snarky and incisive. Ah, I'm like that too. This is my people.”I assure you, I am not your people when that is your approach to life. Get out of here. And curating the people who follow and engage with you on Twitter can be a full-time job. But oh man, if I wind up retweeting someone, and that act brings someone who's basically a jackwagon into the conversation, it's no. No-no-no.I'm not on Twitter to actively make things worse unless you're in charge of cloud pricing, in which case yes, I am very much there to make your day worse. But it's, “Be the change you want to see in the world,” and lifting people up is always more interesting to me than tearing people down.Mark: A thousand percent. So, here's what I want to say about that is, I think, punching up is fine. I don't like to moderate other people's behavior either, though. So, if you'd like punching up, I think it'd be funny. I laugh at jokes that people make.Now, is it what I'll do? Probably not because I haven't figured out a good way for me to do it that still goes along my core values. But I will call out stuff. Like if there's a big company that's doing something that's pretty messed up, I feel comfortable calling things out. Or when drama happens and people are attacking someone, I have no problem with just be like, “Listen, this person is a stand-up person.”Putting myself kind of like… just kind of on the front line with that other person. Hey, look, this person is being attacked right now. That person is stand-up, so if you got a problem them, you got a problem with me. That's not the same thing as being negative, though. That's not the same thing as punching down or harming people.And I think that's where—like I say, people kind of get that part confused when they think that being kind to people is a sign of weakness, which is—it takes more strength for me to be kind to people who may or may not deserve it, by societal standards. That I'll try to understand you, even though you've been a jerk right now.Corey: Twitter excels at fomenting outrage, and it does it by distancing us from being able to easily remember there's a person on the other side of these things. It is ways you're going to yell at someone, even my business partner in a text message. Whenever we start having conversations that get a little heated—which it happens; business partnership is like a marriage—it's oh, I should pick up the phone and call him rather than sending things that stick around forever, that don't reflect the context of the time, and five years later when I see it, I feel ashamed." I'm not here to advocate for other people doing things on Twitter the way that I do because what I do is clever, but the failure mode of clever in my case is being a complete jerk, and I've made that mistake a lot when I was learning to do it when my audience was much smaller, and I hurt people. And whenever I discovered that that is what happened, I went out of my way, and still do, to apologize profusely.I've gotten relatively good at having to do less of those apologies on an ongoing basis, but very often people see what I'm doing and try to imitate what they're seeing; it just comes off as mean. And that's not acceptable. That's not something that I want to see more of in the world. So, those are my failure modes. I have to imagine the only real failure mode that you would encounter with positivity is inadvertently lifting someone up who turns out to be a trash goblin.Mark: [laugh]. That and I think coming off as insincere. Because if someone is always positive or a majority of the time, positive, if I say something to you, and you don't know me that actually mean it, sincerity is incredibly hard to get over text. So, if I congratulate you on your job, you might be like, “Oh, he's just saying that for attention for himself because now he's being the nice guy again.” But sincerity is really, really hard to convey, so that's one of the failure modes is like I said, being sincere.And then lifting up people who don't deserve to be lifted up, yeah, that's happened before where I've engaged with people or shared some of their stuff in an effort to boost them, and find out, like you said, legit trash goblin, like, their home address is under a bridge because they're a troll. Like, real bad stuff. And then you have back off of that endorsement that you didn't know. And people will DM you, like, “Hey, I see that you follow this person. That person is a really bad person. Look at what they're saying right now.” I'm like, “Well, damn, I didn't know it was bad like that.”Corey: I've had that on the podcast, too, where I'll have a conversation with someone and then a year or so later, they'll wind up doing something horrifying, or something comes to light and the rest, and occasionally people will ask, “So, why did you have that person on this show?” It's yeah, it turns out that when we're having a conversation, that somehow didn't come up because as I'm getting background on people and understanding who they are and what they're about in the intake questionnaire, there is not a separate field for, “Are you terrible to women?” Maybe there should be, but that's something that it's—you don't see it. And that makes it easy to think that it's not there until you start listening more than you speak, and start hearing other people's stories about it. This is the challenge.As much as I aspire at times to be more positive and lift folks up, this is the challenge of social media as it stands now. I had a tweet the other day about a service that AWS had released with the comment that this is fantastic and the team that built it should be proud. And yeah, that got a bit of engagement. People liked it. I'm sure it was passed around internally, “Yay, the jerk liked something.” Fine.A month ago, they launched a different service, and my comment was just distilled down to, “This is molten garbage.” And that went around the tech internet three times. When you're positive, it's one of those, “Oh, great. Yeah, that's awesome.” Whereas when I savage things, it's, “Hey, he's doing it again. Come and look at the bodies.” Effectively the rubbernecking thing. “There's been a terrible accident, let's go gawk at it.”Mark: Right.Corey: And I don't quite know what to do with that because it leads to the mistaken and lopsided impression that I only ever hate things and I don't think that a lot of stuff is done well. And that's very much not the case. It doesn't restrict itself to AWS either. I'm increasingly impressed by a lot of what I'm seeing out of Google Cloud. You want to talk about objectivity, I feel the same way about Oracle Cloud.Dunking on Oracle was a sport for me for a long time, but a lot of what they're doing on a technical and on a customer-approach basis in the cloud group is notable. I like it. I've been saying that for a couple of years. And I'm gratified the response from the audience seems to at least be that no one's calling me a shill. They're saying, “Oh, if you say it, it's got to be true.” It's, “Yes. Finally, I have a reputation for authenticity.” Which is great, but that's the reason I do a lot of the stuff that I do.Mark: That is a tough place to be in. So, Twitter itself is an anomaly in terms of what's going to get engagement and what isn't. Sometimes I'll tweet something that at least I think is super clever, and I'm like, “Oh, yeah. This is meaningful, sincere, clever, positive. This is about to go bananas.” And then it'll go nowhere.And then I'll tweet that I was feeling a depression coming on and that'll get a lot of engagement. Now, I'm not saying that's a bad thing. It's just, it's never what I think. I thought that the depression tweet was not going to go anywhere. I thought that one was going to be like, kind of fade into the ether, and then that is the one that gets all the engagement.And then the one about something great that I want to share, or lifting somebody else up, or celebrating somebody that doesn't go anywhere. So, it's just really hard to predict what people are going to really engage with and what's going to ring true for them.Corey: Oh, I never have any idea of how jokes are going to land on Twitter. And in the before times, I had the same type of challenge with jokes in conference talks, where there's a joke that I'll put in there that I think is going to go super well, and the audience just sits there and stares. That's okay. My jokes are for me, but after the third time trying it with different audiences and no one laughs, okay, I should keep it to myself, then. Other times just a random throwaway comment, and I find it quoted in the newspaper almost. And it's, “Oh, okay.”Mark: [laugh].Corey: You can never tell what's going to hit and what isn't.Mark: Can we talk about that though? Like—Corey: Oh, sure.Mark: Conference talking?Corey: Oh, my God, no.Mark: Conference speaking, and just how, like—I remember one time I was keynoting—well I was emceeing and I had the opening monologue. And so [crosstalk 00:17:45]—Corey: We call that a keynote. It's fine. It is—I absolutely upgrade it because people know what you're talking about when you say, “I keynoted the thing.” Do it. Own it.Mark: Yeah.Corey: It's yours.Corey: So, I was emcee and then I did the keynote. And so during the keynote rehearsals—and this is for all the academia, right, so all these different university deans, et cetera. So, in the practice, I'm telling this joke, and it is landing, everybody's laughing, blah, blah, blah. And then I get in there, and it was crickets. And in that moment, you want to panic because you're like, “Holy crap, what do I do because I was expecting to be able to ride the wave of the laughter into my next segment,” and now it's dead silent. And then just that ability to have to be quick on your feet and not let it slow you down is just really hard.Corey: This episode is sponsored by our friends at Oracle HeatWave is a new high-performance accelerator for the Oracle MySQL Database Service. Although I insist on calling it “my squirrel.” While MySQL has long been the worlds most popular open source database, shifting from transacting to analytics required way too much overhead and, ya know, work. With HeatWave you can run your OLTP and OLAP, don't ask me to ever say those acronyms again, workloads directly from your MySQL database and eliminate the time consuming data movement and integration work, while also performing 1100X faster than Amazon Aurora, and 2.5X faster than Amazon Redshift, at a third of the cost. My thanks again to Oracle Cloud for sponsoring this ridiculous nonsense.Corey: It's a challenge. It turns out that there are a number of skills that are aligned but are not the same when it comes to conference talks, and I think that is something that is not super well understood. There's the idea of, “I can get on stage in front of a bunch of people with a few loose talking points, and just riff,” that sort of an improv approach. There's the idea of, “Oh, I can get on stage with prepared slides and have presenter notes and have a whole direction and theme of what I'm doing,” that's something else entirely. But now we're doing video and the energy is completely different.I've presented live on video, I've done pre-recorded video, but in either case, you're effectively talking to the camera and there is no crowd feedback. So, especially if you'd lean on jokes like I tend to, you can't do a cheesy laugh track as an insert, other than maybe once as its own joke. You have to make sure that you can resonate and engage with folks, but there are no subtle cues from the audience like half the front row getting up and walking out. You have to figure out what it is that resonates, what it is that doesn't, why people should care. And of course, distinguishing and differentiating between this video that you're watching now and the last five Zoom meetings that you've been on that look an awful lot the same; why should you care about this talk?Mark: The hardest thing to do. I think speaking remotely became such a big challenge. So, over time it became a little easier because I found some of the value in it, but it was still much harder because of all the things that you said. What became easier was that I didn't have to go to a place. That was easier.So, I could take three different conference talks in a day for three different organizations. So, that was easier. But what was harder, just like you said, not being able to have that energy of the crowd to know when you're on point because you look for that person in the audience who's nodding in agreement, or the person who's shaking their head furiously, like, “Oh, this is all wrong.” So, you might need to clarify or slow down or—you lose all your cues, and that's just really, really hard. And I really don't like doing video pre-recorded talks because those take more energy for me than they do the even live virtual because I have to edit it and I have to make sure that take was right because I can't say, “Oh, excuse me. Well, I meant to say this.”And I guess I could leave that in there, but I'm too much of a—I love public speaking, so I put so much pressure on myself to be the best version of myself at every opportunity when I'm doing public speaking. And I think that's what makes it hard.Corey: Oh, yeah. Then you add podcasts into the mix, like this one, and it changes the entire approach. If I stumble over my words in the middle of a sentence that I've done a couple of times already, on this very show, I will stop and repeat myself because it's easier to just cut that out in post, and it sounds much more natural. They'll take out ums, ahs, stutters, and the rest. Live, you have to respond to that very differently, but pre-recorded video has something of the same problem because, okay, the audio you can cut super easily.With video, you have to sort of a smear, and it's obvious when people know what they're looking at. And, “Wait, what was that? That was odd. They blew a take.” You can cheat, which is what I tend to do, and oh, I wind up doing a bunch of slides in some of my talks because every slide transition is an excuse to cut because suddenly for a split second I'm not on the camera and we can do all kinds of fun things.But it's all these little things, and part of the problem, too, with the pandemic was, we suddenly had to learn how to be A/V folks when previously we had the good fortune slash good sense to work with people who are specialist experts in this space. Now it's, “Well, I guess I am the best boy grip today,” whate—I'm learning what that means [laugh] as we—Mark: That's right.Corey: —continue onward. Ugh. I never signed up for this, but it's the thing that happens to you instead of what you plan on. I think that's called life.Mark: Feels right. Feels right, yeah. It's just one of those things. And I'm looking forward to the time after this, when we do get back to in-person talks, and we do get to do some things. So, I have a lot of hot takes around speaking. So, I came up in Toastmasters. Are you familiar with Toastmasters at all?Corey: I very much am.Mark: Oh, yeah. Okay, so I came up in Toastmasters, and for people at home who don't know, it's kind of like a meetup where you go and you actually practice public speaking, based on these props, et cetera. For me, I learned to do things like not say ‘um' and ‘ah' on stage because there's someone in the room counting every time you do it, and then when you get that review at the end when they give you your feedback, they'll call that out. Or when you say ‘like you know,' or too many ‘and so', all these little—I think the word is disfluencies that you use that people say make you sound more natural, those are things that were coached out with me for public speaking. I just don't do those things anymore, and I feel like there are ways for you not to do it.And I tweeted that before, that you shouldn't say ‘um' and ‘ah' and have someone tell me, “Oh, no, they're a natural part of language.” And then, “It's not natural and it could freak people out.” And I was like, “Okay. I mean, you have your opinion about that.” Like, that's fine, but it's just a hot take that I had about speaking.I think that you should do lots of things when you speak. The rate that you walk back and forth, or should you be static? How much should be on your slides? People put a lot of stuff on slides, I'm like, “I don't want to read your slides. I'd rather listen to you use your slides.” I mean, I can go on and on. We should have another podcast called, “Hey, Mark talks about public speaking,” because that is one of my jams. That and supporting people who come from different paths. Those two things, I can go on for hours about.Corey: And they're aligned in a lot of respects. I agree with you on the public speaking. Focusing on the things that make you a better speaker are not that hard in most cases, but it's being aware of what you're doing. I thought I was a pretty good speaker when I had a coach for a little while, and she would stand there, “Give just the first minute of your talk.” And she's there and writing down notes; I get a minute in and it's like, “Okay, I can't wait to see what she doesn't like once I get started.” She's like, “Nope. I have plenty. That will cover us for the next six weeks.” Like, “O…kay? I guess she doesn't know what she's doing.”Spoiler she did, in fact, know what she was doing and was very good at it and my talks are better for it as a result. But it comes down to practicing. I didn't have a thing like Toastmasters when I was learning to speak to other folks. I just did it by getting it wrong a lot of times. I would speak to small groups repeatedly, and I'd get better at it in time.And I would put time-bound on it because people would sit there and listen to me talk and then the elevator would arrive at our floor and they could escape and okay, they don't listen to me publicly speaking anymore, but you find time to practice in front of other folks. I am kidding, to be clear. Don't harass strangers with public speaking talks. That was in fact a joke. I know there's at least one person in the audience who's going to hear that and take notes and think, “Ah, I'm going to do that because he said it's a good idea.” This is the challenge with being a quote-unquote, “Role model” sometimes. My role model approach is to give people guidance by providing a horrible warning of what not to do.Mark: [laugh].Corey: You've gone the other direction and that's kind of awesome. So, one of the recurring themes of this show has been, where does the next generation come from? Where do we find the next generation of engineer, of person working in cloud in various ways? Because the paths that a lot of us walked who've been in this space for a decade or more have been closed. And standing here, it sounds an awful lot like, “Oh, go in and apply for jobs with a firm handshake and a printed copy of your resume and ask to see the manager and you'll have a job before dark.”Yeah, what worked for us doesn't work for people entering the workforce today, and there have to be different paths. Bootcamps are often the subject of, I think, a deserved level of scrutiny because quality differs wildly, and from the outside if you don't know the space, a well-respected bootcamp that knows exactly what it's doing and has established long-term relationships with a number of admirable hiring entities in the space and grifter who threw together a website look identical. It's a hard problem to solve. How do you view teaching the next generation and getting them into this space, assuming that that isn't something that is morally reprehensible? And some days, I wonder if exposing this industry to folks who are new to it isn't a problem.Mark: No, good question. So, I think in general—so I am pro bootcamp. I am pro self-taught. I was not always. And that's because of personal insecurity. Let's dive into that a little bit.So, I've been writing code since I was probably around 14 because I was lucky enough to go to a high school to had a computer science program on the south side of Chicago, one school. And then when I say I was lucky, I was really lucky because the school that I went to wasn't a high resource school; I didn't go to a private school. I went to a public school that just happened that one of the professors from IIT, also worked on staff a few days a week at my school, and we could take programming classes with this guy. Total luck. And so I get into computer science that way, take AP Computer Science in high school—which is, like, the pre-college level—then I go into undergrad, then I go into grad school for computer science.So, like, as traditional of a path that you can get. So, in my mind, it was all about my sweat equity that I had put in that disqualified everybody else. So, Corey, if you come from a bootcamp, you haven't spent the time that I spent learning to code; you haven't sweat, you haven't had to bleed, you haven't tried to write a two's complement algorithm on top of your other five classes for that semester. You haven't done it, definitely you don't deserve to be here. So, that was so much of my attitude, until—until—I got the opportunity to have my mind completely blown when I got asked to teach.Because when I got to asked to teach, I thought, “Yeah, I'm going to have my way of going in there and I'm going to show them how to do it right. This is my chance to correct these coding bootcampers and show them how it goes.” And then I find these people who were born for this life. So, some of us are natural talents, some of us are people who can just acquire the talent later. And both are totally valid.But I met this one student. She was a math teacher for years in Chicago Public Schools. She's like, “I want a career change.” Comes to the program that I taught at Northwestern, does so freaking well that she ends up getting a job at Airbnb. Now, if you have to make her go back four years at university, is that window still open for her? Maybe not.Then I meet this other woman, she was a paralegal for ten years. Ten years as a paralegal was the best engineer in the program when I taught, she was the best developer we had. Before the bootcamp was over, she had already gotten the job offer. She was meant for this. You see what I'm saying?So, that's why I'm so excited because it's like, I have all these stories of people who are meant for this. I taught, and I met people that changed the way I even saw the rest of the world. I had some non-binary trans students; I didn't even know what pronouns were. I had no idea that people didn't go by he/him, she/her. And then I had to learn about they and them and still teach you code without misgendering you at the same time, right because you're in a classroom and you're rapid-fire, all right, you—you know, how about this person? How about that person? And so you have to like, it's hard to take—Corey: Yeah, I can understand async, await, and JavaScript, but somehow understanding that not everyone has the pronouns that you are accustomed to using for people who look certain ways is a bridge too far for you to wrap your head around. Right. We can always improve, we can always change. It's just—at least when I screw up async, await, I don't make people feel less than. I just make—Mark: Totally.Corey: —users feel that, “Wow, this guy has no idea how to code.” You're right, I don't.Mark: Yeah, so as I'm on my soapbox, I'll just say this. I think coding bootcamps and self-taught programs where you can go online, I think this is where the door is the widest open for people to enter the industry because there is no requirement of a degree behind this. I just think that has just really opened the door for a lot of people to do things that is life-changing. So, when you meet somebody who's only making—because we're all engineers and we do all this stuff, we make a lot of money. And we're all comfortable. When you meet somebody where they go from 40,000 to 80,000, that is not the same story for—as it is for us.Corey: Exactly. And there's an entire school of thought out there that, “Oh, you should do this for the love because it is who you are, it is who you were meant to be.” And for some people, that's right, and I celebrate and cherish those folks. And there are other folks for whom, “I got into tech because of the money.” And you know what?I celebrate and cherish those folks because that is not inherently wrong. It says nothing negative about you whatsoever to want to improve your quality of life and wanting to support your family in varying ways. I have zero shade to throw at either one of those people. And when it comes to which of those two people do I want to hire, I have no preference in either direction because both are valid and both have directions that they can think in that the other one may not necessarily see for a variety of reasons. It's fine.Mark: I wanted to be an engineering manager. You know why? Not because I loved leadership; because I wanted more money.Corey: Yes.Mark: So, I've been in the industry for quite a long time. I'm a little bit on the older side of the story, right? I'm a little bit older. You know, for me, before we got ‘staff' and ‘principal' and all this kind of stuff, it was senior software engineer and then you topped out in terms of your earning potential. But if you wanted more, you became a manager, director, et cetera.So, that's why I wanted to be a manager for a while; I wanted more money, so why is my choice to be a manager more valuable than those people who want to make more money by coming into engineering or software development? I don't think it is.Corey: So, we've talked about positivity, we've talked about dealing with unpleasant people, we've talked about technology, and then, of course, we've talked about getting up on soapboxes. Let's tie all of that together for one last topic. What is your position on open-source in cloud?Mark: I think open-source software allows us to do a lot of incredible things. And I know that's a very light, fluffy, politically correct answer, but it is true, right? So, we get to take advantage of the brains of so many different people, all the ideas and contributions of so many different people so that we can do incredible things. And I think cloud really makes the world more accessible in general because—so when I used to do websites, I had to have a physical server that I would have to, like, try to talk to my ISP to be able to host things. And so, there was a lot of barriers to entry to do things that way.Now, with cloud and open-source, I could literally pick up a tool and deploy some software to the cloud. And the tool could you open-source so I can actually see what's happening and I could pick up other tools to help build out my vision for whatever I'm creating. So, I think open-source just gives a lot of opportunity.Corey: Oh, my stars, yes. It's even far more so than when I entered the field, and even back then there were challenges. One of the most democratizing aspects of cloud is that you can work with the same technologies that giant companies are using. When I entered the workforce, it's, “Wow, you're really good with Apache, but it seems like you don't really know a whole lot about the world of enterprise storage. What's going on with that?”And the honest answer was, “Well, it turns out that on my laptop, I can compile Apache super easily, but I'm finding it hard, given that I'm new to the workforce, to afford a $300,000 SAN in my garage, so maybe we can wind up figuring out that there are other ways to do it.” That doesn't happen today. Now, you can spin something up in the cloud, use it for a little bit. You're done, turn it off, and then never again have to worry about it except over in AWS land where you get charged 22 cents a month in perpetuity for some godforsaken reason you can't be bothered to track down and certainly no one can understand because, you know, cloud billing.Mark: [laugh].Corey: But if that's the tax versus the SAN tax, I'll take it.Mark: So, what I think is really interesting what cloud does, I like the word democratization because I think about going back to—just as a lateral reference to the bootcamp thing—I couldn't get my parents to see my software when I was in college when I made stuff because it was on my laptop. But when I was teaching these bootcamp students, they all deployed to Heroku. So, in their first couple of months, the cloud was allowing them to do something super cool that was not possible in the early days when I was coming up, learning how to code. And so they could deploy to Heroku, they could use GitHub Pages, you know like, open-source still coming into play. They can use all these tools and it's available to them, and I still think to me that is mind-blowing that I would have to bring my physical laptop or desktop home and say, “Mom, look at this terminal window that's doing this algorithm that I just did,” versus what these new people can do with the cloud. It's like, “Oh, yeah, I want to build a website. I want to publish it today. Publish right now.” Like, during our conversation, we both could have probably spent up a Hello World in the cloud with very little.Corey: Well, you could have. I could have done it in some horrifying way by using my favorite database: DNS. But that's a separate problem.Mark: [laugh]. Yeah, but I go to Firebase deploy and create a quick app real quick; Firebase deploy. Boom, I'm in the cloud. And I just think that the power behind that is just outstanding.Corey: If I had to pick a single cloud provider for someone new to the field to work with, it would be Google Cloud, and it's not particularly close. Just because the developer experience for someone who has not spent ten years marinating in cloud is worlds apart from what you're going to see in almost every other provider. I take it back, it is close. Neck-and-neck in different ways is also DigitalOcean, just because it explains things; their documentation is amazing and it lets people get started. My challenge with DigitalOcean is that it's not thought of, commonly, as a tier-one cloud provider in a lot of different directions, so the utility of learning how that platform works for someone who's planning to be in the industry for a while might potentially not get them as far.But again, there's no wrong answer. Whatever interests you, whenever you have to work on, do it. The obvious question of, “What technology should I learn,” it's, “Well, the ones that the companies you know are working with,” [laugh] so you can, ideally, turn it into something that throws off money, rather than doing it in your spare time for the love of it and not reaping any rewards from it.Mark: Yeah. If people ask me what should they use it to build something? And I think about what they want to do. And I also will say, “What will get you to ship the fastest? How can you ship?”Because that's what's really important for most people because people don't finish things. You know, as an engineer, how many side projects you probably have in the closet that never saw the light of day because you never shipped. I always say to people, “Well, what's going to get you to ship?” If it's View, use View and pair that with DigitalOcean, if that's going to get you to ship, right? Or use Angular plus Google Cloud Platform if that's going to get you to ship.Use what's going to get you to ship because—if it's just your project you're trying to run on. Now, if it's a company asking me, that's a consulting question which is a different answer. We do a much more in-detail analysis.Corey: I want to thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me about, honestly, a very wide-ranging group of topics. If people want to learn more about who you are, how you think, what you're up to, where can they find you?Mark: You can always find me spreading the love, being positive, hanging out. Look, if you want to feel better about yourself, come find me on Twitter at @marktechson—M-A-R-K-T-E-C-H-S-O-N. I'm out there waiting for you, so just come on and have a good time.Corey: And we will, of course, throw links to that in the [show notes 00:36:45]. Thank you so much for your time today.Mark: Oh, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me.Corey: Mark Thompson, developer relations engineer at Google. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry, deranged comment that you spent several weeks rehearsing in the elevator.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism

Samhain Mediation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RjNTyI4xTs   S2E40 TRANSCRIPT: ----more---- Mark: Welcome back to the wonder science-based paganism. I'm your host, mark.  Yucca: And I'm Yucca.  Mark: And it is Hallows seasons, Samhain season, Halloween, so many happy returns of the holiday to you. Today we're going to talk about all things related to those holidays, that constellation of holidays, and talk about themes and activities and how we celebrate. So it's hard to believe that we've come all the way around the wheel of the year, again, to, to this time. But here it is Yucca: Yeah, here we are. And personally, I'm thrilled. I love this time of year  Mark: me too. Yucca: it's a fun one. And right now, so we're recording the 24th, so a week ahead. But mark, you have another reason to be celebrating happening right now, right?  Mark: I do it is pouring rain where I live and we've been in a really serious drought. So I'm, I'm, I'm in a really great mood today. It's the sky is dark and gray and we're probably getting about an inch, an hour of rain, maybe a little less. And,  Yucca: a  Mark: we have flash flood warnings and I couldn't be more pleased Yucca: Yeah. So sounds like the land has been really, really thirsty. This is early for you to write.  Mark: very much so. Yeah. I mean, we typically get one rainstorm in September or October, and then it stays dry again until like December But this is the second rainstorm we've had. The first one was very weak and about a week ago. But this is a class five atmospheric river, so it's huge. And we're expected to get as much as 13, 14 inches of rain in the next 24 hours. So it's pretty exciting. Yucca: That's amazing. Yeah. So I hope everybody stays safe during this time as well though. Cause you've had fires. So after fires, there's often the mudslides and flooding that comes from the areas that were burned.  Mark: Right. The other reason why it is such a relief to have this huge rainstorm for us here is that this marks the end of wildfire season. Everything is getting a good wedding down and we're we're even if we have a lightning storm now, which is what set off the last couple of rounds of fires were lightning storms. The ground is just going to be too wet for anything to take off. So we're, we're good  Yucca: be that sponge, just that store to get you through the next few months. Hope, and then hopefully your rain will come, so, oh, well that's great.  Mark: Yep. They're excited. Yucca: yeah, 13 inches. That's amazing. So, but why don't we let's jump into Hallows and Halloween and all of that. And let's actually start by talking about. Different holidays because like Blake, when we get to the winter solstice, there are quite a few holidays that are all clumped together. And sometimes we treat them sort of as one, sometimes we don't, but there's different themes. There's overlapping themes. So I think that'd be interesting to get into the differences  Mark: Sure. Yeah, at the winter solstice, there's a, I mean, a literal blizzard of holidays, starting, starting with Krampus knocked on December 7th and then extending all the way until.  Yucca: Mid January.  Mark: January when you've got, you know, the end of 12th night and you know, all those three or three Kings day, and there's all kinds of stuff going on in there for, for various different religious orientations, but here in the United States. Anyway, we really only have one conventionally recognized holiday that is celebrated by the predominant culture. And that's Halloween on the 31st, which is a week from today. And  Yucca: I my area also DIA de Los Muertos is really big here as well. Yeah. cause we're, my account is about 80% Hispanic. So that's a big, but for the, for the majority of the country, I think you're right. That, that Halloween is the primary celebrated holiday.  Mark: We do have some celebrations of DIA de Los Muertos here. And, but I mean, the area where I live is predominantly Anglo. And so, it's really more for the Latino community and and in a very gracious and welcoming way, the leaders of the Latino community welcomed the rest of the community to come and visit the public or friend does and all that kind of stuff. Very aesthetically beautiful holiday. It just, you know, the orange and black and the, the beautiful, beautiful altars. They're just so stunning. So anyway, we have this day Halloween, and for those of us who are pagans, then there's this other thing which is called Sowan or we call it Hallows in atheopagan ism because we don't use the Celtic names for things. Yucca: Or last harvest is another one that gets used.  Mark: Right. The last of the three harvest Sabbaths. So, we, we thought that we would differentiate between those a little bit because for one thing, we're pagan, so we'll take any opportunity to celebrate things that have a holiday. So we'll, you know, we grab all of them and we don't have to crystallize our favorite time of the year down into a single day. In fact October is kind of eerie month.  Yucca: Yes.  Mark: We get out all the decorations and we watch scary movies and just do all the, you know, read ghost stories and do all, all the things,  Yucca: And eat, pumpkin so much pumpkin  Mark: eat so much pumpkin. Oh my goodness. Yucca: and the sweet potatoes and the all that nice warm, all that good stuff.  Mark: Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about Halloween first. I mean, this is going to be pretty familiar, I think to almost all, if not all of our listeners it's obviously a holiday that has become very commercialized in the United States. More money is spent on Halloween than on any other holiday, except for Christmas. And that's in the form of decorations, candy, party supplies, and costuming generally. It's a big deal. And so there are these, there are themes that go along with Halloween. And the biggest one is death, mortality and scary stuff, stuff we don't generally cuddle up to, or want to look at so big, hairy spiders and you know, lots of cobwebs and imaginary, supernatural beings that scare us a lot and psychotic people who will kill you because they're deranged and all those sorts of kind of narrative themes. It's a, it's a time for looking at the darker side of life. And I wouldn't say. In the mainstream culture that's done in an entirely healthy way. For one thing, it's very commercialized and it's also highly sexualized. A lot of the costuming, especially for women is it's like sexy nurse, sexy air air, traffic controller. Yeah. Yucca: I was looking at it and my kids are very young, but I was looking at costumes for them. And we ended up making them, which was way more fun for the kids, but looking at what would fit my five-year-old daughter and going, whoa, whoa, wow. Like, you know, we're not like super like modest, tight, strict people, but like that's uncomfortable. Like that's for a, five-year-old that's a barely more than a toddler and you know, the, the skirts and the low cut things and just very sexualized already  Mark: Yeah. Yucca: I was quite disappointed actually to find that  Mark: Yeah, it's disturbing. And I mean, to me, part of that is just not letting children have childhood,  Yucca: yeah,  Mark: You know, sexual, especially girls, you know, sexualizing them early and kind of encouraging them into that sort of, you know, demonstrative sort of dress and, and behavior. And as you say, you know, as pagans, we're not, prudes, we're all about the sex. We think it's great, but not for five-year-olds.  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: That's that's, that's inappropriate and there's no reason for it. And unfortunately there is that factor that happens with children, where they try to emulate what their parents or the older people are doing, because you know, learning to play adult is a part of how they learn to become adults. Right. And so I think then there's that fosters this demand for this kind of costuming that just really isn't appropriate. Yucca: And to be fair, it's not all of them, there are plenty of other ones out there, but a lot of those are the ones that get on the front page of this search. You know, when you're on Amazon or they're the things that are at the front of the store, if you're going into a physical store, like that's, what's being presented and you have to search to do something else that you've got to put in this, this time and mental effort.  And just to use some of your bandwidth to make a conscious choice to not do that.  Mark: right, right. So that being said, it is a very commercialized holiday and because it is a mainstream over culture holiday, it is steeped with the values of that culture. Two very big aspects are a very uncomfortable and often inappropriate relationship with sexuality and a deep phobia around death, which sometimes manifest itself in morbid fascination, especially at this time of year. So you will see people going for the bloodiest most disgusting look they can possibly come up with because. That's cool that the rest of the year, they have to kind of keep their fascination with that stuff bottled up. But on this one day of the year, they can, they can let it shine. So, we were talking about fiends and I think that and we've talked about this before. There's a, there's a sort of Gothic aesthetic. That's very popular with with goth people clearly. But with pagans in which generally because we, our value system is somewhat different. We kind of, we embrace the dark, we don't reject the dark. And so being associated with spiders and snakes and bones and skulls and. That's and all that kind of thing, black cats that doesn't freak us out at all. In fact, we like it. We, we, we gravitate it is it's kind of fun and there's a, there's a power in it. I think, you know, that, that we, we take to ourselves, these, these objects of fear on the part of the mainstream culture and say, Hey, we're not scared of it. You know, to us, these are powerful allies and friends. And so, you know, we, there there's some, there's some weight that goes behind that. Some, some power that is implied by our not being phased by stuff that the rest of the culture seems to be intimidated by. Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: So. Talk, still talking about Halloween before we get into hellos. And so, and what are some of the activities that we associate with with that holiday? Yucca: Well, clearly the trick or treating that's a big yeah. The trick or treating. And then sometimes the Halloween parties as well, but, but really the trick or treating is the first and foremost part.  Mark: Right. And. You know, especially now that's really kind of a remarkable thing when you consider how encapsulated people are in their little homes, most of the time and the kind of paranoid relationship that we have with one another. Now, I mean, violent crime has been dropping steadily and crime against children has been dropping steadily for decades, according to all the available statistics. And yet parents, I mean, the idea of parents actually letting a band of trick or treaters go around on their own without parental supervision. That just doesn't happen anymore. And it used to, when I was a kid, it was like, go have a good time. We're going to stay here and hand out candy to the kids. And, you know, we'll see you back here at nine o'clock or whatever the time is. Yucca: Yeah. but that was already, by the time I was a kid in the nineties that was already fading. Right, That you might see a few, maybe the older kids you'd be maybe the kids that were just on the edge of not of kind of being a little too old for trick or treating, like they could do it, but, but you know, any of the younger kids, they were always, there was a parent, but maybe the parent was like staying back in the car on the side of the road or just sort of like watching, but yeah. You couldn't do that anymore.  Mark: So I think that at the stage that we're at now where, I mean, I don't know about you, but I get bombarded with advertising for, for like home alarm systems. It's ridiculous. It's like, I don't need a home alarm system. Sorry.  Yucca: Or they have it so that you can then check it with your phone and then I'm like, yeah. But then someone can just hack into that. And now your phone, like now you can, you've got cameras all over your house and anybody could hack in and see what's going on inside your house. That's creepy to me. That's way more  Mark: super creepy. Yeah,  Yucca: All the smart, the, so-called smart gadgets really creeped me out. Not in the fun Halloween way, but in the like dystopian future creeped out way.  Mark: yeah, me too. Me too. We have one smart thing in our house. It's a smart plug  Yucca: Okay.  Mark: that the mayor can control from her phone to turn lights on and off that I can live with. It's not connected to the, well, I guess it is connected to the internet by some sort of means, but all that it can do is turn on and off. That's all that it's capable of doing.  Yucca: It's not voice command.  Mark: There's no voice command there's no he, oh yeah. Don't even get me started on Siri and all those things. They're just really, really disturbing. So. Leaving leaving the actual scary stuff in the world, going back to the stuff that isn't really so scary, but which people get creeped out about. So the trick or treating of course is a really big deal about that. And that has two elements to it. One of which is, you know, bands of small bandits going from door to door, demanding protection, candy,  Yucca: Yes.  Mark: The the other is is the costuming right on Halloween. We get to pretend to be somebody else. Yucca: Yeah. We get to play with.  Mark: Yes. And that is. Incredible really. I mean, to me, that's the most attractive part of the whole Halloween, the, the mainstream Halloween holidays that I like to dress up as different kinds of people. I, I enjoy that. I, and, and when I do it, I do it in this very method acting kind of immersive way where my character has a name and they have a backstory and, you know, it's a very Dungeons and dragons sort of, way of approaching things. Yucca: And is the listeners you already know, we're both, you know, big, big into Dungeons and dragons in the role-playing tabletop role, playing games. So  Mark: yes. Yucca: even another excuse, but this time it can be LARPing even better, right?  Mark: Yeah. So you should tell them about your game that you do this time of year. Yucca: Oh yes. So. So we do a lot of gaming but around Halloween we'll do a horror game. So my partner and I, and neither of us particularly liked to play for, but enjoy running the game. So we'll actually code DM a game and in here's where we can get together and there's not, you know, pandemic going on. We still don't have people coming into our home because our children are too young to have the vaccine yet. Although hopefully pretty soon the older will be able to, but we still have the youngest. So we still have all the precautions. But when we, when it's not a year like that, we actually use a system called dread. So instead of rolling dice, it's a Jenga block tower. And that just adds to the tension and the atmosphere and we'll do different themes, but it's the one time of year that with the people we play with that it's. Instead of doing a power fantasy, we get to play with those horror themes. And again, I'm not a big fan of playing the horror, but I'm pretty good at figuring out the things that are really kinda gonna get my friends and feel like, Ooh, this is, this is what's going to really, really make you uncomfortable just for that one. Just for the one night. And there's just something really nice about being able to, to play quite literally with those different uncomfortable, those that whole different side. There's just something very, very I guess cathartic about whore.  Mark: Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I mean, there's, there's some good science on this, actually. I mean, you know, what, what horror movies do is they build tension and then they give you a big dopamine flush and then they do it again and then they do it again. And you know, that's rather like winning frequently at the slot machine. It's the same, you know, the same sort of intermittent reinforcement principle that works so well for human motivation.  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: So it's it's a kind of a natural thing for us to be attracted to doing.  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: so the dressing up, that's a, that's a big deal. I, we have tons of costumes stuff, Noumea, and I do tons and tons of it. I'm not saying it all fits anymore. But we have. And I haven't decided what I'm going to wear on Halloween itself. And I'll be getting into what my weekend looks like next weekend in a little bit, but we're going to be the new neighborhood that we live in now, I believe probably has quite a number of kids that are going to go trick or treating. And so I'm going to get home from my other commitments early enough that I can change into a costume and hand out candy. And that'll be fun because we haven't done that for years. The places where we've lived before have not had children come by. Yucca: Well, where we live, there will be no trick-or-treaters, but we will be going into town to their grandmother's place, which is actually where my family would drive us to town. I had lived very rural as a child as well to go trick or treating. But my children have informed me that I'm going to be the wishing tree. So anyone with young kids right now might be familiar with true in the rainbow kingdom show from Netflix. But they are going as true and Bartleby, and I am going as a very large tree that grants wishes. So, but it's good. I think it's going to be really cute.  Mark: It sounds adorable. Yucca: yes. And they got, they got to choose what everybody was going to be. I was, I was going, how about we all be cats? No, I don't get to dress up like a cat. I'm going to be a big tree.  Mark: Lumbering tree.  Yucca: yeah. With a little smile on it. So yeah, they were also voting, they also number blocks. So basically going as numbers was pretty high on their list too,  So,  Mark: well,  Yucca: yeah.  Mark: And you have, you have a week to get that costume together if it's not together already. Yucca: It is not, I don't think it's going to be terribly difficult because it's a tree. So I'm just getting, I get to be great. there's, a little bit trickier. I mean, the, the littlest ones could, it's going to be a black cat, basically talking black cat. So that should be good. Cute, cute photos for the future to get to look back on. And that's, I, I remember, and it's, it seemed like it's been the same thing with my kids. Just being the anticipation. there's something so exciting about it. I was woken up this morning to a little voice going seven days to Halloween. So she's been doing that since day 20. Very excited. Mark: I mean, there's so much to love about it when you're a little kid, it's like you get, it's a different day. It's different than all the other days of the year and you get to dress up and you get to go and get candy, and there's all this sort of wonderful imagery around you. That's really interesting and, and evocative. I mean, I, I, I loved it when I was a kid and I, well, I didn't stop  Yucca: you still, Right, A lot of the other holidays that we have, like, there's a kid component to it, but it's not really about kids.  Mark: right. Yucca: Like we're going to be coming up on Thanksgiving. And so yeah, you get to like eat stuff and that's great, but there isn't really a kid you're just sort of there for Thanksgiving. Halloween is really about kids and a lot of ways for the kids, right. Still adults who don't have kids do plenty of Halloween things, but,  Mark: Right. Yucca: but just from their perspective,  Mark: Yeah. Being the center of attention. That's, I mean, that's, that's an attractive prospect for most people and especially for children.  Yucca: And getting to put a mask on piece, someone else and get lots of sugar, lots and lots of sugar.  Mark: Lots of sugar. You bet.  Yucca: So  Mark: So, the, the other side of this holiday season is the pagan side, the Salan or Hallows as some of us call it or the third harvest. And that is not necessarily. October 31st fact, the actual midpoint between the autumnal Equinox and the winter solstice lands, typically on the sixth or 7th of November. So what that does is create a nice tidy week of festivities through October 31st through the 7th of November. When you can do all kinds of cool fun, spooky, great Erie stuff. So why don't you talk a little bit about your thoughts and feelings around this time of year and. Yucca: Yeah. So, so for us, it's this time of year is really about our ancestors, about the, our ancestry and yes, about our immediate, you know, our parents and grandparents and their parents. So our, our human ancestry and maybe our cultural ancestry. But it's also a time that the magically we're really interested in our non-human ancestors, looking at our. At evolution, right? And the, the looking at going back, you know, to reptiles, back to fish, but way before we were even, you know, court dates and going back through and, and really looking at that and just bringing that back into our normal awareness, because we can get so focused in, on our, our daily human life in are extremely urbanized separated from the rest of nature reality, even though, as we've talked about before, you never really can separate from that, but we can, we can put our blinders on and pretend that we are right. And so this time of year is really about being in touch with that. And also the, those that went before the, to make us to allow us to exist that were our ancestors, but also the. That whose deaths allowed us to be in a, in a way they are also our ancestors. So the, the beings that we ate, right. And all of us, again, no matter what your diet is you, because the like thing, that's not really, like, that's not really a thing. Like we all eat. That's just part of being an organism. And we ate somebody in somebody, in somebody. And those, I think honoring those beings is, is honoring our ancestors. So we think a lot about that. It's we were always, you know, reading books and watching documentaries and things like that, but we try to theme w we try to choose things that match with the theme of the time of year So we've been milling a lot on on human evolution and things like that. So the, we have the, the family practice and then my personal practice and the family practices evolving as the children are growing older and getting into different phases in their life on a personal level, I will do like a kind of a meditation or where I will just step out, do a private ritual, usually outside sometime around dusk. And just. Take a moment to really, really think about and remember, and. be really present with those ideas. On my YouTube channel, a couple of years back, I actually did a guided meditation version of this. If people are interested in checking that out.  Mark: Great. Let's put a link to that in the episode notes. Yucca: Yeah. So I'll go ahead And put a link there for everyone who wants to check that, out. And you know, that's like a 20 or 30 minute version for me when I'm guiding myself through that it would, it's maybe a longer process. And it's really nice when I finished. I don't like being cold, but I'll usually go out and do this so that I am a little bit cold afterwards when I go in and there's, and now it's dark and there's just this, this quiet feeling afterwards. Mark: And that, that ties in with the idea of Hallows or sell and as the third harvest, the flesh harvest, but not just the, the late vegetables, but also the time when you're thinning the herds. So that the, the, the animals that you keep are your reproductive stock and, and what you need to get through to the net, to the following spring. But you're not keeping everybody because all of those will eat and food that they're going to eat his food you need. Yucca: Yeah. Or, or like, you know, with cattles, we don't even sustain food as them typically, but they need a lot of it. And is it available? Do you have it stored up? Right. Do you have enough of it or not?  Mark: Right, right.  Yucca: yeah.  Mark: Yeah. So, that whole idea of. The ancestral value of the creatures that we have consumed becomes really pertinent at this time of year. I think there's a tradition that is pretty common in the pagan community which I like to call a silent supper. There they're more frequently called a dumb supper, but I don't like using that word for being unable to speak. So I'm a silent supper and that's a, a silent meal contemplated meal where an empty space is set for the dead. Or in some cases, if it's a ritual for a particular funeral, then that place is set for that particular person.  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: And then the foods that are offered to them, which are always the best, the best cuts of whatever you have, the nicest vegetable, the prettiest piece of cake, all that kind of stuff that gets offered to wildlife afterwards, so that it goes back into the cycle of everything as we all do that there are at some of them that I've been to there have been sort of thinking prompts that have been printed on a little card next to the place settings and thinking about ancestors and then also about the animals and plants that we've eaten over time are among those prompts. That can be a very profound ritual. Actually. It's a. There's this, something about creating a special feast for the dead and, you know, having the food be very special and using the good dishes and you know, all that kind of stuff. It can be, it can be very moving actually. Yucca: And, and the silent aspect to, it seems like it would create would be create a space out of the normal, because we so often are filling things with conversation, with our phones, with our, you know, everything. But when it's silent, you are there. You're really there. Right? Where else can you be? If not there.  Mark: Yes. And it reminds you of the profound silence or silent equivalents. The death is no stimulation, no awareness. Just. Stillness. So that's a thing that sometimes people do for Sowan hellos celebration in honor, of their ancestors or of the people that have passed over the course of the last year. I'm going to back up the people who have died over the course of the last year. I really don't like those euphemisms for Def prefer not to use them. What are some other activities that you do? I know that there are some things that I do in the lead up to Hallows that are a value to be. I update my preparation documents for death every year at this time of year in October. My will, my Advanced directives for health decisions. My you know, just lists of phone numbers of people to be contacted and biographical details for an obituary and a farewell letter. And about a half page description of my wishes for the conditions under which I'd like to die. You know, I prefer to die at home. I prefer to see my friends as my health allows. I'd prefer to listen to this kind of music and have these kinds of sense around me. And Yucca: So your death plan in the same way, someone might go to the hospital with a birth plan.  Mark: yes.  Yucca: your, your death plan. Yeah.  Mark: And so I update all that stuff and then I take it to my ritual circle, dark suns Annual cell and gathering. And then we sign the documents and I have members of my ritual circle service, the witnesses for the things that require legal signatures. I believe very strongly that doing this kind of preparation is a profound gift to the people who survive you. When people are grieving, their brains are fogged and it's very hard to pay attention to details like, you know, how do I find the life insurance account number or the phone number for the the bank or the password to the Facebook account, or, I mean, any of those things and having all of that in a packet of information that can just be given to the loved ones. Is a huge weight off them. And it's something that I feel strongly we should do. Not only for them, but because having an annual think about the fact that you're going to die and making some choices about how you would like that to go, I think is very healthy for us.  Yucca: I  Mark: It helps. It helps remind us that this life is finite and that it's precious. And so that means that if there's something that's missing in your life, well, you better get to it. Yucca: Yeah. And I think that in our culture, we're, as we've talked about before, we're really scared of death and. W we like to not, we don't want to think about death because of some sort of idea that somehow if you think about it, it's going to make it. happen. Right. It's it's going to happen either way.  Mark: Right, Yucca: so, so, you know, make the best of what you've got right now. And being aware that you are going to die, you can make those, hopefully, you know, sometimes there's accidents and you're just gone. Right. But you might be able to have the chance to make those last moments more like you want them to be like you were describing in the, in like the death plan. And also a moment to step back and just be able to see is what I'm doing, what I want, because I am going to die. I've only got these, how many ever decades. Assuming everything goes great. Well, is this how I really want to be using it?  Mark: right, right. Yucca: So it's kind of that you hear the stories about people on their death bed, looking back at their life and going, I wish I had done XYZ, but this time of year is an opportunity to have a mini little deathbed each year. So you can look back and see, did I do what I want? And it's your second chance it's it's giving yourself the second chance before it even happens.  Mark: Right, right. That's very well put the, the flip side of refusing to look at the fact that you're going to die out of the fear that that's somehow going to accelerate the process is that instead what it actually does is it tends to give you clarity. Clarity about the fact that your life is going to end and that the you've got a limited amount of time. And then you can make real choices about what you want to do with the time that's allotted to you. And you don't know when you're going to die, because accidents do happen. And people get terrible diseases at young ages and lots of, lots of, you know, bad things can happen to perfectly good people. There's, there's, there's no rhyme or reason to it. It's just luck fortune.  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: And, but at least you will know for yourself and your loved ones will. How you wanted it to be, and it also gives you a chance to write a farewell letter that says the things you want to say to the people in your life. You don't have to leave anything unsaid if you don't want to. Because I think that a lot of people on their death bed really regret that they didn't say a thing to a person whether it was an expression of love or an expression of anger or an expression of acceptance and forgiveness, whatever it is, those are important. And they can give you, I think, a sense of peace. As you pass into the death experience, knowing that that letter is going to be read and people will receive the messages that you wanted them to. Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: So that's something that I do leading up to the hellos holiday. The other thing that I do is I steep myself in the mood of the season as much as I possibly can. So we have been watching all of these Halloweeny movies many of which are just terrible hammer, horror movies, and really schlocky kinds of things. But some of them are pretty good. I mean, there's a, there's a wonderful movie with Nicole Kidman called the others, which is very eerie and, and creepy without being gory at all. It's just very, very creepy and it's, it's worth, worth seeing. There's another with Kate Blanchett called the gift, which is a sort of psychic power, supernatural things set in the deep south. Great cast in that. And then there's some of the other more standard things like the fog and and practical magic, which I watched this year, every, at this time of year, every year, because it's just so delightful. Yucca: Hm. Hm. Yeah. And depending on the place where you are too, I mean this, the time of year just outside is just really fun, right? Especially for those folks who live somewhere where you might be in a next to a maple tree or something like that, where you get to skip the amazing amounts of leaves and the beautiful that crackle when you step on them and the little and the little that chill in the wind and the spell of autumn, there's just, every place has its own really special. It's special ambiance.  Mark: Yes. Yes. Sometimes in October can sometimes be very warm where I am, because it's before the storms have come. And so sometimes we have these sort of spookily warm evenings with kind of a light breeze sort of whistling around the eaves and wind chimes tinkling a little bit. And it's all just very, very evocative. Oh, that's another movie that we always watch, which is the Halloween tree which is the animated version of the Ray Bradbury book which is a wonderful book about the season and ultimately about mortality. Yucca: yeah, these are. Good suggestions. So  Mark: So that's the kind of thing that I, and of course we decorate outside so that we can attract tricker traders and all that good kind of stuff. And I bring in a bunch of colorful leaves and use those and gourds and dried corn cobs, and so forth to decorate around the house.  Yucca: For us, we're stacking firewood. This is our better have it all stacked. Which is nice because we were in the city for years where we didn't have a stove and I grew up with a stove and we we've got one again. And it's just so wonderful to have that smell and going out and getting the wood and attempting to split it. I've got weak over the years. I've got to get strong again, to be able to split that wood, but it's gotta be done. So it gets strong over the winter.  Mark: So that did so Yucca. Do you have any activities that you do as you lead up other than splitting firewood? Yucca: Well, there's just so much happening in this season that has to get done. There's just that it's mostly enjoyable. But there's the re winterizing the house that we still have warm days. The days are quite pleasant actually, this time of year we're in the sixties and we might crawl up into the seventies, but at night it's freezing almost every night now. So there's just a lot that it's all that stuff you've been putting off all summer just has to get done. And it really is for us. November is not autumn. November is when. Right. Maybe the first week or so is still autumn, but then boom, we, we just transitioned there's autumn is super, super short. But a lot of it really is that harvest stuff. It's a pumpkin's and the, you know, taking the little animals out because this time of year, all the little spiders and little stinkbugs and all of those, they're trying to come in the house because it's getting cold out there. So that seems like maybe some sort of that's a tradition, a very necessary tradition, but here's the cup. Put it on. Nope. Out you go. I'm sorry. I don't know if I was telling you about this one. On as we were recording last week or not, but we had a Wolf spider come in to visit us that we had quite an adventure trying to get out without letting the cat see that it was there because we didn't want the cat going and getting its nose bit or pulling it apart. So we had quite an adventure there. But, but you know, other than that, it's really, we don't have a lot of specific rituals that have developed yet. And when we circle back around to this next year, you know, when the kids are older, things might shift, right. Because you know, a lot is about their wonder and excitement and, and building that foundation for them. So yeah.  Mark: but that absolutely makes sense to me. And so that brings us then to the Hallows, Sal and rituals themselves. And when you practice those in my mind is kind of a moving target. What I tend to do is the first weekend in November. And then in this particular case, one of our circle members had a conflict that weekend. And so we're doing next weekend, the weekend of Halloween instead, but usually it's just the first Saturday and we do an overnight. So it's the first Saturday and Sunday of November. And sometimes that's the sixth or seventh, but if not, it's close enough.  Yucca: Will you be in person this year? Cause I remember last year you did a, a virtual version, right?  Mark: we did this year, we are going to be in person. We're all vaccinated and we're all old enough to be we're all old enough. Not that I want any of us to stop getting older. I'm just to be clear. We're I'm, I'm the youngest person in the group. So, you know, take that for what it, what it is. The, we are doing it in person. This will be our 30th anniversary. The circle started on sell and of on Halloween actually of 1991. And so this will be our 31st ritual, our 30th anniversary. So that's pretty exciting. It, it really is And everyone who was in the circle to start with is still there. We added two more members three more members later. But everybody that, the original six they're all there. We've had people get mad and go stomping away, but they come back. It it's a family you know, it has, has the dynamics of a family. So what we do is we go to the home of two of the members of our circle and we hold th for the ritual part, we build a focus and alter at the fire circle that they have down below their house. And we lay a fire, but we don't like. The only light we wait till after dark and the only light that's coming from the circle is from the lit jack-o-lanterns that are on the alter. So we proceed down to there. And then we do a sort of upper world ritual, which is a gratitude for the things that we've had, the harvests that we've had over the course of the year. And acknowledgement of the losses that have happened over the course of the year. And then when we're ready, when we've kind of put everything down and we're ready to go, we precess into the woods to a very dark place that we fancy as the land of the dead. And then we speak to those that have died in the previous year that we miss. And we tell them that we miss them and we love them. And we're sorry that they're gone and all that, and thank you for what they gave us. We leave things in the underworld that we no longer want to keep with us stuff that is just not serving us anymore. We leave tokens of that down there. And then when we're done, which in a scary sense tends to be when we start getting comfortable, when you start just kind of, well, I don't, we can just sort of stay here. Then we browse ourselves and we marched back up, light the fire, and then we pass around pomegranate and chocolate and red wine and then sing songs and. Being alive because we've come back to life where we were we're returned from the land of the dead. It's a ritual we've been doing for decades and it's always very moving and I love those people very much. So it's a, it's a, a great, pretty simple ritual, but it's, it's a really, really profound one for us.  Yucca: It sounds amazing.  Mark: It is. It's really cool. How about you? What are the sort of ritual things that you do for Yucca: Well, the one that I do is, was mentioning it earlier is the going out for that, that private recognition of all those that made me that unbroken line of ancestors back to Luca and of all of the, the beings. Whose lives, whose lives ended for mine to continue and, and just sitting with that awareness and just thinking through each of those, the ones that I can think of. And there's always more, but I'll, I'll begin at, I usually do a circle. So cast a very simple circle and be in it. And when I do have a garden that I have an annual garden that I have done through the, the year where we are now, I didn't do an annual garden here because this is our first season, but in the future, I'll do it there where I'm in the. The plants, the dried up vines and get the, that little pokey sensation of the like the dried pumpkin buy-ins against the skin and things like that. And just hang out in that crispy, in that crispy, dead garden, right. That has produced and has been, and also, I mean, always remembering for me, there's the always remembering that, that all this death does eventually lead to more life. Like we were talking about in the decomposition episode a few weeks ago that it leads that, that we ate the plants. We ate the animals, we, and it brought our life and our life. I will be, I mean, it's, I'm an ancestor already, which is weird to think about, but, but I will be an ancestor in more ways. One day. And just that memory, that, that awareness of that mortality, just sitting with that mortality  Mark: That's great. Do you and your partner do anything to celebrate the holidays? Yucca: in the years where we can have gatherings, we usually have a like a holiday feast. So we do the, we'll do the Halloween game, which is really as Halloween, but then we'll also do like a get together feast. I don't usually call them Sabots but a Sabbath feast. because actually half of my family's Sephardic, so for us, Sabbath is preferring specifically to the Jewish holidays. So we don't call the pagan holidays. The Sabbaths like just as some people do some people don't, but for us, there are two separate things. So we, we don't have any sort of ritual you each do together, but we do have the community, if the bring people in. And a lot of those people, some of them are pagan. Some of them are not, it's more of a community thing of it. It works really well. This, this eight holidays a year with the changing of the season just works out very, very nicely. right. It kind of has a familiar feel, but it's not so often that people are just worn out by it. Like, oh, it's not special because we do it, you know, every couple of weeks. No, it's, it's longer. It's not every month. It's a little bit longer. Right. So, we look forward to being able to go back to that. But you know, we're still, we're still not quite there yet.  Mark: Sure. Yeah. I mean, we all just trying to. Get your head around the sheer magnitude of the losses from COVID it's, it's a big deal. And I know that's going to be a huge subject for our ritual in the upper part of the ritual. Getting ready to take the walk to the land of the dead, because  Yucca: There's  Mark: you can imagine you're waiting through crowds of people that just go on and on and on and on in order to get there. Yucca: yeah.  Mark: It's, it's, it's almost 5 million people worldwide now and that's just staggering. Yucca: Yeah, It's, it's been a rough couple of years. Mark: Yeah, it really has. Yucca: And to be here, I mean, we at least sort of knew that we'd still be here last, last year when we were doing this episode, but there's just been so many more people sending. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: I don't want to get sidetracked into that too much because there's a lot to be said about it, but I think it's all been said before by someone. And even though this is a solemn holiday, I mean, Halloween and Halloween is a sort of a sparkly, glittery fun holiday, but hellos Sowan can be a very fervent, solemn, serious holiday around the contemplation of mortality and how all things must go in time and become something else. And I feel like I feel privileged to be a part of this practice, this, this tradition in process of developing itself. To have a time of the year to contemplate all those things, to not turn my back on mortality and on suffering on the reality of, of the dark things for want of a better term in life. And we, as we talked about a couple of weeks ago, we don't mean dark in any kind of a racist sense. We just mean the kinds of things that are in the shadow, less conscious hidden, less visible, hidden. And besides that, I, I like a good, scary movie. Yucca: Yeah, I really appreciate that there are so many sides to it. I appreciate the Halloween and hollows aspect of this time of year. Because I think both are really valuable and that, that it can all kind of be true at the same time. Right.  Mark: In fact, I liked that so much that I really wish there were, there was more dimension to some of the other Sabbaths around the year. You know, this one and you'll, which of course is deeply informed by all of the mainstream Christmas stuff. They have a lot of, they've got a lot of weight. There's, there's a lot there. And when I think about some of the other holidays around the course of the year, there, there isn't quite as much there. And I, I hope over time to build rituals and traditions that, that add to the, the overall weight and sense of dimension to those, those holiday. Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: Which is part of what this podcast is for. So then all of us can, you know, figure out the rituals that are going to work for us and help us to celebrate life more because this is life and it's. It's good. Yucca: Yep. This was so much fun. Thank you, mark.  Mark: Thank you so much, Yucca. And I hope you have just the most wonderful, spooky, evocative, thoughtful, memorable, meaningful a week coming up. Yucca: Oh, likewise. And we will see All of you next week. Mark: All right. Yep. See you on November 1st.

THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S2E33 TRANSCRIPT:----more---- Yucca: Welcome back to the wonder science-based paganism. I'm your host Yucca.  Mark: And I'm mark. Yucca: And this week we are talking about sigils. So it's another really fun one where we're going to get into the nuts and bolts the details. Get into a specific practice.  Mark: Right. This is a time honored tradition. People have been making. Hmm, symbols that they consider to be magical for thousands of years. We have the, you know, the seals on the tombs of the Kings in, in Egypt Lots of really kind of very old symbols that are meant to have magical powers. So, this is something that we can do in our own time. And it's fun and it can be psychologically effective. So we thought we would do an episode about it. Yucca: exactly. And I think a really great place to start is to come back to our view on magic and magical practices and how we see that, because this is a. Non-thesis is a science based paganism podcast. So when we talk about a magical practice, we aren't saying that that this is, you know, magic with a capital M where we're really making things float or fly or casting spells. This is a psychological process.  Mark: Right. This, this is something that we can do, which will change us internally. Our, our brains are, our minds are incredibly programmable and are we're constantly creating new neural pathways to accommodate new experiences and new understanding. Our, our brains are very plastic in that way. And so we've, you. The practice of rituals and magic and so forth as with the intention of changing something about what's happening in our minds, whether it's our emotional state or our our degree of focus on something that's important to us or our commitment to a goal any of those kinds of things. And what's really cool about a sigil is that it can give you this. Sort of quick flash stamp of something, which will then remind you of a whole magical meaning that you folded into the creation of that sigil. Yucca: Yeah. So. So given that, I mean, let's, let's get a little bit more into what a sigil. is. I loved the imagery that you started with, right? The, the symbol on the tomb and the ancient pharaohs and things like that. But, but this is something that gets used in a lot of different cultures over millennia and something that we do today.  Mark: Yeah. And some of them are some of those kinds of symbols are very standard eyes. Like the evil eye, for example, in many of the Mediterranean cultures is something that's been around. It appears for. At least a couple thousand years.  Yucca: Predating the religions that commonly use them today.  Mark: exactly. And so those, those symbols become freighted with not only meaning for the individuals that are putting them down, but then also there's that historical momentum coming in behind them. And so when you create a new sigil that won't have that historical freight behind. But what it will have is the history of all sigil making through all human history, leading up to the moment that you inscribe your sigil for the purposes that you intend. Yucca: And depending on how you create your central, you can work in. Some of those historic city rules as well, or elements from them, things that remind you of that and bring it in, I'm thinking about the evil eye or the Humsa or hand to Fatima. Like you can, if you already have a relationship with that, choosing colors or shapes or things that are reminiscent of that can just can strengthen it for you. It's about what that association is in your mind. And what it communicates to you instantly.  Mark: Right. Right. When I wrote a post to the atheopagan is a blog which is that atheopagan is some.org about sigils. I called them barcodes for the brain. Because I really think of them that way. They are something that your brain can read in a little short beep and get a whole, a whole collection of meanings that you have, that you have compressed into that little sigil. Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: And so it can be something very useful to put on your focus or alter which is another term for what we call focus. It's something that you can inscribe on magical tools. I I've known people that made a sigil and put it in their wallet. And just carried it around whether it was for safety or for prosperity or for a focus of a particular intention. Those are things that they, they concentrate on and they, they have it there so that they see it on a regular basis. And it reminds them once again of the ritual work that they've done to focus on that outcome. Yucca: And one thing I did. So. Done sigils before. And mark suggested a few weeks ago, oh, this is a topic we could do. So I said, well, I've, I've never done this before. I know about the concept. So I did a little bit of internet research and I tried two different weeks doing it. And the, this past week it was really, really successful for me. And one thing that I did was I actually drew it on my wrist with henna and it, and this was something that This was a very, you know, not to be too over sharing, but this week was a really challenging week. It was one of those weeks where like all the crisis has come at once and everything stacks up. But I had a lot to be doing some, a teacher. My semester was starting at all these new classes we were receiving evacuees from the coast coming in because of Ida and all kinds of things happening all at once. So I, yeah. Tried one of these and it was about returning to focus. And so I felt like it wasn't something that I needed over a long period of time. It was something that it just really needed for this week. And so putting it I dunno if you can see, it's almost, it's pretty much gone. But it lonely lasted for a few days on my wrist because you know, washing my hands and that part of is rubbing up. And when you put hen on somewhere on your body, that doesn't get a lot of contact if they can stay for a long time, but the HANA worked really well. So that can be an option for people who use that, like you were suggesting putting on the dashboard or on the focus, or you could literally put it on the body as well.  Mark: Yes, that's very clever. I like that. Yeah. I mean, I know people that have had permanent tattoos and sigils as well, but the idea of something that, you know, where you have this identified immediate need, that isn't necessarily a long-term need, but having it there so that you see it on yourself all the time. That's that's I could see how that would be very helpful. Yucca: Yeah. And somewhere where I could see it, but it's also not super public right. Asleep can cover it, but I'd still notice it  Mark: Right, right. Yucca: you know, maybe not putting it on my forehead.  Yeah. I mean, I think that might work for some people depending on what you're doing, but if you're public facing, that might end up with more questions. Of course, that could be the purpose. So it really depends on what you're trying to do with it.  Mark: right?  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: Yeah. So, that, and that really is an important piece of the, the process of any sort of so-called magical ritual process. You have to understand what your intention is, right? You need to know what you're trying to accomplish. And in my work at the focus or alter a lot of the time, what I am seeking to do is just to create that kind of present grounded, warm, glowing feeling that I have by candlelight and in front of my focus. And that's all, that's all that I want. I'm not trying to make anything change. I'm not trying to. You know, program my psychology with any particular intention. I just want that good feeling that comes from going into that ritual state. But if you do have something that you want to accomplish, you know, if you're stuck behind a procrastination block or your You're really trying to focus your attention on something very important in your life. Like getting a job or finding a workable relationship or, you know, those kinds of things. It can be very helpful to get very, very clear about exactly what it is that you're seeking to achieve. And I have always felt that the more clarity you have, the more specificity you have about what it is that you're seeking to achieve. The more likely it is that you'll you'll make that happen for yourself. So not just, I want a relationship, but I would like to be connected with a person in this way, who has these kinds of attributes? So that, so that you can recognize it when it comes along. So that you're, you're clear about, you know, oh, well here, this, this is the sort of thing I've been looking for. Yucca: And to, to become really clear on what it is that you really are looking for. because sometimes our surface understanding might be very different than when we stop and really examine and evaluate. You know what is going on. Sometimes we can see certain emotions can be hiding as other emotions. Like quite often, something like anger when you really get underneath it's. Oh, no, it's really fear  Mark: Right,  Yucca: And so maybe the addressing the fear is what's going to let everything else. It's going to unblock, let the rest of that river flow or whatever it is that you need to happen.  Mark: Yes. So, yes. I think that's true. And and so now we should talk more about About what the process is, how you make them. And then, then we can go into various ways that they can be used. So a sigil is. A symbol, typically a complex one and the most common way that people make them is by taking a key word, a word that encapsulates the thing that they're looking for. And it may, or maybe two words or even three not a whole long sentence because that's a whole lot of symbols to have to sort of compress altogether. And what you do is you take those letters and write them out, strike out all the valves. And now you've got a bunch of consonants and that is your raw material for making your sigil. You, you can put those together in various ways. You can add like little circles or squiggles or flames or whatever, whatever attributes you think. Add to the sigil. You don't have to use all the letters. That's very important to understand, essentially what you're doing is you're creating the crystallization of the concept that you've written down in the words, and it doesn't have to look like anything that's readable to anybody, but you. Yucca: And when I was doing research for it, I found some really interesting playful things that people would do. So instead of letters, They took the letters and made it kind of a code where they associated one letter with a number. So ABC might be 1, 2, 3, right? And you go all the way to your 26 and you could swap it for numbers or where they made a grid with the alphabet and the position that the letter was in would then associate with where on the symbol, that letter would go.  I saw some people doing some backwards writing. And there are a few really just very skillful artists that did some amazing, really look like tattoo work.  Mark: Yeah, I've seen some very beautiful, sigils and the, the, the important thing is to do it until it's done  Yucca: Hmm.  Mark: and you'll know it's done. When you feel like it's done.  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: That's, that's the only way to tell, honestly, as I said, you don't need to use all of the letters, numbers, figures, whatever it is, you can just use the ones that strike your fancy. You can flip them upside down. You can make the mirror image. You can add additional embellishments that make the sigil look more mystical and cool. Or that look more Persuasive and compelling, whatever you think is effective for the creation of your sigil. And what I found when I started doing this is that my early ones were pretty perfunctory. I was just not as daring as I might've been in, in making changes. And they got a lot more extravagant as I practiced more. Yucca: But I did this past week was I did the letters. I actually, I wrote a sentence. Right. I figured out what my sentence was really focused on exactly what it was that I wanted. And I did this all in ritual. So thought about it a little bit beforehand, but then really refined it in ritual and took the first letters of each word. And used that to create the symbol. But I also create, I used some shapes as well, that weren't letters. So I used a circle and then made the letters make sort of the form looked almost like an eye. So like a Sur an eye within a circle because I was working on being able to return to a focus and centered, balanced. In the moment when I felt like I was being tugged in 20 different directions was okay. Let's, let's bring that back to the focus. And so I was trying to come up with what will, what will feel like that? What does that feeling look like in a symbol? And so the letters were a component, but just the shapes that the letters were making the shapes that the letters were contained. Yeah. Helps to facilitate that immediate return to that feeling.  Mark: Sure. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. I know that people will sometimes add like wavy lines for water or other, you know, other kind of elemental pieces as well, too. To sort of describe the feeling that they're working to evoke the emotion they're seeking to capture. Yucca: Right. I can imagine if someone works with a framework of the elements often that really associates like, okay, so air is mental. But, you know, the earth is ground or whatever it is, there are associations that you could use that as a starting place for that sigil or incorporate it. And Yeah. I did not work with color, but I think that some people could, if you are a color person, color is, is so powerful, right. Mark: Yeah.  So I was going to describe a process that I went through a while back with the atheopagan group, Saturday mixer group that gets together on zoom every Saturday morning. There was a poem by Robinson Jeffers that was read by a member of the group. And the last line of the poem really struck me. The line was for you also are human.  Yucca: Hm.  Mark: And so what I did was I took the first letter of each of those. Each each, the first letter of each word of that line and made that into a sigil. And that was about it. Self compassion and humility and understanding that I'm not always going to get it right. And I created that into a sigil and it turned out to be a very powerful kind of symbol for me. I, I I've kept it on my focus for close to a year now, I think. And and I've used it in rituals as well. Especially when. Working to address things that are challenges in my life, just to remember. It's okay. You don't have to be perfect.  Yucca: It's beautiful. It's a beautiful line too.  Mark: It is Robinson Jeffers. If you haven't read him his marvelous,  Yucca: Hmm.  Mark: a very, very strong conservationist out of the American west and yeah, just really recommend his stuff. Beautiful.  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: Okay. Yucca: let's circle back, maybe summarize about the creation of a sigil. So step wise, we said, figure out what your intention is, Right. And preferably in ritual, then create it, put, make it into something visual.  Mark: Right, Yucca: do the letters, maybe have symbols that represent the letters, but you can make it as involved and intricate as, as feels. Right. And as you were saying, mark, just keep going until it feels complete and done.  Mark: right. And while you're doing this, sorry to  Yucca: Oh, please continue.  Mark: But while you're doing this, bear in mind, what you're trying to do is to capture a particular emotion. What you're trying to do is to make a symbol that can help you to snap back into a particular emotional state. So play music that brings you that emotional state, while you're working on your sigil, you know, burn some incense that reminds you of a particular kind of feeling that you, that you have, or, you know, spray a little essential oil into the air or whatever it is that you do for scent. You can, you can turn this into a multi-sensory kind of experience that will help you. When you, when you start using the sigil out in the world, Yucca: Yeah. So for an example, sharing, what I would I did this past week was when I did that ritual actually went out clear stars, really beautiful moment. Created that had to use like a little red light so I could see it created that symbol. And then hung out in that ritual space with the symbol. Trying to be in that place of, of focus, which was what I was working on returning to and spent. I don't actually know how long it was because it was probably only four or five minutes, but it felt like a long time. And just really tried to connect the feeling of that symbol with that, with with that experience. And then it was later. It was a second time that I came back and actually put that as Hannah, because it didn't occur to me until after I had done it that maybe I shouldn't get henna.  Mark: That's a really clever idea. I like that a lot. Yucca: So yeah. I mean, you might, depending on how the skill that someone has with the henna you know, you might even do it on your body as you're creating.  Mark: Okay. Yucca: So, so that would be okay. Have that association form that association, whether it's with the, hopefully with as many things as you can to make it really work for you since the color, the, the ambiance, the music, if you're a musical person  Mark: Tastes and flavors that make that make you happy or remind, you know, maybe it's black coffee, maybe that. you of focus and attention and kind of diligence about pursuing whatever your goal is, or maybe it's chocolate and that's just sort of sensual pleasure, kind of happiness sort of feeling that you're trying to capture as many senses as possible. It's usually a good rule for rituals. Yucca: Yeah. You know, and, and as we're talking, it occurs to me that we've been doing, we've been focusing on this as a. solitary or singular thing, but this could be something that you're doing with a partner as well. If it's something that both of you or all of you, if it's more of that are working on together and maybe it's maybe you're in the process of moving or forming a new. Relationship or things like that, that you could use this in a lot of different ways and have that, that kind of special, powerful symbol between the two of you that represents whatever this goal or agreement it's arrangement is.  Mark: Right. Like if you're forming a household together for the first time, for example, you could create a sigil for, for, and health and all those things that you want to be a part of your household. And then that could be on the household, Walter along with other, you know, pictures of. Of the members of the household and other things that remind them of why they live together. Yucca: Hmm, that's really sweet. I could see that above a door too.  Like in the, the walking into the threshold of the house.  Mark: So that's a thing that you can do. You can put it on the dashboard of your car. If you're, if you have a problem with getting lost or if you.  Yucca: Get really angry with driving.  Mark: Yes. If you have a problem with road rage or, or if you have a habit of speeding, maybe something that will remind you to slow down a little bit and you know, pay a little more attention to what's going on around you. Yucca: Or confidence and comfort and maybe not having the overwhelming anxiety of that horrible feeling of, oh, I've got to merge. I've got to change lanes. I've got to. Got to drive. And by the way, driving in the part of the country that you live in, just sounds terrifying. Driving and in California, there's very aggressive and lots and lots of drivers there. So if you need help with driving in California, that could be a reason to really do a sigil.  Mark: It could, you could do a little outline of the state of California as a part of. Yucca: You're good. Yes. Or, you know, maybe a bubble of protection around your car or something like that.  Mark: Yeah, Yucca: I just teased though, you guys are great.  Mark: well, I mean, to be honest, I'm pretty happy about the area where I live in terms of how aggressive the drivers are. There are places like Silicon valley where the drivers credibly aggressive. You have lots of sort of young male drivers with really expensive cars who feel entitled to own the entire road. And they drive like maniacs. It's it's really frightening. Okay. Yucca: Yeah, folks. Aren't good drivers here, but there just aren't a lot of them, so,  Mark: Yeah. Well, that's good. If they're being really bad drivers, you just let them pass you and forget.  Yucca: that's right. Yeah. I'm just like, Okay, So anyways, so these are some, some ideas. What else could we say?  Mark: well, there's the question about using the CGM? Kind of visibly and publicly, or at least visible to yourself. And then there's the sort of secret sigil thing. Some people like to create a sigil with a particular meaning and then seal it somehow in an envelope or just folding over the paper with ceiling wax or you know, somehow. Keeping it hidden so that it's power becomes stronger because it's been hidden. That isn't something that I've done very much, but I like playing sealing, wax and seals. I just think it's really cool. So.  Yucca: It reminds me um, A girlfriend who was Japanese and she we weren't living there. We were living in an actually Bilbao, but she had these little envelopes. There were beautiful cloth envelopes from the temple in her village. And they had prayers inside that had been written by the priest at the temple. And. She said that if you opened it up, you let it go. I wouldn't, it wouldn't work anymore. So you always had to keep it sealed.  Mark: Hmm. Yucca: There was just that it, it made it really special to have that little sealed cloth envelope with the special not done. And that just seemed to give it this kind of. This feeling of importance and there was like the rules around it that just made it kind of fun. And I think that, that's what, that's what I think gave it the, you know, the power. So to say it was, is the belief around it, not necessarily that the actual marks of ink on paper did anything, but the way that she felt about it and the stories that she told about it. Right. Created that feeling. So that's what it reminds me of. When you say that to sealing it away with wax or putting it into an envelope.  Mark: Well, it's funny when you say that story, because I, I hear it in two different ways. On the one hand. Yes. It's very special to have the prayer enclosed in its little envelope, you know, with the special knots and all that kind of stuff. But. Another way that you could look at that is it's sort of like a, like a battery, like a store, a stored blessing of some kind. So when  Yucca: open it when you're ready.  Mark: you open it when you need it. Right. So,  Yucca: Oh yeah.  Mark: kind of cool. Huh? Yucca: I liked that. I might do something like that with the kids.  Mark: Yeah, I would think that would be a cool thing to do with kids. Cause it's like, if you're having a really bad day, maybe today's the data open, open your, your blessing packet and, you know, let a little goodness in.  Yucca: Yeah. Great. Mark: that. Yucca: Okay. Thanks for, for picking up on that. part. That's really special.  Mark: Yeah. Well, I'm always trying to think of new ways to do cool ritual stuff, you know, it's it's ritual is play for adults. In, in many ways we get to do stuff with all the cool toys and it's just, it's fun  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: and meaningful that's yeah. That's part of what makes it adult play as opposed to children's play, not the children's play isn't meaningful, but most of the meaning for children's play is about brains in development, you know, eye, hand coordination, and, you know,  Yucca: This figuring out how to human  Mark: Yes, exactly. All that kind of stuff. Whereas as adults, the introduction of meaning into our play makes it really significant and important to us. Yucca: Yeah. So we might have it being something that's public or private, but at some point it might be time to, the schedule might be done. There might be some that, that are never going to be done well within your lifetime. Right. But there might be others. Like the one that I worked with this week that, that it felt like it was something I needed for this week. So. I next step might be a releasing of that situation.  Mark: Okay. Yucca: Maybe it might fade away like how I did it with the henna. It just sort of faded away and I don't feel the need to formally release it or destroy the central or something like that. But there might it, depending on what your central is, there might be need for that is to create. Another ritual space and burn it or put it in the compost or erase it or replace it with another central, maybe renew it because sometimes things get stale, Right,  Mark: right, That, that thing that you see on your dashboard every day after a while, you won't see it anymore. Right. So, it may be. I don't know. I would consider putting it on my rear view window. I mean my rear view mirror so that, you know, a little, little piece of paper along the edge so that I could see it and it would continue to draw my attention. Yucca: Hang it right there. So it moves a little bit.  Mark: Huh. Yucca: you turn the car back up or yeah.  Mark: Although, apparently it's illegal to hang anything from your rear view mirror, and cops can pull you over for that, which is how a couple of young black men have been killed. So  Yucca: California thing. I mean, maybe Mark: I guess it  Yucca: on the state,  Mark: I guess it depends on the state. Yeah. Yucca: Yeah, in my state there, they're more worried about whether you have a license plate or not like you just cause your car street like it does it, is it safe? Do you have a license plate? My, my brother went east once and they pulled him over because the tent was too dark on his on his windows. So, Yeah. And I guess in a lot of states you have to have a drivers license plate on the front too, and not just the back.  Mark: Yeah. In California. Yucca: Yeah. So I think it's probably gonna depend on a lot of places, like on what state you're in you know, in, in the more rural places you probably won't have trouble with that, but in the the more urban areas, it seems like it would be likely that they're going to look for more, more issues. Mark: Huh, Yucca: And some states it's illegal to drive barefoot  Mark: it's illegal to drive barefoot in California. Yucca: Yeah. That doesn't make much sense to me. I can understand why say, you know, maybe don't drive in stilettos or something like that, but  Mark: Yeah,  Yucca: the,  Mark: that makes a lot more sense to me than the barefoot one. I don't know. I don't know what the problem with the barefoot one is. It might've been one of those kinds of anti hippie laws that got passed in the 1960s. It was just designed to target particular kinds of people. Yucca: Yeah. Or the logic of maybe if there's broken glass, you won't be able to push down far enough, but there shouldn't be broken glass under your pedals. So,  Mark: You would hope not. Yucca: yeah. Anyways, I don't know why we're we keep talking about driving today. Must be on my mind.  Mark: I don't know. So, so yeah, be creative in thinking of the ways that you can use these symbols in your life and in the world. One of the things that's really great about them is that you can make them really small and unobtrusive and you can keep them in places where they're hidden from other people that are, are going to ask questions that you don't want to answer. And it's a way of being able to kind of carry your magic with you. In on your day-to-day life. So it doesn't have to be just something that lives within your focus at home. It can be something that goes with you in your pocket. Yucca: So this could be a really good practice for folks who are living in a dorm situation, or we've talked about before that, you know, they live with parents who are. Really into a very different religion or very strict about what, you know, they want the kids in their household doing, or there are, you know, you've got an in-law or something like that, where it's, it doesn't have to look like anything more than a cool than like a really cool doodle, like a symbol, like, yeah, I really liked this symbol. Like I'm into drawing. You know, and yet to you, it can have a really the, the idea is that it has really important meaning,  Mark: Right. Yucca: and it's yours. It's yours.  Mark: Very essential. I mean, there are tons of sigils that can be copied out of various books and all that kind of stuff. And maybe you'll get some value out of that. I don't know. But to me it really matters that I create my sigils myself. They're unique to me. And that means that it's the only one in the world. You know, when I draw it and put it in my pocket or whatever it is, it's the only one like it in the world. Yucca: Yeah. So this is a really a really fun practice. So thank you for sharing this with me, mark. It's been, I've loved playing with it over the last couple of weeks and hope to do more.  Mark: I'm so glad. Yeah. I, I do think it's really fun and creative and I think one thing that we don't do very often in our ritual work is, is graphic kind of stuff, drawing and so forth. And this, this is something that anyone can do. You don't have to be a good artist. And I mean, I just think it's, it's a lot of fun and it can be a really powerful, effective, psychological practice as well. Yucca: Yeah,  Mark: Well, thanks so much for having another great conversation with me, Yucca. I really appreciate our conversations together and look forward to next weeks.  Yucca: likewise. Thanks mark.  Mark: All right. See you folks. Bye bye.  Yucca: Okay.

ECO ELEVATiON
#19 ABRA-CADABRA-ALAKAZAM with MARK ENGLAND

ECO ELEVATiON

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 22, 2021 121:31


With MY word, i CREATE. AbRa-CaDaBra this is how i KNOW we have already W.O.N (wholeness, oneness, nowness) This Podcast Episode is honestly a vibe for YOU my TRiBE ! Mark England is & has been a teacher for years with a vision & PRO-active practice UNLOCKiNG the BREATH of HUMANiTY! His community & TRiBE are most known as the LANGUAGE & the BREATH people. First OFF it is an iNSiDE effort & practice to LEARN how we CREATE what we ALLOW our SELF to see. #ENLiFTED beyond the external by more FOCUS on the iNTERNAL, by transforming our inner-dialogue with something as SUBTLE as the practice known as the SOFT-TALK-CHALLENGE. Please DO iT for YO SELF !!! i know i am extremely grateful for this DiViNE connection with Mark & ALL of YOU amazing iNFiNiTE iNTER-DiMENSiONAL LiGHT BEiNGS

Sermons by Ed
Mark: Follow Jesus; Serve Others

Sermons by Ed

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 4, 2020 35:05


Study Notes Ed Underwood Mark Follow Jesus; Serve Others “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Jesus Christ, Mark 10:45) The four Gospels are corresponding accounts that provide a complex portrait of the person and work, the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, the Messiah of Israel, Savior of the world, and Son of God. These historical books encompass about 46% of the New Testament. Though they were not the first books written, the early church placed the Gospels at the beginning of the New Testament because they are the bedrock upon which the book of Acts and the Epistles are constructed. The Gospels are written as biographies with a purpose. They are thematic portraits of the life of Christ focusing on the brief public ministry of the Son of God. Each author selects distinctive events and teachings of the Lord Jesus to present a purposefully skewed account to accomplish their purpose: Matthew, a Jew, writes to persuade His countrymen that Christ is their King. Frequently quoting from the Old Testament Scriptures, he argues that Jesus of Nazareth “fulfills what was written.” His birth, life, death, and His resurrection leave only one possible conclusion: Jesus is the Messiah of Israel. Mark seeks to reach the Roman mindset and presents Jesus as the Servant who came to “give His life as a ransom for many. He begins by serving the masses, but as He is being rejected and His departure grows near, He concentrates on serving His disciples and equipping them to serve others in His name. Luke focuses on the Greek way of thinking, revealing Christ as the Perfect Man. Dr. Luke highlights the human side of Jesus, describing Him as the one who came to earth “to seek and save that which was lost.” John writes to everyone, regardless of culture. He selects seven miracles and arranges them carefully to persuade his readers to believe in Jesus as the Son of God who will give them eternal life. Mark is the shortest and simplest of the four Gospels. It gives the reader a vivid, compelling account of the life of Christ. With no editorial comments, Mark lets the narrative tell the story: Jesus is a Servant, constantly on the move and the pace is exhausting. He never rests, never ignores a hurting heart, and never avoids controversy, opposition, or danger. He just keeps moving and serving toward His reason for coming to earth—to suffer and die for the sin of the world. Those who follow Him on the path of serving and suffering are often confused and exhausted, but always marveling at the wonder of being close to Him. Amazed at His words and works, His compassion and strength, they come to understand what all of us realize as we read on: Following Jesus is extremely difficult, but eternally rewarding. Mark began by citing Isaiah, who predicted the Servant of God (1:3; cf. Isaiah 40:3). He ends with the Servant suffering on the Cross, and the implications of that event on the lives of His followers. Jesus came to serve God and others by providing salvation through self-sacrifice. Mark is the Gospel that most portrays Christ as the Son who became the Servant of the Lord Paul describes in Philippians 2:5-11. John Mark, the nephew of Barnabas and disciple of Peter, records the life of Christ from the eyewitness stories of Peter. “Mark’s story of Jesus is one of swift action and high drama. Only twice, in chapters 4 and 13, does Jesus pause to deliver extended discourses.” (J. D. Kingsbury, Conflict in Mark: Jesus, Authorities, Disciples, p. 1): The pace of the Book is as exhausting as the pace of life for a devoted follower of Christ. The adverb euthys, translated “immediately,” occurs 41 times! I. PROLOGUE: PREP ARA TION OF THE SERV ANT (1:1-13): Mark’ s dramatic introduction of Jesus of Nazareth sets the tone for the rest of the book. Prophecies from Malachi and Isaiah identifying John the Baptizer as Messiah’s forerunner, established Jesus’ credentials as the Christ (Messiah). Mark: All who follow the Suffering Servant must be prepared to suffer and serve— to lay down their lives and serve others in His name! II. THE SERVANT’S GALILEAN MINISTRY (1:14-8:30): His work in Galilee stirs up the religious authorities. Two series of confrontations with Jewish leaders reveal their hard hearts (2:1-3:20). The first time around, they decide to kill Him (3:6); the second time, they accuse Him of relying on Satan instead of God (3:22). Three events—the charge by the religious authorities that His powers come from Satan, His rejection at Nazareth, and the murder of John the Baptizer—precipitate a great transition in the ministry of Jesus. His primary focus from this point forward is His twelve disciples. Just one year from His crucifixion, Jesus devotes six months to an intense training of the Twelve—teaching and demonstrating that He is the Son of God—as He withdraws away from the hostility of the Jewish authorities, the domain of Herod Antipas, and the fickle masses (3:23-8:22). The great transition in Mark’s narrative follows the re-teaching of the answer to the question, “Who is Jesus?” until finally Peter answers correctly for the Twelve, “You are the Christ!” (8:30) After Peter’s declaration, the disciples will learn what kind of Messiah He is as they follow Him to Jerusalem, where they will witness His crucifixion and resurrection. III. THE SERVANT’S JUDEAN MINISTRY (8:31-16:8): Jesus’ movement to the cross dominates the second half of Mark’s Gospel. From the time they leave the north, Jesus and His disciples were “on the way” to Jerusalem (9:33; 10:32). Mark bookends this section with two separate healings of a blind man—the first in Bethsaida on the north shore of Galilee (8:22-26), the second in Jericho, just before He enters Jerusalem for the last time (10:46-52). Mark’s careful placing of these miracles demonstrates that Jesus was endeavoring to open His disciples’ eyes to the truth of the necessity of the cross and suffering. All who follow the Suffering Servant must be prepared to lay down their lives and serve others in His name. Over a third of the book is devoted to the eight days following their arrival in Judea on the Sunday before His resurrection—from His entry into Jerusalem (11:1-11) to Christ’s resurrection (16:1-8). Monday through Thursday Jesus cleared the Temple, exposed the hypocrisy of Israel’s leaders, received Mary of Bethany’s worship, predicted His desertion and betrayal, instituted the Lord’s Supper, prayed in the garden, and was arrested and condemned by the Sanhedrin. But only the Roman authority, Pilate, could execute anyone. On Friday morning, Jesus stood trial before Pilate. By 9:00 AM, after being scourged and mocked, the process of His crucifixion began—the Son of God was nailed to a cross between two thieving insurrectionists. He was guilty of being “The King of the Jews.” For six hours, Jesus suffered on the cross, the last three being accompanied by miraculous events. Then, at 3:00 PM, Jesus died, and was buried in a nearby tomb. The foundational truth of Christianity is the Gospel: Christ died for our sins and arose. But too many Christians underestimate the mighty work of Jesus on the Cross. He not only paid the penalty for our sin, He made a way for us to overcome the power of sin! MARK AND YOU: When reading Mark, keep in mind the author and the audience. John Mark was a privileged young man who failed miserably in his early Christian life. He abandoned Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey. Years later, he writes his Gospel from Rome, primarily to Roman Christians living in a proud and powerful culture. Remember that Mark is stressing sacrifice and service from a heart that grew up in privilege and to a people who dominated the world. Remember that Mark is stressing suffering from a heart that tried to avoid it and to a people who were facing persecution Remember that Mark doesn’t try to hide the faults and weaknesses of Jesus’ followers. Remember that Mark learned his lessons on suffering and servanthood the hard way—through disappointing those he admired in Christ when he decided that following Christ was too costly. Messiah: Mark portrays Jesus as an active, compassionate, and obedient Servant of God. Christ is constantly moving toward the goal of laying down His life for others!

The Marketing Secrets Show
Interview With My Original Mentor - Part 4 of 4

The Marketing Secrets Show

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 31, 2020 27:04


How do you handle the haters? When you’re the face and voice of your company there’s going to come a time when someone’s going to talk trash about you. But when you put yourself out there, whether it’s on video, a podcast, a blog, a webinar, social media, there’s going to come a time when it happens to you. I came to a place where I started to think differently about the bashing and untruths. Want to know how to deal with the “haters?” Want to know how to turn the dirt into a castle? Then don’t miss the 4th and FINAL part of my interview with my first mentor Mark Joyner. ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. And welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Today, hear a story. This is part four of four of the interview from the Mark Joyner show. And I hope you've enjoyed the series so far. I had so much fun sharing this interview with Mark, and I hope that you get a ton of value and benefit out of it as well. With that said, I'm going to ... No further ado, we'll cue up the theme song when we come back. You have a chance to listen to the exciting conclusion of my interview on the Mark Joyner show. And now it's funny for me because then I feel like now are the team has been doing good, now the next phase is this crossing the chasm. So I've been having my core team, I'll read this right now, we're all geeking out on it because it's fascinating as you start learning. And I pulled that. If you just Google crossing the chasm graph, you'll see a graph of the five phase, the innovators, the early adopters, and there's this big chasm. And on the other side is the early majority. And that's the majority of business, that's where you go from 100 millions to billions is getting the early majority. But there's a chasm because you have to shift everything. It's hard for me because it's the art that we use to get the innovators and early adopters repels the people on the other side of the chasm. It's like the funnels don't work over there, the messaging doesn't work over there, how we structure. And it's like, "Oh, do we really want to do that thing?" But it's like, "Yeah, that's the next phase. Otherwise we're just going to hang out where we're at forever. Right?" And we always say good is the enemy to great. Right? We're doing good. Oh yeah. There's perfect example of the graph right there. Yes. Yeah. He uses the big scary chasm, yes. And so for us, that's the next stage. The early majority, if you look at my business, right? The innovators were the people, the internet marketers who understood funnels. They were the first group. Next were the early adopters. These, for me, are the influencers, the creators, the experts. Those are the next phase where they're the people that are already, they're creating stuff and we're saying, "Here's how to get your creative message out." And so they've been really easy to become early adopters. But the early majority are the business owners. It's the chiropractors, the dentists, the LASIK surgeon. That's where the majority of existing businesses need funnels. How do we make this mainstream? How do we get to that next tier? And there's some that's bled into that, but for us to make that strategic move, it's hard because the dentist doesn't build their own funnels. Right? The person on the book or does the course, whatever's, typically ... They're the CEO and the marketer. And it's like they're loving this stuff because they'll spend the time to learn the strategy, do the thing. Over here, their dentist wants more dental clients, right? Or they're the restaurant who want ... They're not marketers, they're not going to learn marketing. They just want the tool. It's like we have to restructure so much of how the software alone needs to be rebuilt differently to be able to handle that next phase. The marketing, it's literally like it's a big rebuild. So there's fear, there's excitement, there's kind of that thing. And we're testing a lot of things on a small scale to kind of figure out pieces of it. But that's the next phase for us. Mark Joyner: That's beautiful. Dude, that was a fantastic example or a fantastic answer. I don't think you could give a more concise, better answer to that because you don't know. You don't know. It is a big, scary chasm and you guys are about to cross it, but you have some clues though. You know what I mean? Looking at just going back to good old fashioned Eugene Schwartz and looking at the tools that he gave us for changing the messaging. I think that a lot of your answers are going to be found there. Listen, do you have a couple minutes for a few questions? We got tons of them, but I know we've been going a little while. Russell: Yeah, sure. Mark: All right. So a lady here named rise of truth, she says, "Dan Gable coached at my alma mater. Have you ever listened to him talk about the letter to his mother wrote to him while he was attending college? Pretty awesome." Russell: I have not, but now I'm going to look that up. That's fascinating. Yeah. Far as I know, Dan Gable's like the Michael Jordan of wrestling. He is a legend. And I took a snapshot because I'm going to go look up the letter now. That's actually really cool. Mark: Yeah. I'm kind of curious about that too. What's funny, it reminds me of how when Edison was a very young man, his school wrote his mother a letter saying, "Hey, your son is basically not teachable. He's not smart enough to be in school." But then she said, "Oh, I got a letter from school. And what I read to them was that you're too smart to be in school so you have to be homeschooled." And then later on in life, after he had achieved all of this, he saw that original letter. And it just ripped him to shreds because he realized how much his mom sacrificed and how much of her belief in him changed his own perception of himself. And that's such a profound lesson, man, because if we could all just change our belief in ourselves a little bit, we're all capable of so much more than we're taught to believe. And while we're opiating ourselves with all this crap on TV and we're all involved in all of our different distractions, these things are also subtly weakening us and programing us with the message that, "Hey, there's this wonderful life that other people are watching or are living on the other side of the screen, but that's not for you. You're meant to be in this little box where you're the observer of everything on the screen while you stuff your face with Haagen Dazs and take more fentanyl. I mean, that's literally what's happening to a lot of society right now. And I think what we've got to do to to kind of turn society around before it destroys itself is to get people to understand that we're all capable of so much more than we've been taught that we're capable of. And the more people we can reach with that message, I think the better hope humanity has. Kenneth Kern Sanu had a really interesting question. He was talking about basically, I'm not going to phrase it the way he did. He phrased it in kind of a slightly rude way. No offense, Kenneth. But I don't know what you meant by the way you phrased it. But the question you asked at the end was very important. But he's talking about how you're getting out there all the time. You don't see this on the queue here. This was from another thread I started where a couple days ago, I asked people to just say, "Hey, tell me what your questions are for Russell." And basically his question was with you being out there so much and being so visible now, how do you deal with online haters? Russell: Oh, man. Man, when I first got started, back about the time I met you initially, that's the first time I started getting hate. So it's been, man, whatever, 15, 16 years ago when that first started. And it was really hard back then, man, I would see something and it'd put me out for three or four days while I sat there just depressed or upset or whatever. And it was really, really hard. And I remember a couple things that helped me. One thing I remember Dan Kennedy said, if you haven't offended someone by noon each day, you're not marketing hard enough. And that was a weird release to me. I'm like, "Oh." I don't know if I really believed that, but it gave me a little permission. And the more I've seen the hate, the more I realize it's people that aren't happy with themselves. I try not to look at it because it does, if I read something, it'll mess me up for awhile. But for the most part, when people, especially on ads, I mean, you get beat up in the ads, the more you're visible, the more that stuff happens. The hard thing for me is when there's people that you've helped or you love or you respect or whatever. And that doesn't happen often, but those are the ones that are more brutal. You know what I mean? You're just like, "Oh." I've had a couple people that I've spent a lot of time developing and helping find success, and then they seem like sometimes they're the ones that come back the hardest. And you're just like, "Seriously?" Mark: Yeah. Especially when you help them for free. Right? You know? Russell: Yeah. Those ones hurt the most. For the most part, people that are just posting stuff, I think it's funny at this point. It doesn't bother me at all. But I know my wife just started her first podcast, which is so far out of her comfort zone. She's very keeps to herself. And so she's getting to have people commenting and things are happening and it's the first time. And I'm remembering, I'm like, "I forget how hard that can be." In fact, it's interesting. Oh yeah, we talked earlier. I have a podcast, the Book of Mormon podcast. And it's funny because I tell people all the time, "Go and publish, go and publish." But I started publishing that and I had all sorts of things. I still do. I don't publish that near as much as I want to because I get the fear again because it's like ... I don't know, on the marketing side, I can take it, go for it. Take your best shot. But on other things that you're not as comfortable talking about or things you really hold sacred or dear or whatever, it's a little harder. But when all is said and done, I think that God's created these platforms for us to share and if we're not willing to share, then he'll give the ability, the gifts, the ideas, whatever, to other people. And so I think it's just we've all been entrusted with a lot so it's just like be willing to share it even if you get beat up a little bit along the way. So anyway. Mark: That's right. Well, yeah. Oh, dude. Well you know I have many, many stories along those lines I should share. That's something I've had to learn the hard way. But you have to give up and you have to trust a little bit. I mean, having so many things, I took it very personally along the way when a lot of people that I helped even straight ripped stuff off or even turned around and did nasty moves behind my back and stuff like that. And then I was kind of like, "You know what?" Well, here's the thing. I can look at this through another lens. I can say for whatever reason, I've been gifted with the ability to get these ideas and to be a conduit for these ideas. And I'm grateful that that conduit is still open. And I think that if I keep that channel open and keep giving it, it's going to keep coming. And what I need to focus on is the infinite abundance of that source of that inspiration rather than like, "Oh man, if I had patented the tracking pixel ..." I mean, these people come up to me, they're like, "Mark, how come you didn't patent eBooks or the tracking pixel? Doesn't that make you so mad?" And I'm like, "Not really. Because think about it, right? Let's say I patented the tracking pixel, right? They would have probably came up with some other very similar technology, called it something else, now everybody's still, even though it's a JS file, they still call them tracking pixels. And I get to be known forevermore as the inventor of the tracking pixel. Right?" So, I mean, maybe it wouldn't have worked out the same way had I patented it. Right? Maybe it would have gone a totally different way. Maybe it was actually the best possible way for things to turn out for me. You know? So I'm learning how to change my orientation about that, but I want to ask you something about this. Do you ever give online haters a little sass? Because I've experimented with this a bit over the last couple years. I got to say, normally, for awhile, I was just like, "All right, just be kind to everybody." But then I was like, "You know what, man? Some of these people need a little bit of a slap back every now and then." And I started getting a little bit more sassy over the last couple years. And how about you? Have you experimented with that? Russell: It's funny because I would say since ClickFunnels' come out, there's been probably three or four times where I just ... You just snap and your thumbs are flying on your phone. You're like, "Ah," and you post it. And I can honestly say every time I've done that, I've regretted it. And it's now, I look at this, with ClickFunnels as well, it's not just me. Everything I say is an extension of my partner, Todd, and my other partners and my employer. So especially there was this one dude, I'm not going to say his name, but somebody who I had a lot of respect for. We've never had any ... It's just weird. We'd never really communicated and I thought we were ... I mean, we communicated a little bit. I assumed we were friends. We're peers. And he starts going off on his own personal wall about aggressively tearing me down. So confusing. And anyway, so I said some things I probably shouldn't have. So it's tough. Especially the wrestler me. Because man, if you say it to my face, we are going. Please come at me. Mark: Yeah, right. Russell: It's not posted publicly for everyone to see the fight, but we can have that fight right here, anytime. Mark: You’d rip their limbs off their torso. Russell: I know. Yeah, it's frustrating. But when all said and done, it's just, it's hard. Mark: I'll tell you the distinction I have on this. Right? So if I reply out of anger, I always regret it. But sometimes, if I come back with just a really like an IDGAF attitude zinger that just puts them in their place, that one, I'm like, "Nah, I don't regret that because you totally had it coming and they shut up." Right? And it teaches them like, "Okay. Man, if- Russell: You get to punch back. Mark: Yeah. I mean, whatever people think, I know I'm going to say something very divisive here and I'm not going to get into politics or anything, but whatever people think about Trump, whether they hate him or love him, and it seems to be a completely divisive thing, nobody's in the middle. I think I'm the only guy on the planet who's like, "I don't really have an opinion." I can look at him through a million different lenses. You know what I mean? There's so many ways to look at what he does. Right? But one thing that you have to recognize about the guy is that when somebody punches him, he punches back hard. Right? And fast. Yeah. And it makes people hesitate. They're like, "I don't know if I can tangle with this dude." Right? So it's an interesting thing to observe. I don't know if there's any one right way. All right. We've been going awhile. I'm going to… go ahead. Russell: I love your Facebook comments because you always post these questions that you can tell you're stirring the pot a little bit like let's just see what both sides are going to say to this question. Mark: Yeah. Russell: I always read them, but never comment because I don't know if I have strong enough opinion one way or the other to defend anything, but I love reading. Mark: Same, same. And by the way, I'll just say, people misunderstand. They think I'm doing this for engagement bait. And it's like, "Dude, if I was trying to gain Facebook for marketing, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing on Facebook." I mean, I see what I do as more or less of a public service. I feel like what I'm doing out there is kind of like trying to teach people like, "Man, stop being so rigid about your view of reality because you don't know, man. You don't know." And I'm trying to get people to be okay with disagreeing with other people. And I mean, that's been sort of like my whole mission on social media is to create an environment where people can be like, "Hey, let's see if we can actually look at things dispassionately and look at them through somebody else's eyes and maybe say to ourselves, 'You know what? I see this completely differently from that other guy, but I don't have to hate this dude. He sees it differently from me. We can still get along.'" This has been a quixotic battle for me. I don't think I've succeeded in this mission. I don't know how much longer it's going to last. I think I'm probably going to change up my approach on it. Hey listen, let me end on one last question. I don't know if this is one you're going to want to ask, but it's from a mutual friend of ours. You remember Brad Callen? Yeah? Russell: I love Brad. Yeah. Mark: I love Brad too, man. He is a great dude. And he asks a question that I don't know if you're going to want to answer because it's a very personal questions about numbers. Russell: Okay. Mark: Okay? All right. So he says, "Posted this earlier and also mentioned directly to him, but having him give you some tangible numbers on ClickFunnels. Things like total number of free trial users. And by the way, I don't think I would answer this question if I were Russell." Okay. If somebody were to ask me this about Simpleology, I don't think I would answer. I don't think I would answer. And guys, if Russell refuses to answer, do not fault him because he is under no obligation to answer this question to anybody. And I'm kind of- Russell: Especially Brad. Just kidding. Mark: Yeah, especially Brad. No, we love Brad. Brad is an awesome dude. All right. "So things like total number of trial users they get per day. What percentage of those stick and are billed at least once? What the average member link there is, what the churn rate is, what the refund rate is. That would really help those of us building software businesses to know what numbers we need to hit monthly to reach Clickfunnels' level revenues and valuation. Assuming Russell wouldn't know exact numbers off the top of his head, but maybe some broad guesses. The more actual data of any sort of numbers metrics he can give would be great for those that have been at this for awhile and also help broaden the mindset and goal setting on what's possible." And then he said, "PS, anything not covered in his books would also be ideal." I'll answer the PS. Wait for the two sequels coming out here pretty soon. Russell: I mean, I don't know the numbers off the top of my head. I'm not a big data guy. I'm more the creative side. So some of my partners can answer a lot of it better than me. But I'll share some stuff I think will be helpful and motivating for people. Because I remember when we launched ClickFunnels, the event I told you at the very beginning where I did the first presentation, I was like, "Oh my gosh, we got the message right." It was kind of a funny event because you could buy a booth. And it was a hallway half the size of the room I'm in right now. And there were only four people that bought booths. ClickFunnels had our very first booth ever. And then Leadpages had a booth, and two other people. And this side of the hall was Leadpages, and this side was ClickFunnels. We were almost touching. And that was our big competitor when we first got started. And I remember I was just like ... It was really funny because our banner ad said, "Can your landing page software do this?" And it had a picture of a funnel. And then right there, it was like, "Landing page software." Anyway, it was really funny. But at that event, I remember Clay Collins, who I don't know if he still owns Leadpages or not, but at the time, he owned it. I think he still ... Anyway, but he told Mike Filsaime, I think, I don't remember the exact numbers, but I think he said something like there's 200 or maybe 300 signups a day that were happening. And I remember he told me that and I was like, "There's no way that's possible." And I sat home thinking forever, I'm like, "How do you get 200 to 300 signups a day consistently every single day?" And I just, that number drove me crazy. But then it became my KPI. Like, "Okay, how many do we get a day? I need to know." And it was three and then it was five. But because anything you track, it starts to grow. And so we kept looking at it, looking at it. And so for me, that became the number to look at because I couldn't figure out how he was doing it. And so I can give you some, again, basically right now we get about 1500 people a day that go to clickfunnels.com and start the trial, which is step one, which basically pick a name and a username. And then from that, step two is where they put in a credit card. And about half of those will put in a credit card. So we're getting, I don't know, 700, 800 paid, or not paid, but credit card trials a day that are coming into the platform. Some days are higher. Some days we get 1000. Some days it's 500 or 600. But pretty consistently, it's around 1500 free leads a day and then you get a little more than half actually finish credit card. And that's about all the numbers I really know off the top of my head. I know that it's interesting. At this point in the game, those people come whether we're buying a lot of ads or not. The game now on our side is the churn stuff. Because every percentage of churn, we drop churn right now by 1%, that’s an extra $20 million a year revenue to the bottom line by 1%. And so that's the game right now. It's like, how do we simplify the software? How we change the lead flow? How do we pre-frame it better? There's so many things that it's a fun game. And that number is always fluctuating. And we're always chopping it down by a fourth of a point, half a ... And so I don't know what it is right now off the top of my head. But I do know that's the number. That matters more right now than new leads because, like I said, a half percent, 1%, it changes, it's a big deal. Mark: And by the way, so to wrap this up, I just want to tell Brad, the answer Russell just gave you is actually better than specific numbers that he could have given you. Why? Because he's teaching you the secret formula for what to look at, right? It doesn't matter how your numbers stack up to some other company. What matters is the improvements that you make to your numbers right now. That's the only thing that really, really matters. And sometimes competition is a good way to motivate yourself, but it's not the best way to improve yourself. Because if you're looking at the other guy, you're not watching your own lane, right? You need to be watching your own lane. You need to be improving your game. Yeah, check out the other guy's numbers from time to time to kind of see how you're doing, but really 99% of your focus needs to be on how do I improve me? How do I improve what's going on inside my company? And usually, by the way, how to improve what's going on inside in your company comes down to improving what's going on inside you. All right. Listen, Russell, I know I've been keeping you up late and I know you got kids to take care of and you got a company to go back to tomorrow and it's getting late and we are way past your bedtime here. I want to encourage everyone, go to simpleology.com/clickfunnelsfree. At the very least, check out the free trial Funnel that they have there because Russell has honed that through thousands upon thousands of split tests now. And you guys will see their marketing structure, how they're doing that, how they're retargeting it, how they get you guys back on email, all of that. And also, the software itself is absolutely amazing. And I want to encourage everybody as well, if you enjoyed this tonight, if you appreciate the fact that Russell here spent almost two hours now giving us some pretty amazing inside information on a business that is actually right about to cross that chasm and start to reach that billion dollar mark, and I can almost guarantee you guys they're going to make it, knowing Russell and knowing how they're doing, if you appreciate what he has delivered tonight, I want you guys to share this far and wide with as many people as possible. If you think this has helped you, let's get this message out to more people. And any comments you guys can put underneath all of this to say thank you to Russell as well, I'm sure he would be very, very appreciative to get that. No matter how well we do, we always want to be appreciated for our contributions. And Russell, I appreciate you very, very much, man. Man, I'm so proud of what you've done. And you have become an inspiration for me. You make me want to be a better person and you have set a higher bar. And at 51 years of age now, I feel invigorated watching you being so successful. And I'm now inspired to take my company to a higher level as well because of what I see you doing. So thank you for that, man. Russell: Thank you. And thanks for having me on. I had a really good time. I haven't had a chance to do something like this for a long time. I mean, we're always in the thick of it. And with this late night, it would work for me. And I appreciate you letting me do that. But I was going to kind of wrap with just saying it's interesting, in your life, your life's a timeline from you're born and then over here, you die. And there's different people that, as you're on this journey, that shift your direction a little bit. And a little shift in direction can be a huge different outcome in different spots. And I'm just honestly so grateful for you, man. I started this journey 17, 18 years ago and I was floundering, trying to figure things out. You were the guy who literally grabbed me and shifted my direction and completely transformed the projectory and the future of my life. And anyway, I'll always be grateful for you for that. And anyway, so just wanted to let you know that. And just grateful that you put in as much time as you have. I think, again, I always talk about it with my own tribe, but I feel like business is a calling from God and that we're being called to serve a group of customers. And if we do it right, we change their lives. And you definitely changed my life. And so thank you for hearing the call and putting forth the effort and the time. And I know from experience it's not easy, it's not painful. It's way easier to go sedate and go watch TV and do whatever. And through those times I'm sure were hard for you at the beginning of the internet, before Facebook, you were out there killing yourself and learning this stuff and trailblazing for people like me so that we could get on your shoulders and learn from you and set our own path. So always be super grateful eternally for you. So thanks for all you've done for my life. Mark: Thank you, man. I'm humbled. All right. Everybody, you guys have a beautiful night. I enjoyed this immensely. And Russell, I will see you actually very soon. Russell: You’re coming to Boise! Mark: That's going to be awesome. That's going to be awesome. Russell: I'm so excited. I appreciate you coming. Mark: See you in Boise, brother. Russell: See you, everybody.

The Marketing Secrets Show
Interview With My Original Mentor - Part 2 of 4

The Marketing Secrets Show

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 24, 2020 25:36


Want to know how ClickFunnels became so popular so fast? Or how we generated over $10,000,000 in revenue our very first year, right out of the gate? I’ll give you a hint: We didn’t sell ClickFunnels as a software. To find out how we were able to grow so fast…and how YOU can grow YOUR company by hacking what we did, listen in to part 2 of my interview with Mark Joyner! ---Transcrtipt--- Russell Brunson: Hey everyone. It's Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Show. I hope that our last episode, you enjoyed episode number one of four with my interview with Mark Joyner. And it's fun having chance to relisten to it and rewatch it, and just I had so much fun that night, it was such a cool experience. And so with that said, I'm not going to do too much more other than set up the second part of this interview with Mark. And I hope you guys enjoy it. If you are enjoying this series, please, please, please take a screenshot of this on your phone, wherever you listen to the podcast and post it on Facebook or Instagram. And tag me in it, do #marketingsecrets, tag me, and please give me your comments or feedback, your ideas, your aha's. I'd love to hear them. And with that said, I'm going to cue up the theme song. When we come back, you'll listen to part two of my interview with Mark Joyner. Mark Joyner: All right, what would be the third, most significant strategic move? Russell: Oh, there's a couple different directions. I could go on this one. Can I give two halves? Mark: Please, I love it. I love it. Russell: So one half is when we launched ClickFunnels, It wasn't just that we were going to build a software company. In fact, it was probably a month or two before we came out with ClickFunnels. I went with... I don't if you know David Frye, but David's one of my mentors. Mark: Yeah, I love David. Russell: His wife's actually my second aunt. So anyway... Mark: Oh wow. Russell: When he was dating his now wife, I was like a little snot nose kid running around at my grandma's house. And anyway. Mark: I love David. He's my buddy. He's a great guy. Russell: Yeah, he's amazing. And we were at this network marketing convention, and I remember we were there and the company was a software company. We're sitting there with like 5,000 people in the room. And all the people are coming on stage and they're crying and all this stuff. And I'm just confused, like this doesn't make any sense. And I remember he leaned over to me after two days of watching this and he said, "You see what they're doing?" I'm like, "No, I have no idea what's happening. I'm so confused." He's like, "They're not selling software, so they built a community." And I was like, "Oh my gosh, that's the thing. They have this community. They have a culture. And so when we started doing ClickFunnels, it was that mindset. How do we build a culture? So it's not just like a software. I want to build something where people feel part of it. Like it's not Russell's company, because Russell's company they'll go to whoever's the cheapest. Whoever's got the new feature. If it's their company , it it's their culture, that shifts everything. And so we started this whole thing from day one, of like, "We're funnel hackers. This is our movement. This what we believe in." And two weeks ago we had our Funnel Hacking Live. We had 4,500 people in a room and people are going crazy. We got people with ClickFunnels tattooed on their arms, people wearing custom funnels. And we had people coming on stage crying. And I'm looking out and I'm like, six years ago David Frye pointed out to me, that became a big piece of it. So I think it was not just having this as a software product, but having this as a movement, where it's bigger than that. So, that was one big strategic thing that I think a lot of people miss. And then the second one is, I think, again, it comes back to us as marketers. We get so excited about the next thing. What's the next offer we're going to create, and everything like that. And I remember after the first year, ClickFunnels grew to a certain point, and then me I'm like, "I want to create something new." Even though the market didn't necessarily needs something new, but I wanted to do something else. And so what I started doing is I realized, this funnel's in the middle of my value add. The webinar funnel and tons of people had seen it. It was starting to fatigue a little bit. And that point, we'd done over $10 million in sales. That's what we launched the second funnel to bring people to ClickFunnels. That's when basically I wrote the DotCom Secrets Book, and that became a book funnel. And people come and they buy the book, they go through the book funnel. And then at the end the book funnel, we just send them up into the webinar. Mark: See that funnel right there, by the way, the links up there for that. Russell: Oh, very cool. Mark: You guys should check that out by the way. That's another very, very interesting thing. You guys need to funnel hack what the guy who teaches funnel hacking does. Because this dude has a mastered this stuff and that funnel is sick. It is sick. Anyway, keep going. Russell: Yeah. Well, so I'll tell you a story that shows why this is so powerful. About a year and a half, two years into ClickFunnels, We started getting all the calls. This is when the VCs and other people start noticing you. And they're like, "Hey, we want to be part of your journey." And I was just like, "I have no desire to do any of that." And then one time, some guy was like, "We're in Boise State, can we meet with you?" I'm like, "Okay, sure, let's go to lunch." And turns out they were in San Francisco, they jumped in a plane, a private plane, flew in and then drove to our office and were like, "Hey." And I'm like, "Where you guys staying?" "Well, we just flew in." I'm like, "When? Just right...?" It was a whole thing that they tricked me into thinking they were right there. So I went to lunch with these guys and they start asking me all the VC questions like, "Well, how much does it cost to acquire a ClickFunnels customer?" And I was like, "Well, if we drive ads to the homepage, it's like", I can't remember at the time, "$150 to acquire customer." And the guy starts getting all excited and he's like, "Okay. So if we were to give you $40 million in funding", and he was doing the math, like how many customers that would equal all sorts of stuff. And he's getting all excited. And I was like, "Wait, wait, wait", I was like, "We actually turn those ads off." He was like, "What? Why would you do that? That's a great cost to acquire customer in the bay", or whatever. And I'm like, "because I'm bootstrapping this thing. I'm paying for these customers out of my pocket. I'm not paying $150 for a trial. I'm going to be broke in a week and a half." And so I said, "But instead, what we did is we created these book funnels, where someone comes in, they buy a book." And I said, "On average, we spend about $20 in Facebook ads to sell a book. But then there's a funnel. So the audio book and there's a course. And there's a couple of different products in the funnel. And so we spend $20 to sell a book, but we make $40 in the book funnel. So I net $20 cash in my pocket.And then I tell these people, "After you read this book, you'll understand the strategy of funnels. Now you need to use ClickFunnels. So technically all of our customers actually pays $20 before we introduce them to ClickFunnels." Mark: And this is the other book funnel, by the way, guys, if you guys want to check that out. Yeah. And both of these are pretty sick, because the first one was Dotcom Secrets and then Expert Secrets. Russell: And then Traffic Secrets is coming out in like a month. So that's the third book. Mark: And I'm going to be at that event. Can I say that. Can I say it? Russell: Yes, please do. Mark: Can I say it? Russell is holding this awesome live event. He invited a small group of speakers. Only 200 people are going to be there in the audience. But he's going to be broadcasting this live all over the world. I'm going to be there. I'm going to be one of the speakers. I was very flattered and grateful that Russell invited me to be part of this. This is going to be sick. Russell is going to spread this thing all over the place. It's going to be madness. Everything that Russell has put on since... Well, over the last few years, everything you've done has just been nuts. But it's been getting better and better and better. I'm so excited to see what you do with this one, because I have a feeling this is going to eclipse any of the past campaigns you've ever done. I got a little feeling in my gut. Russell: I was so excited for it. It's like, as I'm writing the book, all I can think about is how we're going to sell the book, like this is going to be so much fun. Mark: Oh dude. That's awesome. That's awesome. Russell: So fun. But what's crazy was I'm sitting there that lunch with the VC, I'm telling this stuff. And he doesn't understand it the first time, I explaining it three or four times. And finally remember he said something really profound. He said, "If what you're telling me is true, this will change business forever." And I was like, that's the whole thing. A software company that's grown to the size we have, all of them have taken on money. I can't find any that didn't. Mark: That's right. Russell: Maybe a couple. But for the most part, they all took on money to grow. And I was like, instead of bringing on cash to grow, you just use a funnel and it finances itself the whole way. And so I think that's a big strategic thing is like, we drink our own Kool-Aid. I literally today was working with my funnel team on our next funnel for the next campaign, to bring more customers in for free that we can then bring into ClickFunnels. So I think that's another big piece is just understanding you can grow a company without taking on cash, it's just understanding this funnel game where your customers finance the growth. And I think that's the best way to do it. Mark: Well, I got to tell you what. For me personally, my experience in the VC world and in the acquisition world and all of that, back in the early days of online marketing, you were still in college, but before the first dot-com bubble burst, I'll just give you guys one example of one of the ugly things I saw. Every company that I've ever started was bootstrapped, but we had some of the same things. We had people coming in trying to acquire stuff. I started the second pay-per-click search engine. While Google was still in college. I started the second pay-per-click search engine. Well, I want to be very careful about how I phrase this here. Let's just say around that same time, there was a group of people who attempted to acquire one of my companies and through some shady, reverse merger, backend, crazy deal, these guys basically bamboozled us out of everything. And it turned out that a lot of the guys who were involved in that ended up going to jail for stock fraud later. And that kind of thing, by the way, people don't understand, this is common. So not only are the VC guys who were the legit VC guys, those guys are sharks too. But there's a layer underneath those guys who were like straight criminal sharks as well. So you have to be extremely careful when you're swimming in that world. And this is why, for me, I don't want to accept outside funding for anything. I want to bootstrap everything. I want to surround myself around people who are as motivated as I am, so that I can grow it by pulling our own selves up by our own bootstraps. And then we're going to own everything. We're going to get all the profit, and we don't have to worry about some VC jerk off telling us how to run the business when they don't really understand. Russell: You want to know something cool? Mark: Please. Russell: I just bought bootstrap.com. And my next book is going to be called bootsrap.com. Mark: I love it. Russell: You said it five times. I'm like, "I'm so excited right now." Mark: That's awesome. Okay, so after the trilogy, you're starting a whole new thing. Russell: Yeah, because the trilogy has been how-to books. This one's not going to be a how-to book. This is going to be like the story of... And what's crazy, ClickFunnels was built remote, all of our team's remote. So almost every conversation has happened on Boxer. So we've recorded every important conversation in ClickFunnels. So I'm getting them all downloaded and transcribed right now. So it's going to be like, this is actually what Russell said. In fact, you could listen to the conversations. Anyway, I'm excited. That's going to be my next project starting in about a year from now. Mark: Beautiful. So, man, I'm going to have to skip a couple of these. All right, so here's one… Russell: I'm feeling good so we can keep going. Don't worry. Mark: All right. Awesome. Awesome. Well, you're always super energetic, man. Every time I talk to Russell, I get more energized. I'm generally a pretty energetic guy, but I just vibe, because Russell's got this amazing... He effervesces energy. All right, so what would you say are the three biggest barriers, or bottlenecks for growth in businesses right now? Russell: In my specific business, or just business as a whole? Mark: Well, either one. You pick either one. Russell: Interesting. So three biggest bottlenecks for growth. I think this may be a little early, but I think one of the biggest things people are going to see, right now we've been in this amazing season where advertising has been easy. When I first got started online, grateful for you, because I don't know how you guys can figure it out back in the day. We were building lists and there was no Facebook. Google, wasn't really there the way... I was lucky enough to hear your audio is on viral marketing. And we were building these viral sites to acquire customers email addresses. And I remember sitting listing the farewell package, and you talking about with crazy stuff you guys would do to get a list. So you got my mind thinking like that. Mark: Yeah, we had to get super creative. We had to get super creative. Russell: Oh yeah. No one thinks of that anymore. So what's happened is Facebook came out. It's easy. Everyone's in business and it's been like that for the last decade. So business has been so, so simple. And I don't think it's going to last that much longer. I think either some government regulation is going to happen, or they're just going to do a Google, where they start shifting away from smaller brands and just elbow us out and go after bigger companies. And I think in fact, that's a big reason I wrote the Traffic Secrets book. Hopefully you guys all have a chance to read it when it comes out, but it's very much not tactical, like here's how to run a Facebook app. I don't show the Facebook editor once. It's very much a strategic book, like how do you start thinking differently? Because when Zuckerberg comes and we always joke, it was probably because I was writing the book right when Avengers: Endgame came out. And Thanos, who does the Thanos snap and half the world disappears. We always talk about Zuckerberg. We nicknamed it off as Zanos. I'm like, Zanos is going to snap his finger, and half the entrepreneurs and businesses will disappear. And we're seeing it. I've had probably five or six people that are friends, in the last week alone, who's got Facebook ads shut down. And it's going to be coming. And so I think the biggest thing is that people have had it really good and really easy, because they've just been like, "I'd run Facebook ads, or I run a Google ad." they're just doing the basics, that are simple. It's going to get harder. And so I think it's time for all of us to start resharpening our marketing mind. In the Traffic Secrets book, I have a whole chapter on integration marketing. I learned this from my mentor, Mark Joyner, you guys need to start learning this stuff." Just all these different things that, that people haven't had to learn. I'm definitely looking at it and. And I keep giving you so much credit, because so much of my mindset initially was based on your teachings. But we spend so much effort right now focusing on list building, because I know that it's going to get harder to build lists. Like right now, from clickfunnels.com site, we get about 1500 opt-ins a day. And then for my other funnels, we get about three to 4,000 opt-ins a day. So we got almost 5,000 people a day opting in. And that's our focal points. Because I'm like, "I'm going to keep building these lists like crazy, because someday these other things might disappear, or get harder, or more expensive. And I'm going to have these lists, and I'll be able to weather the storm." Where a lot of people are not going to be able to, because they're not focusing on list building and building relationships with those lists. They're just out there buying Facebook ads, because it's easy. And I think that's one of the biggest things that I'm fearful for myself. I'm doubling down on, I think other people need to as well. Mark: I want to interject really quick here about something, because it's funny you bring this up. Because this is something I've been talking about a lot. So I've been doing a lot more public speaking lately. And one of the things that I've been talking about is exactly this. And I want to show everybody a little bit of an interesting phenomenon in it. Russell, I think you'll appreciate this. So if you guys remember Chris Anderson writing the book about the Long Tail, right? And if this is the unit numbers sold of any particular... Let's say you imagine you take Amazon's entire marketplace. This is the number of units sold and this is the rank. So the number one selling book is going to outsell the number two selling book by an order of magnitude, at least. So it's like the inverse of an exponential growth curve. So Chris Anderson's whole theory about the long tail, was that because automation is making everything so easy, was that yeah, traditionally people used to focus all their energy in here, because this is where all the money was. But now, because of the improvements we have in supply chain technology and deliveries, there's so much money in the long tail of the graph. And if you could have an inventory of billions and billions and billions of units that represents enormous economic potential. But here's what happened, the exact opposite of what Chris Anderson predicted is the reality of what happened. See Facebook, YouTube, all of these platforms, they built themselves on our backs. We were the ones that created all of the content so that these guys could be so big. And now we're the eyeballs, but guess who they care about now? If you take this out and you put in, you take this same graph and you speak in terms of ad spending, they only care about this portion of the graph. Why? While this represents a lot of economic potential. It also represents an enormous pain in the ass for the company that has to manage it. Russell: They hate customers. Mark: They hate the customers. And this is why when you're on Facebook and we're on YouTube, now, your ads are getting shut down algorithmically, or they're getting shut down by some low-level employee that doesn't really understand what's going on and they don't give you any explanation. And Russell, you've probably heard so many stories like this. People wake up in the morning and then they have this business, it's going great guns. And they're saying to their wives, "This is it. We've made it." And then the next day they wake up and then because something happened algorithmically in Facebook, they completely get shut down, that their lives are basically shattered as a result of that. So unless you're here, in terms of ad spend, you don't get their attention. They're not going to explain to you why they shut you down. And this is why we started this thing called integration marketing society. So you talked about integration marketing. So we're building integration marketing society, so people can band together and buttress ourselves against the threat of this. That's what that whole thing is all about. So I want to have another conversation with you about that another time, because I think that there's a lot of potential synergy there. I'm glad you're seeing that same thing. So what would you say is the number two and three bottlenecks now, then? Russell: Let's see. So definitely traffic's the biggest one, I think. And I don't know historically how all this all works, but advertising's all about the pattern interrupt. We're still seeing stuff happening. And then like the thing that catches our attention, it interrupts. And it used to be, back when we first got started, you figured out a pattern interrupt and nothing would last for months, or years before people caught on and figured it out. And now it's tough because we come out with the new pattern interrupt, we post it on Instagram, and within like 15 minutes, there's 800 other people doing the exact same posts. They see, "It worked for us it must work for me." And they start doing it. And it's interesting, because it's so easy now to clone and to copy and things like that. And so I think for people who are truly trying to grow companies and serve in a different level and like be creatives, being creative is harder. And I think that it takes... I don't know exactly how to phrase it right. But I think that the me-too stuff's going to get worse and worse, because there's some people copying, right? Mark: Yes. Russell: I'm going to get better at the creation and better at creative and better at figuring out how to break the pattern and break the pattern, and stay in front of that all the time. Because it's crazy how fast things get knocked off now. We have a campaign, or something that's working and it's crazy. In fact, I had this conversation with Dean Graziosi, He's become a dear friend and Dean ran infomercials for a year. And he said that he would record a show, an infomercial, and the lifespan was like 18 months. every 18 months, he had to record a new show. Then he came on the internet and he's like I started doing my ads and I would launch them on Facebook, or Instagram. He's like, "They'd be killing it for a day and a half, two days, and then it's gone." And he's like, "What?" And they couldn't figure it out. And he basically came back, he said I'm testing a bunch of stuff. He said, the biggest thing he figured out, he has to create tons of creative. I said, "Well, how much? One ad a week, two ads a week?" He's like, "No, no, no." He's like, "I carry my phone wherever I go, like two to three ads a day, minimum." And he's walking around with his book, like, "Here's an ad here." He walks to his daughter's soccer game, he's doing an ad there. And then he's in the elevators, doing an ad there. And just tons and tons and tons and tons of creative. And I figured out how to break the pattern, how to like how to grab people's attention. And so it's like, if you don't love your thing enough to like, "I got to create a lot more creative", it's going to be hard, because people are just knocking you off. So I think that's a big part for us. We used to spend so much time being slow on creating ads and stuff. Now it's more like, how do we stay in front of that curve and get excited where the art isn't in creating next product or the next campaign, or the next funnel, the art becomes, "What's a new way I can sell the thing you already have." And it's that big shift. In fact, in our company, I like building funnels. I'm a little obsessed with it. And so for a long time- Mark: Yeah, to say the least. Russell: Yeah. The way we kept growing is I create new funnel and create a new funnel. And the tough things is it's just hard to keep doing that, because then every time you create a new funnel, you got to create the new ads and it's a lot more work and effort. Whereas, now it's like we shifted our focus in less funnels, but more creative for every funnel. And it's just a different mindset shift. And so it's not super clear the way it came out, but it's one of the big problems I've seen that we're having is ad fatigue. It burns out super fast if you're not in front of just creation, always trying to figure out different ways to break the pattern. You're going to get left behind really, really quickly. Because the copycats are so many of now, that even if you are copying the gift pattern, the diminishing return hits so fast. Mark: Well, the problem is, is people also don't know how to copy. For me, there's like three levels of copying, one is straight out plagiarism. And then the next one is, is people take your surface stuff and they change a few words and then they pop that up. Which to me is just as dumb and is just as shady. Because first of all, changing a couple of words doesn't make sense when you're dealing with a completely different product. Russell: All sorts of stuff. Mark: Yeah. So many different things are different. And this is where you really got to get into the real understanding of when you're funnel hacking something, or you're modeling something, what you have to understand is the psychological structure behind it. And this is what Breakthrough Advertising, the classic Eugene Schwartz book that everybody should be reading. I had to read that probably about five times before it finally sunk in. Holy crap. I didn't really understand it at first. I was like, "Oh, okay. It's interesting." But then when it finally clicked. And his whole idea, it's basically based on the notion that you've got to analyze how to connect your product with the market forces that already exist. And every product, in every market is going to have a different way of connecting that. And you can't copy that from someone. The only way to get that correctly, to have a real big legitimate breakthrough in the business is through the process of analysis. And this that's the core idea of... There's so many nuggets of wisdom for breakthrough advertising, but that's the core thing that people had better get good at, because I tell you what, if they don't, here's what's going to happen. It's going to become like the quants in the trading game. The quants are like, "Hey, let's see who can shave a quarter of a millisecond off the trading time on the stock market." Well, if the marketing world becomes like that, good luck to you unless you're the guy with the best quants. The only other way to compete then is to train your creative mind, to come up with creative answers. And as you remember from the farewell package, there are so many ways to do that. There are so many out of the box ways. You don't have to do things the same way everyone else is doing, but everybody's getting lazy now, because they see the quick way to get it done. But I think what's going to happen to those people, it's going to be what happened to the people early on in the early internet era. When the guys got the big, quick SEO money. Because remember I was telling you, "Hey man, don't do the ad set. Don't go too far down that AdSense rabbit hole. Build your list." Well, remember all those guys who are killing it with AdSense. And then were, boom. Thanos snapped his fingers and then all of them money was gone. That's going to happen to everybody who doesn't build their creative muscle. Russell: 100%.

The Quiet Light Podcast
Why Email is the Unsung Hero of E-Commerce with Phillip Rivers

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 11, 2020 36:29


On this episode of the Quiet Light podcast, we talk to Phillip Rivers (not the quarterback). We get into why email is the unsung hero of E-commerce businesses. In his experience, thirty percent of your revenue should come from email connections. Tune in to her more on Phillip's thoughts about the power of email in E-commerce.   Topics: Phillip's background in E-commerce. Why email is still powerful despite expanded advertising options. The misstep of shooting from the hip. How to start out on the right foot. Offers Trust-builders. Content The efficacy of social media advertising. Getting past personal biases. Sharing a name with a famous quarterback.   Resources:  Phil@gotetra.co Phillip on Facebook Quiet Light Podcast@quietlightbrokerage.com   Transcription: Joe: Our buddy Mike Jackass did a presentation not too long ago on his product campaign product with Color It and what he does with e-mail in Klaviyo and did a presentation to I think it was the eCommerceFuel folks showing how much of his revenue came from his e-mail campaigns. And a lot of people were blown away because they felt like it's something that is dated and not an area that's strong in e-commerce anymore. Maybe those folks are doing mostly on Amazon and actually can't e-mail the customers. But in this case, when it's an off Amazon business, Mike presented a case, that e-mail is an important component of any campaign in growing up SaaS business or content business whatever you've got if you've got a list of customers to reach out to them. I understand you had Phillip Rivers on the podcast talking about this very same thing. How did that call go? Mark: Well, you can imagine my delight when I got an e-mail from Phillip Rivers. I thought he's finally returning my fan mail. All the e-mails that I sent to the quarterback of now the Indiana Colts as opposed to the San Diego Chargers; I'm sorry, Los Angeles Chargers. I was like I finally met; no, it's not that Phillip Rivers. I did have to ask him about that at the end. He has a funny story about people not believing it was his real ID when he was going into a bar thinking it was a fake ID. But that's at the end of the podcast. The bulk of what we talked about instead of football is e-mail marketing and the fact that it's the unsung hero of e-commerce marketing. And for all you buyers out there, this is one of these opportunities for where you can find opportunities for immediate gains after you acquire a business. Phillip Rivers at this podcast argues and argues very well that in his experience, an e-commerce business should have at least 30% of its revenue mix coming from e-mail. So if you're looking at where customers are being acquired from currently with an e-commerce business and it does not have a sizable portion coming from e-mail, this is an opportunity. And there are ways to do this with Amazon as well. I've known plenty of Amazon sellers who have healthy e-mail lists and use it to launch products. And that's a great avenue for getting those products to rank well on Amazon very, very quickly. So we talked a lot about his experience with this; with e-mail marketing, some of the best practices he follows and then some of the metrics you should be following in here. I joked at the end when you have a name like Phillip Rivers your open rate probably naturally gets higher than if it's just Joe Valley. Well, probably not Joe Valley, Joe Valley is recognized, right? Joe: In a very small circle of people, yes. Mark: Yeah, right. Anyways, good point. I think it's a bit larger than that. I open the e-mail when I see it, but no, good episode for just learning about identifying these opportunities for quick wins and opportunities that you're evaluating for businesses for sale. Joe: Excellent. Let's go to it. Mark: Phillip, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast here today. I'm really excited to have you on because you reached out to me. You talked about e-mail as the unsung hero of e-commerce and I have a special place in my heart for e-mail as I built my first business on the back of e-mail marketing. So welcome to the podcast. I'm really glad to have you here. Phillip: Thanks for having me, Mark. Mark: Hey, why don't you give a little bit of a background on yourself and why you reached out to me about e-mail as the unsung hero as you put it of e-commerce and why this is something that you want to talk about? Phillip: Yeah, man. So I've been in e-commerce for quite a while, about 15 years now, highs and lows. But in the early days, there was none of these wonderful tools that we kind of now take for granted. And so I sort of skid my teeth on e-mail; building audiences and nurturing them and figuring out ways to monetize creatively. And this dates back to; this is pre-Shopify, Facebook Ads, and all that stuff. And over the years, as the industry matured, I just got really leaned into and sharpening my sword on building audiences and communicating with people. And in doing so, I've had some successful stores and some unsuccessful ones. It's kind of how it goes in this game. Mark: I've only got successful stories. I've never had a failure in my life. Phillip: That's not true. I heard on another podcast a business you bought that didn't work out. Mark: All right, I have more than one of those. Okay, let's move on from my failures on to your successes. Phillip: And so, in any event, I think that to my time in e-com I notice that e-mail is this very unique special channel that the brand or the individual business has complete control over in terms of how they build that audience, how they connect with them over time, and what messaging they put in front of them to get whatever action they aim to get out of it, whether it be engagement or revenue or whatever it may be and so much so that in talking with friends or now clients that are in the e-commerce space, it's just e-mail is one of those things that kind of gets kicked to the curb or neglected in lieu of kind of faster or sexier channels. And so really, I'm here just kind of standing on a soapbox and tell people like this is an important channel for longevity and to have a clean, healthy business long term and an asset that you can own and control. E-mail is very important and vital to long term success of any business. Mark: And I would agree but let's go ahead and play some of the devil's advocate here with the different channels. Obviously, social media is where a lot of people are putting their attention. You're on Facebook for a long time some people are kind of weighing in on Facebook and saying Instagram advertising works really, really well for them. Influencer marketing, it's a matter of time before we get to the next big social media. I was just talking to somebody yesterday who was like I'm trying to figure out TikTok. It's the latest thing out there to try and figure out. With all these things happening, why does e-mail continue to hold a seat at the table in our marketing mix? And then later on, just for those listening, I want to get into the how later on. I think that's the mediary topic but before we get to the how let's talk about the why. Why is e-mail; why does it deserve a seat at this table? Phillip: Well, it's the one channel that you own outright. I think that gets kind of discounted or forgotten a lot. Any other social channels you're borrowing that audience and technically Zuckerberg or one of the other power players is who owns that audience and you can be sort of de-platformed or the cost can go up or the algo can change and all of a sudden you can't reach the same amount of people. So it's just they're not bad and they're amazing tools, you just don't have full control like you do e-mail. So I think for me that's the biggest thing. And the other way that I look at it is all these social channels are great at engaging folks and driving traffic but if you look at the analytics, at any store or any e-com store, the conversion rate; let's just say it's 5% which would be on the higher end of the spectrum. But that still means that 95% didn't buy on any given day and if you're not thinking about how you capture leads from as many of those people as possible and how do you communicate with them to communicate your value proposition and products etcetera, then you're really relying on luck and kind of paying for impressions to get people back again which is it leaves too much up to chance, in my opinion, or for my liking. And two, it just is a very expensive long term proposition and it's hard to build something sustainable that way. Mark: Yeah. With that, though, and again I'm still playing the devil's advocate here, should we own the channel? We own somebody's e-mail, we can hit them up but Google's gotten better at filtering that out. Our updates here at Quiet Light got thrown into the updates folder. Another company I have, things are getting thrown over in the promotions folder which is like spam with an asterisk; it's spam, but you should probably be looking at it. At least that's what I look at that promotions folder. Do we really have full control over e-mail do you think, or are we losing control, and what about the future of that? Is that something to watch out for in the future? Phillip: I think that strategy is the most important part. And so I think that this goes kind of back into the how, but based on how you set forth in terms of once someone pops in and you start to communicate with them, how do you do it and what actions do you ask them for. Doing some of those things kind of at the outset can dictate where your e-mail goes in terms of the Gmail inbox, for example, long term. If people aren't engaging with it, it'll be routed to promo. But if people engage with the early e-mails, that's kind of a way to work around it to land in the inbox. But to go one layer deeper, I think from an e-mail perspective, I don't worry too much about the mailbox tab or the promo tab. The only one I really want to stay out of the most is Spam and that's the one I can control. Whether it ends up in promo or one of the other tabs, there's nothing that I can do about it. As a marketer, all that I can do is think critically about how do I create the most incredible experience for the person that's going to be consuming this message? And if I think about them and value them, then the things downstream that I don't really have control over will tend to work out. Mark: Sure and I think this is a point that might get lost sometimes with e-mail, right? And maybe we can talk a little bit about the how, because I think we're just going to naturally end up there anyways. Phillip: Can I add one more point before we get there, Mark? Mark: No. No, I'm just kidding. Please. Phillip: I was going to say that the other thing is like you mentioned the dynamic changing or Google changes things meaning how that affects us in deliverability in the inbox. Facebook or the players and social are changing algorithms every single day and so increasingly of all of your audience there, fewer and fewer of them see your message unless you pay to play. So e-mail, if you look at them side by side on engagement metrics, e-mail would win far and above every single time from organic social versus e-mail. But the state of play on all platforms is always changing. But I don't look at that as to say like we shouldn't play the game. It's just like what are the rules and kind of where do I have to get creative and that to get the best result possible? Mark: Sure, yeah. And I think talk about a multiplatform approach makes sense as well. It's not an either-or sort of proposition. We can definitely enhance our e-mail marketing with other platform marketing. But for anyone curious as to what's the winner when you are looking at these different channels just do a Google search. I mean, the open rates and the attention that gets paid to e-mail versus social media is significantly higher with e-mail. I'm going to stop playing devil's advocate because it hurts me to do so. Because I do have a soft spot in my heart for e-mail but people do it wrong all the time. People really don't understand how to do e-mail right. And I mean, I go through every day and I unsubscribe from; I have no idea how many people I'm unsubscribing from every day. It just feels like I'm constantly unsubscribing because they're not offering me value. But there are some people in my inbox that I don't remember signing up for but they're adding value so I keep them in there. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about doing it wrong. Let's talk about doing it right, especially from an e-commerce standpoint where you're selling products. I'd love to hear where you start that conversation with people. Phillip: Well, I think that through the lens of e-com, what most people miss, Mark is the strategy first and foremost. So I talk to a lot of business owners on the phone and most of them when it comes down to e-mail, they have no clear roadmap or kind of treasure map, as I like to call it, in terms of what they're going to be doing week to week from a messaging perspective, whether that's value, whether that's offers or; not offers at percentage basis but talking about a product and offering something for sale and also segmentation. So pretty much what most brands do is just shoot from the hip, which is really hard to build a successful channel when you're just guessing and playing with borrowed time all the time. And so that's kind of the biggest misstep that I see a lot of people making. And then it's important with this channel just as any other just like with your Facebook ads where you're putting a lot of budget behind the ads that you're running is like, okay, how do I kind of think about what do I want to communicate to the audience and based on kind of where they are in the lifecycle so that one, I create a good experience for them, but two, I get to little by little move them along the lifecycle to ultimately converting or re-converting or whatever it may be. But that's the biggest thing that I see missing is starting off on the right foot. Mark: What is the right foot and what's the wrong foot? Phillip: Well, I think the wrong foot is sale, sale, sale all the time or just running with offers to people and just mass discounting to get sales which is the strategy or tactic a lot of people use. So I think the right foot is looking at what does your audience care about? The way I like to break it down is into kind of three different high-level kind of categories; offers where we talk about the product, trust builders, where we can pull things from social media or reviews, testimonials, maybe how our brand, our origin story or how a product is created, where we can tell a story. To me, that builds trust or connection. And then also content. That content, again, could be Instagram content, or a blog content, or just things that are important to the brand and they know it's important; the avatar that they can talk about. It doesn't have to be a blog post necessarily, but content. So ultimately, if we take a step back, that's a mixture of offers and value add stuff in one way, shape, or form. And they all sort of cross over it's like a then diagram you can make a content message and offer message and so it's kind of a hybrid, but you're still in that context leading with value and you're offering something for sale but the main point of that isn't an offer or a product. It's you're telling a story around some angle or narrative. So I think the right way to start is to; what we often do is group what things can we talk about from an offer perspective that apply to our brand, our avatar, same thing for trust builder, same thing for content ideas and put all those on paper as wild or crazy or simple or sophisticated as you think those answers or your ideas are. Get them all there and then it's a lot easier to cut things or group them together once everything's sort of out of your brain and onto the piece of paper. That's oftentimes the first step that I take and I recommend people take because that way it's a lot easier to see it. Kind of like akin to Minority Report. Mark: Throwback there to an old Tom Cruise movie for anyone that hasn't seen it. Don't watch it. Actually, it's an okay movie. Well, let's try to actually break this down into an example here because a lot of theory here as far as this. And what I've often found when we talk about marketing, whether it be e-mail marketing or any other type when we start talking about segmenting; it sounds great in theory, right? The idea that, hey, you want to segment your audience, you want to understand and kind of meet them where they're at and like, yeah, that's great and then you sit down and you do it. So how do I know where my audience is at? How do I know what they want to hear from content? And how do I move from that content to the offer? So let's make-believe a brand, we got a pet business here. It sells dog collars; custom dog collars, let's say with nice little chains around the neck or something like that, I don't know. We'll just say a pet brand we don't have to get that specific. You talked about breaking up into these three different levels. I mean, how would we do this with a B2C sort of brand for a hobby niche or a passion just like pets? What are some things to look at there? Phillip: So I'm talking through the lens of campaigns, not flows, just to be clear. And so through this sort of pet leash or pet brand that you mentioned, it's like, okay, what are some offers that we could talk about around the product? So there's obviously discounting, there's maybe product releases, back in stocks. There's a few ideas. There's design inspiration, why they built this product this way. That could also be kind of like a trust builder sort of thing. And again, reviews, even just pictures of dogs wearing your collar. Pet owners love that type of stuff and so that goes a long way. Again, this could also be content or slash trust builder. But I know it's hard to stay organized talking about this and through the lens of the people that are listening now, this is all over the place. But like pictures of other dogs wearing the collars, that could be used in all three of these categories; offer, trust builder, or even a content idea. So the way that I look at it, Mark, is you have these three overarching categories. In a month there is four weeks that you're going to be communicating campaigns to folks. And not to get too into the weeds on segmentation, but let's say you're going to send five campaigns throughout the course of the month. So one a week plus some sort of like wildcard campaign based on whatever's happening in the calendar or in the world that you could sort of ride the coattails of in any given month. So I would say two of those should be offer related e-mails. Two of those or three should be content or value-added. To make it simple it's something that people can sort of sink their teeth into. Like, okay, now I have a clear go forward in terms of what I should be doing each week. Mark: Yeah, you don't want to get into the weeds with segmentation. We're going to do that in a bit. But first, I want to know, does this change when you are going B2B or B2C? Phillip: The only thing that changes when I go B2B is it depends; like what's the underlying product that's being sold and what's the sales cycle and how is that product consumed? So if you're selling cloud hosting solutions for law firms, which I've done before… Mark: That's exciting. I fell asleep while you were saying that by the way but I'm awake. Phillip: So the sales cycle for that is long and they don't really repurchase it. They're repurchasing services from whoever installed the cloud hosting stuff for them. And so for them, one a week might be a little bit too aggressive. It might be a bi-weekly or monthly thing, but I think to answer your question, it's all circumstantial based on the underlying business and what they sell and how it's consumed. And so there's not a hard and fast rule that you have to send once a week even for e-com necessarily. It's what applies for one business won't necessarily apply to the other and I think a lot of people get sort of tripped up on that where they seek advice online and they think they have to do it that way. But it's not necessarily best suited for them or their or their leads or customers. Mark: Yeah, you do consulting for this, right? This is part of what you do. Phillip: Yeah. Mark: Okay, so let's say a new client is coming to you. And I want to just talk about the average client avatar that you have here, like the average client coming in. What do you often see with people's e-mail setups when they first come to you? Assuming that they have something set up what is kind of the most common approach they take? And then the follow up to that's going to be what do you do next once you see that and what are the steps to try and get it in shape? Phillip: Yeah, so what I often see most is there's no strategy like it's just sort of thrown together piecemeal and they send when they send. And therefore they don't know what they're doing with campaigns. There's no plan and there's no measurement because you can't track what you don't measure. So that's big mistake number one. The other thing that I see is people that do use flows; again, this is through the lens of e-com especially, more often than not they kind of just use like the templates that are given to them by whatever ESP they're using so it's like they put forth the least amount of effort just to have something there to cross it off the list. And oftentimes they do this because people don't realize the potential to e-mail has for their business and so because of their; what's the word I want, lack of experience sort of in this channel, they think that if they get 2%, 3%, or 4% a month from e-mail they think that's; their outlook is, oh, we're doing okay. I'm happy with it. Not knowing they should be doing at a minimum 30. Mark: 30% what? Phillip: Of revenue per month attributed to e-mail. Mark: That's a high percent. Okay. Phillip: So without a solid strategy, I would say it's like building a house on quicksand and if you do that, it's not going to be around very long. And so what they do is oftentimes there's no strategy. They do a little bit here and there, and they're quite happy with the results because they don't know any better. But they're also inclined to say e-mail doesn't work for my business. But it's not because the channel is inherently bad, it's because there's no strategy in place to make it successful. Mark: Right, that makes sense. So what's next for you then after you see this? They don't have a strategy in place. Is the strategy that you start putting together just what you were talking about; this kind of planning out the next month and these three different types of e-mails that you would send out or how do you go about dissecting that that strategy and building something for them? I mean talking flows, let's just make a quick point of clarification. Flows would be like automations, there's e-mail sequences, there's a lot of different names for these, but it's e-mails that are sending based off various triggers in sequence. Is that right? Phillip: Correct. So when I'm sort of looking at an account and I'm diagnosing what's currently happening, what are the holes in their funnel, if you will, or what are the pitfalls within an e-mail and how can they improve as fast as possible to start making; squeezing more juice out of this lemon? I look first at how are leads being captured on-site? Traffic is coming from paid social, organic social, TikTok, or SEO, whatever the traffic sources are. But they're coming in. Most people don't buy. So how effectively are leads being captured so that you can communicate with them? Most people don't track these at all. And just for those listening on the low end, anything that you're doing on-site with, like a pop-up, for example, should be converting at minimum 5%. We always sort of measure; our goal is to get to 10% conversion rate. So impression to conversion is 10% and if it converts to 10% percent I'm not touching it. It's like I found the unicorn. I just let it ride until it starts to diminish; the performance starts to diminish. But most people don't even know how the pop-up is performing from a lead gen perspective. So that's the first thing we look for. Second thing is in parallel, what's happening with campaigns is they're sort of a strategy or a framework in place for communicating with the audience, period. More often than not it's no. If they do have a strategy in place, it's like, well, how is it performing? How are they using segmentation to at least be sort of more precise with their messaging, making sure that it has audience message fit to move the metrics that they want to move. And parallel to that on the flow side, again, as you mentioned, Mark, these flows their purpose is to nurture people throughout the customer lifecycle based on their behaviors, attributes, or lack thereof. So if someone comes in and gives their e-mail; they come from paid social, they give their e-mail, they don't buy, you put them through a series of messaging that starts to evangelize them. They learn what's important to you, form some sort of a connection, a deeper one, than you had when they got there in the first place. And so these flows, by and large, there's four, I would say, critical or key flows that any business needs first before they start adding a bunch of sexy stuff afterwards; that being the welcome flow, like when you start to sort of indoctrinate or evangelize folks, browse abandoned flow, so someone's been opted in, they're shopping around, but they don't take an action to add to Cart, abandoned cart flow, which there's a lot of people that add to cart and never buy. So there's just low hanging fruit there. And then the other one that I think is the most important to have at the outset is first time customer. And so at this point, the reason I think that's so important, Mark, is getting someone to buy the first time is one of the hardest things in the world. But once they've converted they're five times more likely to buy a second time than a new person is to buy a first time. So this is really our first opportunity to start to make an even deeper connection with someone that's converted once and to communicate our values and what lies ahead for them when they receive their product in the mail, so on and so forth, so that we can start to then be in a place to position something else for them to buy at some point down the road based on what makes sense for the underlying business and what they sell, obviously. And so usually when I'm a buyer, those are all the things that I look at like is the core infrastructure of flows in place yes or no? If it is okay, is it performing well or are there holes in it that should be improved before moving on to something and moving on to kind of more sophisticated flows? Mark: I got it. Phillip: I know that's a mouthful but is that helpful? Mark: No, that was great. I mean I purposely was just not talking because I was soaking up a lot of what you were saying here. With flows a couple of just practical application issues here that I want to go over, one is do you recommend interspersing campaigns with flows and if not, how do you work in holiday specials and stuff like that? And my follow up to that is going to be how do you do this without interrupting things? For example, I've seen this flow set up before where you get the introductory e-mail, and then the next week you get another e-mail that's kind of more trust building, and then week three you have something that's sent out that's more of a promotion e-mail. And this is going to be everybody's experience when they become a new customer, right? They're going to have this sort of experience. Their clock starts the day they buy or the day that you capture them as lead depending where their starting point is. Do you recommend using campaigns as well and how do you not have competing offers or campaigns disrupting that flow? Phillip: So I think, quite honestly, I don't worry too much about cannibalizing flows with campaigns or campaigns with flows. Most businesses aren't to the point where they're that sophisticated from a marketing perspective, where there's that much going on, where it's going to hurt them to have a campaign sent and someone also receive a flow. So I think a lot of times they start; it's an outlier and people worry about it and it takes up time, energy, and ultimately it becomes a barrier for them ultimately taking action. So then what happens is they get into the weeds thinking about it and like oh, they end up not doing it because they're worried about somehow buyer implications that might happen if they were to do this. And they don't do anything, which is worse than just doing both. So I think it's a lot easier to keep it simple. But again, this is one of those things where it all depends on the underlying business and what they sell and how they communicate and all of these things. But to answer your question, I don't worry too much about if someone's enrolled in a flow sending a campaign. But what I will do depends on the ESP that's being used. But I'll talk through the lens of Klaviyo because that's where I spend most of my time. If someone is in abandoned cart flow, which is very high leverage flow and they're close to converting. And I also have campaigns going out that generally disperse; these people that are in the abandoned cart would also get this campaign. If I'm hypersensitive to it, or I want to make sure that people enrolled in flows don't want to see this particular; let's just say it's a deep discount, I'll just suppress that segment or anyone that received an abandoned cart e-mail in the last 16 hours from getting this campaign. So it's like an easy sort of fix but if you don't have to go write it all out on a whiteboard and see where all the dependencies arcs is it just becomes too confusing. It's just easier not to do it if you're going to go about it that way. Mark: Sure, and you don't think people are paying enough attention anyways to; not paying enough attention but you're not to worried about cannibalizing and having one interrupt the other not as problems. Phillip: Not really. A lot of what happens to is we have like our own world view, our own biases when we're thinking about stuff as the business owner market or whatever like I don't like this or I'm worried about that. But at the end of the day, to answer your question to this specific example, I'd rather look at the metrics of the e-mail to tell me what's working or what's not working or what I'm doing wrong or right. So, for example, if I just let it ride, people get flows, people get campaigns, and I start to see there's an uptick in spam complaints then that tells me, okay, I need to pull back a little on the aggressiveness of the campaigns. That's the first place I would look. But I'd rather know in black and white than me, just come up with something, not know what the upside or downside, but then I don't do it. But I also don't know how it affects my business in a positive or negative way. Mark: I got it. What's a good opening, in your opinion? Phillip: That's a loaded question because there's so many factors but what I would shoot for, at a minimum, I would say 25%. Mark: That'll be great. I mean, again, it's a loaded question and it's difficult. Every business is going to be a little bit different. If you're not at that, let's say that somebody is listening and they are 15% right now or 12½% or something like that, which I think is kind of common, depending on how long and how old your listing is. Lists in my experience tend to get old and sometimes get a little bit tired, especially with the older people on there. What are ways that you can increase that open rate and is it something that they should really be worrying about as well, in your opinion? Phillip: I think it comes down to a lot of the underlying business, but also like what do they care about most? From my perspective, revenue is the most important thing. The audience is important. I don't want to blow up a list and degrade the engagement metrics in favor of revenue because ultimately revenue is just a lag indicator of the engagement metrics anyways. So that's going to start to diminish over time if that's the approach that you take. And so to answer your question, if the open rate is 15%, I would look at how old is the audience to your point, how long have they been around for, what other behaviors or actions have they taken since they've been on the list that would tell me that they are interested in receiving more messaging from me. Sometimes I do this, too and you probably do also but I subscribe to lists. I open their e-mails. I don't necessarily consume them, but I don't want to unsubscribe because; this is e-commerce but I don't want to unsubscribe because there might be something I want to see in the future so I stay on but I also am not really engaged. So I think that on the one hand it's looking at kind of the age of the audience and are people engaged with your site overall? Like when was the last time this cohort of people has even been on your website? At some point, this is one thing that a lot of people don't think about is like, how do I start to clean my list or my audience or where do I draw the line in the sand to determine these folks who want to be here, these folks don't, and come up with a strategy to either ask them finally, do you want to stay or just suppress them or remove them altogether? But to get the open rate up, that's one place I would look. Also, if it's a new, relatively new audience, and your open rate is only 15% what that tells me is there's misalignment between the message and the audience. So there might be a bad resource or another example that a lot of people do these days in e-commerce is they run giveaways, but give away enrollees aren't necessarily the best subscribers because they're not there because they want to hear from you. They're there because they wanted something for free. And that has its own sort of implications and how do you deal with that but from my experience, the list that I see that are at 12%, 15%, there's a combination of not the best audience, not the best message for that audience, and also an audience that's probably decaying because the strategy for e-mail isn't buttoned up and so the audience doesn't know what to expect. Therefore, they're relatively unengaged. Mark: Yeah, let's close out with this question here, because we're getting up against the clock here on our time. What are some key metrics that you do look at with your list? Obviously revenue, and obviously open rate to an extent as well, depending on some other circumstances. What should people be looking at? If there's going to be one thing that somebody is going to look at as soon as they stop listening to this podcast and leave in a rating on iTunes because I know everybody does that; a cheap plug there. What is one thing they should go over into their ESP and take a look at to say, am I doing well here? Phillip: Okay, so I can rattle off a bunch if that's helpful. Mark: Please, yeah. Phillip: But I think starting with revenue at the top just to be able to assess overall performance of e-mail as it applies to revenue for your business is just look at what is the revenue contribution like from Klaviyo, for example, the last 30 days, 90 days and then breaking it up. What did flows contribute to that? What campaigns contribute? That'll give you a really good idea in terms of the heartbeat of the performance of e-mail overall. Like I said, I would strive for 30% so if that's at 6% there's a lot of room for improvement. If they're at 25% they're still upside but again, I don't like to quote higher than 30 because there's things about businesses. But let's just say you still have room to improve, but obviously not as much as the folks at six. So that's what I would look at first. On the campaign side, I look at open and click. I look at click to open ratio, which really tells me of the people that open how engaging was this message for them? Did it resonate with the audience? I'll look at revenue on a dollar perspective; dollar amount, and then also the percentage of the people that received the message that bought just so I can see kind of a take rate and placed order from this particular campaign. Mark: I got it. That's great. Anything else that you'd like to add and if people had questions or wanted to bounce some stuff off of you regarding e-mail marketing, where can they find you? Phillip: I don't have anything to add other than just think about adding e-mail to your marketing mix if it's not something that's a focus right now, that's all. Mark: Can I double down on that? I mean, if you're going to buy a business, we talk often about doing an acquisition, finding places where business is weak, and bringing a strength to that. That's an easy way to get a fast return on your investment. If somebody is not doing e-mail marketing with their e-commerce, then that is an easy opportunity to add more revenue to a company, especially if the target is 30% revenue mix. I mean, that provides a nice metric to take a look at to see what is somebody doing right now and maybe where can we grow this company. I agree with you 100%, e-mail is the overlooked channel. One of the few areas where I keep harping on this is and frankly if I see a business; if I'm selling a business that has a good, solid e-mail list for somebody to optimize that, I typically give it a higher valuation because I don't worry about the algorithms changing like I do on Facebook or any other social media network or getting overly crowded. E-mail is going to continue to be a champion for a long time and I know that other marketers agree with this, especially some seasoned marketers. Where can people contact you if they have questions about this? Phillip: You can find me on Facebook, just Phillip Rivers with two L's or on my site on the contact us form or something like that. But my e-mail address is at phil@gotetra.co. Mark: Awesome. Phillip Rivers with two L's not one. Phillip: That's right. Not the quarterback either. Mark: Not the quarterback. You probably get asked all the time. Are you a Chargers fan or now Colts fan is it? Phillip: By coincidence when he got drafted I was going to school in San Diego and I also turned 21 at this time so I would always get double takes by the bouncers. Like who is this guy with his fake ID. Mark: You don't look like Philip Rivers. Phillip: And I'm only six feet. He's like 6'7. But I was a Chargers fan for a long time. I kind of like just don't have as much time to watch sports. But yeah, I'm a Chargers fan, but I always appreciate him just because he's my namesake. Mark: And there you go. And I'll tell you what, it gives you a higher open rate because when I saw that I have an e-mail from Philip Rivers, I'm like, sweet Philip Rivers is contacting me. Hey Phil, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I really appreciate it. Phillip: Thanks for having me, Mark.

The ALPS In Brief Podcast
ALPS In Brief — Episode 48: Is This My Life Now?

The ALPS In Brief Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 23, 2020 31:46


Lawyers become lawyers to help people. To right wrongs, to champion for justice. While law school prepares you substantively for the legal issues you'll face in private practice, it doesn't address the systemically unhealthy cultural expectations of the profession.  Five years in, one new lawyer found that the tremendous workload, low associate's salary in the face of huge student loans, and endless extra hours to stay on the partner track simply weren't worth missing out on his daughter's childhood. 84% of new lawyers we surveyed agreed. So is the culture of law doomed, or could building in a structure of support — to help people — be the answer? ALPS Risk Manager Mark Bassingthwaighte and ALPS Claims Attorney Shea Sammons discuss.   Transcript:    MARK BASSINGTHWAIGHTE: Hello, and welcome to ALPS In Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. I'm Mark Bassingthwaighte the risk manager here with ALPS, and it is my pleasure to have Shea Sammons join me this afternoon. As we talk a little bit about a survey that we did with young lawyers here at ALPS. But before we get into that, Shea, can you just tell everybody that's listening a little bit about yourself?   SHEA SAMMONS: So I'm a claims attorney at ALPS. I'm originally from Montana, long line of Montanans. I think I'm fifth generation. Went to undergrad here at University of Montana Western down in Dillon. Had a professor kind of talk me into going into law school. I was a little bit interested anyway, but he definitely swayed me. So I went to law school here at the university. Graduated, went into private practice, was in private practice for about five years and then came on board with ALPS. MARK: Very good. Well, very good. Again, I appreciate your joining us. Why I thought it would be fun to talk with Shea. We did a survey of young lawyers and had some, not completely unexpected responses. But as we looked at the responses and chatted about it with some of the younger lawyers here at ALPS, it became apparent that that Shea, as an example, in his own path, his own experience, really mirrored a lot of the responses that we saw. And I just wanted to talk a little bit about that and share part of your story. And see if we can get some insights and learnings from what your generation is struggling with in terms of young lawyers. You talked initially about a professor sort of encouraging you to head into law. Is there more to that? I mean, why did you end up going to law school? What was the dream, for lack of a better description?   SHEA: Yeah, so originally I went to school to be a teacher. A lot of people in my family are teachers, educators. Decided that I didn't have the patience to deal with young children after I did some field experience. So I had a degree in history and I had a degree in political science. What am I going to do with these things? It was either grad school, law school, something like that, continuing my education. And then I had something happen with a family member in law that I didn't really understand. And it was pretty out of my control, which I also didn't like. So that was kind of what maybe peaked my interest in law. And then going through my last semester of school, I had a professor, constitutional law was a requirement for me to get my political science degree. Took that class. Became not really interested in it, but it was an interesting class. And I loved the professor and he was like, "Well, have you ever thought about going to law school?" I said, "No." Just took the LSATs kind of on a whim type of thing. And then I just set my mind that I was going to go to law school. Applied here at the university, got in and ended up going. I guess that's how I went into law school. MARK: All right. Actually, your expectations in terms of what ... I think we all go into law with an idea in our head anyway, of what it's like to be a lawyer. So I'm kind of looking at what were your expectations versus the reality, both in law school and post law school? Did they line up at all? Was I ... SHEA: I think my expectations of law school were pretty spot on with the amount of work that it was, the dedication that it was, the financial burden that it is, and that it became. I knew those things going in.  The thing that didn't really align with my expectations was private practice. I think one of the reasons is I went into law school wanting to be a prosecutor. I wanted to be this champion for justice and had these noble goals of doing the right thing for people that couldn't do the right thing for themselves and righting wrongs. And then we start getting into these little kid cases and like crim pro. And I'm just like, there's no way I could be a prosecutor if I have to deal with this kind of stuff. I was interning at a law firm that first year, and I was coming home. And just thinking about these nonsense housing development disputes that we have until like 11 o'clock at night. I couldn't imagine bringing that kind of work home with me. So I switched over and started focusing on civil litigation. Because I always did want to be a litigator, be in the courtroom. I liked that sort of thing. Got through law school. My entire law school career, I clerked for ... Up until the last semester when I got hired on at the firm that I wound up working for here in Missoula, I clerked for a firm in Missoula that primarily does civil defense. We defended insurance companies, basically. At that point, I kind of realized that I had, I don't know if consigned is the right word for it. But I had just given up that the noble law avenue. And I was just going to pursue this avenue through law that provided a good living. That I knew that work was always going to be there, that our clients were going to pay their bills. That sort of thing. Graduated, went on with a firm here in Missoula. And I did not expect the amount of hours that I had to put into things to be as heavy as it was in law school. Even clerking and seeing the amount of work that partners were doing, that sort of thing at the firm that I was clerking at. And some of that might've been my own personal way that I work. And not being able to figure out right away the most efficient way to do things or get through a brief or whatever it is. I was kind of in a lucky position. The firm that I stepped into had a couple of really good partners that really wanted to bring me along and were dedicated in developing me as a litigator. Really good at basically just holding my hand through a lot of it. "This is the motion. This is how the motions games work. You want to file this motion when this sort of thing happens. Don't make that argument. You're just giving the court reason to give the opposing party what they want," that sort of thing. So I was lucky that I had that handholding, but still the amount that I was expected to work and the amount that I had to work were not something that I was prepared for from law school. I think that they do a good job, at least the law school I went to did a great job of preparing me substantively for the legal issues that I was going to encounter like intellectually. They did a great job of preparing me for it. Trial wise, I don't know if I had ... I did trial class and I was on moot court team, but we didn't really have any trial prep outside of that. Or we didn't do any sort of deposit ... How do you go through a deposition with people? Motions in limine, that sort of thing. There was no preparation for that in law school. And maybe you can't prepare for that. MARK: I think it'd be hard. I think you can, through perhaps ... I've looked at the medical school model practicums and internships and things. Maybe there's something there, but law schools ... I'm quite a bit older and your description of law school is very, very similar to mine. I've always thought, I think law schools really do a pretty good job of teaching how to be a lawyer. But a horrible job at teaching you the realities of how to run a legal business. How to make this thing work day to day in any kind of same way. That's sort of how I responded to all of that. But any regrets? Would you do it again? SHEA: I think that I would do it again. I would try to get in the door at ALPS a lot quicker than ... Not to kiss boots or anything, but that's a little bit. I mean, I think private practice was just so demanding just by its nature. You have to put those hours in or else you don't get the work done, and you're going to have mad clients. You're going to have poor work product, that sort of thing. You're not going to have a job eventually, but other than just, maybe I wasn't prepared for the amount of work that it was, or the way that the work is also expected to be done. But I wouldn't say that I regret going to law school. I would have thought a lot harder about it. The other part of that, the other side of that coin, I guess, would be the financial burden that you have after law school. I knew that I was taking out student loans going through law school, but it's not something that really hits you until you get out of law school. And you're like, "Holy cow. That's some loans." And then on the outset, you're just making first year associate money. Which lawyers make a decent amount of money as compared to some other professions or whatever. But I would say that, or I'm going to say that, I think that lawyers are probably underpaid for maybe the first two or three years. Considering the amount of financial burden that a lot of them have to take on to get out of law school.  I had friends that were making $45,000 a year with $120,000 worth of debt that they took on just to get through law school. And I mean, you can't even pay the principal on the loan with that amount. MARK: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And at what you're sharing for those listening here today, a lot of Shea's insights really match what others have said on the survey. That just tremendous cost and not having a true realistic understanding of what the work environment and the financial side of all this is post law school. You see some same things in Madison. Some people think you can make a lot of money and some people do. But a lot of people—   Shea Sammons: —Don't.   MARK: It's day to day. I mean, it's okay. Pardon me. I have a little cough here. Excuse me. But at that load it, you see the same thing in Madison. It's just sometimes even quite a bit higher. And they just can't ever get out of that. SHEA: I think- MARK: Yeah, please go ahead. SHEA: I'm going to just interrupted you a little bit. MARK: No, please. SHEA: I think also the way that the business is structured in law with the partnership structure, which is usually the common way that firms are structured. You're on partner track, you put in three, five, seven, nine years, whatever the partner track is at your firm. But until you make partner, you're still making that associate money. And then you're hoping to maybe supplement that with some kind of bonus that your boss is willing to throw you, or hopefully you get a raise. Otherwise, it's just, you're making that little amount of money to make partner. MARK: Would you say the environment was sort of a sink or swim environment or was it more really geared to mentoring and they really did ... What was your experience? SHEA: I think that's the one, and maybe not just the only one, but one of the areas where my experience isn't really the norm from what I've talked to with my classmates, at least. Because I was really brought along, I had two partners that were very good. They'd been attorneys in the area. A lot of them were practicing for 30 years. They'd help write some of the laws in this state. Really great attorneys. And they really cared about bringing me along as an attorney. So I had, it was more of that mentorship for sure. But I think that's the exception to the rule in some places. MARK: Wow. That's again, what we see a lot on the survey. Yeah. I think your experience is a bit of an exception there. What really led you to say, "Okay, the private practice life isn't, you know ..." SHEA: Not for me. MARK: Yeah. You start looking elsewhere. SHEA: I think it was a couple of things. So I have a four-year-old daughter. The main thing was that I was having to work enough that I was starting to miss things in her life. Like they're going to go fishing, once I get off work we got a brief due on Monday. I'm going to have to be at the office for another three hours. You guys got to go without me. Or she's in T-ball or whatever it is. And I have to miss a game. That sort of thing. That just in my experience, is something that I wasn't willing to sacrifice, just so that I could put in enough hours to make partner, make as much money as I possibly could. That sort of thing. Work at that point, wasn't worth more than missing out on things with my daughter. So that was the main driver, I think. The other one was just the workload, it's crazy. But I mean, by nature, it sort of has to be that. And some of my friends that I graduated with, love it. They were born to be letting [inaudible 00:14:33] 70 hours all week, every week. You know, those sorts of people. That's just not how I'm wired, I guess. And that comes to another point that a lot of people were making on the survey that it's really hard to find that life-work balance. You feel worked to death and there's no area, no room for anything else outside of work. MARK: Yeah. I love how you talked about your daughter and the importance of that and driving the change. I've spent a lot of years on the road. And in prior years, long before you got here, I was traveling two weeks every single month. And again, we had five kids and I feel why [crosstalk 00:15:29].   SHEA: It takes a toll. MARK: It does take a toll. And I think I did what you did just in a different way. You just have to find ways to ... And we've talked about this a little earlier. For me, it's not about finding balance. It's about finding creative ways to make each day aspect of your life, whether it's work. I don't like this notion of compartmentalizing either. SHEA: I don't either. MARK: And really sitting and saying, okay. So although I'm 2000 miles away, I may sit down at a restaurant, get a glass of wine and call my wife. And we'll just chat for 15 minutes. And the kids know, okay. One of the other things that I did, it was kind of fun. I took each one out on the road with me. And they got to see what my life was like. SHEA: Exactly. I bet they loved it. MARK: And then they had some great dad and son or dad and daughter time. On a weekend, we'd go. And we have some really good times. SHEA: I bet. MARK: I'd love your thoughts, if you can take a couple minutes and say, speaking to both lawyers that ... or young lawyers that are thinking or people think going to law school or in law school. And young lawyers that are the first couple of years of whatever their professional life looks like. What are your thoughts, thoughts about what can we do in light of the current reality of a lot of debt for a lot of people to go to law school? And I don't know that that's readily solvable, but the long hours. Let's try to shed a little light or offer a little, a window of hope perhaps, for those that sit here and say, "Oh man." You started to second. So I'll let you run however you want to run with that. It's a bunch of things in there.   SHEA: I think then the first thing, at least that helped me to accept. Just to accept that the way to you achieving some sort of happiness. Because I think that's what you're talking or we're talking about with this, the concept of life work balance. It's being happy while also being able to maintain this lifestyle of being a lawyer. The work aspect of it. MARK: Okay. Yes. SHEA: So I think part of it is just accepting that the profession, at least the way that lawyers work, that's just the way that it's going to be. If you're not up for working or putting in a certain amount of hours. Like with me, I litigated. If you're not up for putting in those 60 hour weeks at the beginning, especially when you start practicing, then you probably shouldn't be a litigator. There's other areas of law that don't require that hour workload. I think the other thing is as well, is it ... And this is something that I've kind of gained perspective on just recently in coming on with ALPS, I think is that I worked a ton when I very first came out of law school. But I got more efficient at getting my work done. And I maximized my hours in a more efficient way, I guess, for lack of a better term. I think people need to view that our load and that the insane amount of hours that maybe they will have to work as soon as they got out of law school or whether they do or not in a more of a longterm perspective. The first five years of practice, you might have to bust your butt and work 60 hour weeks every single week. And you get a week of vacation every year and that's it. That's all you get. But maybe on that sixth year, you make partner and you don't have to do that anymore. You didn't have this ... I don't know. To use the term again. And I agree, I don't really like the term life work balance because it insinuates something that they're separate and you need to put this amount in this one and this amount in this one to balance them out. And how do you do that? That sort of thing. I think the point is, is that you might not have that balance at the beginning of your career, but by the middle of it, you probably will. At least that's been my experience. And I obviously I switched out to get that balance. I'm not private practice anymore. But as I was coming up on those five years, I had a decision to make. The partners were kind of retiring and I could take over the bulk of business that we had at the firm and our clients. And just continue on with this thing as my own, or I could go do something else. And I made the decision that I wanted to go do something else. And that was with ALPS. Yeah. MARK: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I have some takeaways on that and I'll share shortly. The one thing that my thought is ... And I think your experience was a little better in terms of having some mentoring and those kinds of things. SHEA: It was, for sure. MARK: But I'm not convinced. I guess I'm further down the road in a non-traditional legal career. Boy, I've worked with thousands of lawyers and you look at all the data on how unhealthy our profession is. I'm not so convinced that once you hit that partner track that it's- SHEA: I agree. MARK: It's all roses. Sometimes I think it can get even crazier. SHEA: Worse. MARK: Which just underscores the value of getting to this balance thing, getting to this finding a health and wellness in all aspects of your life. I mean, some of the things that I take away from Shea's story. I liked the fact again, that you really sat down and said, "Okay, I went into law with I think a relatively good understanding of what you're getting into in terms of studying long hours, that kind of thing." But the other side of that experience, I hear a little bit about, it's not everything that I thought it would be. SHEA: No. MARK: And you are sitting down and saying, "Is this what I want the rest of my life to look like?" And it's in no small part driven by this sweet little thing that you brought into this world. And you look and say, "What are my priorities here? Am I living to work or am I wanting to work to have a life?" And I think you made a very well reasoned and intentional decision in your career. And to me, that's one important takeaway to all of this. When I look again at a lot of the survey responses. I want to say to these folks, at the end of the day, whether you have regrets or might do things differently. You are where you are and you can make choices. This is your life. I'm another great example. I actually kind of was very interested in doing the same kind of thing you did early on. But I also there's a non traditional legal career and there are lots of lawyers that are non traditional legal careers of all ... There's just so many things. I think that's one of the value adds for lack of a better description of a law degree.   SHEA: I agree. [crosstalk 00:24:00] MARK: Because you can do all kinds of stuff. If you listening to this are sort of ... can relate to Shea's story or feel some of the things that we're sharing with some of the others young lawyers in this survey, in terms of these responses. You are in control. I mean, not saying it's easy but you really have to sit down and ask some tough questions and decide what are my priorities in life. But the other thing that I think is important too, that I like. Sort of underscoring the difference that you shared with your own experience in the law firm. This is where I've made a big mistake. I kind of jumped out and hung up my own shingle with a law school classmate. We were both green and had just no clue what we were doing. SHEA: It's so tough, right? Yeah. MARK: You feel alone. You feel scared. You feel isolated. And let's be honest, you feel incompetent because you don't have any real experience under your belt. SHEA: Because the way that they teach you a law is not necessarily the way that it's practiced. Then all those little pointers and tips that you get to pick up with a mentor. MARK: Yeah. Pardon me, I need a little sip here. My throat's dry. But if you feel alone, isolated, not entirely competent. SHEA: And any of those. MARK: All of those, any and all of this stuff, I think it's very, very normal, first off. So don't feel like, oh, it's just you." SHEA: I felt that way. And I had somebody holding my hand. MARK: Yeah, I did too. And I really do hope that ... To those that are can relate to this whole discussion, you are not alone. You are not unique in feeling what you feel. I'm not saying it's great. I mean, it, unfortunately, in some ways it comes with the territory. But the good news is, again, you can control some of that. But I also think reach out and look core mentors and try to find people. SHEA: I don't know. I might be speaking out of turn. MARK: No, please. SHEA: I don't know if this program still exists in Montana. It did when I was in law school, but there's a mentorship program here. That if you get ahold of the state bar, they can hook, they they'll set you up with somebody to ... You meet up, you have coffee, you bounce ideas off each other. How should I write this brief? What do I need to do here? MARK: Right. And a number of bars all over the country have various programs. They may be structured a little bit differently, but mentoring, there's a tremendous need for it. But what a lot of folks don't realize, particularly in terms of the younger lawyers, there are also a lot of people out there that are more than willing to do it. There is an availability, particularly the more senior among us. SHEA: Right. And you get on the backside of the practice. MARK: Right. It's a way to give back. They start to slow down. I've talked with enough lawyers that do say, "I have something I would love to give and share." And here's another thought, some of these lawyers still want to practice for a number of years, but you know what they're afraid of and not competent in? And sometimes it's just how to use some of the tack. And what I have found at times, some really interesting mentoring relationships where the senior lawyer's talking a little bit about- SHEA: Just back and forth. A little symbiotic relationship. MARK: "Here's how you do a [inaudible 00:27:46] and don't do this in front the judge." And the other lawyer's saying- SHEA: This is how you [crosstalk 00:27:50]. MARK: Yes, yes. "Here's how you put the screen up one Zoom." It really can be-   SHEA: Value goes both ways.   MARK: Value goes both ways. But I also think at the end of the day, you can get some really meaningful relationships out of it, in terms of just support systems, professional support systems that really add to life.   So this has been awesome, Shea. Do you have other thoughts or points or things that you'd like to share? I want to make sure you get- SHEA: Yeah. Well, the only other thing that I was thinking is I think we've touched on this subject that people are having these experiences. My experience might be a little bit different than your experience. There were a lot of different experiences in the poll. I think the last point that I'd really like to make is we're all obviously individual. And what's going to work for me in trying to find happiness and with my personal life and work might not work with the other person. One of the ways that I started to try to relieve that work stress and try to relieve my mind from working was going running, or getting outdoors. That sort of thing. And that's what worked for me. Maybe for somebody else it's knitting or playing racketball, or sitting there starting a new TV series or whatever it might be. I think again, to touch on your point of it's about internalizing, figuring out what works for you and making a really intentional decision after that thought process on, is this the way that I want to go? Is this the way that I want to go? Is this something that is going to be able to work for me? And then just following through on it. Yeah.   MARK: I absolutely agree. You're speaking, you're saying things, I think I would have said myself in your shoes. I'm just, again, many years further down the road. But for me it's bike riding and cooking. I love.  And interestingly enough, even the choice to be a road lawyer. That like you were saying, some people love to the hours of litigation and the thrill of the courtroom and all that. I am a guy that just loves to move. I mean, I really do. And so I had my challenges to find ways to make that work for my family, because I need to support and take care of my support system. And I'm also a support system to them. So I need to be there, but you can do that. It just took me a little while to learn that I'm the one in control of these decisions. SHEA: Yeah, exactly. MARK: And so I think we'll leave it there. That's, I think the message that we're both trying to make. And I hope that again, walking away with, reach out to support systems, be a support system. But really you're in control of your life. And all that you're feeling is normal. We all feel it it. It's just natural, but there are so many opportunities out there. Just take the time to find ways to reach out and make it work. So I hope you found something of value today. Shea, thank you for taking a little time.   SHEA: Thank you. Yeah. This was fun.   MARK: It really truly has been a pleasure. For those of you listening, please don't hesitate to reach out to me anytime. If there's something I can do in terms of risk question, an ethics issue, a cyber concern of some sort. You do not need to be an ALPS insured to visit with me. My email addresses MBASS, M-B-A-S-S @ALPSinsurance.com. That's it, folks. Thanks. Bye-bye.    

The Quiet Light Podcast
When Does a SaaS Business Earn a Revenue-Based Multiplier With David Newell

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 21, 2020 38:15


On this episode of Quiet Light, David Newell talks about when a SaaS business earns a revenue-based multiplier. David is one of our colleagues who just wrote a guide outlining everything he knows about SaaS valuations. Tune in to hear his thoughts on how SaaS businesses have unique needs, the ideal scenario for revenue growth, and which valuation metrics to use when scaling.   Topics: Revenue-based multipliers. What happens when SaaS businesses scale. The ideal scenario for revenue growth. SaaS valuation metrics. Why there is a bias towards monthly plan revenue. Comparing scaling a business to dating. Takeaways from David's guide. Transcription: Joe: I understand you spoke with our colleague David Newell about when a SaaS business becomes a listed at a multiple of revenue instead of multiple of discretion earnings, how'd that go? Mark: Well, there's an interesting dynamic when it comes to SaaS businesses, right? E-commerce is pretty straightforward. We have some pretty good metrics that just show that vast majority of e-commerce businesses will be measured as a multiple of their SDE but SaaS businesses, especially on larger levels, we see transactions happen as a multiple of revenue even in some cases when you have a business that is not turning a profit or is currently EBIDTA zero or close to it. And so there's a big question out there, what are the criteria that allow you to apply a revenue multiplier versus an SDE multiplier to a SaaS business? Obviously, this makes a huge difference, right? I mean, if you're multiplying your revenue by five, that's going to be a much bigger number than multiply SDE by five, or four, or three, or whatever. So SaaS valuations can accelerate incredibly rapidly. I mean, it's breakneck sort of whiplash valuations that happen. So I talked to David; I sat down with David. He had just finished writing a 15,000-word guide that really picks apart everything he knows in SaaS valuations and that's a lot that he knows. And he goes into how do we first make this determination between a revenue-based multiplier versus an SDE multiplier? And then the second question, which is again equally sort of murky if you haven't been doing this as long as David has, is where do you then find the multiplier because the ranges are a bit broader than we see in other sectors. And so he goes over the approach he takes for it and then we started talking about some of the individual metrics as well, which are going to apply to all SaaS companies whether it be revenue based multiplier or SDE multiplier. If you are a geek when it comes to valuation talking this is the podcast for you. It's definitely meaty. We get into it pretty in-depth on this. But if you really enjoy this, take a look check out the guide that he wrote. It's now published. It's going to be available on our website. It's also available for PDF download. Share it. Discuss it. Reach out to David. Chris Guthrie would be another great person on our team to discuss these items with. He knows SaaS extremely well. And frankly, anybody on the team, we've all worked in this space ourselves but really, when it comes to our resident expert, we look to David first and foremost and part of it is because of the guide that he put together here. Joe: Let's go to it. Mark: Hey, David, thanks for coming on the podcast. I know you've done a couple of these before, right? David: I have, yeah. Mark: Well, cool. I'm glad to have you back on and I'm excited to have you on this week because you finally finished, and I shouldn't say finally because it wasn't even expected of you but you put together a very comprehensive guide on valuing a SaaS company. How long is it? David: It's a jargon. I think it's about 15,000 words. We shouldn't say that just in case that thwarts people from reading it. I think we're going to do a distilled down version of it. Mark: It's kind of like a mystery novel, how to value a SaaS guide. You know I wrote the ultimate guide to website value years ago when that was what we were really talking about is valuing websites and I think that was a 25,000-word guide. I started out thinking this should be something I can hammer out in a week and it turned out to not be a week. It was much longer than that. It took a while to put that together. And I know this took me a while to put together but the stuff in here is really an authoritative guide on the valuation principles behind a SaaS company. David: Yeah, it's a strange terrain this SaaS valuation conversation because unlike other business models that everybody's familiar with is not purely an earnings-driven model. It's not all about seller's discretionary earnings. And you see that so much in kind of public markets, they speak about SaaS businesses based on revenue multiples and then obviously in our kind of business brokerage landscape, you see it more around SDE multiples and so there's this kind of big confusion in this cross terrain between both buyers and sellers about what is my SaaS business worth and on the other side of the table is how much should I pay for it. And so there's a surprising amount of similarities in the valuation logic between both but what I wanted to point out was the crucial distinctions between them and why they're there to really help people understand that both buying and selling. Mark: Yeah, and I think this is an interesting conversation because we talk so much about valuations at Quiet Light Brokerage. And I've said in the course I put together on how to sell an online business for six, seven, or eight-figures I spent a lot of time on the valuation side and trying to dispel the myth that the valuation formula creates the value of the company as opposed to the valuation approaches and formulas and methodologies are really a predictive exercise more than anything else. And that really, when you boil it down into kind of a philosophical standpoint, it's really a measurement of expected return on investment for the buyer discounted by risk or mitigated by risk. And so you can have other valuation approaches that are completely valid. I know in the web hosting space, which is where I cut my teeth in the brokerage world, that was a revenue-based multiplier as well, because you had a lot of strategic sort of sales going on. It was typically 10 to 16 months of revenue was the average range that we were seeing so I'm interested to get into this. Because I know when I talked generally to people about valuations, I always have this asterisk of but SaaS companies are different and it's kind of a mystery box. So let's talk a little bit about that right there. We'll start with the revenue-based multipliers. Why are we using revenue with SaaS companies and are all SaaS companies going to be valued on their revenues as opposed to SDE? David: Yeah, that's a great question. You hit the nail on the head with what you said there which is that it comes all down to expected return on the asset. And I think the way to think about it is actually kind of in the life cycle of starting a SaaS business. If you imagine starting as many you do people SaaS businesses out of their bedroom; a lot of entrepreneurs see a problem, decide they didn't like it, wants to code a solution to it, put in their own money into it, then they might bring in a developer to start helping them out and they start putting their own money into start scaling it. They get friends as customers and sooner or later they are 10,000 in MRR or so forth and then they start to scale a little bit beyond that. And so initially you're in this period of scaling often with your own capital. And this is kind of a lot of the businesses that we see in the very early stages; kind of like homemades, bootstraps, sub million dollars in ARR businesses. They can remain focused for a large part on earnings and that's why they get they tend to craft some seller's discretionary earnings-based valuations. A lot of these SaaS businesses, for example, one doing 300,000 ARR might have about a hundred thousand in seller discretionary, slightly more multiple of that. Now, what happens? Typically a SaaS businesses look to scale particularly as they kind of arrive more towards a million in ARR and above is that typically what's the case is quite a lot more infrastructure is needed to be brought in to solve the biggest challenges of SaaS businesses which is churn. And that infrastructure is a lot of sort of customer success, it's a lot of additional development in terms of creating better onboarding, and it's putting a lot more sort of infrastructure around the business to really mature and allow it to scale from a small business into a much, much, much larger one, which can happen very quickly, arguably faster than any other business model. And so what happens it seems to me has been the case is that it has become acceptable and standard within the SaaS establishment to at this kind of sub million and arriving at a million in ARR level be able to say we're going to sacrifice our earnings in the near-term, in the short term in order to now chase absolute scalability in the business. And this is acceptable, more so in SaaS than any other kind of business, largely because we have a recurring revenue model with unit economics that are stable once you have churn in place that allow you to do that race up and scale and then cut back on that expense and immediately just be accruing very, very, very significant profitability in the business. And so the quid pro quo for you, reducing profitability of what was a relatively profitable small SaaS business to a now significantly unprofitable or flat profit business is that you'd have to start chasing revenue growth significantly. And so to your point, Mark, about having this kind of expected rate of return, buyers basically say we'll let you run to EBITDA or EBIDTA 5% margins in order that you're going to start sharing consistently 40% to 50% to 60% year over year growth or higher while still going between a million in ARR to five million in ARR, to 10 million in ARR, and 20 million in ARR and beyond. And so that is really the thinking behind why you get to a revenue-based multiple with businesses because the expectation is that eventually a SaaS business will mature and become extremely profitable. A great example of that is something like Salesforce which is now striking off enormous amounts of cash but for a long period of time before it wasn't. And so a lot of the businesses that you see come to market eventually even IPO still have this same kind of fundamentals and eventually, their hope is that they do become very profitable businesses. So it all kind of descends really back from that and I think that some of the question marks around valuation methodology is where is in this kind of hundred thousand in ARR to three million in ARR level which is, of course, where we do a lot of business and where a lot of other market participants are; people listening to this looking to buy and to sell often are is figuring out where are you in a lifecycle, the life journey of the SaaS business, like what is your aim and what are you trying to achieve? And that really informs what the valuation method is for the business. Mark: So as you said there, and there's a lot in there to unpack but the tradeoff or the requirement if you're going to be running at a low EBIDTA or a low profitability or even zero profitability, and I have seen this, by the way, we get these messages from private equity all the time saying we are actively seeking out X, Y, and Z with these characteristics. And I've talked to private equity that is looking for SaaS companies where they said we are not concerned about the EBITDA, we're not concerned about the profitability, but the expectation there is revenue growth at that. I would imagine, though, that there's got to be some other elements in there as well that; let me back up a little bit, we have the revenue growth, but I'd mentioned the expense structure needs to also look at this as being a growth-driven company where the expenses are being driven mainly towards growth. I can't imagine a scenario where you wouldn't necessarily see that but what happens if the growth is minor? So you have a company who is maybe a 500k ARR and they're growing and they're trying. So they're investing heavily in advertising, but their cost of acquisition has skyrocketed. Or they've invested in a large sales team to do onboarding, but they just have not figured that out yet. At what point can we start to say it's not working or is that a solution or somebody just needs to wait in order to sell the company, how do we start to make that discernment in that kind of squishy middle territory where we don't have the clear revenue growth, but we still have the low EBITA? David: 100%. That's what we call the struggle and there's a lot of SaaS businesses in that exact pocket. And the decision for the management team really is what do we do to grow or do we park this and move on to something else? And the former can involve all kinds of different decisions. Obviously making pivots within the business, like changing terms of software products, customer base, also looking to kind of raised capital, the venture capital or angel just to try and get into different channels or find capital to source it from there. And you more or less, Mark, have to push towards that fabled grace, because that's the only available kind of exit option to you from there. Or you go the other way, which is; and you see there is a lot of businesses we're promising and then they haven't reached the cap in the market or a competitor outcompetes them or management loses interest or whatever, and they start to trail off, go flat, and you end up with what's called zombie SaaS which is a not particularly affectionate side while it's probably still a lovely business. And then the option there is more or less you have to cut back all of that operating expenditure in the business in order to restore some earnings and try and exit at typically a much lower multiple of revenue still, but considerably lower that looks more like a normal of an EBITDA type sale and just cut your strings basically and move on to the next thing. And so many businesses, of course, we all know how hard it is to grow and scale any kind of business are in that struggle and trying to figure out that option. Mark: Yeah, I love going through with people the basic framework that we created of the four pillars of value. You want to mitigate your risk, you want to have good growth, make it easily transferable, and have great documentation. Well, that's second pillar of growth is so easy for us to say, right? You want to have great growth and everyone's thinking, well, yeah, of course, I do. It's a lot harder to do. Let's talk about the ideal scenario here. You have a company that is growing strongly and let's say that you're in that one to three million ARR range and we're seeing that ARR grow rapidly so we can apply a multiple to the revenue here. I know what people are thinking, what sort of multiples can we apply to them? David: Yeah, so this is when we flip into a slightly different structure but with very similar dynamics to how we think about business value at Quiet Light and the way we model multiples but the difference, the departure is the starting point. So whereas we in the private buyer side particularly the earnings businesses, we draw upon the several hundred previous transactions we have. We know where the average multiples are for businesses with certain characteristics in nature and we can call on that data set. To start with the revenue multiples side of things you have to again go find the data set and the data set to pull on is generally the public market. And so the best thing to do to start with is actually go look at like an index of cloud companies; SaaS companies that are publicly traded on Nasdaq and so forth, and use that as the benchmark for that kind of revenue multiple that normal publicly traded SaaS businesses are trading at. And that could be something like 10 times, 11 times forward multiple around probably what it is right now. And then, of course, naturally, that's a multiple that's appropriate for a large publicly listed company so already you're saying like, well, that's not really relevant to my smaller private business. So the first thing you have to do is make a public to private discount on that and so there are varying schools of thoughts around what that kind of discount is. It can be somewhat arbitrary. There's a lot of private equity companies out there that speak about what they do, and they have portfolios of private companies that they pour. The received wisdom is it's anywhere between 25% to 30% immediate haircut for being a private company. So you can come down off that 11 to something like eight, for example, and you have what feels like a large private company SaaS business should be trading at. And then we get more into the territory of what we do Quiet Light and what you're just talking about, Mark, in terms of the different four pillars of the business and you start to adjust based upon where this business is aware of the SaaS business we're talking about is relatively strong or weak compared to businesses of its size and businesses of its nature. So three million in ARR is a great example, you'd actually expect on average businesses at that level and this kind of valuation exercise to be growing probably at something like 50% to 60% year over year because it gets harder and harder to grow faster and faster, obviously, with scale. And so if it was much larger, say like a hundred million, you'd actually reduce it and say the average business at a hundred million ARR would be growing at about 30% year over year. And so already you need to compare what's the revenue growth rate of this business versus the paired average for other similar-sized businesses. And it's again a case of going through all of these different classic criteria that we normally do; revenue growth, churn, lifetime value, diversification, all of this classic operational metrics that go back in kind of normal business logic land and just comparing where does it look like versus businesses of its size and businesses in its same kind of customer segment of category and that begins the adjustment process down until you get to a multiple and that starts to make sense. Mark: Yeah, so I want to touch real quick on just the size of a business in general because I know we experience this across the board with all different types of businesses. And yeah, my alarm bells went off, and let's just start with the publicly traded companies. Because I can hear all of my e-commerce clients saying, well, fantastic; I don't know what Amazon is trading at right now as a multiple of revenue, but I'm sure it's a ridiculous number. David: Yes. Mark: But Amazon is also the largest company in America at this point. Actually, I don't know that for sure. I'm sure they're up there, though. They're top five. So sort of with the publicly traded markets is a starting point but there's a lot of discussions that are going to happen in place. So if we're looking at a publicly-traded company like a Salesforce, as we scale down in terms of revenue down into the seven-figure territory from the nine-figure, eight-figure, seven-figure, the discounts do come in pretty rapidly. Why is it that larger companies earn a higher multiple of either revenue or earnings, in your opinion? David: Well, there's a perception of greater stability with greater size. Additionally, just generally speaking if you were to say a business growing 30% year over year at a hundred million in ARR versus one at 10 million in ARR it's more oppressive to be doing a more valuable; you're creating more value at a hundred million than you are at 10 million and therefore, it's commensurate with so the business is worth a greater multiple. It's much, much, much harder to do so. And you see that very, very clearly if you just go and look at a size-adjusted scale in public markets, at businesses at scale that are growing very quickly, they're the ones that are trading at the highest value and that's why Amazon's ballistic valuation. But it's because it's delivering unbelievable revenue growth for business scale. It's already absolutely huge in size so it is very, very, very impressive. But you're right, you need to start discounting down quite significantly. But it's tempting to be like we're starting so kind of pie in the sky with these public numbers and public multiples like wipe off of there. They are the heartbeat of overall like macro SaaS macro sentiment and like it or not, that is where a lot of sentiment; investment sentiment, think about it like kind of customer confidence. It's kind of like investor confidence really does benchmark from public market tech valuations. Mark: I mean, it makes sense, right? Everything that we're talking about here, any sort of valuation is really a market-based valuation. Anytime we're valuing any asset, whether it be a business or apples, it's based off of market dynamics here. So that part makes sense. I want to dig into the business metrics though that we start to get into in more. The regular as we are characterizing it, the regular valuation metrics that we look at. Within the SaaS world, these are going to be somewhat different anyway from, say, an e-commerce business, right? On an e-commerce business, we're going to be looking at gross profit margins, we're looking at growth, we're taking a look at some qualitative aspects of the products that they're selling such as the intellectual property protections and everything else. What sort of business metrics are we going to look at for a SaaS company, regardless of whether we're looking at it from an SDE valuation viewpoint or a revenue multiplier viewpoint; what are some of the other metrics we want to look at? David: Yeah, it's a great question because it's both actually identical and this is where the commonalities between the two methods are huge which is that it's all very well talking about in a revenue growth way of SaaS businesses but you have to look at what's the quality of that growth. And the key barometer of quality of revenue growth in any SaaS business is churn, average revenue per user, lifetime value, a monthly versus annual plan split, and the gross margins on there. So clearly if you just take the first one, because churn is such a focal point for everybody, if you have a business with an outsized level of churn versus its size and category, then that's a major red flag in terms of the business. You see that quite a lot in terms of Shopify or Amazon plugin type add-ons, where largely because of the type of end-user which on Amazon can turn over quite quickly buyers and sellers come and go there. Those tools can kind of have quite high churn rates. And so it's an interesting one because they often have very fast growth rates in general, like a very sharp revenue growth rate because Amazon is an absolutely enormous space to be in. There's tons of new sellers turning up, signing up for new tools that they're churning away after three to four months. So you have to immediately look at can I appraise this tool that's going 100% year over year growth versus the 15% monthly churn? Because if it stops growing even just a little bit within 12 months, it's going to churn out almost the entire customer base and cut off all the growth. And so you have to look at those two. They're absolutely symbiotic. And it's the same with seller's discretionary earnings type businesses because ultimately that impacts the bottom line as it is with revenue multiple. And then the interesting one is looking at monthly versus annual plan split. Naturally, most SaaS businesses are an amalgamation of both and it's definitely favored and preferred that there's a much stronger bias towards monthly planned revenue if that makes up sort of 85% plus of your overall business. That's perceived as a very good thing. If annual is a bigger proportion of that, that's something of a concern. And that's really just because what you want in SaaS is predictability. That's what everybody loves with recurring revenue. Monthly plan revenue is more predictable than annual planned revenue, which seems psychologically counterintuitive, but it's not when you consider that every single month customers have the opportunity to churn away, whereas with annual planned revenue that only happens once every 12 months. So you have no idea what's going to happen in 12 months' time to a large cohort of any bias. Their whole lives could have changed quite a lot so the data set there is less rich and so it makes it more opaque for bias. And so they actually value that pop business generally lower than monthly occurring revenue. So they are just a few of a couple of the kind of revenue quality metrics that should be really important for both buyers and sellers. Mark: I want to talk about ARP but before that, I'm going to talk about churn and a concept of it. I don't know if you would take this into account an evaluation of an Amazon SaaS business, for example, that is supporting sellers. As you know, David, I have an interest in a dating website online and there's a concept in dating world called the good churn. It's somebody canceling their account because they met somebody. And within the dating world, you want to have good churn even though it does impede growth. I know with the site that I have interest in, the business I'm interested in, we have monthly turnover on 23%, which is massively huge and it does impede growth, but we want to have 23% be made up as much of good churn as possible because when people meet somebody they then talk to each other. So within the Amazon space, do we take that into account or with any sort of support service where you're getting somebody off the ground and they outgrow your product because it served its need, right? That's really the dynamic here. If your SaaS business serves a need that your users no longer need it that would be good churn. Would that be taken into account with that churn number very much or are we really looking more just the throttling on growth and the fact that you're chasing ever-increasing growth numbers with high churn? David: Yeah, it's hardly the latter, because if you think about it, I mean, SaaS valuations, in general, are higher than any other business model. And the reason for that is because for every single unit of revenue you're bringing in you can predict how long it's going to stay with you for and you can't with any other business. And so helping people out for a shorter period of time, even if they're then canceling for good reasons while still brilliant from a customer success standpoint, isn't something that a buyer would attach a higher multiple to. So you kind of want to help people for the longest amount of time to create the most amount of value and that's why I like businesses with very high lifetime values and their churn are generally speaking, the most valuable type of SaaS businesses. So, yeah, you've got yourself a beautiful paradox there Mark with your site. I think in that situation, you just have to turn into a massive marketing spend then. You need to post those numbers all over your website and say people are gleefully canceling because of what we do. Mark: Well, you know it bleeds out into the other metrics, I think. And I wish I could say our 23% was good churn. It's not but it bleeds into be other numbers, right? Because if you have good churn where it trickles into is your cost of acquisition becomes effectively lower. So the more good churn you have, the lower your effective cost of acquisition compared to people that don't have as good of churn because you have more social proof. Now, it may not be a very clear or strong relation, it's more murky but let's talk about ARPU and also a lifetime value of a user. When we're looking at these metrics, how much does taking look at cohorts in terms of time play into that? Because I know Chuck sold a business a while ago, it wasn't directly SaaS. It was sort of SaaS-y in its makeup, which it was pretty much awash for the first 24 months in terms of lifetime value and cost of acquisition. But after that 24 month period, everything was profit on top of that. And I look at that and say that's fantastic. That's great. I get it. But from a buyer's standpoint, the cash requirements for a business like that, especially if you're growing rapidly, becomes a constraint to growth. You have to be able to fund a business with a 24 month period lead time. How much does a cohort analysis play into a valuation? And I would assume kind of the logical conclusion here is the shorter period of time to be able to get from your cost of acquisition to your revenue is more desirable. But is that something that you look at closely? David: Yeah, I mean, from the challenges with LTV in many monthly recurring revenue businesses, is it's moving around so much. I just sold a business just recently where the LTV posted up and profit well is going everywhere from 2,800 to $7,000 month to month. So try marketing a business with that level of variance. So to your point, Mark, you do have to look at cohort analysis, I think to go back and be like, what's the kind of longer-term trend in the business here? Like what's actually evolving because that business is a great example, the same phenomena you're talking about which for two years, more or less, didn't really make any money and then started to hockey stick. Not so much because the revenue growth was absolutely phenomenal it's just because the cost base no longer needed to go up anymore to substantiate it. They kind of refined the products enough, spent enough on development, finally figured out the marketing channels, stopped spending really a lot of both and then it just started to fly. And that is the case in point for so many SaaS businesses, which is that it's kind of like swimming into the dock a bit for an indefinite period of time until you do hear those unique economics that makes sense. And it just flies from that point in many cases, anyway. Mark: I think that the whole world of trying to value SaaS companies, especially in this murky range, is a fascinating exercise. When we do an e-commerce valuation, so much of it is cut and dry and I think part of that is just due to the volume that's out there. It's also the nature of these e-commerce businesses as you buy an asset and you turn it around and you're selling it so your profit becomes kind of immediate as opposed to the longer periods of baking and growth with the SaaS company for the long term, which makes it more of a complex exercise. So let's talk a little bit about the guide. 15,000 words, you talked a lot about this idea of moving over to the revenue-based multiplier. I would imagine that there are some examples. And we joked about this before we started recording, I haven't seen the guide yet and reviewed it so I'm going to be speaking a little bit and guessing. I'm assuming that you have some examples in here and other information. Tell us a little bit about what's in the guide and what people could take away from it. David: Yeah, so the guide really breaks down how to do the traditional SDE approach valuation and the revenue approach valuation, and most importantly, how to discern the difference between case studies where you should do one or the other. And I kind of put a four-part test in there which is really the size test. Is it or around or above the million dollars in ARR level? The next thing we look at is where's the revenue growth trending towards, is it showing these kind of fundamentals we're talking about 40% plus year over year growth? The next thing is looking at is this still a business that's kind of a single owner-operator in a relatively thin personnel business, or is it starting to staff up with customer success, starting to wrap around some significant infrastructure to enable it to start going from one to 10 million dollars? That's a really important kind of qualitative factor. And then the last one, of course, is churn, because in reality smaller apps, generally speaking, have higher churn rates. So you'd expect to be seeing kind of an over tuned 4% to 9% in monthly churn in immature let's say, and to the immature SaaS apps. And as you start to get up to this million in ARR level you'd like to see that really dropped below 4% monthly churn. That's the big thing, because churn, as every SaaS business more or less in the world will tell you is the hardest problem to solve for because it is the ultimate barometer of whether people think you're creating enough value to not want to churn out and cancel. And so the more value you're creating, the more helpful you are to people, the less they're going to churn. And that's ultimately what anybody wants to pay for in any business. And so it being the most difficult problem to solve for makes it the most valuable one for a buyer to want to buy. So the lower the churn, generally speaking, the higher the value of the business all else being the same. So those are some of the key distinction points. And then, of course, I'm aware that there's both sellers and buyers looking at it. It's really useful information for both sides to see. Buyers are looking to buy to grow up and scale, sellers are looking to increase the multiples, everybody wants to increase value so I put in a bunch of additional kind of growth value; what I call value-centric growth levers. And what I meant by that is like what essentially the top three things that you can do that will most dramatically impact the most part of the business right away beyond just getting more growth which, of course, always helps. But like specifically one of the things that we've seen over the years in Quiet Light selling businesses, one of the things that we know dramatically increase the multiples of businesses. So I shared some of those in the guide as well for both buyers and sellers to look at. Mark: So if we want to just be trite, we can say if you want to get a great valuation, grow your business or reduce the churn, right? David: Yeah. Mark: All right, the guide is going to be available on the website. We will include links, obviously, in the podcast. You're going to be seeing some emails from us about the guide. We'll also have a PDF downloadable version of the guide. And of course, if anybody has questions about the valuation of your SaaS company and where you fall or questions, I'm sure David would be more than happy to answer any questions about this as well. David: Absolutely. Mark: David@quietlightbrokerage.com. David, thanks for coming on and enlightening me a little bit on this. And it's a complex topic, its super interesting, though. You know, I've been doing this for 14 years now, and it's sort of refreshing to look at different types of companies, different approaches to the same problem, and seeing where we can get some variation. So this is absolutely fascinating to talk about it and I'm looking forward to reading it, which I should have access to it. I'll be reading it here soon. David: My pleasure. Mark: Thanks David.   Resources: David's Article About SaaS Valuation Quiet Light Podcast@quietlightbrokerage.com

The Quiet Light Podcast
How to Build an Algorithm-proof Ecommerce Business with Joe & Mike Brusca

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 16, 2020 41:57


On this episode of Quiet Light, we talk with Joe and Mike Brusca. We discuss Ecommerce and how they built an Amazon publishing business. It's a really interesting look at one Ecommerce business model and how it works. Tune in to hear us discuss the right and wrong way to drive traffic and why their business is such a success. Topics: How they got their start during the “wild west” period of Ecommerce. How to structure your business when you get paid “per page reads”. The Right Way and The Wrong Way to drive traffic. Building an algorithm-proof business. The “right” types of books. Delayed profitability and building your back-catalogue. How Joe and Mike are planning their eventual exit. The four pillars of value. Transcription: Joe: One of the cool things about what we do, Mark, is that we're exposed to so many different business models. There are a million ways to make a living both on and offline. You can do all sorts of things offline, but online, it's not just writing content and producing affiliate revenues or building a brand and selling it on Shopify or e-commerce or building on a SaaS business. And we have the luxury and privilege of talking to so many people and learning what they do and how they do it and how they make money. There's not just one model for everyone. And you had Joe and Mike Brusca, is that how you pronounce the last name? Mark: I believe so. Joe: On building an Amazon publishing business to sell. And, I talked to somebody a year or so ago that did a similar thing and wanted to sell. And unfortunately, folks, he didn't have his numbers together. He didn't have any financials. He just had a lot of high-level details and it's not something we thought we could sell because we want to protect both the buyer and the seller. In this case, these guys were doing a very similar thing; building out a lot of content through actually having books published and earning revenue off of that. How did that call go? Mark: It was fascinating. I mean like you said, we get the chance to see different people's business models and look they made no allusions to anything other than the fact that they are looking to build this business and eventually sell it, which is where it became a really interesting conversation for me to have. There are so many different business models out there and we know most of them that exist, right? There's SaaS, there's content, there's drop shipping and e-commerce in general but what they've started is a publishing business and leveraging a different part of Amazon, which is really how Amazon got to start and that is their publishing and selling of books. We dug into what that business model looks like; how are they making money from selling Amazon Books and primarily, this is where their difference is, right? They're not just selling books for the face value of $10 to download this Kindle book but they're utilizing Kindle Free Time, which is an Amazon-specific program that's generating, frankly, quite a bit of money. In fact, they mentioned the best month so far is $25,000 in a single month of revenue for content that once it's built, it's built and it's ready to go and their back catalog perpetuates itself. Joe: That's called cash flow folks. If you're building a product business, you're constantly putting money in inventory as the business grows. That's a beautiful model. Mark: These guys are classic Internet entrepreneurs. They've sold a few dropship businesses in the past. They have some other e-commerce businesses that they're building to sell as well. So if anything else, this is just a fascinating conversation about building a business that maybe you don't know exists out there. I didn't really know much about this and I'll confess after this I spent about half an hour researching what the top books and the Kindle Free Time library are on Amazon just to see is this something that anybody can do. And I think it is something anybody can do but if you enjoy kind of digging into somebody's business models, these guys are incredibly open about what they're doing and how they're doing it. They do have a coaching program and that was one of the things that they wanted to come out for the podcast but there certainly wasn't a sales pitch for that. This is more just kind of exposing what they're doing. I asked them some tough questions as well, and I think they appreciated the fact that I didn't just throw softballs. I wanted to really challenge them a little bit on this concept and what they're doing and just interesting stuff. Joe: Yeah, I'm looking forward to listening to it. Before we go there, folks, this is part of what we do at Quiet Light. We try to bring interesting guests on to help you learn different business models and different ways to earn a living and build a better business. If you've got a story that you want to share where you think you can help the Quiet Light audience, remember reach out to myself or Mark. You can reach us at joe@quietlightbrokerage.com or mark@quietlightbrokerage.com and let us know what your story is that you want to share, how you can help folks, and possibly we'll be able to get you on the show as a guest. With that, let's go to the podcast. Mark: All right, guys, I'm excited to have two entrepreneurs on this week's podcast in a little bit of a different spin on online businesses; an area that I haven't explored very much but is growing very quickly. And I'm interested in, first of all, this business model in general because I see it as a potentially interesting opportunity, but also in maybe some applications that we can leverage this type of business for. But in order to do that, we kind of have to dig into what is this whole niche and this whole industry that's kind of springing up. And so with that in mind, I have Joe and Michael on the line here on the podcast. Guys, thanks for coming on, I really appreciate having you here. Why don't we just go ahead and if you could just introduce yourselves real quickly and let us know who you are? Joe: Cool. Thanks for having us, Mark. And we're Joe and Mike. We're brothers. Joe Brusca, Mike Brusca, and we're from BuildAssetsOnline.com. We've been doing online business since around 2014. It's kind of when we got started. We had regular jobs and all that, and then we ended up and somehow fell into building online businesses. And, one of the first online businesses that we ever did was publishing books on Amazon Kindle. And when we first started it, it was a bit of a Wild West situation where it was kind of new and Amazon didn't really have their stuff figured out yet and a lot of people were exploiting the systems and their platform wasn't really fully evolved but now it's turned into a really viable long term business model. And in these past few years, we've kind of put together a process that allows us to build and make royalties pretty much on autopilot. And we've seen in the past few years some of these Kindle businesses sell for over a million dollars. We haven't sold ours yet but, yeah we're going to talk about that because it really is a great business model; very, very easy to do, very straightforward, and once you get it going, very passive. Mark: All right so you guys are selling Kindle books. Is that correct? Mike: Yes. We're selling Kindle books and like Joe said, it kind of fits into anyone who has an online business portfolio. It is a really great option to have because it's probably one of the most passive models that there is where there is royalties and so it's definitely a unique form of diversification. We've sold drop shipping businesses, we've dabbled in affiliate websites and so we've kind of seen the entire breadth of online businesses that you can do and it's definitely one that we are putting extra energy into long-term. Mark: Now, I want to dig into this a bit more, because I'll be honest, when you guys first approached me about talking about this on the podcast and everything else I was like Kindle, okay, sounds fine, whatever, it doesn't really fit with what we normally talk here but then when you started to get into some of the details, it was interesting just as far as what you're doing, you're getting royalties for these books, but it's not necessarily you just going on Amazon, listing a book for sale, and then selling it because obviously, that would be; I know a lot of people who have had published books that went up on Amazon and didn't do much there. Maybe they've sold a few and everything, but nothing to write home about. You guys are now talking about selling this for millions of dollars so there's obviously a twist here. I'd love to dig in a little bit deeper here into this. What are you guys doing that might be different from the guy who signs up with XYZ Publishing Company and they add the Kindle book and then they might sell 100 or 500 copies of their e-book? Mike: The main difference is that we're creating our own publishing company and what we're selling is essentially publication company or that pen name. And so we're going out and we're making these books under specific pen names, and it's all with the purpose of generating an audience. So like you said, you can put a book out there on Kindle and nothing's going to happen. What you need to actually focus on is building that brand. And so that pen name becomes a brand just like any other Clorox or whatever brand you could think of that people buy in private equity. It's kind of the same thing. So you're creating these digital products under this pen name. You're developing an email list. You're developing an author website. You can even put your books on ACX, which is Amazon's that's how you get on audible, so it's an Amazon company. And so, you have the Kindle version, the paperback version, and the audiobook version. You're doing this with the whole purpose of generating just a big customer base and that is really where the asset lies. Mark: When you're putting these up for sale are you getting money from the direct purchase of these books; how are you generating revenue from these? Mike: So you get money from the direct purchase of the books. But Amazon also offers something really unique, and that's the Kindle Unlimited program. So there's a huge readership for fiction books and so Amazon wants to accommodate this. And so what they do is for $50 a month or whatever it is now, you can sign up to what's called Kindle Unlimited and you basically can read as many books as you want throughout the month. And so any book that's enrolled into the Kindle Unlimited program, you can download it for free. The way that the publisher gets paid through that is by the amount of pages that get read. And so doing fiction books it's even more advantageous because you can publish novel-length books or you've probably experienced with any show that you've watched once you start watching an episode, you're going to go back through the entire back catalog. And so that's what we're trying to capitalize on in order to get the most page reads. Mark: Okay, so the model here is Kindle Unlimited, you get paid per page read so, therefore, you're wanting to create content that is going to be an easy page-turner, as it were, right? I'm not going to publish some Academia throw it up on Kindle Unlimited and do very well with that sort of approach, right? Mike: Correct. And yeah if you're doing something maybe non-fiction or something more academic, it may serve you better just to have it as a straight purchase option. So, 9.99 or even though we sell books at 2.99 those books can actually still do really well as long as they're part of a bigger catalog because people will decide to buy that book. So we kind of employ that as a strategy. We mix, regular sales with Kindle Unlimited, but Kindle Unlimited still makes up probably 80% of the income. Mark: Okay. Now, you guys have built an entire business around this. I'd love to dig into a little bit longer. How long have you been doing this? Mike: So we started it back in 2015. Joe, did you want to say something there? Joe: No, I was going to say 2015, but it's evolved a lot over time like I was kind of alluding to earlier. And I think we only may have resumed it. We kind of took a little bit of a hiatus when we started getting into other online businesses. We're mainly working with building high ticket drop shipping stores and building affiliate sites and content sites. So we kind of took a little bit of a hiatus but then I think around two years ago is when we really got back into Kindle; when we kind of saw that Amazon was really improving the platform and there were there was actually a lot of potential to build a long term business on it because like I mentioned earlier, it is kind people have been publishing on Kindle for a long time but in our opinion two years ago, that was really when it became the most viable thing to do long term and that's when we kind of start seeing these types of businesses pop up for sale. Mark: Yeah. So you got started at 2015 so about five years ago, but really in earnest over the past two years and would have spent some of those iterations over the years with the things that you've had to do to adjust to make this into an actual business. Joe: So I do want to clarify that over that kind of three-year hiatus of not doing a lot of publishing, we were still actually making money. So we're talking no hours a month into this business and it was still bringing in, probably a five-figure outcome each year. So, again, it's really something that's super passive, especially once you do it right. But we were doing things that; basically Amazon has an algorithm and so when you put out a book, you want to get us as high in the algorithm as possible. You want to get that best-selling status or you want to do something to have people on Amazon find you. And so that was kind of the intention in the beginning. It was more focused on like you said you're storing the books on Amazon and seeing what would happen. And so that's kind of how we started out doing it. We weren't doing any of this actual brand building or email list-focused marketing and stuff that. And like Joe said Amazon was kind of like the Wild Wild West, there weren't a lot of rules in place, people were kind of exploiting those rules. And then Amazon began to crack down on that in 2016 and they're always kind of tweaking the algorithm and trying to make things more of a level playing field and just encourage certain behaviors. So over time, the trend has really gone in the direction of having your own external traffic source that you can drive to Amazon and so they reward you for that. And your reward is increased exposure on Amazon so you get that internal traffic. But. If you're actually getting good books and you're focusing on building a brand, these people will come off of Amazon onto your list, and the cycle kind of repeats itself. Mark: All right. So I'm getting the general idea for it. You've got into a little bit as far as if you do things right, which is a loaded phrase; I mean you guys have doing this now for five years and if you do things right is the result of a five-year process of tweaking and figuring things out. Let's first start though with doing things wrong where it is just throwing it up on Amazon and hoping and praying which is no different than selling a product on Amazon. You throw something up on Amazon hope and pray, you're not going to have much success. You need to have a plan. So what are some of the wrong approaches and then what are some of the right approaches on starting up a Kindle business that can be a sellable asset in the future? Joe: Well, when we first started doing it. Yeah, like you said we were just throwing books on Amazon but the thing is we weren't really writing the type of books that we're writing now. So when I say writing, I mean publishing, because we don't actually write the books. But yeah, it was more about just; back then, Amazon's algorithm really rewarded more so than it does now things that were new. So if you put a new book up with the right keywords, even though it was a short book, as long as it was keyworded right it would show up in the right categories but now it's not really like that. So when we say the right way and the wrong way, that's pretty much the wrong way because it doesn't really work anymore. But it did work at a time and you can kind of see this and it makes sense from Amazon's perspective, is that they want that external traffic. I mean, they're always trying to drive people to Amazon and that's what they reward now. So the wrong way to do is it's at a different time and just taking advantage of how the algorithm was back then. But I don't really see it going back to that direction because like Mike said, it's been moving in the direction that we're talking about now, which is the right way for some time now. Mark: Okay, go ahead, Mike. Mike: Yeah. If I could just add one thing, really, what we've, kind of waited all those years to serve and hone in on now in terms of doing things the right way, is building the business back up in a way that's algorithm proof so that if we're throwing all these books on Amazon and they change something it doesn't completely destroy our business. So now when you have your own readership off of Amazon, it's kind of a win-win relationship for both platforms; good books, people enjoy reading them so they come kind of into your sphere but you give that back to Amazon and they reward you. Mark: Right. Yeah, I mean, it's no big shocker that Amazon likes it when you send traffic over to them. I mean, that's kind of a rule of Amazon, you want to play well with them, send them traffic. So let's actually dissect some of this here. And you talked about the right type of books, the wrong type of books, and then we've also talked about building traffic, and we've also talked about publishing these books. So there are three loaded questions in here which is what are the right type of books number one, and what are the wrong type of books and then second of all would be okay, drive traffic; how? What does that look like? Build a brand is easier to say, it's three words, doing that is no easy task. Building up a following of people is always difficult. And then the third question is writing these things; how do you get them written? So these are all big topics and I don't want to throw them all at you at once so let's go ahead and start with that first one. What are the right type of books, what are the wrong type of books, and what are the books that you just have no idea if it's right or wrong? Mike: Yeah, and to be clear, we hate platitude as well so I don't want to just linger there. So the right types of books would be; like I was saying before you get paid based on page reads. Back in the day, people used to just draw up short books just to kind of; you're kind of throwing as many pieces of bait out there, seeing if one rises to the top and then just kind of going from there. Now we publish books that are usually 30,000 words in length at least so that would be considered novel-length. People would go all the way up to 80,000 words and more and so we say that the right type of book has to be a length that readers can enjoy nut it also has to be a book that is written towards what the market is already demanding. And so what does that mean again? You actually need to do your research and go on Amazon and see; you'd have a very, very keen eye as to the trends that are going on; what types of covers are there, are there any similarities in the covers, any similarities in the titles, going through some of the content of the books? You're trying to pinpoint what it is that readers actually enjoy. And so by doing that, you're more likely to get better conversions, more read-throughs, more people actually subscribing to your email list, and that's what we mean by the right book. And so then you're talking about driving traffic. So it's like we said when people find you and they enjoy your books you can get them off Amazon by giving them say like a free book if they subscribe to your list. And so now you build up a readership. And there's also a lot of other websites where you go and collaborate with other authors and kind of do list swaps. So you're building yourself up that way and so external traffic with Kindle is always about the list. But also, you can take that and say even put it onto Facebook by doing something like a look-a-like audience and now you can kind of ramp up more traffic to Amazon. And a lot of times you do it with the purpose of, again, giving them more referral traffic so they can boost you higher in the algorithm. Yeah, there's other ways to capitalize on it as well by making your own publishing website or you're own author website doing things like blogging there to get traffic. And now, again, you have that audience pixeled, you can use them to drive traffic to Amazon. Mark: Right. Okay, so from your guys perspective and I'm not going to ask you to open up all the doors of your P&Ls historically here but when we're talking about building a network and building a brand and everything, there's a lot of expenses associated with this. So you talked a little bit about the passive revenue, which is great, people love passive revenue. But what goes on behind the scenes? I looked at ads and sites before where somebody fills up an ad on-site and they're like look at this thing it's generating $10,000 a month in passive income. But what they didn't show you is the $150,000 they spent on content and link building over the past year. And so you're like, okay, you're just getting started now you sure hope that that lasts for you. You guys seem to have the sort of cost of authors which we need to talk about at some point; how do you find the writers and how do they get compensated and then also building up this audience? Well, what does this look like from an expense standpoint compared to what you get from Amazon? I would assume profitable otherwise you wouldn't be talking about this but what are we looking at here? Mike: Well, I would say there's really two paths you can go down. So we talked about you can use Facebook and drive traffic that way and that would be more of a kind of accelerated approach to trying to get quicker earnings on Amazon. Or you can do more of a slow and steady approach, which is kind of what we do with a little bit of Facebook ads. So what this means is just consistent but relatively low cost. Just say okay, I'm going to invest in a book a month and if you're just consistent with that, say it costs you 500 to 800 bucks a month for all your expenses, your book cover, editing, whatever. Obviously, when you put that first book out, you're not going to be profitable immediately. You have to also do some list building expenses, maybe. But over time, over the course of a few months, you start to build up quickly. Okay, now I'm making $20 a day, now I'm making $30 a day. And so it's really a snowball effect as you build up that back catalog, as you gain more followers. And so now once you have a bigger following, you put a book out and then you get a return on that book pretty quickly. Joe: It's nothing like you illustrated with that ad sense example. So, again, I don't really have the numbers in front of me, but I can give you a rough estimate. So I think it was a few months ago when we usually make between; so there's a few months ago where we made over $26,000 in royalties and we probably got one book published that month where we spent the $500 to $800 and we probably spent 3,000 or 4,000 in Facebook ads that month. That's a rough estimate of what you would see typically. But again, it varies because sometimes you're not always heavily promoting on Facebook. Depending on what month it is, maybe you put out two books but we tend to put out one book a month. But, yeah, that's generally what it looks like for us now. When you're getting started, it's obviously going to be slower. But I've made affiliate sites and I made sites that rely on SEO and link building and the expenses are nowhere near that, not even in the same ballpark. Mark: Okay, you guys lost me a little bit here. $500 to $800, write a 30,000 plus word book, I mean, I pay $500 for a single blog post on our site. So let's talk a little about sourcing authors, I know you guys are in the fiction space here, are fiction writers that much more willing to write for $800 or $500 or what's going on behind the scenes there? Mike: Yeah. So it's definitely a bit of a different market than getting a blog post written or even a nonfiction book because there's really no research involved. It's just kind of a creative process. So comparing it at a cent per word basis, it's going to be a lot lower. And there are people that invest more into that, there are people that invest less. But what we found is honestly as long as the books are good then people will read them, the audience response to them well. We've kind of gotten to a nice, sweet spot there where you can invest more and maybe that has a better return; I don't know, we haven't really experimented too much but yeah, that's really you can certainly go on Upwork or even Craigslist we found writers or you could probably go on Indeed and find writers. But it's not an uncommon rate to spend say two cents a word or even less on a fiction book. Joe: To write a blog post for your company, Mark, I mean that's a lot more expertise required than writing a fiction book for sure. And fiction writers, think about it in terms of rarity; how many people love reading fiction, love writing fiction compared to how many people have any sort of knowledge about online business. I mean, the supply and demand there is just totally, totally different. Mark: Do you guys read the books that you publish? Mike: In the beginning, I did. I was kind of bootstrapping it but these days no, we just kind of; I mean, I'll read samples like if I'm hiring someone new just so I can evaluate if they're actually good at writing. But no, it's just they send it in, it goes to the editor, get the cover design, put it together, send it out. And so if there was any real issues we also have an advanced reader team so they get the book as well to write reviews because Amazon actually does allow you to give away your book for reviews. Right now at 2020 in May they allow it. And that is because it's a very common practice in fiction. You give people the book early to let you know how it is. You can't do that with a physical product. So it actually allows you; it's much easier to develop that social proof and you also are not giving away all of your 20, hundred thousand units to get reviews back like with FBA. Mark: Right, because it's a virtual product at the end of the day. I want to backtrack a little bit because I've had this nagging question my head. You talked about the number of page reads, they pay on the number of pages read, they're not looking at the furthest amount that you've gone in the book but actual time spent on each page is that right? Do you know? Mike: I don't know their exact process, but I would say it's kind of a combination of both. I mean, there's probably a number of time that they spend on a page for it to count and then it would be the amount of pages that they actually read for that number of seconds. Mark: Yeah, because my shortcut got to cheat the system mind was thinking, oh man, what you did to choose your own adventure, you could get them to go all over the book and… Joe: Do you remember when I was talking about the Wild Wild West? Mark: Yeah. Joe: I mean that's the kind of stuff that was going on. So they've spent a lot of time on perfecting and tweaking that algorithm. Mark: You're telling me that Amazon is smarter than me. Joe: Well, I'm just saying you were… Mike: Maybe they were not really paying attention and what people were doing was; so they actually have a cap now on how long the book can technically be. So even if a book is 100,000 pages Amazon will only count it up to 3,000 pages. So what people were doing was they're really abusing the system, they will just fill these books with just the most random things and they would have these books that were so long and then they would have something like to win a free prize just click to the back and then boom, they would make 150 bucks. Mark: Right. Mike: That was part of the reason… Joe: I got a lot of trouble for that. Mike: Yeah. That was part of the reason why we walked away from it actually was because it was almost like if you think about professional sports, everyone is taking steroids so in order to even compete because page reads wards you in the algorithm so you'd have these random books in the best-selling things; this is way back in the day so we never did anything crazy like that but it just seemed too; it was between doing stuff like that or not doing stuff like that and we did it. We always thought it was risky to go crazy abusing the system like that so that was one of the reasons why we kind of took a little bit of a hiatus until things evened out. Mark: Right. Okay, well before listeners wonder how far off track we're going to go from our core type of topics here, this is fascinating, I could talk about this all day. I think this is interesting. You guys are building this publishing business with an eye towards someday potentially exiting as well. I'd like to get into some of the things that you guys are doing internally to maybe plan for that. What discussions have you had internally about that? And I'm hitting you out of left field on this. We didn't prep for this before the call so understandably if you don't have ready-made answers, that's fine but have you guys discussed buildings up for sale and what sort of things have you done to maybe have an eye towards that potential exit someday? Mike: So really, the main thing that we've done to kind of have it focused on exit is to focus on having that separate publishing site. So that way we're really establishing ourselves as a brand. We're not just getting income just from these royalties. We actually get affiliate commissions. We have visitors that come to the website and then buy the books. And so, yeah, it's kind of we focused on what can we do off of Amazon like we kind of touched upon it's good to do that for the algorithm and just for your own sake but it actually does help kind of diversify what we're doing and make things a lot better when it comes down to selling it. I don't know if you have any insight there. Mark: So we have a very simple framework that we call the four pillars of value; it's the risk of your business, the growth potential, the transferability, and the documentation. So building up a brand is key; it helps protect against the risk and it's also aiding towards the transferability of the business, which is something that we would definitely encourage. Joe, were you going to say something on top of that? Joe: Yeah, I was going to say as far as the documentation goes, because I feel maybe that's what you're asking. Maybe I'm wrong, but the documentation is not really complex at all. If we were to put together something for someone that we're handing off the business to we would probably just give them; we have like an education course on this subject, but we would just give them that. But it's really just not complicated at all. It's not like handing off an e-commerce store to someone or even an Amazon affiliate site to someone that knows nothing about SEO or WordPress or something like that. When I say it's simpler, it's much, much simpler. Mark: Right. Yeah, absolutely. It reminds me a lot of the ads on publishing days, but through a more established platform of Amazon and utilizing that program. It isn't known much is my guess. Have you guys looked into; I know you're working mainly in the fiction field, have you played around in nonfiction? Because when we first talked about this, my head sort of went to what if we were to leverage this along with our existing business and add it as a revenue stream there? Your paid on a number of pages read, I'm not sure if you can create cliffhangers at the end of a chapter of a business book so much like is this P&L going to get murdered in the next chapter? I don't know. We'll see. What have you guys done, if anything, in that realm of nonfiction books or have you played with it at all and have you thought about using it with an existing business; you have drop shipping businesses on what you're your drop shipping but is there a potential play there, in your opinion? Joe: Well, we have done nonfiction before. When I first started publishing kind of similar books online, it wasn't Kindle, it was Create Space and it eventually merged, and Create Space became Kindle Paperback or whatever they call it. But at that time, I first started doing coloring books and we've done puzzle books and stuff like that. So I think that would be also classified as non-fiction. So I think there definitely is a play there to do that kind of stuff. And again, because that's something you can also build a brand around in the paperback space and you wouldn't approach it the same like we're talking about now with the page read and stuff like that. You'll have to put every book on Kindle Unlimited. It just really depends on the sector of books that you're going after. But as far as what you're saying I think it really is more of a; I guess any book on Amazon would probably be more B2C stuff. I can't imagine a B2B play in this area. There are people that sell non-fiction B2B stuff, but I don't know if it would be a great use of time for a company  yours, for example. I don't know. I don't really think so. Mike: What I would say is I wouldn't recommend doing that for the purpose of making money on Kindle. But the point is that by publishing a Kindle book, you're tapping into that audience and you're tapping into the organic traffic already on Kindle. So you're not going to make your money on page reads and you probably shouldn't be focused on making your money on sales either. What you should be focused on is putting up a good book that way it's almost like lead generation; the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, I believe, think about how many millions of dollars off of Amazon that probably makes him just by building up his name because it's been an Amazon bestseller for who knows how long. So, yeah, when you're doing a non-fiction book on Amazon for business or for something like that you need to keep in mind kind of the back end funnel and it should be more of a complement to your business rather than the business itself. Mark: Right. Absolutely. And that's kind of what I'm getting at, right? I mean, any sort of content marketing play, in general, is just that, right? We bring a lot of content on the Quiet Light Brokerage blog, we have a podcast, I don't sell advertisements on the podcast even though we have a decent listenership. I don't sell ads on or put ads on the blog or ad thrive or anything like that because that's not the main goal. The goal is to build that audience. Although, if there was a way like with Kindle Unlimited it seems kind of a nice backdoor to make a little bit of money, I just don't know what the payouts are on that. How many books do you think you need out of a portfolio to be able to turn decent amounts of money; more than just 30 bucks a day or so? I can't imagine one book unless it's top of Amazon is going to turn in that much money on Kindle Unlimited, I would imagine you need to have a portfolio of books. Mike: Yeah. And I'd say we were kind of familiar with how to do things already because we were doing them in 2015 so we were able to start profiting really within a couple of months. And it does build but it's a lot easier to scale as well because if you're publishing one book a month and you want to do better, publish two books a month. So, yeah, it's hard to say how much you're going to make because it comes down to the execution of it. If you have a really good book that just takes off in the algorithm, if you do the Facebook ads right, and you can really have a pick-up steam then you can make a lot of more money off one book. And it also obviously depends on the length of it as well; so the term how much one customer can kind of give you off that one book. But, yeah, you'd be surprised honestly. Some books can take off and really, really do well. We've only been doing this kind of new way for two years I guess this month and we've really seen it grow quickly and it grows exponentially. Mark: Interesting. Joe: Yeah, and keep in mind that getting into the Kindle top 100 of all the Kindle store, which we have done; getting into top 100 is way different than getting into the top 1000. The top 1000 is still really good but once you break into the top 100, it just; like Mike said, the book would just take off in terms of page reads and everything. So that's something else to consider, is that you have the slow and steady approach and maybe you never have anything that breaks in the top 100 but with the slow and steady approach as that back catalog builds, it doesn't matter. So that is there is a variable there if the book takes off or not. Now, I think if you do it correctly, every book should do decent but like I said, top 1000, top 100, totally different ball games. Mark: Joe, I asked you this when we talked a week ago or so, why share this information? I'm loving the discussion. I'm super entertained. Hopefully, people listening are entertained as well. What are you guys sharing this information for? It seems like you guys would want to be just kind of be like hey, don't come in here. Don't do it. I don't want to compete against you. Joe: Well, actually to be fully transparent we do sell a course on how to start a Kindle publishing business; Passive Publishing Profits. You check it at BuildAssetsOnline.com. But the other thing is the reason why we started doing education in the first place is the guy that told us to do it, he basically said it's a great way to leverage your success. And we have a lot of different online businesses like we've talked about but the thing is, is we might not want to grow these businesses into billion-dollar companies because we enjoy the lifestyle. Me and Mike, we just work from home and we think that the courses are not so much a detriment, but a great compliment as well; teaching other people and getting paid for that. But you also have to keep in mind that especially with Kindle, we encourage our students that you're not competing against one another, because like Mike mentioned earlier, there's this factor of swaps and things like that. So these people who read fiction books, they are really, really avid readers and so if you're partnering with other publishers like we encourage and like we do in our community, it's a win-win for everyone. There's no doubt about that. And taking that back to even selling education products in general, I mean, it's been an amazing experience for us. I'm sure we've generated some competition for ourselves in some way but I think the amount of partnership we've made and things like that far, far outweigh the cons there. Mark: Yeah, fascinating. Well, I'm always a fan of transparency. I mean, that's the only way to do business and I appreciate that as well and it's linked to really fascinating stuff. Guys, I know we're up against the clock here. I've been talking for about 40 minutes; just a little bit more on that so is there anything else that you would like to cut around the discussion with anything that we didn't cover that you're like man, why hasn't he asked this question? Joe: I don't feel that way. I think you did a good job of really trying to hammer in and have us explain ourselves. Mark: Hey that definitely makes you my favorite guests. You said I did a great job. Joe: Well, not every show does that, to be honest with you. I mean sometimes; I guess we feel leaving a little bit empty because we didn't get asked the deep questions that force us to be on our toes. I definitely got that with this one. Mark: Yeah, absolutely. Well, guys, I appreciate you reaching out. I appreciate you coming on here; really interesting stuff. I'd be lying if I said I'm not going to go on Amazon and take a look at the top 100 on Kindle and see what type of books are there. And there's no time for me to jump on another project but that doesn't mean that my entrepreneurial wandering eye isn't going to spend a little bit time looking at that. So I appreciate you guys coming on. I really enjoyed the conversation. Mike & Joe: Thank you, Mark.  Resources: Joe and Mike's Website Quiet Light Podcast@quietlightbrokerage.com

Retirement Planning - Redefined
Ep 18: Investing In Down Markets

Retirement Planning - Redefined

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 16, 2020 17:16


It can be tough to see the silver lining in times of volatility, but when the market is down oftentimes there are some great investing opportunities. John and Nick give us some key tips on how to take advantage of a down market.Helpful Information:PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/Contact: 813-286-7776Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.comFor a transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/Transcript of Today's Show:----more----Mark:Hey, everybody. Welcome in to this week's podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in to Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth Financial Advisors. Going to talk with me again about investing finance and retirement. Hopefully you've been listening to our series we've been doing the last couple of weeks on, well, really just what's going on in the world in general. And we're going to continue on with that theme by talking about investing in down markets this go around. First off, let me say welcome in guys. Nick, how you doing, bud?Nick McDevitt:Doing well, doing well. How about yourself?Mark:All right. Hanging in there considering all things. Hopefully everybody's safe and staying home and staying with the shelter-in-place and all that good stuff and not going too stir crazy. John, how you doing, buddy?John Teixeira:I'm good. I'm good. It's funny, as I'm quarantined here I'm taking a lot of walks so I'm actually meeting more of my neighbors now that I'm supposed to be stuck at home.Mark:Isn't that interesting? All the different things ... So many conversations had about how our life is so different. If you want to look silver lining, there's a lot of silver linings we can find in this. I know it's tough when people are getting sick and passing away and all, but there's so many things that we're slowing down and maybe realizing stuff that we didn't need or we didn't have to use or we didn't rely on.Mark:I was talking to somebody yesterday and they were ... This sounds like I'm joking, but they're like, "My Starbucks budget. I didn't realize how out of control it was." I know that's a minor thing but coming out of this, I want to think about how to be better about not drinking so much coffee, or at least drinking so much overpriced coffee.John Teixeira:You can ask Nick how he's doing with that. His Starbucks budget's pretty high.Mark:Was it? How you doing, bud?Nick McDevitt:It used to be until I bought myself an espresso machine ...Mark:Okay.Nick McDevitt:... About a year and a half ago.Mark:Yeah?Nick McDevitt:Yeah. I took care of that expense issue a little while back.Mark:But you can relate, then, to what they were saying, right? They were like, "It was out of control!"Nick McDevitt:Oh, for sure. Yeah. Especially because I typically drink lattes instead of just regular coffee.Mark:Right.Nick McDevitt:Those are a little bit harder to make at home.Mark:Six bucks a pop. Seven bucks a pop. Whatever it might be.Nick McDevitt:Yeah. Yeah. So, I brought that cost in-house and good machine pays for itself pretty quickly.Mark:Yeah. There you go. See, look, there's an investing tip right away!Nick McDevitt:There you go.Mark:Right off the bat. Boom! A bonus thing you didn't know. All right. Let's talk about investing in down markets, guys. John, talk to me about proper asset allocation. Let's just jump in and spend some time on some of these pieces, okay?John Teixeira:Yeah, yeah. I think we want to recap from our session the last time where we really talked about planning. We go from the standpoint of the plan really dictates your investment strategy. Once you have your plan in place, it tells you, "Hey, this is how you should be invested, whether it's conservative, moderate, aggressive growth for income." But once you determine that, you really need to develop the right allocation of investments within your portfolio. And once you determine that, hey, I'm going to be ... I'm just throwing this out there ... 60% equities and 40% bonds, you really want to stick to that strategy. And when you're building that portfolio you want to put into things like diversification as far as not having all your eggs in one basket and really develop a zig and a zag in your portfolio.John Teixeira:In reality ... It sounds kind of weird to say, but you always want something going down while the market's going up, per se, because what will happen is when the market's going down hopefully that asset class with be going up. And that's one that we do in our portfolios. We're really trying to make everything work together as a unit. And part of that is ... I'm going to throw out a term people probably haven't heard ... Is correlation of assets. And that's how we can determine exactly how are these assets correlated so when one goes up, is one going down? If one goes up, is the other one not doing anything at all? And when you structure and put that all together you can really build a good portfolio for someone to weather the storm a little bit in this type of volatile market.Nick McDevitt:Yeah. And zig and zag also happens to be John's favorite dance move as well. He really tries to tie into that as much as he can.Mark:Do the zig, do the zag. All right. There you go. I can see you.John Teixeira:Nick's just a little jealous. He has no zig and zag.Mark:Ah.Nick McDevitt:Yep. It's true.Mark:I would have pegged you as a stanky leg kind of guy, myself.John Teixeira:You got me right.Mark:All right. Nick, what's your thoughts here?Nick McDevitt:Really, from the asset allocation standpoint, really what you need to take into consideration to determine that the plan helps create the parameters and what makes sense from a planning standpoint. But then there's also the emotional aspect of it and people's previous and historical experiences with the market can play in. Any client that we bring in, we go through a risk tolerance process where essentially they're answering questions that have to do with risk. Typically, it's probably the process that people like the least ...Mark:Right.Nick McDevitt:... Because often times, they want us to tell them. "Hey, this is what you guys are here for, right? Is to help guide us through this." And they answer to that and the feedback on that is, yeah, we're going to tell you if you're not necessarily taking enough risk for the plan or if the answers you're providing are outside what your plan is telling us makes sense. But at the same time we want to make sure that the amount of risk that they are going to take is something that's comfortable to them, even during uncomfortable times, which, obviously we're in right now.Nick McDevitt:That work up front. One of the things that we really do emphasize with people that we work with is we do a significant amount of work up front. Our process is probably a little bit more in depth and tedious than a lot of other advisors out there that tend to focus on, "Hey, let's get the money in and then we'll dial in after that." Where we say, "Let's get the plan done. Let's do the work up front to make sure that we don't have to overreact or make emotional decisions at the time where we are the most emotional." We can kind of revert back and say, "Hey, remember, this is why we did what we did. Here's the process that we went through. We spent a lot of time doing this. This is why it makes sense."Nick McDevitt:Making sure that as we approach retirement we have a plan for adjusting the risk and early into retirement. But also, making sure that we're not getting out of all market risk. Not being in the market has a cost, an opportunity cost, and that's its own risk. That work that we do up front in determining that asset allocation and the risk really helps us weather through the tough times.Mark:That's really great points, here, as we're talking about investing in down markets. Again, proper asset allocation, risk ... Obviously, those are all key factors in there. What about just the value that an advisor brings? I've been saying for ... I do tons of shows and podcasts all across the country and I've been saying for a while now that as we're moving through this Coronavirus epidemic, never been a better time to have an advisor and, really, in so many ways you should have one anyway. But going through this, people aren't sure where they stand or they aren't sure how things are going to look on the other side. And I just think that the value of an advisor is immeasurable right now.Nick McDevitt:Yeah. We obviously have a little bit of built-in bias that we do feel that we add value and we are important, but the reality is that there's been studies that have been done and Vanguard has done a pretty good study and we'll talk about that a little bit, but the reality is that during times like this having someone to share concerns with, to be able to talk to ... One of the things that we really emphasize early on and when we work with people is the importance of communication, where we want to be heavy on technology, heavy on communication. We want to make sure that people are comfortable having difficult discussions and conversations with us because that allows us to really do our job.Nick McDevitt:We're really hamstrung when we don't have the information that we need. So, when we can be a sounding board for clients ... Even though I know all of these things, I will say I was still a little bit surprised how far a five or 10 minute conversation with clients over the last month went where, really, they just needed some affirmation, a reminder of what's going on, a reminder of what we're going through, and that although it's looked different we've been here before. And the feedback that we've gotten from people has been very positive and that's where some of these studies ... And John can talk about it a little bit more in detail, the Vanguard study, where the studies have shown that the performance that people who work with an advisor have versus people that don't work with an advisor ... There's a pretty drastic difference. And part of that is because of the work that goes up front. It's not just, "Hey, somebody picked better investments at different points of time." Really, it has to do with the plan and the overall strategy and having a game plan and implementing those sorts of things.John Teixeira:Yeah. And that study, Vanguard did it. It's called Advisors Alpha. And basically, the study came out to showing that having an advisor brings about an average of three percent increase in the portfolio over the years. And really, that's in a segmented time period where the market's doing really well or the market's doing really bad; where advisors help clients take emotion out of it. And if you here a dog barking, that's my dog. We really help take emotions out of it. And one of the things that I'd say ... When things are going really good, I'd say we have some people that ... "Hey, maybe I should get more aggressive." And one of our jobs is to make sure that they stay the course in what we initially set up out front.John Teixeira:And the same thing when the market's been volatile as last month, it's, "Hey, let me sell out. Let me get more conservative." And it's like, "No, let's go back to our initial plan, our initial strategy. Let's stay the course." And I think that's one of the biggest values that ... One of the values that we bring to our clients is really just helping them take emotion out and realize it's never as good as it seems, it's never as bad as it seems. And let's just stick to the plan and the strategy.Nick McDevitt:Yeah, and part of that, too, is depending upon how closely they follow things like the news or what's going on, the market tends to be a leading indicator in things. And so, this last month and a half has been a good example of ... Before people were seeing the negative impact in their communities of the virus and the things that were happening and as they were still going to work and, really, their day-to-day life hadn't started to change yet, the market was racing down. Now, we're pretty much 20% off of the bottom and from a societal standpoint and from a lifestyle standpoint, people's biggest impact is currently happening. They're currently living that. And yet, they're seeing that this market bounces back and that's really a good example of what happens. And when you let the emotions or even sometimes ... It sounds weird to say it, but sometimes logic, get in the way you can really have a negative impact on your overall investment strategy.Mark:No, and I get what you're saying about the logic portion of it as well because we ... If anything, logic seems to be going out the window anyway, right now, for a lot of things. All this new paradigm that we find ourselves in, it's very difficult sometimes to figure out which way is up and which way is down. And you're talking about the markets and, obviously, we've seen huge, massive swings. At the time we're taping this particular podcast, we've had a couple of decent days in the room. But that, John, does create buying opportunities or at least the conversation to have with your advisor. "Hey, is this a good time to buy? Is it a good time to look into this, that or the other as part of the overall strategy?"John Teixeira:Yeah. And one thing we like to look at, before we jump into that, is really, what's your time horizon with the money? Is this money that you're going to need within the next year? You may want to not consider buying in in a volatile market. But if you're looking at a five plus year time horizon, I would say this is an excellent time to really consider buying some equities. Looking back at 2008, and I'll preface it by saying past performance is not indicative of future performance, but there were a lot of stocks that, I'm sure, if you look back and said, "Oh, man, I wish I'd bought it at that price," just what they've recovered over two or three years after the 2008 recession.John Teixeira:We have had some people calling in saying, "Hey, this is a great time to buy. What do you think? I'd like to put some money to work for me and take advantage of some of these stocks that are on sale." And when you say it that way, it makes a little bit more sense because if you go to the store and it's like, would you rather buy stuff at full price or when they're on sale? That just brings it full circle to help people understand that a little bit more.Nick McDevitt:Yeah. I would just say that there's always a silver lining to any sort of situation and what John emphasized about the buying opportunities and that although things are going to continue to be difficult in the "real world", at least we've got a little bit of stability and a reminder for people of how these sorts of things play out in the marketplace; how they happen quickly. And really, the importance of having an advisor that can help guide you through it so that you don't make decisions that you're really going to regret in the long-term.Mark:And as we're finishing up with the podcast this week, guys, that's the message I've been trying to convey over the last couple ones. I think we're going to continue to push that message, as well, is that while so many things are out of our control when it comes to the virus and when we're off of lockdown or whatever the case might be and we feel like we're sitting on our hands, there's still a lot of things we can be proactive about. And thinking about our financial future, our retirement future on the other side of this is one of those things we can certainly do. We've got more time on our hands, so put some thought into this. Have some conversations. Talk with your advisor. Work with an advisor. Find an advisor.Mark:Whatever the case might be, there's a lot that can be done virtually in this time frame. And people will be saying, "Well, I can't go drive around and see people." No, you can't. But you can listen to podcasts like this one. You can listen to John and Nick, things that we're talking about. You can reach out to them and let them know you want to talk. They can set you up with a virtual Zoom Meeting like the whole world's doing. We're doing one right now. We're doing the podcast through Zoom Meeting.Mark:Reach out and let them know that you want to have a conversation about some of the things we've discussed here today on the show when it comes to investing in down markets. And give them a call at 813-286-7776. Again, 813-286-7776. That's the number you call. Let them know that you'd like to chat and they'll get you set up and taken care of for a time that works well for everybody. You can also go to their website PFGPrivateWealth.com. That's the name of the company. PFGPrivateWealth.com. You can subscribe to the podcast while you're there on Apple or Google or Spotify. Share it with those who might benefit from the message. And also, of course, check out and learn more about the team; about John and Nick, at PFG Private Wealth.Mark:Guys, thanks so much for your time. I appreciate you, as always. Hope you're staying safe and sane and not too stir crazy.Nick McDevitt:Thanks, Mark.John Teixeira:Thanks, you, too.Mark:All right, guys. Take care and I'm going to need to see some dance moves on the next episode. Just saying. I've heard about it.Nick McDevitt:We'll take that under consideration.Mark:We'll go video next time and we'll see some dance moves. All right, folks. Take care of yourself. Have a great week. Have a safe week, and we'll talk to you soon here on Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick, financial advisors at PFG Private Wealth. 

Plan With The Tax Man
Stages Of Retirement Planning

Plan With The Tax Man

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 19, 2020 21:41


It is no secret that our financial plan will shift and change throughout our lives. However, this is even more prevalent the closer we get to retirement. Tony will discuss the different retirement planning stages and what the focus should be when you hit these checkpoints. Important Links Website: http://www.yourplanningpros.com Call: 844-707-7381 ----more---- Transcript Of Today's Show: Mark: Hey everybody, welcome into this edition of Plan With The Tax Man, with [Tony Mauro 00:00:00:04]. Mark and I... I am Mark. Mark and Tony here talking about investing, finance and retirement. How are you doing bud? Tony Mauro: I'm doing well. Thank you. Mark: Better than me apparently. I'm all messed up today. Everything had been going okay so far? Tony Mauro: It's been going good. You know we're in the throws of tax seasons, so it's a very busy time. But we know that every year, so it's not like it's a surprise. Mark: Right. It's certainly been an interesting few weeks with everything going on between campaign stuff and financial stuff with a Coronavirus stuff. There's been lots of things going on over the last couple of weeks. But I'm going to focus right now here on a news article I saw when I ask you about this. That Bloomberg, obviously one of the gents running, has stated that unlike... I guess the point is he's kind of poking fun at the current president maybe. That he'll sell off all his financial data and media company if he was to win and become elected. It's worth estimated, I guess around 60 billion. My big question is not from a political standpoint, but how many buyers could there be for such a thing? Maybe Disney, they buy everything. Tony Mauro: That's right. It would have to be somebody, a big company to buy something like that from him, because his wealth... If you ever looked at him like maybe some people were looking at our current president, he's into a lot of things and it would have to be a large company. Somebody like, say, an At&T, General Electric, somebody like that, somebody huge. Maybe it'll be one of these tech companies who knows, Google and Amazon, some of these companies are sitting on large piles of cash. Not probably that much, but it would have to be somebody like that. But it is interesting that they're kind of going back and forth to so-called billionaires on... Obviously he's making fun of the president a little bit, but he'd be willing to give up all his [crosstalk 00:01:56] what's happening now. Mark: Now you kind of can't help but see the jab in there, but at the same time, I mean 60 billion. That's a pretty hefty price tag. So it would have to be definitely the right suitor, I'm sure. Tony Mauro: [crosstalk 00:02:10]. Mark: We'll see how that all plays out as the year goes along. Obviously we're just in March right now, so plenty of time to go. But we'll see how things rock and roll. But for our conversation today, Tony, our main portion of our podcast, I want to talk about the stages of retirement planning. What I've done is, I've kind of broken them down into a couple of categories. Basically let's just assume for the sake of the argument and for the podcast today, that people are retiring at the age of 65. That's the number we all kind of associate anyway. So let's use that as our median number and say, let's talk through some stages. Stage one being those folks who, like myself, are about 15 years away or so from retirement. Maybe you're right around 50, maybe you're 49, 50, 51. What are some main financial things, some things we should start to focus on if we're this I guess preliminary stage, stage one if you will, of thinking about retirement planning? 15 years out. Tony Mauro: 15 years out, and I'm right there with you. I think about it myself, my brother who just turned 50. It's like a switch went off with him, all of a sudden he's thinking about this more as well. So that seems to be kind of the age, 15 years or so out. But I think there's a number of things we could talk about here, but a few of them basically... I mean for me, one of the most important things is getting out and staying out of debt, trying to eliminate as much of that as you can in these next 15 years. So that you can not have those pressures you have when you're younger of, I've got to pay all these bills. It makes it a lot easier to live on less if you don't have all that debt. That'd be the number one I would say. Number two is, you've got to start thinking about what you want at the end in forms of different income streams and what you are going to have. Tony Mauro: This is where the planning starts to come in, you can't wait until the last day to do this. You've got to kind of start planning on, here's where I'm at now, here's where I want to be and am I going to have enough? If not, how am I going to fix that? Then that opens up a whole new conversation. But that would be something else. Then the last thing would be, this is probably the last time, especially in today's market, that you want to be increasing your risk in your portfolio. If anything you want to start, if you're haven't already, getting your diversification intact and starting to take a little bit less risk for these next 15 years. Not I'm saying you have to go all the way, all the cash or anything like that, but certainly need to take a look at that and your appetite for that as you get a little closer. Mark: Right. Now, I think that's a good idea. So 15 years out, you're really kind of in that beginning stage, you're starting to think about it. I think those are some good bullet points you gave us there, Tony, to start kind of considering. So let's move it into stage two and say okay, well maybe we find ourselves now at the 10 year window. Okay, so maybe we're 55, 56, somewhere in that neighborhood. We're starting to amp this up. Give us some bullet points, some ideas to start ticking this thing closer. Tony Mauro: So a couple things we can do right off the bat and this is easily obtainable, is to get a statement not only from social security as to what your potential benefit will be at 65, maybe 67, 70. Finding out what your full retirement age will be for them, because they have increased it for us a little bit. Doing the same thing with any pensions that you might have. Not as many people have the old fashioned pensions, but if you do, you want to get a rough estimate of what your monthly benefit will be there. Tony Mauro: I think another thing too is you got to start thinking about, because I know I will be. Okay, when do I really want to call it quit? Is it going to be 65, is it going to be 70, maybe I continue to work. Again, big picture stuff, but you need this start narrowing it down a little bit. That would be something to think about. Then last is, because it's all based on, I think for me again it's close to home. Because I want to know what people want to do in retirement. Because for me, it's not going to be the same as you or somebody else, but that's what it's all about for me, is what I actually want to do. And am I going to have enough money to do that or not? Mark: Right. Of course everybody is different, but you are starting to pull these things together. You starting to determine or maybe getting closer and have an idea of where you want to retire, how you want to retire, what do you want it to look like? What are you wanting to do? Settle a lot of those things. I mean hopefully you've been thinking about that all along, but I think it starts to... naturally it starts to ramp up in our mind as we get closer, we start to have more conversations over dinner with our spouse and daydream maybe if you will, of things you want to do, so on and so forth. Mark: All this kind of takes up and takes forward, but then we start to get to the five year window. Now hopefully by now we have actually started taking action on many of these items, hopefully anyway. But either way, let's talk about five years out. Now, let's just say, for the sake of the argument, we're 60 and it's right around the corner. Maybe 62 is looking better, maybe it's 65, maybe it's 67, whatever the case is. But what are some of the more serious things to consider here? Tony Mauro: So now we're starting to get into a little more of a tighter funnel here. Because we're starting to come closer to the end. I think for a lot of people it's important, just like you said, is to think about, okay, what are we going to do for that date? What are we going to kind of pencil in, if you will, as to at least when we're going to start? The other thing I think, if you haven't already, you really need to take a serious look and not have a lot of your retirement assets tied up, maybe in equities. Now I'm not saying again move everything. Tony Mauro: But you should be working with someone to assure that your portfolio or nest egg is well diversified and not taking the risks like a 25 year old would be, looking for growth. Because you don't have the time to make up those potential losses if they should occur. Then I think last probably is again, trying to get a tighter number on what streams of income are going to come in and how much, because you're getting close now and you want to firm up some of these numbers that you've been talking about over the last five years or so. Mark: Right. When you're in that five year window, Tony, it's often referred to as the retirement red zone or the financial red zone or whatever. Hopefully you're working with an advisor at this point. Now, it's never too late, it's one of those things where you don't want to give somebody the impression they'd say, well, you've waited till five years out. Oh well, tough noogies. You can still come in- Tony Mauro: There's always some things. Mark: Always some things you can be doing, but hopefully you've been addressing some of these ahead of time. Working with an advisor is going to help you go through these different stages. I think the stages will obviously, if you even started with an advisor 15 years out, the level of working with him, it's going to slowly kind of amp up as well. As you're moving through this and getting closer, the activity between you two should be increasing as well. Or am I off there? Tony Mauro: No, I think you're exactly right. We work mostly and have the most contact with our pre-retirees and retirees, because of the stage that they're at. In the growth stage, yes, you're monitoring the plan and making some small changes, but that's pretty much it. As goals change, adjusting, but retirees, it becomes a whole different thing, because you've got to make sure that you've got enough income coming. Make sure your taxes are paid and all this other stuff. So, yeah. Mark: Okay. We've hit all these, we've hit these windows, the 15, the 10, the five, excuse me. So now Tony, well, it's the big day. We're on the day of retirement, what are the absolute essential things that we should have and need to have figured out at this point? Tony Mauro: Well at this point, hopefully you've covered everything that we just talked about and you have your income sources in place, you know what they are. Then I think an important add on is, if they have never been taxed, make sure that your taxes are being withheld or your taxes are being paid. So you don't have a surprise come tax time that you owe a large tax bill. Then you need to have a really good grasp, and a lot of people don't. Because they've never done it, is to what our monthly expenses are going to be, our monthly budget? What do we spend in that we have to spend money on? Then what's the fun stuff? Another thing is, even though you are in retirement, I still think there's a need for some sort of emergency fund. Tony Mauro: It doesn't need to be maybe to the extent of when during your earning years, but just something in case something happens. You've got some reserves, you're not wondering and maybe getting into debt to replace something or something like that. Then on the investment side, and I see it all the time on the tax side of our business. Retirees come in, they have a handful of CDs, they're getting 0.1% and they're wondering why they don't have enough income. You got to have something that's going to, at least with part of your money, to outpace inflation. Mark: Right. No, definitely. I'll go back to the market drop a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, a couple of weeks ago, I guess at this point. The big first big day, I'm thinking about it from a standpoint of I was having a conversation with someone and we were talking about the diversification. So in 2019, it was a good year. I mean you had people overall 2019 ended up well. There are a lot of people saying that the average was somewhere between 25, 30%, right? Tony Mauro: Yeah. Mark: You have different people, I've heard from folks saying, well I didn't make 30% and I was upset with my advisor for it. It's like, well, a lot of that had to do with probably how you're allocated based on your risk tolerance, where you're at in life. Like the people that were making 30% that was mostly, if I'm not mistaken, all large cap, which is going to put you in a different risk category. Again, correct me if I'm wrong, because this is what you do every day. But that's the whole purpose of an advisor is to mitigate some of that. So if you were making 10, 12, 15, 17 you still were having a good year. That was based on the fact of your risk tolerance. Now in a case where the market's been dropping due to the Coronavirus, you're probably not losing as much as the 3% or the 4%. because again, you're diversified. Am I right in that? Tony Mauro: No, you're too right on it. Yes, because as the markets have chugged up over the last four or five years, everybody's now thinking that no matter what their risk tolerance is, they should be getting anywhere 15, 20%. I mean something higher. What I'm telling them, because I have had a couple of clients, they're the pre-retirement, but they said the same thing. Hey, the market's up X, but we only got X. I'm quick to remind them that, hey, it's because here's the way we're invested based on your risk tolerance and your nearest to retirement. Tony Mauro: We can't afford to take those risks. If you want to take those risks, I can make it very easy for you. We'll go out, we'll just basically drop everything and we'll buy an ETF in the S&P fund. You'll get the returns of the market, but you're also going to get the losses when they happen as well. So sometimes I have to try to correct what I call... I tell them what I feel like it's irrational thinking, that if you're basically using advisor to outperform the market, I think you're going to be disappointed in all cases. That doesn't mean we're bad. It just means that, we're out there trying to devise a portfolio that is going to work for you and your risk tolerance. Mark: Right. Kind of weathering multiple storms. Yeah. I think that's where, of course, we've talked many times on the podcast, the greed factor that we all possess. And there's nothing wrong. It doesn't make you a bad person. You go, man, I want to make 30% too. But if you're 60 chasing 30%, it's probably not the best idea in last year's market in case of something like this. If you want to kind of use the conversation about the market downturn so far, early this year. We had multiple 10% drops in 19, yet it's still finished up almost 30%. Tony Mauro: It still finished up. Mark: Right. So you just don't know until as the year plays out. That's why investing is a longterm proposition, right? Tony Mauro: Long-term proposition. In fact, I just had a funny story. I had a client who just emailed me two days ago. He's a client that isn't involved too much in this portfolio, but he started listing off all these points that have been happening the last few weeks. Tony Mauro: He gets it from the news- Mark: Of course, right. Tony Mauro: ... of course, the internet. He pointed to China and the Coronavirus, maybe we should get out of any investments that hold anything over there, the economy. All the way down to if the democratic president becomes president, there's going to be a market correction. And I said, well, you're watching way too much [crosstalk 00:00:14:26]. We're longterm here. I said this is always happens. It may not be these points, but there's always something going on and the markets could be turbulent over the next six, eight months. But in the end, over time you have to view it as longterm, number one. But as you get closer to retirement, to our point, you can't be in that whirlwind of trying to chase those types of returns. Mark: Now I think that's a great point. Well, I want to wrap this up here with our stages of retirement. So we went through 15, 10 and five. We also hit the big day of actual retirement. Of course the great thing about a podcast folks is, if you're listening to us and we tend to sometimes veer off target, kind of like we did just a second ago. But I think there were some good points in there. You can always go back and re-listen to it. You can pause, rewind, all those kinds of things and of course subscribe to the podcast so that you always get new episodes when they come out. You can listen to past episodes by going to yourplanningpros.com, that's yourplanningpros.com. But we've hit retirement. We went, I guess, like I said, 15, 10, five, the big day, we retire. That's it. Tony, we're done. There's nothing else to think about after you retire with a retirement plan on the day you retire. No. Tony Mauro: I would say no [crosstalk 00:15:30] You could live anywhere from zero to 30 years from retirement, depending when you go and your longevity. So [crosstalk 00:15:38]. Mark: It should be a living document, it should flow and change with you through retirement. Now you need to think about post-retirement. Tony Mauro: Yes. This is an important area, because again, a lot of retirees could spend 10 to 15, 20 years in this stage. Which is a long time and things change. I think a couple things they need to think about is a rising health costs and medical expenses and how that's going to affect their monthly cashflow, number one. But number two is, it's that real grim reaper that everybody thinks about and it isn't death. It's the dreaded nursing home. [crosstalk 00:16:14] about the possibility of ending up there, losing all your money. Everybody says that, nobody comes and says, well, maybe I should take this out of my name now and do this with it. I always ask them why? It's always because they are afraid that they're going to lose it if they go in a nursing home. Tony Mauro: So I think there needs to be some planning around that really, that probably should have been done about 10, 15 years earlier. Not at this point, because generally there's not a ton of options there. But I think there's that. I think there's the fact of facing that there's going to be an end for all of us, making sure that your end and your legacy is carried out like you want it. I think the other thing is, trying to get your assets depending on where they're at, so they're transitioned to the next generation as smoothly as possible, and definitely the most efficient tax way possible. The optimized way, because there are some mistakes that people make, then their heirs end up paying more taxes than they should. Mark: Yeah, definitely. Of course, you could see our episode, our podcast on... We just had not too long ago on some of that. We covered that topic. Of course the new elimination of the stretch IRA within the secure act also changes how you're going to try to leave money to your heirs in a tax efficient way and all that kind of stuff. So there's definitely a lot more planning that has to go involved. The idea of, again, stages of retirement planning. There's multiple stages you may find yourself in, whether you're in stage one and you're 15 years away like I am. Mark: Or you're in stage two, you're 10 years away, or you're five years away, or you're getting close. Or even after retirement there's still planning that needs to be done to make sure that we're being as efficient and hopefully smooth as we can try to keep it. Anyway, that's the idea. There's always going to be something going on. But you want to try to keep it as smooth as we can through retirement, because God willing, you're not going to be retired for just a couple of years. You're going to be retired for many years, nowadays possibly 40. Tony Mauro: Yeah, possibly. Mark: It's pretty crazy when you think about that, versus our parents or our grandparents. So that's going to do it for our main show here on Plan With The Tax Man, with Tony Mauro. But before we go, I want to ask Tony something a little fun getting to know you. Since it is tax season and I know this gets to be your hectic time. What do you do to kind of chill out, remove some stress and work your way through this hectic busy month or two? Tony Mauro: Sure. It is stressful, but I think everybody deals with stress and it is a more serious thing than I used to give it credit for. But now that I get a little older, I see people having some health problems and different things. So very mindful of it, not only during the day. But I'll tell you what I like to do, I do something at the start of the day and believe it or not, I actually pay for a journal that I actually kind of journal my day, what I'm going to try to accomplish? Mark: Really? Okay. Tony Mauro: What's going to make it a good day? Then of course try to get some exercise. For me that works, I have to actually pay for that. You think I could just write that down on my own, but I have that, I like it. So that's what I aspire to do. But to relieve my stress really, I like to get away and tune out. I'm not a big TV watcher, but I do like to read and I do like to do some yoga, because for me that's... I struggled so much with it just to maintain those little poses. [crosstalk 00:00:19:21]. Mark: It's tough, isn't it? Some of those are pretty complicated. I started doing that as well myself.,I had some back injuries. It's actually really helpful. Tony Mauro: It is, but I'd say to people, you've got to find something that works for you. Don't think that stress isn't real, because I think it is definitely real. Mark: No, it's absolutely, and it causes so many hidden things. I think we've gotten much better as a society and as a people understanding how stress affects us through the years versus, again, like even our parents or our grandparents. So certainly beneficial there. Good to hear that everybody takes a time or we should be taking the time to distress once in a while. Well folks, there you go. That's going to do it for this week, this episode on Plan With The Tax Man. If you have questions about what stage of retirement planning you might be in or you need some help getting through those stages, whether you've gotten this through an email blast from Tony or you've gone to the website, or you subscribe to it on whatever platform. We have Apple or Google or Spotify or Stitcher, definitely reach out and have a conversation with them. Mark: They are Des Moines professional alternative at Tax Doctor Inc. You want to always talk with a professional about your specific situation before you take action. Because again, we're talking in generalities here on the podcast for a wide audience. So if you want to talk about the stage you might find yourself in, whether you're 15 years away or 10 years away or five years away, give them a call, get on the counter, have a chat at (844) 707-7381, that's (844) 707-7381 or go to yourplanningpros.com, that's your planning pros.com. Tony's been helping families in the area for more than 23 years. He's an EA and a CFP and my friend. Thanks for your time, buddy. I hope you have a great week. Tony Mauro: All right, you take care. We'll talk to you next time. Mark: We'll see you next time in a couple of weeks on more with Plan With The Tax Man, with Tony Mauro.

Achieve Wealth Through Value Add Real Estate Investing Podcast
Ep#34 Buying Deals in five different states, Lifecycle from W2 Job to Business Owner to Real Estate Investor with Mark Kenney

Achieve Wealth Through Value Add Real Estate Investing Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 24, 2019 51:44


James: Hey, audience and listeners, this is James Kandasamy from Achieve Wealth True Value-add Real Estate Investing. I'm here today with Mark Kenny, who's the founder and I'm not sure, the president or what's the title?   Mark: Yeah, well my wife and I together so we might have different opinions but...   James: Okay. Both of you run the King multifamily. But before that, before we go into the hot topics that we're going to discuss with Mark, make sure that you guys look at last week's episode where we had KK Singh being interviewed. KK has moved from a business owner. He used to own gas stations and laundry mat and now he's become a multifamily investor, which is a very, very interesting concept. Because I think any business owner, anybody who wants to know how that business is run and why he's using multifamily, why did he go into multifamily? And he didn't even pay tax last year just because of the multifamily investment. So you guys want to check out the last episode.  But let's come back to this episode. Hey Mark, welcome to the show.   Mark: Thanks for having James. Great to see you again.   James: Awesome. Also, I'm happy to have you on the show. So, Mark, he's a GP, almost like 5,200 units, out of that 2000 units where he's basically the primary active asset manager and he's also GP on another 3,200 on top of the 2000 units. And he goes across multiple markets, which is very interesting for me. I want to go a bit deep dive into that. You know, he's in Texas, he's in Alabama, he's in Tennessee, he's in Florida and I believe that's what I covered. Right. Mark?   Mark:  Georgia, as well.   James: Georgia. Okay, got it. Got it. Atlanta. Right. So yeah. So Mark, did I miss out on something about yourself? Do you want to tell the audience about yourself?   Mark: No, I mean, yeah, real quick. So I grew up in Michigan. I'm in Dallas now, so not too far away from you, James. But I was a CPA for a while, did IT consulting, which you and I traded some stories about that before about the IT side and I started buying small multi-family when I was 22, I was a senior in college. About two to four units and then my brother and I...I didn't know what syndication was. Syndication is the fancy word for raising money from other people for the most part and pooling it together to buy properties. I didn't know what that was. So I started buying two to four units. And then my IT business was doing pretty well. That was, I really had no time. I always, I'd say 80, 85 hours a week and start really doing the math.   I was probably 90 to a hundred hours a week and a lot of weeks. And you know, frankly didn't have any time for my wife, caused some issues and so she basically said, you need to do something different than what you're doing. And I said, well, yeah, I will. But you know you have to deal with me and we both love real estate. So we started buying larger properties through syndication. I invested passively first in a syndication with a friend of mine, said it makes a lot of sense and you know, why don't I look at doing it myself and that's what we started doing back in 2013.   James: Got it. Got it. It's very interesting about your story when you're working on a W2 job, especially in the IT tech industry. I mean, it's a lot of work, we put in long hours, right? It's a constantly changing sector, right? The industry is consistently changing. We are always driven by schedule and I was just talking to, Shanti, who's my wife and all and how our life has changed when we used to be in W2 every day, like Fridays when we can really open up our time, open up because from Monday to Friday we are like so busy working like [03:55unclear]  focused and where I used to work, we used to work remote as well. So after five, six o'clock we used to work like, you know, we have lunch, we have dinner, and we continued working with the offsite team. So life never ends. And now with real estate, it's so much of a difference. Now you own your own time and you're out on what to do and we can, you know, my traveling time in Austin is like 11 to 2. That's it because it's a bit of traffic.   Mark: Yeah. It's interesting, right? I mean, I actually started my own IT business 2008 so I didn't even have a W2 job since 2008. But I got in a situation where, you know, any project that came up and any unrealistic timeframe that was out there, I would do it. I would make the dates. So that's what allowed me to get more and more projects. I had a number of Fortune 100 companies as customers, but so even though I have my own business back then, I still didn't have the luxury of time. You know, I was always going somewhere, always doing projects and yeah, I'd be up, I sleep three hours a night, like consistently, that's all I would sleep.   James: I mean, you don't have to go by numbers, but did you make like almost a similar amount of money compared to what you made in real estate? I mean, it's a time versus money investment, right?   Mark: It's a great question because when I first started looking at syndication, I said I'm not going to be able to replace my IT income. And I truly, it was a mindset. It really was. I really did not think I'd replaced my IT income. It was pretty, pretty high at the time. And after three projects that I did in multifamily I stopped doing IT. I had not replaced my IT income at that point in time, but it was enough to live and live, you know, decent. And then we've done, you know, we've done 37 projects, whatever now. But I didn't think I was gonna replace IT. But yeah, we've far surpassed it. I mean a lot frankly, and the time we have, and I don't have to ask anyone to go anywhere or you know, things like that, you can turn it on and off if you want to. Where in IT, if you're not working, not making any money, you don't have that passive income.   James: So you have a very interesting life cycle because you were working in IT, a W2  job and then you went to do your own business but still in IT. And now you are completely a full-time real estate investor. So, so in terms of time wise, I mean from what we're discussing, I mean, real estate investment gives you the best return of time, right? I mean, you get really good pay and at the same time, your time is like, really low.   Mark: There is no comparison. You know, you mentioned about talking to your wife a higher life is different. I mean, my life has, you know, 180 degrees different for the better than when it was before. I was on the verge of, you know, I'm not sure, you know, Tammy, my wife wasn't only happy because of my work schedule and now we got to work full time together. Just like you get to work with your wife, which is great. And the time, you know, if I want to go somewhere and you can get to the point with multifamily or any real estate investment, you get enough of it. If you choose to go sit on the beach, which I don't want to do, frankly I don't but if you choose to go and do that, you get in a position to do that for sure. With IT, I wouldn't be able to, I had to keep working projects in order to make money.   James: Yeah. But can we go back to your mindset when you are working, not as a business owner, when you are working in IT? Because I sometimes analyze my own mindset when I was working, because when I was working in IT, I did look at Robert Kiyosaki's book and I could not read like a few pages because it just doesn't make sense to me, we are so busy working. What is this guy talking about business. And after a few pages I put it down and I forgot about it until recently I started reading it and I was just surprised that that book changed a lot of people, real estate investors' life. But I don't know, I think when you are working you're really, really working, you really don't care about the business side of it and I mean, I think it's up to your circle, right? Who are you mixing with?   Mark: That's a great point. I know when I worked originally at KPMG Consulting and I worked for SAP you know, did some Salesforce consulting and things like that. And you're looking at other people that are older than you at the time I started out, it was, you know, early twenties when I started out. And look at other people that are partners, for example, and you have this image, you're like, that's my lifestyle. I'm going to be traveling all the time and I'm going to be working seven days a week, which is what I did. And you know, and then, you know, some point in time, not everyone gets to the point where I was, where my point was. And my wife was pretty much ready to leave me if I didn't do anything. And that was a big eye-opener for me. But you're right, you get trapped in that circle of influence, right? And everyone's doing the same thing. And at that time, I aspire to be a partner and I would've made partner, I mean, made a manager in two years and things like that. But I would have been miserable, frankly. I would have been.   James:  So compared to the job security, I mean, I don't know whether there's job security in any job or not because there is no job security, right? I mean, when I was a manager, I used to hire and fire people very quickly just because of non-performance, right? So there is no job security, right? I mean, I use to work on a semiconductor industry for like almost 20 years and we thought we were going to retire there but we realize you know, during different economic cycles, the company doesn't really, you know, honor your loyalty.  I mean, there's no such thing. They have to make a business decision, they'll let you go if they need to let you go. There's no such thing as a company is going to be keeping you forever.    Mark: Right, right. That's true.    James: Right. So yeah, coming back to real estate venture. So 2008 was when you got into IT and when did you start your real estate venture?   Mark: Syndication; 2013 is when I first started investing passively and invested in a few deals. And about that time I started looking at syndication, but it took me almost a year to get my first deal. And it was partly, I was looking at other things too; self-storage and building custom development, you know, homes and things like that, franchises. I looked at everything. I was looking for something to get me out of the bad situation I was in. But it still took us about a year to get our first deal.   James: So did you stop work and start into real estate? Was it a step function or was it like a...   Mark: It is gradual; for me, it took me three deals. So I'm thinking, let me see, 2014 is when I think I got my first deal, I don't remember exactly. But by '16 I had stopped doing IT.   James: Got it. Was that a painful transition from a business owner to a real estate investor?   Mark: No, it really wasn't for me anyway. You know, I've always had a big fear of money and you know, I wish I did, but I always did cause growing up and things like that. But we had enough money set aside to where, you know, I looked at it, if I had to go back and do IT, I had so many connections at a time, I could get a job pretty much, you know, right away. I didn't want to, but I was like, okay, well, I have a transition I'm making here, but if I fail, that was my mind, if I failed at doing this and after taking a year to find my first deal, I was pretty skeptical. And then we started getting the traction. So I was like, Hey if I need to go back, I can do that. I don't want to do it. But if I do, I can support the family. The transition wasn't hard for me. We were buying at that time only in Dallas, so I really wasn't having to travel outside Dallas. Yeah. So it was a pretty easy transition.   James:  Got it, got it. So as I was talking about that, you had like three different lifecycles, right? You're a W2 employee, you're a business owner and then you become a real estate investor and you are a CPA. So I'm going to ask you, similar to CPA question, how was your tax advantages comparing these three life cycles?   Mark:  Okay. So you know, even though I'm a CPA, I haven't practiced for 20...   James: But at a high level, was there any tax benefit between...   Mark:  Oh yeah. Without a doubt. When I had the IT business, you know, I was actually paying taxes quarterly. I was getting hit hard. I mean, I was making decent money. Now, in the last two years, we haven't paid any federal income tax like zero. And in fact, it's negative. So people were like, Oh, you didn't make any money. No, we make money. But from the tax benefit we received through depreciation and cost segregation and bonus appreciation, we pay zero federal income tax. So, I mean, think about people listening to this, if you didn't have to pay taxes, how much more money you'd have in your pocket and what you could do with that?   James: Absolutely.  Yeah. Yeah. I have a chart that shows how a $2 double for the next 20 years. And you know, at a 25% rate, that $2 becomes 72,000 after 20 years because you're taxed 25% every time you double, right? But if you don't have tax, that $2 becomes almost like $11 million, you know.   Mark: Oh, boy, Oh my goodness.    James: So the tax does impact your compounding savings. And if you don't look at it, you may not know. I mean, when I was working, I never really looked at tax because as I say, we are busy working. We just look at net pay coming to the thing. I mean taxes, like it's not nice for me. But when I look at that kind of chart, you know, it does make a lot of difference in terms of, Hey, you know, it does impact your overall savings. You know, if you compounded for not [13:53unclear]  you see a big difference, millions of dollars of difference.   Mark: Oh yeah. And like you mentioned, when you have a W2 job, it just comes out, you notice it, you don't like it. But when you have your own business, my own IT business, you have to write check every quarter you really notice it. And then you're like, I made that much money this quarter and where did it all go? And now I have to write a check for, you know, X number of dollars. And you know, you're just scratching your head and you're frustrated and stressed out. But with real estate, it's literally zero.   James: So did you have employees under you when you have a business?    Mark: All 1099.  James: Okay. So if you have an employee, then you're to pay tax for them too, I guess. So that's double taxation   Mark: That's exactly right.   James: Okay. So W2, I mean, I don't know. I have a chart that shows W2 people are paying almost 70% of the tax in this country. So this country is supported by people who are in W2. They are the ones who's paying taxes. They're the ones building the roads, the bridges, and all the infrastructure. Right? The 30% is from the other people who are earning less than 30,000 or people who are earning more than 500,000 and above.   Mark: Yeah.    James: Right? I mean, people who are earning more than 20,000 to pay a lot of taxes. But in general, if you look at it, the big bulk of it is paid by our W2 employees.   Mark: Right. Makes sense.    James: Just because you can't run away.    Mark: You can't. There are no savings, no tax shelters.   James: Absolutely. I'd say real estate investors, all kinds of you know incentive in the tax code to not paying taxes. So coming back to your real estate venture in multifamily, and you skipped over buying single-family and you went direct to multifamily.   Mark: We did. I mean, multifamily, two to four units when I was 22. Yeah. So it was smaller for sure. It made more sense to me, frankly. I don't remember, I actually didn't look at any homes. I don't know why I'd go back and think about that. Why I didn't start looking at any single-family homes. To me, we looked at two to four units at a time.   James: Well, I mean if you look at cashflow, two to 14 definitely make a lot more sense in terms of cash flow. Right? Maybe that's what it is. And how many two to four units did you own before you come to multifamily?   Mark: We had like 17 units total.   James: Okay. 17 in two to four units, I guess. Smaller multifamily. And do you think that helped you when you scale up?   Mark: It did. Because I know you manage, right? You and your wife manage. When we did the smaller properties, we self-managed and we took care of things and evicted people. So it definitely helped from that perspective. I didn't like the process, it's not something I want to do now, but it also, even though it's drastically different how you evaluate four units and below and in five units and below is drastically different, people can argue all day long steps are almost identical, right? You identify your criteria, you go drive by a property, contract, blah, blah, everything's the same. So it helped for sure. Plus just kind of, you know, getting comfortable with buying your first deal is the hardest. So once you start, you know, I bought like whatever it was, you know, five deals, six deals, I don't remember the number, exactly.  It gets you more comfortable. So when you go buy a larger property, it's bigger numbers. So it is concerning whatever I had already done, you know, like six transactions before that time, even though they're small, it helped.   James: Got it. Got it. I mean, in a way, it helps because I mean, you know at least how to read the lease and you probably know how real estate section happens, right?   Mark: Your first time signing for your first deal, usually you're most likely going to be pretty freaked out, right? You've done six smaller deals. It's still, then when you start doing bigger deal, then it's the money. Right? The only thing that concerned me, you know, I have to say only it really was the, you know, brain capital to the deals. I had no concerns about how to underwrite the deals that I knew how to do that or how to find deals or talk to brokers or loan. It was always about, you know, the capital. That was my biggest concern.   James: Okay. Okay. But do you think that's still an issue in this market cycle?   Mark: Yeah. I'm always concerned about capital. You know, we have like eight deals under contract right now. You know, so we've never not closed a deal, but you know, that's the one thing that's still stressing me out sometimes, frankly.   James: Yeah. Because you need to figure out whether you have big enough investor base too in all those eight deals.    Mark: That's right.    Mark: Okay. Got it. So coming back to this, no multiple markets that you have, I mean, do you want to explain on how did you get into this so many markets? I mean, I think some of it is you've partnered with some of your students, right?   Mark: Well, originally I was just buying pretty much with one other person off in Dallas. Dallas, and at least, in my opinion, was definitely getting more expensive and it's even more expensive now. I have a twin brother that moved to Atlanta so I used to visit him and Atlanta has a lot of similarities to Dallas. Dallas is yet, and it may never be, but it definitely has a lot of similarities. So I started traveling there. I looked at properties for about a year and a half before we got our first deal. And I just really like the market. That kind of was if my brother wasn't there, I don't know if I would be in Atlanta, frankly. I don't know if I would have thought about going there. When I'm going there, I see a lot of activity, new buildings, new development cranes, things like that. So it was an attractive market.    And then, so that's Texas and you know, kind of the Atlanta area. And then we started looking in the Southeast. This is a general statement. Some of the brokers cross different estates sometimes too. They might, if they have a license, they can actually sell in multiple States and they might say, Hey, now, we're in Tennessee, we have a project here, we have a project up in Arkansas now, which we don't own anything there yet. So these brokers started giving us deals and I started checking out different markets. And really, the way I got into the other markets as far as initially was I would have brokers in Dallas typically reached out to other brokers in other markets and make an introduction for me. And that kind of gives you instant credibility and they're going to typically give you the best of the best of brokers to work with in another market. And that's how we got involved in other markets.   James: Got it. So how did you choose this market? I mean, except for Atlanta where you said your brother was there, you initially went there because of Atlanta, but now you are like in five different markets. Tennessee, Alabama, Florida. I mean, now, how did you choose these markets and why these markets?   Mark:  Yeah. A friend of mine who I've done a lot of deals with, he had bought a smaller deal in Memphis and I never would have considered Memphis. And some people don't like Memphis. We own a lot there. We've done really well there. But Memphis also has, you know, even though [21:05 unclear] job growth population growth, things like that, it's okay, but not like Dallas, of course. But the rent growth has been going up. They're putting, you know, several billion dollars in investments of downtown. But that particular city also has something called a pilot program, which we've done multiple times. Where you can go in, you buy a multifamily property, you have to put a certain amount of capital into it. It's a lot. And then you'll get your property taxes cut in half and then they're frozen for 20 years. So I mean, as you know, property taxes is typically one of the largest, right?  [21:44unclear]  I can freeze them for 20 years. Cash flow is going to typically be pretty nice on it.    James: Hmm. So you're basically taking advantage of that particular program. What about the other States that..."   Mark: Yeah, Florida, I always looked, I like Florida just because of probably the weather initially and when we were in Atlanta we started looking in Florida as well. And Florida has, I mean, some areas like Miami that as you probably know are extremely expensive, just not going to buy there. But I also have a cousin, multiple cousins actually live in Florida and so I heard different things from talking to them. And then some of the brokers we were talking to like in Georgia and stuff like that, had some properties in Florida and a property came up and the first time we're looking at properties there. I liked the properties in Jacksonville and we have a few properties there now. And it was one of those markets, again, similar to Atlanta, job growth, population growth, rent growth. It doesn't have to be off the charts, frankly.    Some of the markets where it's so off the charts, it's just too expensive to buy in, the yields. You can't get the returns. And then with Alabama, it was a guy that had a deal and was looking to partner and I partnered with him on a few deals. He had deals there in Alabama. And then we have another one right now, a guy in our coaching group that has a deal in Alabama as well. He's closer over by there as far as that's where he'd been looking. So usually it's through some sort of relationship. Somebody either already lives there or someone is looking there and then it kind of gives me an opportunity to check the markets out.   James: Got it, got it. So basically if you have boots on the ground as part of your program, that's an advantage definitely. Right?    Mark: It is for sure.   James: But don't you find, you know, establishing broker relationship in that kind of market it's harder because you, I mean they did not know you, right?   Mark: It is, there's no question. I mean, you know, I think that's why it took us so long to get into Atlanta. We had a really hard time breaking in there. And then once we got in there, you know, it was just one brokerage firm in Atlanta that we closed 11 deals in like 18 months with. We've definitely had their attention. With that first deal., I went to Florida. I mean, I was banging my head against the wall because we couldn't get any traction with brokers there. I would say, you know, you just keep sticking with it, but there's no question, you know, if you're an outsider, don't live there and you've never bought a deal there, you're at a disadvantage. You can use things like, Hey, your track record and you can have brokers that I know.    So when we got a deal in Florida, our first deal, it was with a brokerage firm that I had bought a deal in Dallas with and the broker in Dallas had called me about it. So he, you know, if you want to say put a good word in for us. So a lot of these brokers talk as, you know, it's very small world. Yeah. And I don't think we would've gotten that deal in Florida if I had not bought a deal without a broker, you know, brokerage firm if you want to stay in Dallas, I think we would have probably not been selected for that deal.   James: Got it. So let's go a bit more detail into that step by step. So let's say today somebody, you know, in your circle or one of your students come, Hey, you know, I found a deal in Florida, right? Somewhere in Florida, right? So what are the things that you would do to underwrite the deal?   Mark: Yeah. You know, the underwriting different aspects of it, forget the reports and stuff for a second. But you know, even financing terms can be drastically different across the country. Some of the pre-review cities and stuff like that start at 65%. So you want to first understand, don't assume we're getting 80% leverage in three or five years IO in every single location because it's different. So understanding first, the insurance can be drastically different. You know, if you're on a coastal area, it can be a lot higher than all the other areas and understand kind of the fundamentals there.    Taxes, you know, do they get reassessed? And that can be through, we have a tax consultant we use, but also you can typically just call the County and the County will tell you kinda how the taxes will be reassessed and when. You know, in Memphis, that's every four years so that's important to know. They only reassess every four years. And then we'll get like a report, whether it's Yardi or CoStar. Those are paid reports. We'll also use things like some free...we have a number of links on our analyzer that take you to things like crime and the school districts things like that. Those are all links we have on that. But overall, nothing beats having someone on the ground, you know. So if you can talk to other people there and talking to lenders, you know, lenders have the biggest investment in a deal than anybody as a general statement where they have more money involved. So try to understand from lenders to kind of how some of the properties are performing there, it is important. In the report, as I said, it's only as good as the report. It is good data. A lot of it's based on, you know, actual transactions that have happened, but I'm trying to get someone like a broker or property management company. So if we have a property management company you know, David Shore is multi South in Memphis and he's in seven other, he's actually in seven other States.   Once we built that relationship, then we start asking him questions. He'll tell us, don't even look at that deal, it's not a good deal. This deal maybe you can look at, you know, 95% of deals he tells us not to look at there. So having some boots on the ground can't be replaced. It might take you a while to do that. It's typically going to be like a management company or maybe, you know, a broker, but you know, brokers in to sell, you know, they wouldn't, don't get paid unless they sell a property. So kind of all the different aspects. Reports talking to people, visiting the area, trying to understand what happened before in the past. Those areas are all good ways to kind of get more Intel on the property.   James: So you basically look at location, crimes, making sure how are you underwriting your tax records.    Mark: The tax is huge.   James:  Every state is different.   Mark: Yeah. Every state, county; city even sometimes. So we have like I say a tax consultant, but we have found really if you call the County and tell them the property what you're doing, they'll tell you how they reassess and they'll give you a good number. And we've only had like a couple of occasions where it hasn't really given us the information we want. Generally speaking, we always get the information we need from the County.   James: Got it. Got it. So who have told you the most knows? I mean like who say don't touch that deal most of the time? Is it a property management company or is it the tax consultant or insurance company?   Mark: Property management company. Without a doubt. It may be they don't want to manage it.   James: Well how do you know they just don't like that property. Maybe it's just because...   Mark: I know you self-manage. We have found in almost every submarket we ran with a management company, even if they don't manage a property today, they're like, we manage that property five years ago and you know like in that, you might have some Intel. We got a property here where a number of properties in Dallas I've looked at and our management company managed it. So I called the guy and said, Hey, what's up with that? And he'll say, you know, it had like $200,000 of plumbing issues or whatever it might be. But usually someone that's large in a submarket, they know the property or they at least know you know the area well enough to give you some really good Intel and it seems to amazed me where people are like, well, THE manageMENT company says we can push rents like $75, I think we can do it like by 125. it's like there's no basis for that. Like why do you think you can do that?    You can push your management company and ask them questions and things like that. You know, if I go try and do a comp for a property myself, I don't fit the demographics, I'm probably not going to get a good comp. Have a management company do it for you. They'll actually send people out there that fit the demographics. They'll actually get you comps and pictures and things like that. Go into some of these reports...I get called all the time from, I won't name them, but these providers of data call me all the time. I don't talk to them. And half time the information you get, you don't even know if it's right. It's coming through there. So, yeah.   James: So how do you know the management company that is calling is not the current management company?   Mark: Yeah, it's happened before. You know, you can ask the broker who managed it today. They'll tell you because it could be for sale and the property management company doesn't even know it. And if you call them and tell them, Hey, I'm looking at this property for sale, then they're going to be pretty upset.   James: Yeah. I've looked at out-of-state as well at one point. And I realized management company gives me the best quick data. They can tell me a lot of things about a state compared to anybody else, right. Because they know the pain of managing it. So yeah, I would say they are one of the best resources to call if you're looking at out of state investment. So after that, what do you do? I mean, you already looked at taxes, you already looked at the property, so it's all good. So what do you do next?   Mark: So then we'll underwrite it. Usually using, you know, we have a quick analyzer. We have a much more detailed analyzer. In the detailed analyzer, we're going to go through every expense category, like line by line, compare them to the, you know, T12. We'll try to get two independent property management budgets so we get that. And then our analyzer also has industry standards based on property, class, and size. We'll tell you what the standards are for every single category. Which is very helpful to see if something's out of whack. You know, I just had an example. Somebody not in a group, if someone's sent me something, it was two properties. It was over 300 doors together and they had payroll at $750 a door. I'm like, no, it's not going to happen. Or we're going to share the property manager on-site across the two properties and might not for 300 plus units, we're not going to, not very easily.  So I said, okay, so does the management company say they're okay with that? No. And if they did, what happened was that if you have to get rid of them and now you're going to bring in another management company, they're going to be at $1,200 a door. It just happened, another one today actually on something where they're getting charged two and a half percent on 80 doors. I said that's pretty low, two and a half percent. I'm not saying it's impossible, but you need to probably bump that up because just because one management company said they'll do it for that, if they're not your management company anymore, then you're going to be paying more.   James: Yeah. Yeah. You can't underwrite just because one person said it. I mean two and a half is really low compared to any industries. Whenever I see sponsors or syndicators showing me a deal, I mean, not many people should me their deals, but I do get to see some people still.  I mean, when they say they want to share management, that is an indication that you know that deal doesn't have that much upside. They have to do really, really creative weird stuff. They will share this, share that, we have to do. [33:15 unclear] covered parking. We have to do washer dryer and that's all that really small amount of upside. And that is not a good deal.    Mark: That's just the gravy. You're exactly right. I mean, you know it, right? You manage your properties and people are like, I'm going to share. I was like, you're not going to. I mean, if you think it was that easy, don't you think all the management companies would do it?    James: You're going to compromise a lot of things when you share management. And as I said, when you're going to that extent to really justify your upside in the deal, that means the deal is really not a good deal.   Mark: Well, James, I have people who'd be like, we're going to put in like wifi and charge this and they're trying to put that in an underwriting and I'm like, yeah. First of all, you might not be able to because of the cable contract. Right. You might not be allowed to, and second of all, let's just assume you're able to do that, is that needed in your analysis to make the deal work? I sure hope it doesn't. You know, it doesn't mean that.    James: Those who are learning this business, the biggest bulk of the deals that work is when you can bump up rent and you can reduce expenses if you can do these things is a big thing. So if you see any deals that you can, majority of your upside comes from here. You know, I don't look at adding more one or two washer and dryer, adding parking, adding wifi. That's what you said or sharing management. That's all right. Really the deal doesn't work at all. I think the sponsor's just trying to squeeze all kinds of juice and tell you that it's going to work, but in reality, it is really, really hard to make all that work. I mean that all that is just a bonus. If it works, it's good.   Mark: Yeah, that's exactly right. And your total expenses, you could go up because the property taxes, but you know some of your points of your own, you reduce the expenses. I mean there are huge savings in water lots of times for operators. You can go in there and do repair and maintenance. We see lots of times you do as well, I'm sure were people are putting capital items in repair maintenance and they're like $1,400 a door per year. I mean that's a really high, right? So they're just putting stuff up there. If you go in and get a loan you're able to put capital in there and maybe do roofings and a/c and things like that, you can most likely bring your repair maintenance down more to industry standard. So for looking for those things, but if you don't know what those standards are, you know, you don't have any gauge.   James: Sure, sure, sure. So we don't have to talk about your detail and analysis that you do, but on the sniff test that you have a quick analysis. So one of the few things that you would look at to, you know, kick out a project   Mark: Return wise, I'll look at, you know, we still shoot for like a 10% cash on cash return, which is getting harder   James:  10% with the IO on year one, I guess.   Mark: Yeah. Overall or if the product is a five-year project, 10% cash in cash, 15% plus IRR and 100%; 100% is getting harder on five years, frankly for a lot of properties, closer to six.  In some markets, it's more than that, but usually we try to stay in six and below to double the money. And then I'm looking at other things like, you know, what cap rate are they using? You know, on their exit, how they get the current cap rate, the broker. I mean, I had someone, no joke, in Florida called me and said- it wasn't Miami, by the way- they said, Oh, the broker told me the cap rate is 3 and a half. You know what I mean? So those types of things, right. So you can make any deal work. It's on a piece of paper,   James: Just change the exit cap rate.    Mark: Exactly right. I have an example, I do in our workshop where I'm like, you know this, and then you do the cap rate down to two, what does it do? And then, you know, other things are going to be more round, you know, total income growth over the first couple of years. What does it look like? You know, I'll see sometimes people think we're going to grow income 30%. I'm not saying it's impossible to do that, but I see a property as, you know, 92% occupied and you go up 30%, your total income in a year is pretty high so you need to have justification for that. So basically we look at a lot of different gauges, break-even occupancy, break-even reds and then the financing. You know, people don't understand financing well enough. Lots of times as far as what the hell they're going to do that.   James: It can make or break a deal. Right? So let's look at like the rent growth and the exit cap rate, right? So how do you differentiate these rent growth and exit cap rate on this like five different markets there?   Mark: Well the market cap rates, so we always start with the submarket cap rate, doesn't matter which property it is. And we have different ways to get that through reports and things like that. And then we put an escalator on it, an annual escalator, and it'll be different between ABC assets. And we have some ranges there. Some markets actually, you know, Dallas has gotten compressed so much on class C, you know, it was like eight and a half percent in '13. Now, it's like five cap for a lot of properties and you don't know if it's ever gonna go back. So we'll usually use you know, minimum 0.1 up and then up to a 0.2 for a year. So it could be, you know, full a hundred basis points on a five-year exit and a lot of it's depending on the property and location.    I mean some of them, some of the markets that the cap rates the banks compressed there but they haven't compressed as much as like Dallas. I mean they might've been..I'll just make an example, say Dallas eight and a half. Now it's five and the market there might have been seven and a half and now it's six. So it went down, you know, one and a half percent total. But we'll actually, we'll look at the property, the type of property that, you know, the age of it as a class and then the demographics and we'll add an escalator on an annual basis for it. So each year it escalates up.   James: But how do you decide that? So for example, I think in Texas a lot of people uses 3% rent growth, right? Even though some cities are different.   Mark: Well, no, for rent growth we usually use 2%. This is across the board, across all markets after year two. Your first two years as you know, you might have come in and you're increasing rents, rephase revenue in and things like that. After year two, the general statement is going to be 2%.    James: What about expenses?    Mark: Two.     James: Okay, so 2% income growth. 2% on year two onwards I guess. Which makes a lot of sense. I mean, you're not really counting for the first year for value add.   Mark: Right and it might be higher. I mean some people were like in Dallas, you know, seven and a half percent rent increase growth for a while. And people were like, I'm like, but that's like today, one point in time it's proved where, you know, Dallas rent increases have gone down considerably. It's still a great market, I like the market. I don't really buy here right now, but you can't count on today. Or someone will say, Hey, the economic vacancy is 6% and I'm like, yeah, but I mean, good for them. But you can't count on that.    James: You can't count on that. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, yesterday there was a national multifamily trend report which shows I mean Dallas is below national average in terms of rent growth, right? So San Antonio and Austin, Austin has been always higher than national rent growth but San Antonio is higher than national rent growth. I never seen that San Antonio being higher than Dallas. I mean it's just cities change. You have to be really conservative in your underwriting.    Mark: I think people are like, enough is enough, right? When rents go up, you know, seven plus percent for a few years in a row, people are like, you know. And it doesn't mean it's a bad, bad market. I mean, there are 150,000 people a year here that moved to, [41:07unclear] you know, net. So there's great jobs and population growth. I've been arguing that for a while. It doesn't matter all those things happen. At some point in time, people will say enough is enough.    James: Yeah. People can't pay anymore.   Mark: In a 2% increase in their wage or whatever they get in 7% in rent, you know, four years in a row, it has a big impact on them.   James: Absolutely. Absolutely. But how do you like for example, in your experience, because you're working on multiple markets, right? I mean apart from Texas, which has seen a good rent growth, I mean, I think even Florida is seeing a good rent growth. I do not know what other markets house in Tennessee, Alabama and I think...   Mark: Georgia is good as a whole. I mean some markets and we bought in a place called Gainesville, Georgia, not Florida. The property has done phenomenal. But that's a secondary market for sure. It's about 45 minutes from Atlanta, but it's like, you know, a 7% rent growth right now. Same with Dalton, Northeast, you know, almost close to Chattanooga rent growths. Florida, like you said, is high; parts of Georgia is definitely high. Alabama and Tennessee, I would say are mediocre, frankly, they're just going to be average. Now, Memphis in general, the random amounts are lower, but the rent growth there is quite high right now from a percentage standpoint. But you know, the starting with rents, half of Dallas, wherever it is, right. So it's proportional, but the percent of rent growth in Memphis is actually quite high right now. The last I saw, it was in the top 10 in the country.   James: Oh really? Okay. Okay. And what about the exit cap rate? Right. So usually, I mean the usual underwriters, people use like one, to 0.2 more than what the market is. Do you use the same exit cap rates in the other markets?   Mark: We take the current and we'll add...so let's say the current was a six cap, we'll add 0.1 per year, 0.20 per year. And in some cases like to your point, and so like that's to the end of five years, you would've gone from a six to a seven. And in some markets, yeah, we'll be, you know, if we're going to be doing a 0.15 in a certain market and we're like, well, maybe this market isn't quite as attractive or in the past it hasn't performed quite as well, we might do the 0.20. At the end of the day, I mean, as you know, nobody knows what the cap rates going to do. We can all guess. And the important thing to consider is that you know, the cap rate has no impact on your cash flow per se. It's really more of a capital event like a refi or a sale, things like that. So if you can still cash flow and you know, get good returns, then you know, you wait to sell when it makes more sense to sell.   James: Correct. What about a loan wise? Have you guys been doing a longterm agency debt or you've been doing some short term loans as well?   Mark: We do about a third of the deals we do prior bridge, but not necessarily short term is still up to five years. So it's not short term really. And the rates are attractive and there's, you know, a lot of advantages too. Bridge and some disadvantages, but there are a lot of advantages. I like them, especially in the big value add deals from what you have to get them. And then we do Fannie, Freddie, and then a number of bridge frankly.   James: Got it. Got it, got it. So I mean, you work with a lot of you know, students who are trying to come up in this industry, right? So can you describe one characteristic of a student who made them really successful you know, sponsor on their own?   Mark: Okay.  Characteristic is, I mean, you know, if you want to say grit, not giving up, but as far as a whole, it's getting really good at something that really, you know, one skill set. You don't have to know everything about multifamily necessarily to get started. You have other people there to help you. But getting really good at something that's a value to somebody else. And it sounds like, okay, that's kind of obvious. Well, we've seen it work time and time again where someone, all they do is pretty much come in and just find deals. That's where the specialty is. They don't want to raise money or sign the loan or know things like that. But I think it's being patient, you know, when you have to wait a year, potentially. I waited a year to get my first deal. That's a long time, you know, to wait. And then you look back on it, it's like, that's not a long time to wait when you started buying more deals or you're like trying to do something new and you're spreading, you know, 12 months before you get a deal that can be frustrating. So just being patient.   James: Yeah. Especially when people are already committed, I'm going to do this.    Mark: Yeah, some people give something up to do it.   James: Yeah. I mean, I really just remember there's not much deals out there. So, you know, finding that one deal that makes sense takes time. Right. It's not easy, If it was easy, everybody would do it.   Mark: That's right. That's right. Okay.   James: So coming back to your personal side of it. I mean, is there any proud moment in your life that you think I would remember that moment? That one particular moment in your experience in your real estate venture?   Mark: Yeah.  That's a great question actually. I would say when I got that third deal and it closed because I had already decided if I close that deal, I was going to stop doing IT. So when I got that third deal and said, Hey...my son kept asking me cause I kept looking for deals when he's like, if you get that deal, can you stop doing IT? Cause he was seeing me work so much. And so when I got that that was huge for me, for my family.   James: Got it. That was a transition point of view, getting away from IT to real estate, I guess.    Mark: Right, right. And making the decision, like you said, to do it full time.     James: Yeah. It's a hard decision, especially if you're already used to a certain industry. And what has been, you know,  paying your bills, right.    Mark: Paying your bills, which is great. And you know, the other thing, unfortunately, when I was doing IT, that was kind of my self-worth. That's where I got my value. I wasn't really good at a lot of things, but for some reason, my mind just worked that way. And so I got my self-worth out of my job. So to give that up, you know, it is a big thing. And you don't know how successful you're going to be or not in your new adventure. So, but I mean, the best decision I ever made.   James: Yeah. I mean, you brought up a good point. Sometimes that whole industry, what you study for, define you 20, 30 years in your life and suddenly, you are changing your complete identity. I mean, it's a big thing, right? I mean, a lot of people do not want to do that. If they're known as engineer or a CPA or the IT guy, they don't want to know, what! Suddenly this guy's doing real estate.     Mark: Oh yeah. I mean, my CPA said, what are you doing? He did. Now he doesn't say it anymore. He did. He said, what are you doing? You're making a lot of money doing IT, why are you not doing it anymore? I mean, you know, he couldn't even comprehend it.   James: Yeah. And I have to mention this; when I was in IT, when I was an engineer, you know, I always think that people in IT, people who are engineers are really smart guys. So these are the smartest guys because that's what your circle is, right? Your circle of friends is there. You think this guy's smart solving problems. And I mean, I did my MBA, it was really eye-opening because I realized there are a lot smarter guys than me with a lot more money in the financial industry. So that was a big aha moment. And that's where I realized that you know, you have to go into business to make a lot more money. And there are a lot of other smarter guys in other smarter professions out there that make a lot more money. And so, I mean, before I forget what is the most valuable value add that you've seen in all your deals? What would you do in case your rehab budget got cut into half in a deal?   Mark: Oh, you mean from a CAPEX?    James: Capex wise, yes.   Mark: You know, one, people need to be...if the property looks like junk outside...I've been in properties that look good on the outside and they're not that great on the inside. But you need something outside to kind of attract you. And it could just be paint, you know, something so it's not dreary and dark, dark colors, you know, but using something a little bit more attractive color-wise for paint. Landscaping, simple stuff to do. It's basically thinking about what does a tenant see? When people say I'm going to do, you know, electrical work and you know, things like that. It's like the plumbing, stuff like that need to be done, but tenants don't see that. So first start with the outside and see what the tenants, you know, whether they go up to the office and it's kind of decked out.   Sometimes we'll spend a lot of money around the office to kind of put a lot of landscape in there and make it really nice, exterior wise. Interior, I mean, paint, it's pretty easy to do. Flooring is huge just from a maintenance standpoint. So if you can do it, but as you know, it's not that cheap to do floor and then we'll like resurface countertops. I wouldn't do cabinets and stuff like that if you don't have the budget for it. I wouldn't do appliances unless they need them. You're not going to get the bang for the buck for that. Again, people will see paint, they'll see flooring and they'll see like maybe surface countertops, paint the cabinets, things like that. But some people have really high aspirations. They want to do all these things, but at the end of the day, you're not living in the property so don't outdo the market. I won't be the first guy to prove something in a market, I let other people prove it first. But I would say for sure start with the outside. We start like with landscaping and paint, stuff like that. People can see that.   James: Got it, got it. Awesome. Mark. So we're at the end of the podcast. Do you want to tell our audience and listeners how to get hold of you?   Mark: Yes. An email address is Mark@thinkmultifamily.com and love the chat with anybody and I really, really appreciate you spending time with me today, James.   James: Sure, sure. Absolutely. Thanks for coming over. You had a lot of value. And I really like going across markets here because sometimes it's hard to find someone who has done deals in different markets, right. Because it's important. A lot of people want to do markets everywhere. I mean, there are deals everywhere so you just have to buy it right and you have to analyze it right. And, you know, just make sure the numbers work and the location works. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you, Mark.    Mark: All right, James. Appreciate your time.    James: Absolutely. Thank you. Bye.

Retirement Planning - Redefined
Ep 10: Social Security, Part 4

Retirement Planning - Redefined

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 5, 2019 17:05


Today's show is part 4 of our social security discussion. Our topic today is spousal benefit options. John and Nick will walk us through the ins and outs of this facet of social security and offer their advice.Helpful Information:PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/Contact: 813-286-7776Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.comTranscript of Today's Show:----more----Mark: Hey everybody, welcome into another edition of Retirement Planning Redefined. Thanks as always for checking out and tuning into the podcast with John and Nick, financial advisors at PFG Private wealth. Gents, what's going on? John, I'll start with you. How are you buddy?John: I'm doing good. I'm doing good. How are you doing Mark?Mark: I'm hanging in there. How's the little one's doing? I know they, you had some cold running through the house. Everybody getting better?John: They're getting much better, which is good. No more getting coughed in my face a lot less this week, so yeah, that's a good thing.Mark: And Nick, how are you my friend?Nick: Good, good. Looking forward to the holidays coming up here and all kinds of good food.Mark: Oh yeah, yeah. Are you a Thanksgiving kind of guy?Nick: I have become more so after my brother started deep frying turkeys a couple of years ago.Mark: Okay, good. So no YouTube videos of that now, so just be careful. We don't want to see any flying turkeys.Nick: He's got it all under control.Mark: Fantastic. Awesome. Yeah. At the time of this podcast taping it is just about Thanksgiving. It's just about here on us. And so we're going to continue on with our a multi-part series we've been doing about Social Security. So hopefully you've been checking these out and if you have, great, if you have not, make sure you go to the podcast page, you can find it on their website at pfgprivatewealth.com that's P F G private wealth.com and you'll find the podcast page. You can subscribe to it on Apple or Google or Spotify. I think there's other couple of choices there as well.Mark: So make sure you do, a lot of good content that we're discussing. This is a multi-part series all around Social Security and part four here is going to be on Social Security, spousal benefits, not deep frying turkeys that'll come another day, but a Social Security spousal benefits. So guys, let's get into this and just kind of break down some information for us on, I guess, what we're entitled to or how this whole thing kind of works.Nick: Sure. So just kind of a recap on, you know, how eligibility wears for Social Security. Essentially somebody needs to work, you know, for 40 quarters, pay payroll taxes for those 40 quarters and they become eligible for their own benefit. However, you know, one of the common questions that we may get is one spouse stayed at home, one spouse worked. The spouse that stayed at home didn't get their 40 quarters. And they want to know are they eligible for any sort of benefit.Nick: So it's important to understand that, you know, as long as the couple is married, the person that has not qualified for the benefit is eligible for a spousal benefit. And that spousal benefit is essentially calculated by looking at the full retirement amount benefit for the spouse that was working and multiplying by 50%. So, that's the starting line. That's kind of how you understand how they calculate that. And the reason that they did create that was understanding that households, you know, it's not always cut and dry from the standpoint of one spouse is working. There's obviously value to the other spouse staying home, helping to raise a family and they want to protect that spouse in situations like divorce or other sorts of scenarios by providing them with this kind of caveat for how the benefits work.Mark: Okay. And yeah, so the simple way to break it down. So give us some more, John, give us some more things to think about here when we're talking about the eligibility of spouses, maybe some rules, things of that nature.John: Yeah. So basically, some of the rules before you can collect a spousal benefit, the primary worker must have filed. So wait until the spouse actually draws and then you can go ahead and take your spousal benefit. Spouses can actually start taking it at age 62, that's the soonest that you can start taking.Nick: So a kind of a good example of that is, so let's say, Mr. Smith has been the worker and Mrs. Smith stayed at home with the family and raised a family. And a couple of years ago, two years ago, she started working, you know, so she's not eligible for her own benefit. So Mr. Smith is going to continue to work and Mrs. Smith is trying to figure out, "Hey, I'm also 62, can I file for benefits?" So the answer is not until Mr. Smith essentially retires and fights for his benefit. So that's where the restrictions on the ages kind of come to play.Nick: And when John referred to that primary worker must filed for their benefits, there used to be some other rules in play where you can kind of navigate around, but they really cut down and things are a lot more restricted than they used to be.John: Yeah. And just to kind of give some numbers to that, let's say Mr Smith's full retirement benefit was 2,400, Mrs Smith's spousal benefit would be, as Nick mentioned, 50% of that sort of 1200. And again, so her spousal benefit is based off of his full retirement amount benefit and not what he actually gets. So example of that would be, you know, when she goes to draw, let's say if he'd started taking early and he get his full 2,400, she's not penalize by that. Her 50% is still the 1200, assuming she draws at her full retirement age.John: If she decides to take early at 62 she will actually have a reduction of her spousal benefit.Nick: It is important for people to understand that, you know, there's the dates on when people start to receive the benefits are calculated, or factored in I should say, for each person. Though it factored in potentially when Mr. Smith files and starts collecting and it's also factored in when Mrs. Smith files and starts collecting. And so there's a lot of different variations on how that works. And because there are some different variations, we typically recommend to people that, you know, I was helping you kind of walk through the different, let's test out different scenarios and figure which one makes the most sense because there are so many factors that go into the decision.Nick: We understand a lot of people like to just, you know, they want a cut and dry answer and unfortunately or fortunately, the positive to there not being a cut and dry answer is that, you know, oftentimes they can be strategic and find something that works better for them and if it were cut and dry. But it does take a factoring in a lot of other things to make the right decision.John: Yeah. At first the answers to certain questions are, it depends.Mark: Yeah, that's the case a lot of times I think.John: One question we actually get a lot and we talked about in the last sessions was, you know, if you draw Social Security after full retirement age, you actually get a percent increase in your benefit. That does not work for spousal benefits. So if the spouse didn't want to take or they want to defer their spousal benefit, they do not get the 8% increase on it.Nick: Yeah. So, we have seen that mistake happen, you know, the primary person has decided, "Hey, let's wait to collect the benefit" because they are under the assumption that not only will their benefit grow by 8%, but the spousal benefit that their spouse will take will grow, but that's not the case. Only their benefit grows, the spousal benefit does not. So when we run kind of break even calculations, it can often makes sense to just have them start collecting so that they can get both of them.John: Yeah. And then, you know, it's important understand also for to be eligible for spousal benefits, you have to be married at least one year. So can't be a just getting married and after six months started drawing on Social Security for a spouse.Mark: They're not going to just make it too easy for you anyway. All right, so that's some good rules. That's some good basic information there. What are some strategies? Give us a few things to think about when it comes to the spousal benefit options.John: Yeah. And like we said, everyone's situation is different. It really depends and it's important to customize what works for you. And I think we offered in the last session, but if anyone wants it, we actually are working on a Social Security machination strategy, which we're happy to do so. But one thing that we'll do with some spousal strategies, depending on the situation, we might have one spouse claim early and the other spouse, depending on the situation, you know example of that would be, let's say we have a high earner and they want to protect the spouse in case of a premature death. So we might go ahead and have the high earner, who's Social Security benefit is higher, actually delay theirs. So, if they were to pass away prematurely, that spouse can actually jump onto a higher amount, high Social Security benefit, which is nice strategy to protect the surviving spouse.John: I've used that a couple of times when there's an age gap on the spouses or if I'm there, you know, sometimes clients will come in and they're just concerned saying, "Hey, I'm really concerned something could happen to me. Is my spouse going to be okay?" We'll go ahead and implement some strategies like that.Nick: Another time where that can be used is if the primary earner has worked at in an occupation where they're eligible for a pension and they're going to receive a pension and they, you know, kind of through planning or whatever it may be. Or like the example of John mentioned where on of the spouses is maybe quite a bit younger, so when the other spouse is quite a bit younger, it pulls down the pension amount that the primary person would receive. So to offset that a little bit, we might recommend, "Well, hey, instead of doing a hundred percent survivor benefit on the pension, let's do a 50% so that you can have a higher pay out. But to offset that, what we'll do is we'll have you wait to take Social Security until 70." So the pension amount that the spouse would receive would be less, but we can offset that waiting on Social Security a little bit and still have more income coming in the household.Mark: Gotcha. Okay. All right. So a couple of different strategies there to consider and I think a lot of times people sometimes don't plan ahead for that part. It's like we're sitting there talking about different, when you're getting your retirement plan done, I think sometimes we look at it overall and say, "Well, we want to turn Social Security on as soon as we can and yada, yada yada." Instead of saying, "Okay, how can we most maximize our Social Security for both of us in an overall inclusive retirement plan?"Mark: So it's certainly important to do. And as John mentioned, you know, they can run that Social Security maximization if you have some questions on that. If you want to get that done or have a chat with them, give them a call at (813) 286-7776 that's (813) 286-7776 and you can also check them out online at pfgprivatewealth.com.Mark: As I mentioned before, there are financial advisors here in the Tampa Bay area, so if you have some questions about that, again, as always when you're listening to this show or any other show before you take any action, always check with a qualified professional about your specific situation because everybody's, it can be so different, so make sure you have that chat.Mark: All right guys, I think in the interest of time we can probably squeeze in a couple more things. Can you give us a few things to think about on divorced spousal situations?John: Yeah, so it is important for people to understand that they are still eligible for a spousal benefit if they were married for 10 years and they are not remarried. So a scenario that we may see with that is they were previously married to a high earner, maybe they worked a lower paying job, they were married for 25 years, became divorced, they went back to work to cover expenses, et cetera. They may be in a relationship currently, but they're not officially married and we kind of go through calculations and we determined that, "Hey, the spousal benefit that you could receive from you former spouse would be higher than the benefit that you would receive on your own and or higher than the benefit that you would receive if you were to marry your current partner." And obviously a lot of other factors go into that.John: But, from a purely financial decision, that could work out really well because again, you cannot collect that spousal benefit from a former spouse if you are remarried. We have had questions along the lines of, you know, "Hey, I was married twice. Both were over 10 years. Am I restricted to choose just the most recent one?" And the answer is no, you can pick the higher. We had a nice young lady one time that had four different ten year marriages and she asked if she could add them all up together and unfortunately you can't, it's just the higher.Nick: But she had a lot of options.John: Yeah. It's good to have options.Mark: Like window shopping apparently.John: So, yeah. So those are a couple of things to keep in mind.Nick: Yeah. And one question we get a lot with divorced clients, they say, "How soon can I draw on the ex-spouse's Social Security?" And really you can draw on an ex-spouse once that ex-spouse hits age 62. Unlike a kind of a normal situation, when we wait until the spouse draws Social Security. They put this rule in really to protect the ex spouse because we've seen scenarios where certain people might delay drawing to intentionally hurt the other spouse and so they can't draw on them. So basically the rule is once the ex-spouse hits over 62, you can actually start drawing on the spousal benefits for divorcees.John: Yeah. It does not matter whether or not they're collecting. And also some people are happy about this, some people are not. But when you do get that benefit from a former spouse, again it does not affect their own benefit. There is no negative impact to doing that to them.Mark: They don't even know about it.Nick: They would have no idea. And it actually wouldn't affect any new spouse for somebody. So we get that question quite a bit where it says, "Hey, an ex-spouse draws on my Social Security. Does that affect my new wife or husband?" The answer is no.Mark: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And there's interesting on the time period on that, it's funny that you kind of brought that up. My mother, who's 78, actually was given that information and did a refile with the Social Security for her first husband. She was married twice as well. And so yes, she was able to do that and they hadn't been married in like 40 years, but they were married over 10 years. So they were like, "Yep, that's something you can do." So I was like, "Okay, well knock yourself out."Mark: So yeah, it's interesting. There's definitely some few things to consider in there. Different kinds of a spousal benefit options, divorce spousal benefit options. So again, a lot of it comes down to having a conversation about your specific situation with your advisor when it comes to Social Security, because there are a lot of things in Social Security obviously, which is why we're on a four part series, going to be a five part series actually around this.Mark: So with that said, I think we're going to depart this week on the program. I'll say John and Nick, thanks for your time. As always, we appreciate it. Folks, make sure you reach out to them, give them a call if you've got some questions at (813) 286-7776. (813) 286-7776, again, that number to call. And as always, make sure you subscribe to the podcast. Retirement Planning Redefined. You can find it on Apple, Google or Spotify.Mark: You can also just find it on their website at pfgprivatewealth.com and as I said at the beginning of this, that it was prior to Thanksgiving when we were taping this. Now we'll actually air it after Thanksgiving. So we certainly hope that everybody had a great holiday season. And we'll see you for more of our conversation around Social Security through the month of December, right here on Retirement Planning Redefined. For John, for Nick, we'll see you next time.

The Quiet Light Podcast
How to Save $1,000,000 on Your Tax Bill (or Pay None at All) With Shanyn Stewart

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 31, 2019 46:10


It's not about how much you sell your business for, it's about how much you get to keep. A lot of sellers get to the point of selling and see an opportunity to cash out on all their hard work. Unfortunately, there are these entities called the state and federal government whose pockets get lined before the sellers get their bottom line. Shanyn Stewart is a tax specialist who works with sellers in the acquisition process. She goes as far as to claim she can actually structure a sale where the seller pays 0% taxes. The process and benefits of the different structures she offers can allow for more money in the seller's pocket. Tune in for a very useful episode for both buyers and sellers on how to prepare for a sale and legally keep the IRS from getting too big of a slice of the pie. Episode Highlights: The power of knowledge and ways that Shanyn claims she can reduce and potentially eliminate taxes for the seller. How capital gains tax really works. Understanding the basis of your business. What qualifies as basis in various types of businesses. The difference between basis and expenses and where to pay attention when it comes to capital gains tax. The importance of planning well before the LOI. Shanyn explains deferred payment structured sales using a third party. How to mitigate the capital gains in a transaction and reduce the net effect of the taxes over time. A case study of a transaction Shanyn has worked on and ways she increased the seller's profit. How the structures Shanyn proposes can serve as a safety net. Where charitable strategies and trusts fall into the spectrum of planning for sale and profit. Transcription: Joe: So Mark one of the conversations we have all the time; I think I probably had at least 3,000 of them is that it's not about how much you sell your business for, it's about how much you get to keep. And I understand you had Shanyn Steward on the line on the podcast and went through a lot of the different scenarios about the different types of transactions and which one might get more beneficial than sort of an all-cash deal to help sellers out in the process of keeping as much money as they can after the sale. Mark: Yeah. You know it's an interesting discussion because I think a lot of sellers get to the point where they've been putting their money into the business. They've been growing their business over many years and they look at that sale as their opportunity to finally cash out and take that money off the table and be rewarded for all their hard work and they should be. But there's this pesky little thing called the federal government and state government and they want to take their share. Joe: It's getting bigger all the time; it's not little at all. It's bigger [inaudible 00:02:11.5]. I'll stop. Mark: Well no, you're right. Look you go into this process; actually it's funny Joe, you and I were talking to Ryan about this yesterday and he was saying how he puts people through this exercise of here's what your net proceeds are from the sale and let's go run through some scenarios and it's eye-opening for a lot of sellers. Shanyn is a tax specialist and she specializes in acquisitions and saving sellers money on taxes. And she makes the claim that she can actually structure a sale where the seller is going to pay 0% taxes. Well, she and I went through a lot of different scenarios. I want you to listen to this and tell me how many times you heard my mind explode from just some of the things that she suggested in here. I think from a perspective of restructuring a sale she offers a lot of great tips and things that think about rather than saying I just want to get my cash and move on to ways that you can protect your investment, get more money off the table. Here's the tease, here's the hook and I then I'll get right into it. We used a case study in here on an 11.6 million dollars sale where she was able to increase the net proceeds by over 3 million dollars on the 11.6 million dollar sale net proceeds by over 3 million dollars, a 46% increase in the net proceeds on that. Remarkable stuff. Joe: Yeah. Look full disclosure to everybody listening here. I talked to Shanyn a year ago and gosh it just sounded amazing; so amazing it felt too good to be true. And then things fell off and we didn't get a chance to follow up. Mark had the opportunity to follow up and chat with her and get some of the real cold hard facts on the process and the benefit of different types of structures than just all cash. As a seller, everybody says I want all cash mostly because you don't know who your buyer is and you're not going to trust them until you get to know them. It's great to keep an open mind because ultimately what you want is to keep as much of your proceeds as possible. You'll have a great attorney working with you on that asset purchase agreement to make sure it's secure and safe in the event you take a non-all-cash deal. We'll refer a few out if needed but it's a great idea to listen to the entire podcast for both buyers and sellers. Buyers you're out there listening, you're learning, and you might be buying a business that's not going to be 8 million dollars like the example that Mark is talking about. You might buy something for a half a million or a quarter or just a million; just a million, I should stop that, or a million and… Mark: Just around a million dollars. Joe: Right. Mark: It's chump change for you. Joe: Brad sold one of his $40,000; everybody that is listening to this you saw the launch, it was a one to one multiple $40,000 which is exceedingly small for us these days. But he had 20; I talked to him this morning, he had 25 offers on it and over 500 inquiries. Not just the automated inquiries but directly to his inbox so it's a frenzy and I think it launched on Tuesday and today's Thursday that's already closed' that type of situation. But buyers you're buying these businesses no matter what size and you're growing them. You're taking it to another level that the person that's selling it could not because they reached their threshold for staff and management or their own level of incompetence as we often say you got to figure out what your own level of incompetence is and they decided to exit. You're stepping in because you've got a different either level of working capital to help grow that business and expand SKUs or buy more inventory or you're better at scaling from 20 million to 100 million or 1 million to 10 million whereas the seller is not. So this is great for both buyers and sellers is my point. And I'm excited to listen to it myself because my level of incompetence is all about what you're left with after the sale. So I'm going to learn a ton as well. So thank you for following up with her Mark and getting her in the podcast. Mark: Yeah I was just about to ask you what is your level of incompetence? Joe: We don't have time for that. Mark: But what's my level of incompetence? Joe: No don't mention that. I always talk to Megan about that. Mark: Alright let's get to this episode. She talks a lot about preparation. If there's one takeaway for people both on the buy-side and sell-side and we had Joseph Harwood on a few episodes ago talking about how he saved a ton of money on the sale of his business is be open to different structures even from a broker standpoint. I know you and I Joe like hey we actually like these cash deals because that are really simple but when we're looking at saving hundreds of thousands of dollars it's worth looking at some alternative structures. And it doesn't get too complex with the right preparation and that's a lot of what Shanyn suggests here is prepare before you sell. Joe: Gosh that sounds familiar. Please, everybody, plan your exit. Prepare before you sell. If I had a drum I'd be beating it right now. One last thing before we go to this amazing podcast with amazing information that you can learn. I don't like ruining people's weekends, months, years when I tell them, man, you're doing 10 million in revenue that's great and based upon the P&L you gave me it looks like you're probably worth about 6 million but everything is wrong so you have to go back to the drawing board and start over in terms of your financials. I don't like doing that and I did it recently so please prepare; plan. Don't wake up and decide to sell your business when you're emotionally toast and you want to move on. If you plan it in advance and you do that; the four pillars, but the fourth one we're talking about now which is documentation and planning, get that done. You will make so much more money and you'll have so much more peace of mind in the process. And after listening to the podcast you'll have so much more money left over in the bank because you get to keep more of it with the structure and deal size that Shanyn is talking about. So let's go to it. Mark: Shanyn thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. I know you and I have just recently met but I'm really, really excited about this conversation because you and I talked only briefly. I think we talked just for a little bit on the phone and in just about 10 minutes you opened my eyes to some awesome strategies that sellers can use to reduce their tax burdens. And look I've dealt with so many sellers who go to their accountants and say what is my tax burden? Oh here's what it's going to be, 22% or whatever of cap gains tax and I said well what can I do to reduce that? I really can't suck it up and pay for it. And you're like no that's not the case. Shanyn: Exactly. Mark: So let's start out with just kind of a quick introduction of yourself. I want to tell everyone who you are the firm you work for and kind of what your mission is. Shanyn: Yeah. So I am the chief strategist here at Advanced Accounting. And we are a little bit different than your average tax professional. We actually do proactive tax planning for our clients. So what we do is we want to help mitigate those taxes before we actually have an occurrence of sale. And then even on the backend, we can help you after you've actually sold the company as well. It's not as advantageous for you but we really like to be proactive. And that's what we're going to talk about today is how do we after we hopefully the profit on the sale of our business how do we keep the IRS from getting a slice of our hard work legally. Mark: Legally right that's the big thing. You know my eyes were open on a recent transaction that we did hear at Quiet Light, in fact, we had Joseph on who is the seller in that case and it was a little bit of a different deal because he was a UK based seller. But we brought in a tax specialist on that deal who ended up saving lots of money. I mean significant amounts of money from a tax perspective. And so to be able to talk to someone like you who does this as a specialty is going to be really exciting. So let's start off real quick with this and just a point that I know you made to me before our call here which is whenever there's money changing hands the IRS wants a slice of it; like they're going to get something out of it. What would you say to the tax professionals that are saying just suck it up and pay it? Shanyn: Yeah. You know I actually was talking to a tax professional the other day and he was like well nothing is certain in life but death and taxes and just be thankful you're not dealing with death. And he said there is a cap on capital gains and I was like right there is a cap on capital gains after the seller sells has company but there is actually a way that we can mitigate taxes, reduce them dramatically, and sometimes even eliminate them which is like everyone's excuse me how can that be? Mark: Yeah, excuse me, we can eliminate taxes on the sale. Okay, I'm intrigued. Shanyn: Yeah, you caught my attention now. And of course one of the things that when we're looking at the IRS code there was a senator that once I heard quote that the first nine pages of the IRS code is all about the definition of what is income and then the rest of the code is just a web of preferences and deductions and how to actually work the code and work income. And so when we're talking about tax planning that's what we're talking about really being proactive so that we're not giving the tax professional who says suck it up and deal with it you're going to pay capital gains and don't worry about it it's cost of doing business and that's not the truth. It's not. Taxes can be legally mitigated. And if you have enough knowledge that knowledge is power and can really put more money into your pockets. Mark: All right so the first nine pages just define what income is, do you know how large the tax code is; how many pages? Shanyn: You know what after the new revision I really don't know. I think that it's thousands and thousands of pages. Mark: So there's a lot in there. And I met with some tax professionals personally recently for just my own benefit and we went on a conversation with them which was hey we'll look at all the things that you're basically handing over the government where legally you don't have to if you're doing these different things. And it's more than anyone of us can really decipher on our own because I don't have time to sit there and read and stay up to date on all of this. Alright, so where do we start? Shanyn: And I don't mean to bash any type of tax professional because keeping a taxpayer in compliance is in and of itself is a full-time job. So what we're doing is really by being proactive this is a specialty from that standpoint. So I think the first thing that we start about is we talk about how does capital gains really work because that's what happens when you sell your business, you actually have a capital gain. So the methodology is buy low and sell high and pay the tax on the difference. And that's the whole concept really in nine words but really Taxes are never just as easy as just buy low and sell high. The first thing that you have to understand is what your basis is. And basis basically is what did I actually purchase my business for or what did I invest into my business? Sometimes we call it original basis or adjusted basis. So basically it's just anything I paid for the asset and anything I added to it. So we have to understand what our basis is when we ever go into a sale. In fact, the IRS has a 13-page document just on basis. So if you're really excited about basis you can read the 13-page document on it. Mark: I can say I haven't been really excited about it but I am now. And maybe I'm jumping ahead, how would you deal with bases in a startup situation? Shanyn: So basically a lot of service-based businesses are going to have a zero basis. That's one of the things that we deal with on a regular basis is that there is no basis. You started an Amazon business and you really have no assets to speak of. And so, unfortunately, your basis is zero. Mark: Okay, what can you count as part of the basis; what qualifies as that? Shanyn: So equipment would qualify; if you purchased a building sometimes depending on the business it could be that you added furniture and fixtures and things of that nature. Mark: What about things like molds for those that are making their own products? Shanyn: Exactly. So anything like that. So anything like if you have a mall or sometimes depending on the patent copyrights things of that nature can be the basis if you're actually transitioning into another business. Mark: For those that are not in e-commerce; let's talk about like a content site, a lot of content sites are start out by hiring a bunch of writers to build kind of a foundational amount of content on their site and that can be tens of thousands of dollars of content being written. Could that qualify for a basis? Shanyn: It could. It depends on how it was expensed. Sometimes accountants can be creative in the way that they're expensing things. So really basically when we're getting ready to do a sale we get a look at the balance sheet and determine what's been depreciated. So basically if you're depreciating it then that's part of your basis. If it's just been completely; so if you hired a copywriter and you've expensed that then it's not going to be considered basis. Mark: Oh, I get it. And this is one of those things; we talk about this all the time in this podcast, we talk about making sure you understand your own financials. And so many entrepreneurs are really weak in this area when you look at the balance sheet as its kind of cryptic report where we don't really understand it. And then there's also this idea well I want to expense as much as I can to reduce my income tax burden. But this is looking at a little bit different. So if I were to start up a content site and I realized look I'm going to invest $50,000 into seeds content. You're saying look you might initially not be making any money anyway so maybe it's better to put that in and record that as an asset investment that I can depreciate. Shanyn: Right. And see that's one of the things you always want to think about the end in mind. You're always going to want to like look at what is my exit strategy? Even when you're starting a business you want to look at what your exit strategy is to determine. And I know in those early years; I mean most businesses in the first three to five years are not really making a huge profit. And so I look at different expenses and really a lot of those can be capitalized over time instead of just expense in that year. And that's something to take a look at. That's where proactive planning and understanding your financials become so important. Mark: Yeah. Now from a buying standpoint if you're acquiring a business obviously you're going to capitalize expense investing in the business right away. That's going to be an investment so that's going to form basis but then also things that you're doing right after as well. Shanyn: Correct. So anything that's going to be adding capital value to that business is something that you're going to want to kind of look at and see if it is something that we should; is it really truly an expense or is it actually adding a capital value to the underlying business and should be depreciated over time. Mark: Okay. So how does this shake out on a sale basis so I would know we the buy low sell high; I imagine there is a simple subtraction coming up here, right? Shanyn: Right. So I mean basically the difference between the sale price and your basis is where you're going to get capital gains and you're not going to get capital gains depending on your filing status you're also maybe getting hit with something called net investment income tax. And that's a new tax underneath the Obama administration where they're going to kick in a 3.8% tax for those that are $200,000 of adjusted gross income for individuals and 250,000 for joint filers. And so that basically, you're going to hit with capital gains and that net investment income tax. And so that can be pretty hefty so one of the things when we're talking about mitigating taxes on the sale of a business preplanning, becomes very important. And one of the things is that if we have enough time before the sale of a business there's a lot of planning we can do. I mean there's a few after the sale offsets that we can kind of facility to mitigate tax but it's nothing like the time before the sale. And one of the things is we're going to talk about several different strategies. It's really important to understand that we actually need to start our planning; there cannot be a binding contract you're going to say repeat this again, there cannot be a binding contract in place when we start this preplanning. Mark: So a binding contract again from a sales standpoint we're looking at LOI which is it's usually non-binding but then those purchase agreements which are going to be binding. Shanyn: Correct, exactly. So we even like there to be no LOI and we want no question by any type of government organization or court system. So we even tell our clients even before there is an LOI we want to have our planning done. So oftentimes when people come to us to sell their business they know they're going to sell their business. That's the goal. And so that's when the planning should start right then and there. Mark: Alright. And we preach all the time that if you want to sell your business it's best if you're actually planning 12 to 24 months in advance because from our standpoint we want those other metrics that we look at; the influence, the valuation to be as optimized as possible. So I would imagine this pre-tax planning would also benefit if you're at 12, 24 months out. Shanyn: Well definitely because there's a lot that we can actually do in the current year to help them mitigate taxes but then on the sale of the business definitely. Now the quickest we've done; we can do this in 60 to 90 days. But one of the things I found is that what we have to do is we actually educate our seller on these strategies because a confused mind always says no. And one of the things we want to make sure is that our clients understand what they're doing and why they're doing it; what the advantages and disadvantages are. So we really start an education process with them so that they understand exactly that they could sit down and explain exactly the transaction that's about to happen in their own words and have that confidence. Mark: Right. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Alright let's get into the example of a transaction here because let's say that knowing that we're going to sell the business we're getting into this here and we've said okay we've got maybe a little bit of basis we still have a pretty large delta on what we're selling for versus what our basis is. Maybe we'd be able to form 50 maybe a hundred thousand dollars basis but we're selling a business for two million dollars. The savings is nominal on that side. Where else should we be looking at here? I know we talked a little bit about short term capital gains taxes and our pre-cal stuff. How does this play into this? Shanyn: Well I think one of the things is when we start to look at the fact that we have a capital gain and that's what we really want. We have to really immediately step in and say okay what are the strategies that I can do to mitigate these taxes? So one of the strategies and we usually use a combination of strategies. So I know you and I are going to kind of break down just the simple line strategies but oftentimes they're actually strategies that are interwoven together from that standpoint. So one of the strategies we often see is something called an installment sale. And an installment sale is just simply a sale where you receive payments installments in more than one year. And so basically what that means is you sell your business in year one and you agreed to take three equal installments over a three year period. Now that works with some people. The advantages are that you're going to defer the gain until you actually receive those payments so taxes is divided throughout the years. So for example, we just did a transaction where let's say you have a business that you bought for 600,000 and you sold it for a million. So 40% of your sale is a gain. So when you receive those installment payments over the years 40% of each of those installment is going to be taxed as capital gain. So why is that important? A couple of different reasons; it's going to actually if you split out the capital gains over three years or five years you actually reduce the overall taxation that you're absorbing from that standpoint. And so you're not getting stumped all in one year with a big tax bill. But the devil's in the details with that one because not all assets are going to qualify for an installment sale. So that's one thing to remember. So anything that's publicly traded is not going to qualify for an asset sale. You also have tool items we find that buyers and sellers want to get a really, really low rate interest rate and so you have to charge adequate interest to the person who's buying. And if you sell depreciated assets; so let's say you're selling equipment; you have to recapture all of that depreciation and pay ordinary income tax rates immediately. So there's some things where an installment sale works really, really well with and sometimes it's not going to work really well but that's one of the simple strategies that we see. Now, one of the problems with that is that you're going to get your income over a few years. Sometimes it's a big deal. And I actually sent you an example earlier and we can talk about that in a few minutes where our buyer actually got his money over five years. And that worked out perfectly. We are actually able to eliminate the taxation on that. We're going to talk about that because that's huge. And he was given over two million dollars a year so he was pretty happy. Mark: Right. So real quick are you able to reduce the effective rate by doing an installment sale? Obviously, the amount that you're paying in one payment is going to be reduced but you are able to reduce that rate? Shanyn: It does. It depends on the taxpayer's adjusted gross income but we are able to reduce the net effect of taxes over the period. And oftentimes we're talking about that sometimes depending on the amount of the sale or the amount of the proceeds we're able to even get payments five to 10 years out so that we're able to keep that; kind of make an individual pension for that person. And that way they can also do things like delay Social Security and keep their taxes down and so it really becomes very much not just a planning for the sale event but planning for the next few years of what happens with those proceeds. Mark: Alright so I already know most of my clients are going to say with this which is I don't want to defer my payments because what happens if they don't pay; what are my collection options? There's always this worry especially with the Internet and acquisitions where so much of the business is wrapped up in blue sky, goodwill, non-tangible assets. And so what happens if the buyer runs a business into the ground two years from now and they still have about $400,000 payment well what are my options? Could you ask for those funds upfront and pay them out? Shanyn: One of the things you could do is actually do a structured sale and actually bring in a third party. Mark: Okay. Shanyn: So a structured sale is sometimes very advantageous because it actually takes the installment sale tax treatment. It does require a buyer to pay a little bit of cash upfront or all of the cash upfront. So basically what you're doing with a structured sale is you're bringing in a third party and you're exchanging your business for a stream of income. So basically what happens is; and let me say this is appropriate for businesses between the 100,000 and the five million dollar. So if you're over five million it would not work this way. But basically, in a structured sale you're going to negotiate a traditional sale. Your buyer is going to sign their obligation to make payments to an independent third party. So there's a lender involved here or an insurance company involved here. And then that third party is going to take that cash. And so you never actually get receipts. So we avoid constructive receipt rules which would actually make if we actually took that money in our hands immediately that would make it taxable immediately. So then the third party now has your cash and they're going to buy you something like [inaudible 00:26:30.4] to start income to you immediately. So you pay taxes on as you receive those payments over the years you're going to pay taxes on the capital gains again defer it. But this is a way to bring a third party in; it's called a structured sale in order to help mitigate some of that risk. Mark: Okay. So who is this third party company; what would be some examples of these third-party companies? Shanyn: So it could be a lender. It could be an insurance company. There are third parties that actually facilitate deals like this. Mark: Okay. And then from the seller standpoint, the benefit here is that they're not having to act as a collector of funds. You have a certain party that's doing that work. Shanyn: Correct. And so here's something that what we're seeing gain popularity; so one of the downsides of most installment sales, either structured sale or an installment sale is that you sold your business, you've deferred the tax, but you don't have all your money. Mark: Right. Shanyn: You have a stream of income but you don't have all your money. And so one of the things that we have found is that if you're comfortable exchanging your equity in your business for just a stream of income that's perfect; if you don't need it all at one time. But oftentimes I think that entrepreneurs want to go to another venture. It's in their blood. They want to close one chapter and start a new chapter. And so that becomes an issue because there's no capital to actually work with them unless the sale is very large. So here what we're finding is that we can take an installment sale and we can couple it with something called a monetizing loan. Now, this is a complicated concept. It takes months to actually really kind of; we do webinars and PowerPoints to really educate our clients on this and we bring in the legal team to really explain this but I'm going to try to kind of be very simple in my explanation. What we do basically is we take an installment sale and we couple it with a monetizing loan. And so basically the way that business works is we're going to defer the taxes for 30 years. Mark: Okay. Shanyn: So basically you negotiate a sales price with your buyer just like you would. And when it comes time to close there's going to be simultaneous things that happen at closing. You're going to sell your assets to an unrelated third party in exchange for a lump-sum payment in 30 years. Step one that third party simultaneously sells your asset to the buyer in exchange for your agreed-upon price. Now you've sold your asset. You're going to use installment sale treatment to defer the tax but you're still going to have your money. Here's where the monetizing loan comes in at the same time that you and the third-party and the buyer close the original sale the third party lender is going to step in and he's going to extend to you a loan equal to 93.5% of the sale. So remember loan proceeds are not taxable because they come with an obligation to repay. Now you have your cash in your hand and that's almost equivalent to what you had for your sales price. And you're free to do whatever you want with those funds. Now it's a loan. While that loan is outstanding the third party pays the interest. In fact the terms of the loan specify that the interest is non-recourse to the seller which is really important because non-recourse means that the lender can't come after you for the payment of that interest. So 30 years goes by and you have all of your money. You do whatever you want with it. And at the end of the 30 years, the whole transaction unwinds. The third-party pays you or your heirs the purchase price in cash. You use the proceeds to repay the loan and then you pay the tax. So there's some magic that happens here. I always call it the eighth and ninth wonder of the world; that deferral and the time value of money. So the question really happens to be what's going to be the tax in 30 years. So if you think about this if inflation continues at 2½ %; that's kind of what it's been for the last 20 or 30 years, and it continues and long term capital gains remains at 20%, the tax bill on a million dollars of pain in 2019 would be equivalent to about $94,000 in 2049. Mark: Wow. Shanyn: That's less than half of today's tax bill and you've got to use your money for 30 years. Mark: Right. So with the installment sale and the monetizing loan you get that money upfront it's just coming in a different vehicle; it's coming through essentially a loan. Shanyn: Right. Mark: My mind is spinning right now. And you said it earlier a confused mind says no. My head is a little bit confused right now but I'm seeing where you're going with this. This is really, really brilliant. What are some reasons why people both on the buy-side and sell-side wouldn't want to do this other than confusion of the concept. Shanyn: And you know what really when we actually walk; so oftentimes we get clients who are like right in the middle like I've got an LOI I want to sign I need to do something now. This structure takes a lot of time to explain and to be comfortable with and to show how all of the numbers move. So really what are the downsides of this? Confusion, that's probably the number one thing or lack of understanding of how it can really; can this really work? I mean people are like really defer taxes for 30 years? They're skeptical of lenders sometimes that would actually be extending the loan. So there's a lot of skepticism I think and lack of understanding. But really this is a win-win for everyone involved. I mean really the buyer doesn't care. The buyer is going to give his asset and he's going to walk away and he's going to have this new business. So he probably doesn't care. Mark: And they're paying just as they normally would if they're buying the business upfront, right? Shanyn: Exactly. And the seller sometimes they don't understand. But I mean there's legal agreements in place around the loan. You're making sure that you're working with a reputable third party from that standpoint so you're making sure that the loan is non-recourse and how it's going to unwind. And of course, you're going to have your own attorney look at all of the documents and paperwork as well. So basically you're doing your own due diligence. But any tax professional that's utilizing these kinds of strategies has done their own due diligence as well and they're picking at third parties to actually work with that and a lawyer or legal team to work with that's what they specialize in. Mark: Right. How do you handle this with more complex sales where you have a portion of like an equity rollover over, a cash upfront, and maybe some debt as well coming in there. Can you structure this as a component of a larger structure? Shanyn: Correct. So that's what I said we often use multiple strategies. So right now I'm working on a deal where someone is selling a restaurant franchise along with the real estate that some of the franchise franchises sit on and there's debt. And so we're actually restructuring debt to flow through like a different entity on the real estate side so that we can use and monetize installments. So we've got like three or four actual strategies that are in play and that's where the preplanning comes in. So if we got 12 to 24 months to sit down with you and figure out a game plan we can really kind of put several different strategies together. Sometimes we're just deferring the tax sometimes we're able to eliminate it altogether. But it's just different components of the sale will be treated differently. Mark: Alright. So I want to get to our example because again I can hear the question in people's minds which is is the juice worth the squeeze here; the fees to you, the amount of time, the headache, trying to convince a buyer to do this which doesn't look as traditional as maybe everyone is expecting going in. So let's run through an example here and you sent me a PDF with an example; is it okay if I post this on our site? Shanyn: Yes definitely. Mark: Okay so we'll make this available for download in the show notes so that people can follow on with us if you want an actual example of this but let's talk through the example here that you gave me. Shanyn: And this is just one; so this is just one strategy, so I just illustrated one. This was actually a business that's being sold in Michigan. Equipment was included. So they had molds and dyes and they sold on the Internet. So they are a combination business. So the sale price was 12 million dollars. And the cost of the sale was about 360,000. They had actually found a buyer outright. But this is what the legal team was kind of charging. So the gain overall was 11.6 million dollars. So at the end of the day you'll see here underneath projected taxes we have federal taxes, we have that net investment income tax, we also are recapturing depreciation, and then we have the state tax. So all in their total gain is 11.6 million and they're losing 4.3 million dollars to taxes. Mark: Yeah. I can tell you when I sold my business that wasn't for a million dollars but when I sold my very first business one of the most sobering moments was getting this first tax bill. And again just to reiterate this; the tax will gain so the cost of the sale on this we have 12 million dollars on the sales price 360,000 towards advisors and fees here so 11.64 is what they're gaining after those advisory fees and then the government at different levels comes in and says thank you for that 11.6 we're taking 4.3 of that and reducing you down 7.2, 7.3 million dollars. Shanyn: Yeah so about 7.3 million dollars is what you're going to walk away with. That's a lot of money but it can be a lot more. Mark: You're still buying dinner the next time you go out but if you look at 12 million and it gets reduced to 7.3, that's pretty hefty. Shanyn: So one of the things that if you look here is that we're able to increase this seller's profit by over 3.3 million dollars and so basically what we do is that you'll see here that the sale price didn't change, the net sales price didn't change, we're actually using a combination of different strategies and the seller is actually taking payments over five years. So over a course of five years, he's going to get 2.1 million dollars and then there's some additional tax savings that we found in there over time. So he's getting a little bit more cash flow from that standpoint. So after just a coupling a couple of strategies together instead of walking away with 7.3 million he walks away with 10.6. Mark: That's a huge gain. That's 3 point…my math here is 3.3 million dollars. Shanyn: 3.3 million, a little bit more than 3.3 million. Mark: Because some of that money is deferred now with those deferred payments you mentioned briefly the time value of money. How do we capture some of that time value of money? Shanyn: So with those deferred payments I mean basically you are actually getting a little bit of an interest rate in that as well. So that all has to be inside the different strategies. Remember when I said we're doing installment sales so we've got to charge interest and have an interest in things of that nature. Mark: It has to be reasonable. Shanyn: It has to be reasonable. Exactly. So over five years, you're going to receive that 2.1 million dollars. So this person is giving up; they're comfortable giving up a little bit of return on investment in order to actually eliminate the taxes. Mark: Yeah and that right there I can totally see being worth the effort of going through this and I know you know we talk to sellers all the time. They get so nervous about doing installment plans. They want their money and they want their money now. And for a lot of people especially growing a business they're profit rich but cash flow poor where they're showing good profits and the selling moment is the first time where they're really getting the cash out of the… Shanyn: They're reaping their harvest. Yeah. Mark: Yeah exactly. So it's kind of a hard sell initially to say okay I know you're now selling a business for 12 million dollars. Shanyn: Right. Well, I think one of the things that; like the conversation I had with them when we proposed these strategies because they're one of the things that we're looking at is okay you're used to living on 250,000 a year in income and now you're going to get two million. What are you going to do with it? Mark: Yeah [inaudible 00:39:19.4]. Shanyn: What's the difference if you are given a check for 7 or you're given a check for 2? How is think going to change your day to day life? That's a conversation you actually have to have. You have to understand what the seller's ultimate goal is. I mean if it's just to go live on the beach in Delray Beach Florida that's kind of my dream then you can probably do that for two million dollars a year. Mark: Yeah, absolutely. Shanyn: It's kind of you know; and also one of the things and this was the eye-opening experience for me I actually had a brother set and one of the brothers wanted all the money up front and the other brother said to me if we don't structure this on installment sale my brother will blow through this money and he won't have anything because money burned a hole in the brother's pocket. And so the other brother was willing to both of them saw the validity there but the other guy just saw the big numbers and was like ah if I could open up my bank statements see that money sitting there. And the other brother was like no if we do that I know I won't spend it because I'm I will hold onto my money but you'll go through it and you won't have anything. Mark: Right. And I think something that entrepreneurs need to keep in mind and I personally went through this myself when I sold my first business is that a lot of entrepreneurs especially in the Internet space are bootstrappers, we get things going and we do it with a lot of grit. And then when you come into a lot of money you're trying to replace some of that grit with spending and so the second startup is way more money thirsty than that first one. And if you don't get the right payout and I've seen it happen with our clients and I had it happen with myself with that second startup I threw away more cash than I anticipated. So this is kind of a nice little lever on that to make sure you're not following through. Shanyn: I call it a safety net because sometimes we see entrepreneurs who actually sell their business and they say I'm going to retire and that retirement lasts like a year and then they're itching. They're like what do I got to do? Mark: I'm bored. I want to do this again. Shanyn: Right. I want to go do this again. And so basically when we're going into our planning process, not every strategy is going to work for every client but what we're doing is we're doing a full discovery and we're figuring out what's really important to that seller. And then we are working to mitigate taxes through the legal channels that are available so that they get the best deal at the end of the day. Mark: I want to hit on one last thing on the notes that you provided me here because we didn't get a chance to talk about it and that's the charitable strategies section here and we only have about five minutes left here so hopefully I'm not uncovering like an enormous topic that we could have spent… Shanyn: We can talk all day about charitable strategy. Mark: Or maybe we'll do a secondary podcast just on that because that's something that's near and dear to my heart; making sure that entrepreneurs are contributing or we should. But where does this fall into the spectrum of planning? Shanyn: So basically charitable strategies is one of the strategies that we use and it's a foundation of tax planning. It's also a foundation of capital gains planning and that's because charitable organizations can sell appreciated assets without paying tax on the gain. Mark: Wow. Shanyn: So again it's a very convoluted type of strategy but basically what happens is you actually establish a charitable remainder trust and you transfer those assets into the trust. It's important that there's no; this is preprinted, there's no binding contract before you transfer something into the trust. The trust then sells the assets to the buyer. And that's where the magic happens because the trust is tax-free and see there's no capital gains and then that trust then reinvest those assets from the sale price and then it pays you the after-tax amount over a period of time. So basically it's a way that we can eliminate a lot of taxation. Mark: Wow that is absolutely mind-blowing right there. And the worry that I think some people would get into is okay I know you said this is legal how much red tape and how fine are the rules that you have to follow for something like that? Shanyn: So basically; I mean there are rules and so by charitable remainder trust you have a legal team that actually specializes in this. You're not going to your mom and pop local lawyer who handles everything from drunk driving to criminal. Mark: My uncle who's a lawyer and not going to charge me a retainer; that type of a deal? Shanyn: Right. I mean so here's the thing; this is a place where when you're doing these strategies you want expert advice. You want somebody who has done this again and again and again and who understands these concepts. And so you're picking individuals that understand how to put together and to write a charitable remainder trust; how to facilitate these third party transactions. Mark: I got it. Okay, we are up against a clock. Shanyn, how can people reach you because I guarantee you're going to get a lot of calls and a lot of e-mails from this so careful what you're giving out right now; how can people reach you? Shanyn: So definitely they can reach me at AdvancedAccounting.com in the right-hand corner there's going to be a button that says a free consultation. And I would love to have a 30 minute Xoom call with them and just kind of talk them through what their particular situation is and if we can help them. Mark: That's fantastic. We will put that in the show notes; a link over to your website, we'll also upload this really simple example that you put together of tax savings which amounted to three million dollars in tax savings on a 12 million dollar sale, really interesting stuff. And I think the big lesson that I would like people to come away with is to think about the selling process in a little bit more strategic way because so many people are just looking at let's get it simple, let's get it done, let's move on with our lives, I'm going to eat this fee. There's a lot that can be done by hiring the right people to reduce those fees. You are one of those people for sure that can certainly help. So thank you for coming on. I can see having you on and maybe digging deep into one of these strategies maybe in a future episode if you'd be up for it. Shanyn: Yeah, perfect. I'd love it. Mark: Awesome. Thanks so much. Shanyn: Thank you.   Links and Resources: Shanyn's Firm Website Free Consultation Link About Shanyn Stewart: She's a serial entrepreneur and fearless single mom who has a background in military tactical training and is not afraid to stand up to anyone, including the IRS. A gun-toting, libertarian proactive tax strategist, Shanyn has built a team of tax and financial experts to assist clients in legal tax avoidance. Shanyn began her career with General Electric as one of two advisors that worked directly with GE employees and executives to mitigate taxation throughout the country. Armed with years of tax navigation experience, in 1996 she started Advanced Accounting to help clients apply those principles she learned at GE to assist in reducing their tax liability. A former American Baptist Pastor, Shanyn owns Gunpowder & Lace, a concealment garment and holster company for woman. She also coaches women on how to give themselves permission to channel their inner goddess and inner badass and make no apologies for it.

The Quiet Light Podcast
Understanding SaaS Metrics and Forecasting With Ben Murray

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 17, 2019 38:05


One of the misconceptions people often have about Quiet Light Brokerage is that most of our transactions are e-commerce based. In reality, we have got quite a sizeable number of SaaS deals in our portfolio as well. Today, the Saas CFO Blog founder Ben Murray is here talking about his career, the blog, and his passion for sharing the metrics founders need for better planning and forecasting. Through his blog, Ben shares his passion for organizing the numbers, implementing SaaS metrics, and forecasting. Ben's advice is all about getting the lumps out of the profit and loss. Anyone looking to learn more about the topic both from the acquisition and the ownership side, this is the guy to know and this is the episode to listen to. Episode Highlights: The value in forecasting. Why do it in the first place. Things that proper forecasting might protect your business from. Software recommendations for businesses looking to get started with inputting the financial data. Types of metrics that are important for the owner and potential buyer to dial in on. The Rose Metric. Numbers a potential buyer should be looking for in a healthy acquisition prospect. How deep should the buyer look into the metrics? Warning signs to look for in a business evaluation. The why behind the data. Healthy levels of sustainability in the balance between recurring revenue and sales/marketing expenses. How Ben became so interested in the SaaS arena and why he feels compelled to share his knowledge with his readers. The cash runway forecast model. How to get started in forecasting. Transcription: Joe: Mark one of the misconceptions about Quiet Light Brokerage is that some people think we do; the vast majority of our transactions are e-commerce related when in fact we've got quite a sizeable SaaS component as well. And I understand you had Ben Murray from SaaS CFO on the podcast recently. Mark: Yeah I just recently became familiar with Ben. I was going out and taking a look at some of the people that are writing in this space and just kind of doing some research trying to expand our network in this area and I happened upon Ben's blog and I was absolutely blown away. So Ben is a CFO obviously and specializes in the SaaS arena and talks a lot about the metrics that we want to be able to track in the SaaS world for better forecasting and better planning on the part of SaaS founders. So naturally, I thought I had to have this guy on the podcast. We also sponsored a little ad in his newsletter as well to promote David's webinar. David Newell for those of you that don't know recently did a webinar on how to solve a SaaS business for 6, 7, or 8 figures. We're going to include those in the show notes we'll also make sure that we advertise that in our weekly newsletter if you don't get that; a really, really well received. We've had hundreds of people attend and have had great response from that webinar. We partnered with Ben to help promote that webinar as well. And as I told you Joe just before this call he knows more about SaaS than you and I will ever really know because he lives and breathes this on a day in day out basis. And so we talked a lot about some of the metrics to look at, how to think about some of the metrics, how to calculate some of the metrics in a way that makes sense because we know that we're supposed to be tracking some things like lifetime value, churn, and everything else but how do you actually construct these calculations in a way that makes sense for your business and then forecasting as well. So the topic; I'll be honest, I got a little wide-ranging with my questions because I wanted to ask him every question at once. And it was difficult to stay focused because I wanted to ask every question at once but there's just some really cool nuggets in this podcast including one that you and I talk about all the time and that's cash versus accrual accounting. Joe: Yeah, most people think about it only in terms of e-commerce but SaaS and content they've got to do it as well just to get the lumps out of the P&L. Mark: Yeah I mean look it just comes down to this basic concept accounting; double-entry accounting system has been around for a long time and it's been around for a long time because it works. And so we should be making sure that we're actually paying attention to our books in the proper way and understanding what sort of insights we can pull out of this. Ben talks a lot about the need for forecasting which is something that I'm increasingly growing aware of as being an important tool for business owners. And we talked a little bit about how to do that in the SaaS world in this podcast as well so it's super interesting. And I think for anyone that's interested in SaaS both from an acquisition or an ownership standpoint, Ben is a guy to know, this is a podcast definitely to listen to. Joe: I'm looking forward to listening to it myself. Let's get to it. Mark: All right I have Ben Murray from the SaaSCFO.com, Ben thank you so much for taking the time for a conversation here on SaaS businesses, CFO and everything metric heavy. I'm really excited for this conversation. Ben: Thanks Mark, it's great to be here. Mark: So let's start out pretty simple and give just a quick background on yourself; what you do, and also a little bit about the blog. I found you through your blog the SaaSCFO.com but a little background on yourself so that our listeners know who I'm speaking with. Ben: Sure yeah. My name is Ben Murray and I've been in finance and accounting for the past 20 plus years and my background has been airlines and software specifically SaaS. And so I've been a SaaS CFO for about the last 8 plus years or so. And about 3½ years ago I started blogging at the SaaSCFO.com where I just wanted to share my metrics, models, templates that I've been using and creating over the years and hoping that others will have; they could use those and implement the models and metrics in their businesses right away. Mark: Yeah and look there's a lot of people that write on this material, right? I've come across a lot of different blogs that kind of become this intersection of marketing and metrics and company structure and everything else. Yours is really focused on metrics and metrics from a kind of financial outlook perspective and probably a deeper dive than I found in most other places. So I can definitely really, really appreciate what you're doing here on the blog and some of the information that you share. I want to start off with just kind of a big question, your website title is Ben's post on SaaS metrics and forecast; pretty simple. I want to talk about that second half there and the forecasting side of it. I know a lot of business owners and even buyers who are looking at acquiring a business look at forecasts with a bit of a skeptical eye and wonder well what's the real value on them? Now I think people that are growing businesses at a higher level tend to see the forecasts and see the value in them. But I'd love to pick your brain a little bit about the value in forecasting and creating a good forecasting model and maybe what the foundations are for that. So why don't we start with that first question as why forecast in the first place? I mean isn't it really more wishful thinking or is there a real science behind this. Ben: Yeah there's definitely a science behind it because it really leverages your operational understanding of your business and I really feel you can't forecast until you know where you've been. So really understanding your historical financials, all the metrics around that, and then once you have that then you can put a very good forecast together. But if you don't understand your current financial state it's going to be really hard to create a forecast and obviously, the number one thing is cash, right? Cash is king. So if cash is tight or you think it might be tight you definitely need that forecast to balance resource requests versus cash balances. So that's number one. After that say if you have decent margins then again it's really understanding where your revenue is trending; your margins are trending. And as you scale so you don't get in trouble down the road; if you hire too fast, invest too fast. So forecasts it's definitely I'd say part of science part of intuition but it's really critical I think in any business as you scale and of course just understanding your cash and then the metrics that are coming out of your forecast. Mark: Yeah, what are some common areas that you see people running into with a lack of forecasting; just kind of sticking their finger up in the air and feeling where the wind blowing today as they're growing maybe a rapidly growing business. You already mentioned one, hiring too fast and bringing on too much support staff maybe anticipating more growth in the future. What are some other things that proper forecasting might be able to protect you from? Ben: I think when you create that first financial forecast and you have been forecasting it really exposes areas in your business that are kind of weak data-wise. The number one thing is like booking; tracking your monthly bookings whether that's MRR or ARR basis you need to know when new lows are coming in or new customers are coming in any expansion business churn downgrades. So that sometimes exposes that tracking. You're going to be kind of revenue forecast together. It all starts with your booking patterns. So that's one thing. And then it's just basic stuff. What's your current MRR? What are your current customer accounts? How many paying customers do you have so you can put again that revenue forecast together and then it's just understanding where you spend. You know one big thing that I see with SaaS firms is that they're coding all their expenses to one big bucket. And I think once you reach say a million or two ARR you really have to have more sophistication in your financial forecast than you're coding expenses to buy an apartment because without that you really can't create any SAAS metrics from that. So you really need clarity around your expenses as well to see that quite a bit. Mark: Yeah and so much of this when I give presentations at a conference and I get to the part where I'm talking about keeping good clean accurate verifiable books I get the sense sometimes that it gets glossed over. And I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs who say yeah I know my books are important but then when you find out are they actually managing them well we found out that they aren't and because it becomes sort of an afterthought to it. But what you said there at the end I think is so clear. Once you start having good numbers brought in to the business and you're starting to analyze these numbers it brings clarity to the business as well and being able to identify maybe the risks that are actually present in your company that you aren't seeing because you're not looking at the data. A lot of what you're saying here about forecasting, of course, requires keeping track of the numbers in the right way and you need to start somewhere. For somebody that's maybe at the smaller end of the spectrum in a SaaS operation, say sub one million dollars in revenue what sort of recommendations do you have to make sure that the data that they're getting is A. getting input correctly and categorized correctly and B. do you have any recommended software any recommended systems that you would start out with? Ben: Yeah I wrote a post because that was a question I was getting a lot on what SaaS accounting software can you recommend. And of course, when I speak with founders 9 out of 10 times their financials are in QuickBooks . So that's kind of a ubiquitous accounting system out there. And I've seen all sorts P&Ls but really it's good organization to your expense categories. Not having too many. Sometimes you see a QuickBooks P&L and it's 50 expense categories and you've got $5 posted in February and 10 the next month; just too much detail on that where a SaaS company is really 70 to 80% employee wages, benefits, taxes, etcetera. So that's the big thing is getting to know your wages classify them correctly; encoded by department. Then it comes down to travel, rent, commissions, so they're big expense categories that are common within SaaS, advertising, that you want to see those coded and classified correctly and kept track of each month so you're not getting behind and have very lumpy financials. So that would be the big thing is just to clearly categorize P&L by expense category and then obviously the other one is just not applying proper reverec which you can't blame SaaS founders that saved some 1 million but they're not playing proper reverec to their revenue. But eventually, you will need that in order to calculate again good metrics, good gross margin and so forth. Mark: Can you explain that last part a little bit more? Ben: Yeah, about the reverec? Mark: Yes. Ben: So often rates with an MRR business it's not as pronounced where you invoice monthly and recognize monthly but with annual contracts say quarterly, semiannual, annual, multi-year contracts you see a lot of SaaS companies posting that revenue right to their P&L. So, for example, a $12,000 annual contract that should be advertised and recognized over twelve months. They're posting twelve thousand in just one month. You'll see very lumpy revenue that it could be 50 or 100,000 in one month and it's $1,000 a month the next month and I've even seen negative in some months. And with that, you really cannot manage your SaaS business without a proper reverec and that could be finding a SaaS accounter bookkeeper who is familiar with the SaaS business model. But without that, you don't know your gross margins at all. You really don't know what's going on with your business kind of on a good steady run-rate basis. So again under a million, I get it. A million and two and scaling you definitely have to get to that point. Mark: Yeah. And so in our world again we've talked about this a lot on this podcast and pretty much every chance I get. And it's that simple difference between accrual and cash basis counting, right? Instead of saying oh I just got $12,000 in on an annual contract saying well I have an annual contract which means I need to service this client for the full 12 months and that equates out to $1,000 a month which I'm earning as I go along with this contract. It's kind of a foreign concept to a lot of people. But again the importance here is not treating the P&L like a statement of cash flows only and treat it again as a profit and loss statement. I would imagine Ben, this is something I didn't see on your site but I'm sure you've covered because your site is extremely comprehensive, it would make sense at that point to look at your financial statements and understand the balance sheet is going to be important in here as well. What role do you see and let me see if I can back up; I'm kind of all over the place right now but I'll ask this in a very basic way. I know a lot of people are kind of scared or mystified by the balance sheet. How much emphasis do you think people should put on actually getting familiar with the statement like that or do you think it's more important to look at some of the other metrics instead and focus on those? Ben: Yeah I think say as a founder-owner you do need to understand the balance sheet to some extent because the SaaS balance sheet is a little different than others. One obviously is deferred revenue, so in the example, we talked about when you invoice that 12k it's actually posted at the balance sheet as deferred revenue; as a liability, because you have an obligation now to say perform or to service that customer. The second thing with the new reverec standards you now have to capitalize the contract costs that arise when signing contracts with customers, for example, enabling commissions now that becomes an asset on your balance sheet. So that's the second area that's different with SaaS and that's actually new and then, of course, capitalizing software development. You can also capitalize software development once it reaches technological feasibility. And again that's another asset on your balance sheet. Other than that SaaS balance sheets are pretty straightforward but if you're applying the proper accounting you probably will see; you definitely should see deferred revenue and probably capitalized commissions. Mark: Yeah I can kind of hear the collective groan from people listening thinking well I thought we're going to be talking about SaaS metrics here and here we are back in the old accounting stuff but this stuff plays together, right? I mean when we go into some of the other more advanced metrics that you're talking about it depends on having those books done correctly so that you can pull out the right metrics and the right ratios that you're looking for. But let's get into some of those other metrics and just kind of a very basic question here, what do you consider especially forward for companies that 1 million maybe 5 million 10 million and then above as we kind of work up the strata here, what sort of metrics would you generally say are really important for an owner or potentially an acquirer to really dial in on a SaaS business? Ben: Yeah I think once you're past that early stage where you really have to manage your cash flow I mean it's going to be your go-to-market, sales, and marketing efficiency metrics and that's something I'm constantly looking at. So it's really all; it becomes a lot about the go-to-market efficiency. One are your inbound or outbound sales engine and marketing engines and then one metric that's a favorite of mine is cost of ARR, cost of MRR where you're looking at your ARR and MRR bookings and comparing that against your sales and marketing expense to see how much it costs you to acquire one that new dollar or ARR or MRR; that's a big one. And there's a great survey out there, a SaaS survey put out by KeyBank each year that provides those private company metrics so you can compare how you're doing against other SaaS companies who put data into that survey. So it's a great benchmarking tool. But again there are a lot of sales and marketing efficiency metrics that yeah as you're scaling, how efficient are you, how much cash is going to be required to hit your booking plan, and then really just that balance; it comes down to that balance between bookings and sales marketing. Mark: Yeah that's great. Let's talk employees it seems to be one of the costs that seems to kind of spiral out of control with SaaS companies on occasion right? The cost of supporting the clients can be higher and higher. You have something on the blog which I'd just kind of chanced upon which you came up with called the Rose Metric. Can you explain that a little bit? Ben: Yes sure. Again it kind of gets back to the concept that really a SaaS company or any software company is all about the staff; the employees because that's the major expense or as I call merits that investment in the business around your staff. And you see that revenue graph that you metric out there is kind of a general gauge around efficiency which I think is just too high level; too generic. So I want to look at really it's so important that your investing employees, that employees are happy because they are creating that software company; they're creating the product. And really comparing how efficient are we in headcount wages versus the bookings coming in. So it gets you kind of a balance of as we scale what resources do we need to support our bookings plan or rounding plan and just see how efficient we are in acquiring new MRR or ARR against our kind of employee headcount or employee wages. Mark: Yeah it's an interesting piece and again I'd recommend people take a look at the blog and kind of dig into some of these employee metrics. It's one that we don't see as much in our world and I think it's an interesting one to take a look at. From a merger and acquisition standpoint if you're a buyer coming into a business and trying to evaluate it where are you going to begin looking at a company's books? What sort of numbers are you going to be looking at in trying to calculate within that first day as you're trying to see is this a good opportunity and a healthy company? Ben: Yeah obviously the first thing you're going to look at is just are they good books are you inaudible[00:19:12.5] accounting so they're good financial statements. And then after that, it's really understanding the health of the recurring revenue because a lot of valuations are based on almost full of ARR or MRR and then also EBIDTA. So really when I look at it you know it's really looking into that recurring revenue; so the bookings data, what's your gross dollar retention, net revenue retention, how many logos are you losing per month, how many dollars are you losing per month, and churn and dock rates. And then of course if you've got multiple products it's understanding all of those metrics by the product lines. Because that's what you're really buying is the recurring revenue stream and of course any profitability or lack of profitability that goes along with that recurring revenue stream in the form of EBIDTA. So those are the same first things that I dive into is really understanding the revenue streams and then really the business model; what does it take to support that recurring revenue stream? Do you have tech support? Do you have CSMs? What's needed support that revenue? And then, of course, another big thing is to go to market engine; understanding sales and marketing, how they're acquiring customers, how efficient they are, and then of course looking into GNA, RND, the product roadmap etcetera. Mark: Sure absolutely. As far as dealing with a company with weak books like of we're evaluating a company that maybe has this lumpy revenue because they're recording everything on a cash basis. Are there ways that you can suggest that would not involve a whole deconstruction of books but maybe to be able to evaluate a business that has weaker books or weaker data tracking practices? Ben: Yeah if you really can rely on the financials for the revenue stream then you have to really build a backup through their bookings data or their invoicing data. So getting say a couple years of invoicing history of their subscriptions; so dollar amounts, start and end dates, it helps if you knew is this a new logo expansion etcetera so that you can reconstruct what the revenue stream should look like and then get back into you know what kind of expansion are you seeing, churn are they seeing so you can build out that revenue stream if it's not; if they're not [inaudible 00:21:30.3] to the financial statements. Mark: Sure. What would be some warning signs that you would look for an acquisition? Obviously, you said you would really look at the health of the recurring revenue. How trustworthy is it? Also the go-to-market cost as well. What are some things that would be just kind of a deal-breaker for you if you were evaluating a business? Ben: I mean a couple of things would be looking at again I think it's going to be around churn and payback periods. So payback periods are extremely important. So how fast are you paying back those upfront customer acquisition costs. So one looking at their cash balance, of course, are they trying to [inaudible 00:22:10.5] fund working capital through lines of credit or debt that their business model isn't quite working for some reason or the payback period is too long or they have just too much cash tied up in check. And then, of course, new logo acquisition, do they have the go-to-market model proofed out or product-market fit and then again just is churn under control, can they acquire customers but then can they retain them over time. So again those are some of the things that if you see warning flags; you might see some warning flags there that the metrics just as a whole don't add up together. Mark: Right. You mentioned payback periods. This is something that I've ran into a number of times where I see somebody pretty plainly put out there hey my LTV is this my CSC is this so look I'm going to acquire the customer for 80 bucks the lifetime value is $400 and you're going to make a great return on your investment on that. But when you dig into it a little bit deeper you find out that if you take like an 80% cohort, if you're taking a look at the majority of customers the lifetime value is much lower. There are a couple of unicorns in there that are pulling in this really high value. What are some ways that you can recommend dissecting this when you get this kind of flat up numbers of my lifetime value is X and my cost of acquisition is Y so, therefore, you're going to make that killing on this business. How can you sort of dissect that and actually get some better insights there? Ben: Yeah especially with LTV because that can be so sensitive to the denominator or what churn number you're using as the dominator. So you really have to understand what inputs they're putting themselves because that lifetime value can be all over the place. So again you mentioned cohort analysis, are they taking the cohorts, are they using aggregate churn or are you looking at really with check and payback periods you should be looking at it's really a point in time like the cohort analysis that what's the most recent cohorts coming in and the paybacks on those and also lifetime churn from the cohorts say from the past 12 months. So you really have to I think look at the details on the numbers that are building up into those formulas to really prove out what they're saying that they can really claim great numbers. Mark: Yeah, it's one of the reasons that LTV to me I'm not a big fan of that metric on its own I mean it's interesting but I think it's just kind of a live number way. It doesn't color a whole lot when you're looking at it by itself, right? It can really take you to a lot of different factors. Ben: Yeah and I definitely calculate LTV it's interesting because I think SaaS metrics in isolation don't mean much. You kind of have to look at the big picture obviously it's LTV to check but also looking at cost of ARR payback periods. So maybe it's one data point but it's not telling the whole story. So I do look at LTV but again I think say cost of ARR or the payback on that is a much easier way to understand. And LTV I still think is kind of a ballpark because it's always changing and it's such a sensitive calculation that it's not the number to just look at alone. Mark: Yeah. A question I get all the time from people and it's really basic in your world so I apologize for even asking this but people ask me all the time well how am I supposed to calculate my lifetime value, how am I supposed to calculate my churn when I have people that are still; that have been with me from day one? And these numbers sometimes can be difficult to calculate because of that or even people that are dropping off but then coming back on and then dropping off again and then coming back on. Ben: Yeah. I hear that a lot too. Yeah especially if you're a couple of years in you really don't know your lifetime value yet. Again it's just a formula; it's a calculation so it's a ballpark but you don't really know true LTV yet if you've just been around a couple of months or a couple of years. And then the whole dropping off dropping on back on that's where it just becomes almost company-specific that you really just have to define internally what does a new customer mean, when does it really mean that they churn so that everyone within the company understands that. And if you're in any sort of M&A then that's clearly; that you're transparent with how you're actually tracking those stats. Mark: Yeah. And I think that part right there that point is probably the key that I think is so important especially from an acquisition standpoint. If you're looking to acquire a SaaS company and you're just looking at the metrics on the surface how does that seller define those metrics within their own company and why did they set up those rules because with multi churn you can look at that in a number of different ways. You can calculate that number using different approaches the same way with LTV numbers you can use different approaches and get different results. So why did you choose a certain method; why did you choose a certain approach to this? And that's the color I think from an acquisition standpoint that starts to get really important when you're looking at any of these metrics is understanding the why behind what data is being presented and then the rules and applying a sanity test to it. Are these people just giving numbers because that's what they're supposed to pick or are they actually looking at these and using these metrics within their company, yeah just a really good point on your side as far as understanding the metrics and where they're coming from? Moving beyond that cost of acquisition, moving beyond the lifetime value numbers and you've mentioned a few times the going to market costs as well, what are some health levels for the sustainability of ARR or MRR on a SaaS business. Ben: You mean as kind of as far as the balance between recurring revenue and sales marketing expense? Mark: Yes. Ben: Yeah, so healthy levels, the things that I look at and this is probably more mid-market enterprise but usually if you can acquire bookings for $1 of a new ARR for a dollar of sales market expense that's pretty good. So again there are some surveys out there that kind of give you some benchmarks and that's kind of you can say in whole new logo and expansions of course expansion in ourselves should be a lot cheaper than acquisition, maybe that's 30 to 50 cents of sales and marketing expense acquire one net new dollar of ARR. So certainly it's just that you look in and if it's higher you just need to understand from that business why it's taking longer and what's the story behind go to market. Is that a longer sales cycle that's impacting the [inaudible 00:28:48.6] so just different things to really understand their business model. Mark: That's great. I'm going to just take a quick break from some of that heavy metric discussion here because we're throwing around a lot of acronyms right now. How did you get your start in this rollout? You said that you had experience in the airplane industry and then also in the software industry. How did you get to be so passionate about this and kind of digging in as deep as you do? Ben: Yeah well I guess one that you really loved forecasting and financial forecasting though in Excel models and you kind of build-up that tool kit over time and just really enjoy it really understanding the economics of businesses and especially software is so interesting and yeah I did start in the airlines which is also kind of metric intensive and very financially disciplined and I kind of applied that to the SaaS areas. So I just noticed out there a lot of resources on SaaS but it didn't quite I felt go far enough or really just give you the whole story and the template that they were using it kind explained it but then you might have to go do an hour or two of work to recreate what that person did. And so I said; I thought you could be a little different by just providing the exact models, the templates that I'm using and hopefully the bits and pieces of those would be applicable to some people in SaaS that they could incorporate into their business and I received great feedback from readers, subscribers downloading templates that it's helped them out a lot, founders that are trying to do their first forecast. So I just wanted that kind of transparent value exchange out there and it's just really from my kind of on the job experience as a SaaS CFO and just things I encounter every day that are pain points for me that could be pain points for others and just help them out with maybe something with a template that I've used to solve some of those problems. Mark: Yeah you have all these comments on the site from people who have written into about the resources and I love the one here that says great resources that save a lot of time and brain damage to replicate. It's very true. Again there's a really good stuff on here. You brought up forecasting again so I'm going to start to bring this full circle here back to forecasting because we talked about that and it's a topic that I'm personally very interested in as well right now. You have a whole page here on the cash runway model. Can you explain that at a high level and maybe we can get into it a little bit? Ben: Yeah definitely because I have my financial plan out there that I live in Excel every day that I kind of take it for granted that other people can also open up Excel or just dive right in and for a lot of people it's still a little too advanced so with kind of that you could say advanced side of financial planning model. So I tried to create something very basic and it is really inspired by a founder I talked to who said that he got some funding just with a super basic cash forecast. So I thought well how could I take that and just make it super simple say for founders and non-excel people to just start inputting even it really gets to their cash invoicing. So they really could forecast their cash balance and how long that balance is going to last. If they funded it and then they're looking for investments that they could say hey here's my cash invoicing coming up, here's my headcount, here are some other metrics; that major expenses and then just forecast their cash balance in one tab. So that was the genesis of it just trying to really boil down to really something basic that founders and again non-excel people could hopefully use right away. Mark: Yeah. And you have this template available on the site. And you didn't actually answer it's kind of the question I was going to lead into and that is how does somebody get started with forecasting if they don't have the resources for a CFO like yourself what are some basic models that they can put together to start forecasting their cash flow? Ben: Yeah, definitely. I think really it's understanding their invoicing patterns; so what is your cash coming in whether that's funding or just the invoices you're sending out to your customers or their credit card payments they're making online line through your site. So that's really the first step. It's just that cash in. And then it's going to be headcount. Again headcounts the majority of expense for SaaS company so really and I'm quite informal as to how do we easily calculate and forecast that expense. So whether you've got one person 850 cut that into model, forecast that expense out. So the second thing again is headcount. And then any other major expenses, maybe it's rent, maybe it's tradeshow, advertisements, so it's kind of that 80-20 rule start with those big expenses; start with the big invoices as a place to start to put together kind of a basic forecast. Mark: Right then as with all things you can refine that as you go along and improve it and make it more accurate and you can look back to see how accurate was our forecasting and get the insights that you need from there and be able to really plan out what's going on or if you're looking for funding obviously very useful for that as well. This has been really interesting and maybe a little bit of a scattered conversation because I want to talk about everything at once. That's my downfall. I've never really claimed to be the greatest podcast host in the world but there is just so much here to be able to discuss. We are up against the clock at this point though and so I want to give you the chance to kind of round it out and with what you do you obviously have a passion for a lot of this in you being able to help out a lot of people. What are some of the common problems or common questions that you get at the blog and what would you say to SaaS founders currently operating a business right now or those that might be looking to get into this through acquisition? Ben: Yeah I mean the kind of questions or problems that I see really one is just how do you calculate this stuff, how do you calculate these metrics, what are the inputs? And that really comes back to just a nice clean P&L that you take the time; make that investment through your bookkeeper or accountant to really set up a well-organized P&L because that's where all the metrics emanate from. And if you don't have that it's going to be really hard to calculate the metrics and really have that financial transparency to manage your business. So really again it starts with what's your SaaS P&L and I try post on there on my site kind of walking through from bookings down to income; what the major components of the SaaS P&L are and again it's getting good organization and good fundamentals there and then you can build upon it then you can start forecasting then you can calculate metrics. So again it starts with I think a nicely organized SaaS P&L. Mark: You know I had Babak Azad who was with Beach Body; he grew that company into a billion-dollar company and he was talking a lot about the metrics that they use there and I asked him a similar question about how do you get started; how can you start tracking this and his response was just what yours is and that is just start; you just have to start with it right. And your advice to start with a P&L and having that set up correctly. It's what we've been preaching here at Quiet Light Brokerage for a very, very long time. Get those books in order. You want to have those books in order. It doesn't matter if you want to sell or not. As a business owner having good financial records it's irreplaceable. Once you get it you will be so happy that you've had it. But it starts with how you're inputting it. I've run into bookkeepers; maybe you have as well but I run into bookkeepers especially when somebody hires them remotely who kind of don't want to do an accrual basis books because they consider it to be more difficult but it's the proper way to do it and as you said all the metrics derive from there. Alright, one last time Ben where can people find you? What's the best way to contact you? Ben: Sure you can contact me through my site. It's the SaaSCFO.com and then actually later this month I'm launching the SaaS Academy.com. It's an online digital course for SaaS metrics and more so that's coming out soon as well. But definitely my blog you can contact me through to the site. Mark: That's fantastic. Thanks so much for coming on. I hope to have you on in the future. In the future, I'll choose one topic and I'll stick on that for the entire topic but thank you so much for this really good overview episode. I really appreciate it. Ben: Alright thanks, Mark. Thanks for having me.     Links and Resources: Ben's Blog The SaaS CFO Ben's Blog post: The ROSE Metric Ben's Software Recommendations David Newell SaaS Webinar

The Quiet Light Podcast
How Happy Feet Became a Shark Tank Success

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 23, 2019 35:48


Can a plush slipper put you in a happier mood? Today's guest and Shark Tank dealmaker have been banking on that since buying the existing Happy Feet business in 2002. He is with us today talking about the wild ride that his kiosk, retail, and e-commerce business has been on with a single brand that now has licensing agreements with the likes of Disney, Marvel, and the NFL. Pat Yates is another serial entrepreneur and e-commerce success story. Pat has the broadest experience in physical product of almost anyone we've talked with here at Quiet Light. From his early start in a retail golf shop, to selling coffee out of a truck in a one-man distribution venture, on to kiosk retail with Happy Feet which now has a booming e-commerce presence, Pat has done it all. He walks us through the Shark Tank process, the deal he struck, the risks he took in his first licensing deal with a celebrity face, and how he managed the rapid growth and cash flow challenges his business faced. Episode Highlights: When the website for Happy Feet went live and Pat's vision to merge kiosk to e-commerce. The Snooki Story and how he took a chance on licensing for the first time when no one around him thought it was a good idea. His decision to apply to be on Shark Tank, the process he went through, and what his appearance did for the growth of his business. Rapid growth cash-flow challenges and how Pat overcame them. The importance of having good people around when growing. Ways to scale and grow creatively for success. Mistakes Pat made or was perceived as making in scaling the business. How kiosk business works and Pat's thoughts on the current kiosk climate. Pat's advice for those beginning as entrepreneurs and his key tips to being prepared to succeed. Transcription Mark: Joe, Pat Yates is somebody that has been a friend of Quiet Light Brokerage for a long time and might have one of the broadest experiences in the world of physical products of people that I know. He sold everything from licensing products on retail, a whole kiosk business, e-commerce, and he was also on Shark Tank and you finally had him on the podcast where he can talk about some of the experiences that he's had and what it's like to grow a business that's as popular as Happy Feet. Joe: Yeah I know. Over the last six or seven years I've probably talked to maybe a dozen people that have been on Shark Tank and Pat I think has had probably the most success. He got a deal with Robert. He talks about the process, the presentation, preparing for it, a little bit … he goes back into how he started in Happy Feet in malls, in kiosks; really his father bought the business and he tells some great stories about Jersey Shore and meeting Snooki and how he took a risk and did a licensing deal with her. And then really talks about the success after Shark Tank and how to manage cash flows. And then we dipped a little bit into the back side of it because I was at a Blue Ribbon Mastermind last summer and somebody that has e-commerce product talked to somebody that does retail up on stage and whether they should try mall kiosks and things of that nature. And because Pat has a great deal of experience there we talked about that a little bit at the end in terms of how to go from e-commerce to retail and whether he thought the kiosk business was a good option. Mark: I know every time I walked through a mall … a few years ago when I was walking through a mall I'd always come across one of his kiosks and his giant stuffed slippers which is what Happy Feet is right? Joe: Yeah. Mark: They're these ridiculously oversized slippers and they're super fun and I know people bought them for Christmas presents and everything else. So I've always been fascinated with what he's doing. I do have to ask you real quick just changing topics, do you have any idea what the movie quote was on today's intro? Joe: Not at all. No idea whatsoever so if anybody knows what it is rewind, listen to it again, put it down in the show notes, we'll give you a shout out and a thanks in the next episode. Mark: All right why don't we get to Pat and listen to what he has to say about growing an e-commerce business and also the chaos side of things too. Joe: Hey folks it's Joe from Quiet Light Brokerage and today I've got a Shark Tank alumni and we've had some on the past before but this one actually got a deal and has a great deal of entrepreneurial experience; Pat Yates from Happy Feet. Pat welcome to the podcast. Pat: I appreciate you having me on and I'm looking forward to it. Joe: Good man, all right so we don't do big introductions here. We want to hear a little bit of background on your story. Tell us about your entrepreneurial life, how you got started, and where you are today. Pat: Well it's kind of funny. I started my first business pretty much directly out of college. I was actually working for a gentleman in a … when I got to college I started working in a retail golf shop. It's where I've worked in summers and they put me on as the manager in that location which sounded like a really important job at the time. When I got at a college I thought I was going to change the retail golf industry. But in an event when I was working there I had an opportunity through one of the customers I had to get involved in a business in Columbus, Ohio and I lived in Louisville, Kentucky at the time and he basically told me about it and I decided right on the spot to buy into this franchise deal that he had for a coffee company in Columbus. I went home and my wife of three or four months I told her we were moving to Columbus and she'd never been there. So it was kind of an interesting conversation. My first ever business was basically a one man, one truck. I would get up in the morning and I would sell coffee accounts to restaurants and offices and put in vending and just go out and hump it and it was me and that was it. I did everything. Joe: Let me interrupt for just a sec for just a sec for those husbands out there that are newlyweds and still within that first year of that honeymoon, are you still married to the same woman and do you have children now? She actually wanted to go on it? Pat: Amazingly it'd be 29 years this June and yeah [inaudible 00:04:57.3]. So yeah I was pretty lucky and she just had an interesting ride. You should have her on the podcast to talk about me. That would be probably better. But yeah we started … I started that business and 2 ½ years later I sold it back to the company that was a long … it was a long story about a father and son in federal court over their ownership and it was out in the press and we sold ours back. We had a contract. It was exciting. I moved out to Tennessee and started my own company. I basically have a 200 mile non-compete and I looked at the map 200 miles away and my mom lived in Nashville; I've lived in Nashville. We moved over there and started the same kind of company right after I sold it. So at that point, I started working a little bit also in the winner's pawn specialty retail so I would use carts and kiosks for a couple of months and make extra income whilst I was building that company and that's what led me to e-commerce which led me to Happy Feet. So the short synopsis is my father and his wife are trying to work and sell on kiosk too and they were trying to find products. So when they went to a trade show in Atlanta, the Atlanta Gift Mart one time and ran across a guy who had these slippers and he had a patent on them and designed them and he really wasn't selling any so they agreed to buy a container of them. A small container of 4,000 units and put them in a mall here in Louisville. They sold out that season really quickly. It was a great beginning and then we went out and started sending … giving off 24 people to get kiosks across the country. And in 2002 I bought it out from my family and started going in a little different direction, a trajectory on retail that aren't kiosks that turned out to be really big but then really catastrophic with relation to the growth pattern and then started to concentrate more on e-commerce. And that's obviously led me to a Snooki deal which I'm sure you're probably going to end up asking about which is the funny part of the conversation typically. And then it led me to Shark Tank and it has led us to every late night show, morning show, TV show you can imagine. So the press around the company was incredible and obviously, I'm still here doing it basically 20 years later. Joe: That's an incredible story. So if you're focusing specifically on the e-commerce side of it when did you first open up the first web site for Happy Feet? Pat: Well the first one was actually opened up by my dad when they had the business in 1988. They were … they started in doing very little stuff. I mean I'm talking like we packed two orders in the basement one day. Joe: How much [crosstalk 00:07:08.6] 1998 is a lot of having, I think my first site was 50 bucks probably 1998. Pat: I could guarantee that my dad would not have spent $50 on a website. So I don't know how much he spent but it probably was somewhere south of $50. They really weren't doing anything. I think when I bought the company they were doing $22,000 in web sales. They just … it hadn't translated but what happened was I had a little different vision. And my vision was that if I can get it out to people in kiosks and grow that funnel sale it would get the brand recognized by people and then they would continue to buy it online. And since our business was seasonal, two months a year they were coming to me. Two months a year they were going to the kiosks. So if the kiosks can say osh kosh wherever or from like Milwaukee, Wisconsin closed down and someone went back to buy and they didn't have them they see the name on the back of the slipper and all it did was that distribution funnel continued to grow. So my thing was to try to get it to a lot of places for me to market very quickly and try to build the e-com via that. And we went from 22,000 to about 100,000 to about 400 and we capped a million and now we're well over three million and it just shows no signs of slowing down. It's a fun product. Joe: You know the way that you went about it is actually hard work and hustle. And that hard work and hustle got you in the right place at the right time which is not necessarily luck. It's because of the hard work and hustle but being at that trade show in Georgia where your dad was and meeting these folks and taking the risk in buying that half container load so good for you. But then there's a lot of work to do since then. And as we've talked and I've had a lot of people on the podcast and what I've experienced over the last seven years in the brokering side of it is that everybody has problems with cash flows. So I want to talk about that with you. I want to … first I want to hear the Snooki story and I want to hear a little bit of the Shark Tank experience but then I want to talk about how you've solved the problem of cash flow with a company that is growing so rapidly because everybody that's in the first 12 to 36 months of a business that's growing rapidly faces that challenge especially with the Amazon growth these days. But talk to us about the Snooki story did she just happened to have— Pat: Well it's kind of interesting. It's actually my most fun story of all these and actually from many standpoints; number one from a standpoint of growth, second of all from a standpoint of trusting my judgment. I've had done many podcasts before and I've talked to a lot of people about the biggest thing with me is if I always trusted my judgment on what I first had an inclination on I typically had success. Now it's not always that way. Not everybody gets it right the first time but the 80-20 every time I trusted myself it was good. Every time I didn't trust myself it was the same 80-20 but the 80-20 was the other direction. Well, I'm sitting in my house one night and this is 2009 maybe. I'm guessing. I have to go back and look. But my son comes into my bedroom and I've said this many times so I'm sure people have heard it and he said dad your slippers are on Jersey Shore. Snooki is wearing your slippers on Jersey Shore. I said I only have two questions: who's Snooki and what the hell is Jersey Shore? I really had no idea. I had no idea what it was. I've heard of the show but I didn't pay any attention to it and this was the second season on Miami so [inaudible 00:10:13.8] rewind it and I look and she's bent down cleaning something up with our pink slippers on. It turns out she was just a fan of the product. She bought them and took them down there and thought it'd be cool to wear in the house. So we get all these emails and orders immediately as soon as it starts hitting the air. And we sold out of those pink slippers in like three days. So at that point, I knew I had something. So I being a ford motion guy; that's one of the words I use a lot being a ford motion guy, I picked up the phone and I called her agent and it turns out one of the guys is selling license agreements for her because they figured they could capitalize on her fame at the time. It was in Chicago so I got my car and I drove to Chicago four hours the very next day and I sat down and had dinner with her agent and we offered her a license agreement to design her own slippers. I can tell you that there was not one person including my current partner at that time that wanted me to do it. Every person said this will be a complete travesty. Why in the world would you put her in front of your product? I said well there are several reasons: number one, I saw what it did when we got the press and second of all you can always deal with those things. I mean there's no bad press. What you want to do is get it out there. So to make the long story short we sound this license agreement, we launched our product. Her leopard slippers is still probably all-time the greatest selling product we've ever had. The first time she tweeted out about it with only a million followers she crashed our site. So we got to learn really quickly how we needed to scale. Joe: Wow. Pat: Then she took us to trade shows. We went … she was on Jimmy Fallon playing slipper golf which is one of the coolest. If you ever get the chance you can Google it. It was really fun. I was there for it in New York. We were on Good Morning America, on the Today show, so all that stuff came from it and it turned out it was one of the best decisions I've ever made because of the way that it helped to get the notoriety around the product. And I just trusted my judgment because not one person really believed it was ever going to be something good for us. And it was exciting and since then I'm still in touch with her regularly and her management. We still do a lot of things together. So it's been a great relationship for eight or nine years now. Joe: Wow that's fantastic. A fun story too. Is there any chance of Jersey Shore coming back on the air? Have you got any inside information? Pat: They did a rewind this year but I don't know how it did. I know that she has got some other things she's working on so she's always … I mean the thing is people just … really it's amazing in our society how people sort of make quick determinations on small snippets of someone. She's actually a really sweet girl. Some people look at her and think she's this hard core partier; she really isn't. When we were in Vegas is a great example, we went out … everything she gets she gets for free. We went to a restaurant, she took a picture for Instagram, probably a $7,000 bill and with all these people. We went up to this nightclub and it was roped off area, bottles, service, everything she wanted for free. Her life at that time was just immeasurable with relation to the benefits and things she got. But what we ended up finding out was is that she was just this really calm, young girl. We went out to dinner and out to a club and she never had a drink. It wasn't the Snooki they sell on Jersey Shore; it was Nicole Polizzi which is her name. She's an adopted girl from Colombia and she has a great family and she does … she has great young kids now. She's actually a tremendous person. That's the one thing people would really be surprised at next door. Joe: I believe it. Well, I know that you got connected with Quiet Light back in 2010, 2011 or '12. I know you had some conversations with Mark about doing a valuation for Happy Feet. And as Mark often did he probably gave you some good information and suggested you go and fix that or if you want X amount of money you got to build the business more. Not high pressure at all he did the same for me in 2000. I forgot, no it was 2010, maybe we called him about the same time. But at some point, you said okay this Shark Tank thing looks interesting I'm going to give it a go. Can you talk about your decision to apply to Shark Tank, what it was like being on the show, and what it's done for Happy Feet since? Pat: Well I applied on season two originally and it was … I mean if people hadn't done the Shark Tank applications, it's like 50 or 60 pages of disclosures. It's all handwritten. You can't type it. It's so non-technical, you can imagine. And I got turned down that first year. I went to the interview process. We submitted videos and got turned down and I hadn't really thought much of it after that. I watched the show and I was a fan but I remember it they were getting ready to finish casting for season five and I get a phone call. And believe it or not I was actually on a golf course and I picked up the phone and they said look we'd like to revisit your application. We're scaling so fast. We're doing so many new things. We'd like to revisit it would you want to resubmit this application? I said well it took me days to be able to do the application and videos and stuff and I said like okay if you feel like there might be some fruit from it let me know. So I resubmitted the application, did the videos, it comes right down to the end. This is like in September of 2013 they called and said Pat look we have four or five slots left and about 18 or 20 companies where we got it narrowed down to. We want to tape so what we're going to do is we're going to bring you out to LA and we're going to let you tape in front of the producers. If they like you they'll keep you if they don't they'll send you home. And I'm like alright. So I flew out to LA and actually it's interesting because Snooki was sort of involved in this in a pseudo way. I went out and I taped my test and I went that night to Dancing with the Stars and I sat with her family and her agent at Dancing with the Stars live which was really cool by the way and [inaudible 00:15:25.0] I was done I got a call and they said look we're going to tape you tomorrow so be ready. We're keeping you, we are going to go ahead and tape it. So we taped in September of 2013. It aired in April of 2014. And I was also told that probably 30% of people they tape don't get on air. I've heard the number is less than that but there was no guarantee I was even going to get on TV. And then in April of 2014 obviously it aired and it was an exciting episode. It did not go well for a long time in there. And the way that the production was set up and the way they showed it, it turned out to be what I think is one of the better endings and exciting. So it was a lot of fun and obviously, it was a real whirlwind and since then there's just been nothing but great things that have come from it. Joe: Well you got a deal from it. You're one of the first guys I've ever talked to that's gotten a deal from it. I've probably had conversations with five or six people over the last three years that had been on Shark Tank but you got a deal. Actually, I've got somebody else that got an offer but he didn't accept it which in hindsight he should have. But what was the whirlwind part? You were there for a long time it didn't go the way that you wanted it to but you did end up with a deal, how did it go? Pat: Well you're in there … I'm just going to estimate, I'm going to say I was in there probably an hour and ten to an hour and 20 roughly. You get no break rights. There is no break. If you have to go to the bathroom or you have to get a drink forget about it. You're standing on your spot and you're answering questions and they're grilling you. And probably for the first 15 minutes to an hour, it just wasn't going well. Barbara didn't like me which most women don't like me when they meet me the first time. Then I don't know how it went, then Robert— Joe: We'll do another podcast on that and again we'll have your wife on in that podcast. Pat: Anyway it just … everything seemed to be going negatively and then I got an offer from Kevin which was one of his royalty deals which wasn't going to help me. And then Lori I really thought was going to do something then she hitched her wagon to Kevin which was really tough for me because I did not want to deal with that royalty agreement and that was really all I had on the table. And then about an hour and five minutes in I decided because Mark had made comments I asked him if I could tell him a story versus you know asking him. And I talk about my mom who had passed away and I talked about my passion as an entrepreneur and how this is a single product and some people don't do that as a company but I was going to get up every day to make sure it grew. And he made a quick comment which I'm glad they didn't cut out and he said you're the real deal and you have a great business but it isn't a fit for me. At the time I wasn't sure why I mean obviously he has an NBA franchise, we had NBA licensing, I don't know if that got anything to do with it or he just didn't want that kind of product. But either way what happened was it changed more of them because at the end of the day Mark controls more money than most of those people put together. And you're in a situation where if he is saying something like that it makes people view it different. And I think my plea is exactly who I was as an entrepreneur; passion, excitement, and getting people engaged where they feel excited about what they're going to do. Then all of a sudden Robert came back in and made an offer and then Lori and those guys wanted to counter. I gave him a maximum we wanted and understand we only took at our web addition we weren't a consolidated company with relation to wholesale and then all of a sudden Robert said I'll take that deal and I wasn't going to hesitate. I didn't even allow Lori and Kevin to react to it. I just said done and it was over. And the deal changed after the fact. It wasn't exactly the same on the show. It really wasn't anything near that. Joe: There's lots of due diligence after you shake the hand I assume. A lot of verification and it takes process. Pat: For us, it wasn't even that. Robert and I talked and he said you told me you didn't necessarily need the money and he says why do you want to do this? Well I said, first of all, I could use some money but it isn't that important now but I really need the connections and I'd like you to help me grow this company. That's really what I wanted. He said look let's just do a small deal without the money. If you need something in the future I'll try to help you but I want you to work with my Shark Tank group. We signed a deal and we've been working with him ever since. And they're fantastic. They have a Shark Tank division that's run by a really dynamic young lady and she's really good and anytime I need him I can get him. I talk to Robert occasionally. I was in his office four to six months ago before the launch of the Disney line and we went over some stuff but he's just a great guy and it's a great group of people. And honestly, I'm happy it didn't close at what it was before because it would have changed for both of us. There had been a lot more expectations on both sides and other than that Robert has helped me with anything I need from soup to nuts with business including we have so much press. Obviously, it led us to DreamWorks it led us to basically every license we want in the United States and the world for that matter. So it's really a blessing for me and it was exciting, it was stressful, it was fun, it was really scary to watch because I couldn't see the episode. I wasn't allowed to see it. I had to watch it like everyone else. And I swear to goodness I had no idea how it was going to look. And I honestly [inaudible 00:20:12.4] and I don't really get nervous. I've played basketball in a small college, in high school and I've been an athlete. I'm a very competent high playing individual but that one I was sitting there to win. I just don't know how this is going to look. But it was great. And then the one interesting thing that most people don't realize they will usher you off to an airport immediately. As soon as you get off sound stage they take you out of the sound stage into another stage. You do your post interview. They have to sit with a counselor which is required for an hour because they're afraid that some people would be suicidal. So you'll sit with a counsel when they feel like you're in good shape to leave they walk you out the door. This is not a joke. They put you in a van. They drive you to a hotel. You should have your bags packed and they will not put anyone that takes in the same hotel. They don't want you talking. We were originally in the same hotel before we pitched and afterwards they spread you out and then you fly back the very next day. So it was a real whirlwind and it was exciting but it was stressful. But everything that's come out of it has just been fantastic and it made for good television. Joe: Okay I just have to comment on the counselor part and then we'll move on to your growth and then the cash flow challenges that everybody in the audience that's an entrepreneur faces, but does Mr. Wonderful have to pay for the majority of the counselor because he says you're dead to me more than anyone else? Pat: Probably Barbara would be. She has I don't know … it was … again that part was a little odd for me. I didn't know they were going to do that but then they just bring it on me. So I'm like no, I'm in a great mood what do we need to do to get out of here now? They make you stay for an hour. Joe: That's fascinating. Alright so how did it turn out and what kind of growth have you seen since 2014? And then we'll talk about how you dealt with that in terms of financial cash flow challenges. Pat: Yeah I mean we jumped up 40 to 50% over the period of time from where we were in the baseline during at the time. It led us to get passed by DreamWorks to do a license which at the time was a very good thing but it was my first foray into a big license and it was a little challenging. You couple the fact that they were sold in the middle of it in DC universal which became very difficult because they were moving those assets in and they get people assigned, people to work with me. So the DreamWorks thing was an interesting lesson in licensing and how implemented and I didn't do a great job at it but it was a good license and now obviously we're working with Disney and Marvel and all those things came from Shark Tank so it's a great thing for us. Joe: So when it comes to a business that's growing rapidly as many of the folks that I talked to on a regular basis are dealing with a lot of the physical product e-commerce businesses that we're selling, actually I'd say the majority of them are probably less than three years old. And the reason that I see that people exit, you know buyers always say well it's so great why are you selling? It's because for that three year period they're hardly taking any money out of the business. They bootstrapped it, they put it together, and then every penny that comes from the revenue of the business goes back into buying more inventory and trying to stay ahead of it and not have stock outs. What have you done in your business to overcome some of those challenges and what advice can you give to entrepreneurs that are eventually going to be in your position? Pat: Some of it is … there's an easy answer and there's difficult answers. So the easy answer is I think anytime that you're facing cash challenges you should address that either one of two ways. Obviously, they jump off the paper to anyone. Obviously, there's banking that you get involved in but I believe that is really important to find someone who can add value to your company if you decide to do a strategic partner. Some people believe don't believe in partners but if you can find the right strategic partner that not only gives you a leg up in some of the systems and other things that you're going to encounter as you grow but also can help in the financial thing that's premium. What I did as we started to try to grow it is I partnered with someone that could afford to help scale that growth and make sure that we had a position to where we would have the product. But I also started to get creative with vendor relationships. For instance, there's a manufacturer that I work with on licenses that is one of the biggest manufacturers of plush in the country if not the biggest. And I went to them because their margins were really low when we talked about and I said what if we could raise your margins by you going ahead and using your scale and your manufacturing abilities. You send the product in, we have the ability to pay for it as we sell it almost like a consignment deal but we can help you develop a division where your margins grow if it's not capitally intense then it would make sense for both parties. So what I tried to do is be very passionate with people I could put around me in vendor partnerships to try to get them to help me with the initial product I needed to do anything. We developed a brand new credit slipper called zlipperz; Z-L-I-P-P-E-R-Z. That was a collaboration with a company on being able to develop the actual design and to make the product and then we didn't have to put a lot of money on the pocket because we're putting a lot into the system side. I think you just have to talk to everyone you can possibly think of. It doesn't have to be an investor, it doesn't have to be a bank, it could sometimes be your vendors, it could sometimes be family, it could sometimes be a warehousing and distribution company. I mean I almost … I talked to a warehouse and distribution company one time and said look if you could bring your distribution to us we'll help invest in some of the product and we'll mark that back up to be able to help get the distribution business. So there's a lot of ways that people can scale businesses if you put the right people around you. And I think you just have to be willing to have those conversations and think creatively on how to grow your business. Joe: I think you're absolutely right. The more I've talked to different entrepreneurs in this situation it's being likable and it's working hard and it's getting lucky back to the reason you are in the business here and now. And again I don't mean to make light of being lucky because it only came from your hard work and dedication and being willing to take some risks by hopping in a car and drive four hours to Chicago just to meet with the agent of Snooki when you didn't really know. You didn't know what she was all about. So you got to do those things. Well, we had people on the podcast that sort of break the mold in terms of being able to buy internet based businesses because they use local banks because they've built relationships with them. They go and they talk to them, they shake their hands, they see them face to face, and they instill confidence in the bankers, other types of lenders, investors, family funds, family members, warehouse owners, shippers, whatever it might be their goal is to stay in business and to grow. And if you can do what you're talking about and make it mutually beneficial then they're going to help your business grow as well. We do that every day. It's not just brokering and trying to sell a business for the absolute maximum price, it's trying to achieve the goal of the seller. Sometimes they're trying to get it sold very quickly with a better set up and transaction. Maybe all cash close in 30 days other times they want to max it out. They're willing to take a small note on something and hold the business and deal with that emotional stuff you go through for a little longer in order to reach the goal. So I like the fact that you're talking about bringing in other people and talking to as many people as possible to make something mutually beneficial. Well, what would you say has been the biggest challenge and maybe the biggest mistake you've had to have made in terms of finances in cash flow and things of that nature? Just pull on out of your hat to— Pat: Well it's interesting because I can tell you I've made hundreds of mistakes but as I've talked about before there's … let's just say there's a hundred there's less than three that I would regret because the other 97 led me to something that is always better for business. So I'll give you a great example when I was growing the kiosk business my father and his wife Sharon who started it basically had … I don't think they had more than 25 kiosks at one point in any seasons which is still a lot if you're talking season November, December. When I bought it and started doing distribution I changed it up. I brought them into the warehouse because they use to sell only containers. They bring them in to container loads, they bring them in to Seattle or LA Portland and they'd send it to customers. They never touched a product. They didn't have a warehouse; didn't touch it. It was basically just an order company. It's like an FOB order. What I decided to do was get a warehouse and bring the product in, get the warehouse to scale, put people in there, break the containers and ship whatever they needed. So if they didn't get in the 4,000 or 8,000 pair of containers I could still sell. So we went from 30 to about 300 kiosks in about four or five years. So we were one of the bigger kiosk programs seasonally in the United States. We had them from every state. You know I had one guy that ran 20 of them. So what I couldn't see at that time were two things: one, how good that would be and two, how catastrophic it would be. And it's interesting that they're both. And the reason they were both is I started to get so much product and we were so seasonal that I was taking chances on buying product in case we added a few kiosks late or someone needed more or whatever and that was just that all that was doing was rolling the dice and eventually figuring out what year it was going to come up craps. That you ended up a year where you had a million dollars in products sitting on the floor for nine months to a year that you didn't have money to pay for. So I was sort of in a position to where I was betting on to come a little bit more than I needed to be with the kiosk business so it became catastrophic with relation to cash flow. And I ended up having to partner with someone to be able to make sure that I could hedge it and grow. But at the same time, it was the biggest blessing I did because as we put the slippers out there and our name and buy HappyFeet.com was on the back people learned about our brand and we started to build that same funnel I talked about. It's funny how my hands are always down here than they appear but— Joe: And if you had the video I can see that funnel, that visual that you're doing. Pat: I just let everybody know I move my hands we're not even on video. Anyway, my point in this is that it helped grow what we … the scope of the business. It looked bigger. It looked like a company. It looked like something you'd want to be involved with. So all these people started taking notice and we did NBA license, we did NCAA, we did NFL, we did all these different things and we really expanded the base of the product. And it's something that … you know the first container they bought was four styles in three sizes or four sizes, there were 16 SKUs and now we have over 5,000. Joe: Wow, incredible. Pat: So it was catastrophic to our cash flow because it nearly broke me and it should have and still trail the business for years after that because I made the decision. But it's hard to be upset about it because we were in a position to where we decided that we couldn't continue on that trajectory. So we cut the kiosk business back, we concentrated on the .com and what we found out was people were conditioned to buying a product and if the kiosk wasn't there that year they bought it from us for Christmas. So those leap years and those difficult things it's almost hard to be upset about it because it was almost like the lost that you would have taken or the aggravation tax. It was something that you really needed to be able to grow the company overall. So it's really hard to regret that. Every decision that I made that's been bad I always look at something and that thing could be better. The DreamWorks thing, I was terrible at it. I didn't understand any licenses but now I have learned some things about it that going into the Disney/Marvel deal that helps me really understand it better. So I don't regret a lot of those things. I just try to learn from them to get better and back to the point you talked about with relationship on scaling the cash, be passionate like I was. When I talked to people they get excited about building products, they're excited about doing businesses and doing all these things. If you go in and find people that have capital that don't operate businesses and you're passionate they'll put you in place to make you successful because at the end of the day that's what you're going to do for them. It's all going to come around and that's why I have to maneuver so I have to jump up every day and say I want to be passionate. Sometimes it's been hard for me to do that because it's tough but that's what I'm always trying to do. Joe: Yeah it can be exhausting for sure. Let me just pivot here, you've talked about kiosks a lot, it's what you know. You know very well. You're in the ecommerce world now and licensing and so on and so forth. I've been in a few events, Mastermind events where people have stood up and said hey what are your thoughts about me taking my brand and starting in the kiosk business and expanding in retail that way instead of a retail store? What are your quick thoughts on that for folks that are out there thinking of that now? Is it a pain in the ass? Is it worth it? Is it challenging? Is it too much, too late? What are your thoughts? Pat: Let's say … let me answer two ways: number one, for our product as big as it is and needing storage for a couple of months a year it's a very difficult sale. Because I think it's challenging, it's tough, it's a big investment, they want too much per square foot. I personally think that the kiosk and especially retail business is terrible. That's just my opinion. I just think retail, in general, is bad so when it falls down to that and what you see malls do is go away from branded products and good looking kiosks in the past to getting anything they can get in there. It's now like a flea market. So I really don't think it's a very good business unless malls turn around and change it. As far as retail goes you're making a huge commitment to what you're getting in front of customers. Right now I think it's very difficult to get in to retail and be able to scale. But if your product is small enough and you have the ability that you can get people to run them independently then yes I would not sign a lease all over the country as an independent company and then try to make it work for one hug and then have 25 or 30 locations. It's not a good business plan. I think some people have to go to retail. Luckily I'm right now knock on wood I'm not in that position to have to do that. It's not a tremendous business but it's not a bad place to start if you have to. Joe: Okay I got you. Alright Pat you've been an entrepreneur for 30 years, there a lot of folks out there that are just starting off on their entrepreneurial journey some of them are 20 years old, some of them are 50 years old and are quitting the corporate world any last minute advice for those that are just beginning that you can share? Pat: Yeah don't quit your job until you have a built business. I mean I talk to my sons, my sons don't work in my business because we know that I can … first of all, I need them to go and find their own way. And I want them to be able to go out and understand what it takes day to day to be able to work at this job and bride. If they were working for me then I know that they would get a little bit of a sense of complacency. But I tell them if you want to start a business start it while you have a job. Something that is not taking you away from a job, not like you're living and working for someone all day and then taking some of those money. See if you can make a run in whatever product or business you want to do, keep your income so you don't add that stress. There's a stress to starting a business you need to make sure you have an income. If you can figure out how to make that and navigate that as a new entrepreneur, then I think that you have an ability to have a good balance. Either way, you have to be ultra-excited about it and willing to do anything. I'll give you a great story and I know that some people may have heard some of the podcasts, I had a guy that was an entrepreneur here in Louisville that I work for at that golf shop and I told him I said I'm going to go start a business I think I'm going to leave this job is there any advice you can give me? And he said well you're moving from a meal ticket to a suit lot and understand that's not going to be easy. There're going to be days when you're going to worry if you can even have food on the table or whatever it's going to be and you're not going to have a fall back. You're not going to have that check coming on Friday and you better hope it shows up in the mail paying some of your receivables so you're not going to have anything. And it's stressful and some people look at the excitement of taking a product and taking it to market and say hey I can do this so I could really make this work but they don't understand the other intricacies to running a business and stress that comes with that. It's not easy so the biggest thing is just to make sure you're prepared for that. Number two, I'd like you to keep the job and then I would find some mentors to put around you. A board that is a pseudo-board; it may not have to be a board of directors, it's not that sophisticated but people that can help you understand and navigate the problems that you're going to go through. You're going to find them. Joe: Awesome, that's great advice. Pat Yates, HappyFeet.com thanks for coming on the show we'll talk to you soon. Pat: BuyHappyFeet, B-U-Y HappyFeet. Joe: There you go BuyHappyFeet.com I'm going to go buy some. Thanks, man. Pat: Thank you Joe. Links and Resources: Happy Feet Pat's LinkedIn Profile  

The Quiet Light Podcast
What to Do After the Exit

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 20, 2019 36:49


Selling a company is the entrepreneurs' dream goal, but what to do after the exit is daunting. Some sides say to stay away from building another business right away while others say it's important to keep a toe in the pool at all times. Today's episode is about what to do (or not do) after you sell your business. We discuss drive, purpose, and the type of work business owners want to do once they achieve financial freedom. Today's guest, Nate Ginsburg, dabbled in a variety of entrepreneurial ventures before he got into Amazon and FBA about 4 years ago. About a year into his business, he took in a partner and sold off about half of the company to him. In 2018, they sold the US side of the business to a Chinese investor. When he sold the business and made a hefty profit, Nate found himself questioning what he wanted to do next. Today we get into the many ways he is fulfilling his need to always be doing something, both personally and professionally. Episode Highlights: The history of Nate's entrepreneurial journey. The trajectory of his Amazon FBA business and how the sale came about. How Nate and his partner structured the relatively atypical sale. Nate's motivation for selling. The importance of free cash flow in a business. How Nate moved on from the sale to pursue new things. What brought about the new deals he's involved in and what's next for Nate. The importance of assembling the right team in moving your business forward. How the helping and connecting pieces of what Nate is doing these days can play into future deals. Focusing on the big picture in your business role – the recurring notion of working on your business rather than in your business. Transcription Joe: So you and I had a chance a few weeks ago to hang with Ryan Daniel Moran and talk to him a little bit. We had him on this podcast and one of the things that he talked about was what to do after you sell your business. He talked a little bit about planning in advance but his advice was take some time off; don't do anything business wise and that was his mistake looking back. You just had Nate Ginsburg on the podcast to talk about that very same thing if I am right … correct? Mark: Yeah that's right. So Nate has an interesting story. He sold his business last year; not through us. It wasn't through a broker. It was a deal that just kind of worked out on its own. But he found himself after that sale questioning what he wanted to do next. It was a lot of this … you're so used to all this hustle, hustle, hustle, and the next thing you know you're just kind of left there wondering what is my purpose? What do I enjoy? What I want to be doing next? And so he really went on kind of an almost spiritual journey here of really evaluating how does he want to spend his days, how does he want to spend his time. And he came to the conclusion that he really wants to be someone who shares in helping other entrepreneurs and then also doing some investing as well. So this episode has a lot of layers to it definitely talking a little bit about general entrepreneurship and that drive that we all have to do things and that hustle. But also what do you do when that drive kind of dries up or when you aren't having that in front of you or maybe you're hustling for all the wrong reasons. So that's definitely the topic in this but we also have this interesting wrinkle in here that he's bought two businesses since then. One of the businesses he didn't buy entirely. He bought just a portion of it and is more of an investor. And I know a lot of our buyers they ask us about that. Do you have deals where an owner wants to stay the yacht and he's successfully done this before on deals. We've talked a little bit about that as well. So a lot of different layers to this, if you like just general entrepreneurship discussion that's really where this kind of falls into of entrepreneurship drive, finding your true purpose in life and your work, and purposeful work, and then finally getting into some more creative deals when it comes to acquisitions. Joe: I think it's always great to hear people's stories and how they did it. It may not always directly relate to your life and what you're doing and what your goals are but you can always take bits and pieces of it and leave the rest behind. So let's go to it. Mark: Yeah absolutely. Let's go. Mark: Nate thank you so much for joining me. Nate: Thank you for having me. Hello from sunny Los Angeles. Mark: And now you're actually just up in my neck of the woods up here in Minnesota and normally I would tell anyone hey if you're up here in Minnesota up in the Twin Cities reach out. You did and I happen to not be here this past week so we missed each other. Nate: Yeah we missed each other but I'm glad to connect now. And yeah Minneapolis is my hometown. I was back … I was in New York for the summer and then attended Burning Man and then after Burning Man I went to Minneapolis to hang with the family and kind of decompress and now I'm on the road again in California and then making my way back towards Asia where I spend a good chunk of the winter. Mark: All right pretty cool. I've been following you on Facebook for a little bit now and I'm just kind of looking at some of your Facebook posts especially from your … I think you call it the summer of hustle 2018 New York City. And you talked in a few of your posts about your eagerness just to share some of this stuff that you're doing as an entrepreneur. And so I thought hey if you want to share we have an audience. Let's talk, let's start sharing. Nate: Yeah. Mark: I saw one of the images of you doing a photo shoot, a yoga photo shoot in the middle of the street. Nate: Yeah. I mean … so after I sold the business last year and you know after that I had a lot of these questions around like what to do next and what's important and what direction do I really want to be going in? And that's where some of this … it's got all these questions of what am I good at, what's my unique ability, all these kind of things and really trying to uncover and understand what I'm best at. How I can add value, what I enjoy, and yes some of the things that I've … I mean not that this is totally new or not like new information but just useful to kind of like specify or articulate is that I do … I really enjoy sharing, I enjoy teaching, I enjoy helping others. And so that's in part of the Facebook stuff of trying to share more and post more and connect and help and inspire. The yoga stuff I'm also really into yoga. I've been practicing pretty regularly for the last five or so years. And I was hanging out with a friend of mine in New York who … I mean she has an amazing personal brand and Instagram following of 400,000 people. And she was just kind of encouraging again like you should do this and in the trying to stay with pushing yourself to do things even if they're a little bit scary. Yeah, I ended up doing this photo shoot in New York. I got some cool pictures in front of the middle of the street doing head stands. It was a little bit scary but also fun and people seem to like it. Mark: It's pretty fun. It's fun to kind of troll around and take a look at what you've been doing in the past there and like you said pushing yourself which is always fun to talk to people that have been doing that. Let's back up a little bit, let's talk about selling your business last year. Was that the first business that you owned or how many businesses have your owned before you sold that business? Nate: Yeah so that's the first somewhat significant one I've … over the last six or whatever years I kind of dabbled in a variety of things. I have actually sold a few small content websites. This was years ago but nothing that significant. And then I got into that business which was e-commerce, Amazon FBA. I guess I got into it three years ago now or four years ago or something and yeah that was the biggest, I made the most money, built into the biggest operation. So then that was the I guess most notable sale but I guess actually though just kind of back up I've kind of sold that business twice. And what I mean is I started the business myself three or four years ago and then about a year in I took on an investor partner. My friend and now business partner Travis. So then I sold him 49% of that business which was I guess kind of that type of a sale and then a year later is when we had the opportunity to … again we didn't sell kind of the whole thing. We sold the USA distribution side which is actually the one that was making basically all the money. And so we sold that which was for just under a million which is kind of what I was kind of posting more or sharing about but then are actually still operating the EU side of that business which at the time that we sold wasn't at a place or wouldn't make sense to kind of include in the sale but now hopefully going into next year or maybe Q1 or Q2 next year hopefully we'll be looking to sell that remaining side. Mark: So how did that work as far as selling just a portion of that? I mean usually, you have these non-compete agreements in place. People typically want you out of the industry that you're in. So as the owner you know that business … that product really well. Usually, a buyer wants to take over the business and have room to expand and especially with Amazon, it seems like international expansion makes the most sense. So how did you guys … without getting into details you can't get into how did you structure that? And what was sort of the appeal of that? Nate: Sure. So it's a good question and yeah I guess I'd say our sale was somewhat not so typical and I guess there's a lot of different ways that sales wouldn't be typical but yeah ours was not … this wasn't like oh we want to … like oh, let's sell this business and let's put together a prospectus and let's contact brokers and contact the buyer. Ours was like … I mean I was catching up with my business partner Travis. I was in Vietnam. It was in the spring of last year. I'm catching up with Travis and so Travis had sold a couple of businesses himself to this big Chinese Amazon selling company and they have software and a big operation. And so Travis had sold some of his businesses to them before. And we were talking and catching up and he just kind of casually mentioned they might be interested in buying more businesses would you want to sell? And long story short I was interested. Three days later I was on a plane to China to meet with them to try to make out this … work out this deal. And yeah we ended up coming to an agreement for the USA side. And it's kind of interesting and I mean some of this is speculative. I mean I don't know some of these things for sure as to like what their motivations were but that business was rolled up or had some sort of a merger acquisition with a big publicly traded company shortly following their acquisition of my business or the USA side of my business. And so I think that they were just trying to acquire businesses to build up and show more revenue and sales for their … looking forward to their acquisition merger roll up whatever kind of thing. And so yeah that's … I mean again I don't know this for sure but that is kind of my theory or my why I think they were kind of interested which kind of explained the atypical nature and kind of structure of how it played out. Mark: That's fascinating; right place, right time, and right connections as well. What was your motivation? I mean when Travis came to you and said would you be interested in selling. Did you always plan to sell or was it kind of like he has you know like … it actually doesn't sound that bad or— Nate: Yeah. Mark: How… why the yes? Nate: So in my experience with e-commerce and especially with a lot of these Amazon FBA businesses … and this is also a motivation for why I sold half of the business to Travis previously and then selling this is like you can do some really impressive revenue numbers and profit numbers. And I say profit in quotes because your profit is generated or on the books it looks like revenue minus cost of goods minus expenses. And let's say we were selling a lot; 100,000 a month $150,000 a month and then our profit would just say 30% of that or something which is sizable but at the end of every month it's not like the bank account was going up by X thousand dollars each month. The money comes in it needs to go back out for more inventory or you're launching a new product and that comes out of pocket. And so when the business really started to take off our sales was growing but my bank account was still not growing like I wanted to. And I was … the reason I guess for those businesses was very financially motivated. Like I'm trying to run this business to fund my life and build some security into my finances. We were selling a lot of stuff and that's great and we had a lot of profit but it wasn't like the bank accounts were just kind of stacking. And so with a business like that my kind of thought is that where you really stack your bank account is from some sort of sale opportunity. And that's what happened when I sold the half of the business to Travis previously that brought in a bunch of money into my bank account and then again selling the half to the Chinese company got money into my bank account. And so yes so that was some of the motivation and yeah I think we just had a good opportunity. I mean there's a lot of opportunities certainly still there was and is selling on Amazon but there's also different risks and challenges and I thought that this was a good opportunity to take some more chips off the table and then parlay that as like another step up and step forward for my life career allow me to pursue newer and different and better opportunities. Mark: Yeah and I want to move on to some of that and sort of what happened after but I want to stop real quick and make a point because I think you make a really good point here. You said something that I think people need to keep in mind when you're looking at a P&L for any business for sale specifically an e-commerce business that's growing. The profit does not equal capital. It is not the same thing. So if you're looking at a business that is growing and has $150,000 of profit that's not necessarily the cash flow; it's not necessarily 150,000 in positive cash flow. That's a problem that we see a lot with people growing and when they get to a certain point the same reasons as what you faced you know you've been putting in the hustle, hustle, hustle, the business is growing, in some ways it would almost be nice if it leveled off because then you're not … you just aren't actually seeing or realize some of that profit as opposed to consistently reinvesting into the company. Nate: And just to kind of add on that I learned … so I had an opportunity to attend this really awesome entrepreneurship summer camp program put on by Simon Black and the guys at Sovereign Man and one of the … I mean I've learned a ton from them but one of the points that they hammered home which has really stuck with me is when you're looking at a business the importance of free cash flow and like free cash flow being really the only thing that is important; it's not revenue, it's not profit, it's free cash flow that's what's going to pay back to investors. That's what's going to actually go into your pocket. And yeah my Amazon businesses had horrible free cash flow and so having an opportunity to sell that and get the cash part of that motivation. And then also the focus on free cash flow has really been a big driver for the investments that I had ended up making since then. Mark: Alright we're going to get to those but I want to talk a little bit about the post-sale situation that you find yourself in. Because I tell people this all the time when they're selling especially their first business; the first thing that's really taken off and that's have a plan for after the sale. I know when I sold my first business my plan was look I did it once. I was young. I was like 25, 26, maybe a little bit older than that but it doesn't matter how old I was, I was pretty stupid because I looked at it and I'm like oh my gosh this is so easy. I tell people how to start businesses. I tell people how to make money and everyone goes off and does it. I was able to do it with this company and then at that first year I struggled. I couldn't find anything that was actually going to really take hold. I didn't know what I wanted to do. You had sort of the same situation, not necessarily struggling in finding a new business but kind of understanding purpose. Is that fair? Nate: Yeah I know definitely. I mean it's crazy the last year or so after selling that business. A lot of new opportunities and also challenges come up and you've had … it's like for a short while after the sale at least for me it's like ah like everything's great and you're just happy this happened. But then I guess pretty quickly after at least for me I can only … I mean I love yoga, I love being healthy and having a healthy lifestyle and that's great but you can only at least for me that's only a part of life. And after a period I just get really antsy if I'm not being productive working towards something and figuring out what that is, what's the next direction? In a lot of ways, it's like starting over. And so yeah, that was a lot of what kind of followed the sale and what I … so like I'm a people person. I love people. All the best things in my life and opportunities and friends and … it has all happened because of people that I know or had the opportunity to meet and connect with. And so what I tried to do or did is just meet and talk to as many people as possible. And that's been a big and still is like a driver of … I knew like okay well like I've got more time and I've got more money and I've got more kind of options and so I'm just going to try to meet and connect and talk with as many people as I can. So I went to a bunch of events. I was literally flying around the world meeting up with friends in different places and meeting new people and getting different perspectives. And yeah that was actually something that towards the end … so I sold the business in it was like May. Early May was when it was finalized. I got the money and then a lot of that summer I was flying around. I attended a couple of different events. And by the end of the summer, one of the things I kind of concluded was … it kind of like was a confidence in pursuing more investments. So I want to and can get involved as an investor and that's what kind of started this deep dive into just what does that even mean, what are the different structures, how can things be structured, where do you find deals, how do you make deals happen. And so that was … yeah, I guess from talking to and meeting a lot of these different people I was kind of able to realize that yes this is a direction that I want to go down. And also it's just like part of it is confidence of just okay yeah I can do this. I can add value. And yeah, I guess as a first time, investing in a business I don't know that was definitely something for me. I'm just kind of … you know the confidence of it no like you can do this. Mark: All right let's jump into that because I think that's going to be the heart of what we really want to talk about here as well and that is investing in companies. I mean so much of what we do at Quiet Light Brokerage is all about these asset deals. Or if somebody's selling they're selling 100% of the company, the business transaction closes, you got one buyer, you have one seller; nice, clean, simple. It sounds to me like you're doing something a little bit different than that though. You're investing in companies as opposed to buying a whole or maybe I shouldn't assume and let you explain a little bit of what you're doing. Nate: Yeah so it's … I guess it's ended up being kind of a combination of both. And I'm not … I think it has benefits of both and I kind of I guess in the two deals that I've done the last year have … one of them has been invested in and the other one has been bought outright. But in all of them I have partners. And so I invested with Travis who invested in me. We've invested in a business last winter and then also again with another partner we bought outright a business. I mean for me getting involved in a new business it's a lot of … a lot of this kind of came down to again what am I good at, what do I like, why am I doing this. And with the first business, I guess it's like a similar kind of a checklist of things of I want to get into a business where I can personally have an impact. I'm not looking to be a passive investor. I'm also definitely not looking to micromanage but I want to be able to help push the business forward and give my capital the biggest chance and boost of having a good return. And so by investing in a business which was like the first one my kind of role is I mean I have somewhat regular communication with the founder and we hop on calls whether it's every week or every other week and kind of help identify the priorities and make connections and make intros. And so that's something that I thought that I'd be able to have an impact while not … I didn't want to buy myself a job. And with any of these things that's not what I'm looking for. I'm happy to be involved and I want to be involved but I'm also not trying to buy myself a job. And then kind of with the more recent business that we bought outright really like part of the motivation and thinking behind getting involved with that business was that being really intentional about the role that I was going to play. And with that business, I knew I had people on my team from some of the other businesses in the e-com stuff that I knew that I could bring over to kind of plug in to handle some of these different parts of the business that I didn't want to or wouldn't be very suited to handle. And so even though we bought outright the business it wasn't like I was just stepping in myself to kind of operate it. And [inaudible 00:22:17.2] any of the businesses like what I … one of the ways I think that I can add the most value is by kind of assembling the team that is able to run it. And that's something even with the business that I invested in I've been pretty active or my team has been pretty active in hiring new people for the different roles as well as for the business that we actually bought that was really what my role has been is like getting the right people in place to manage their different … the things that they're better at than I am which then allows me to … I mean I'm more involved with that business than the one that we invested in because Brent is the operator of that and I'm still … I guess let's say like CEO but I'm not … my role is still more like finding the right people to do their job and helping them as opposed to me more like in the weeds in the operations. Mark: So it's with the business that you invested in. I have this question from buyers all the time you know do you have people who want to sell just a portion of their company? They're looking for sort of that role. Do you mind if I ask how you came across this deal? Was this through a broker or a—? Nate: Yeah so that one was through a broker. We bought it on Empire Flippers and was totally … it came out of nowhere honestly. So another rule that I've learned from investing or it's maybe the cardinal rule is like you make your money when you buy not when you sell. And one thing when I was kind of decided that I wanted to invest or buy a business and one of the first things that we started to do was look at all the brokerages. I was looking at yours as well as … just like trying to see what the deals look like. And one thing that we found is that the deals that are … generally, if you find them on a brokerage they're fairly valued and as would make sense. And not that I'm … I'm not trying to rip anybody off at all but as a buyer I'm looking for the opportunity to buy a good discount or get involved at a discount. Again you make your money when you buy not when you sell. And so that had kind of turned me to look elsewhere for investment opportunities which led to the first investment. And then my business partner Travis, this was a couple of months ago sent this listing. It's a cryptocurrency publishing website and it was selling at … I mean it was a relatively young site. It was only making money for six months or so which had the multiple low. It was selling at a 22X monthly … last six months monthly profit which I know for an average website business a 3X multiple is somewhat standard. So we were getting it at less than 2X multiple and so that got our attention. And this was listed and then I hopped on a call with the seller two days later and then there were other interested buyers so we just had to move fast and pull the trigger and bought it. So yeah that's what kind of happened with that one. It just kind of fell into our lap and we thought it was a good opportunity and had to act fast. Mark: Yeah I like the saying that you make money when you buy when you're investing, you don't make when you sell. That's absolutely right. For the seller that was looking to … that you just invested in was he actively looking for that or was it something that you suggested? Nate: Yeah so that one, so kind of back to what I was saying when I first got started interested in buying or investing in businesses the first place that we were looking was the easiest place to look; all these brokerages. And again there's a lot of great businesses and they're generally pretty fairly priced and then one of the things I realize is that if I wanted to get the best deals or getting things where I would have opportunities that were not to get into a bidding war with other people I had to find those deals myself. And so that's kind of what started then. I started like … and part of that all leading into sharing more and sharing my story and going on podcasts and just kind of being intentional to try to develop and build a personal brand so that … so I was doing some of these things last fall and that's what kind of got the conversation started with Brent and the Amazon advertising business that eventually led to us investing in it. So it wasn't … he wasn't looking for … looking to sell, looking for partners. It was like I was kind of starting to share this and we previously had a relationship. I don't remember exactly how it was brought up. Maybe it was just like hey, by the way, I/we might be interested in investing and partnering up and he was like yeah I would be interested in continuing that discussion with you and Travis to get involved and so that's what led to that. It wasn't … they certainly weren't actively seeking investment. It was more like we … yes, somehow the dots were able to connect with us kind of putting it out there and kind of starting that conversation. Mark: Yeah that's pretty cool. I know there are probably a lot of buyers out there listening and being slightly jealous that you were able to pull a deal like that off. What does the future hold for you are you going to continue to buy or are you looking for more opportunities to invest? Nate: Yeah definitely. I mean it's kind of … so it's come together a little bit in the last couple of months or so but I will say that I … well as a kind of a side tangent personally I got very sidetracked by crypto last winter as many people did and— Mark: Back when it was trading at high levels right? Nate: Right. I mean it was exciting and so when I sold the business last spring I dumped a pretty good chunk of that into bitcoin, ethereum. I was starting and that kind of got me into ICO's over the last summer which was early enough before the big run up in November-December that come December-January I was way up. Unfortunately, of course, I didn't cash out at the top but from that then I kind of like … I mean I was kind of going in this direction and I had made this investment in Brent's business and was generally enjoying that. I'm trying to put myself out there more and find more opportunities. And then this crypto stuff spiked and I kind of put everything on hold. I'm like alright I'm diving in here. I started going to events and flying all around trying to see what's going on. Then fast forward a couple of months and the market was not where it was in January and some of those same kind of questions came back up of like is this what I want to be doing? What do I want to be doing? What's important? And it was kind of again like revisiting a lot of these things in direction and what do I want to do. And then this new site became available so we kind of jumped on that. And then the last couple of months have been … I'm kind of happily busy working on that and it gives me stuff to do. And some of the stuff that I've learned is that I'm certainly happiest when I have a project. And it's not … I mean money is important obviously but it's not just about having as much money. And time is important but you don't want to have all the time. It's important. You want to have enough free time. I think balance is really important but also having the balance towards productive work and having a project that you can work on and make progress and connect with people and be excited about is a really … like I've realized is maybe the most important factor for just my personal happiness. Anyway so that site came around and I had the opportunity to get involved and I have been working on that and getting the people and pieces in place to keep that moving forward. And that's kind of solidified what I see as my direction of continuing to find … putting myself out there, sharing more, hopefully attracting new and better opportunities. And when the right opportunities come along and when I have the time and the interest and the right opportunity kind of all lines up get involved with a new business. So that's sort of where I mean I'm not sure if I'm quite there yet because there's still quite a bit working out with the crypto site but fast forward a couple of months the idea is to continue to share more, put myself out there, connect more, just really finding opportunities to connect with and help other entrepreneurs as priority. And then also if down the road whether that's in three months or six months or whatever when I'm looking to make the next investment to bring into the portfolio that also can put me in a position to be able to get access to good deal flow. And then I think the idea is getting involved with more and better businesses and bigger businesses going down the line while also kind of trimming or unloading different ones in the portfolio moving forward to just kind of have a better and especially now focusing on cash flow generating portfolio and moving forward. Mark: Cool. Yeah, the point of while connecting with other people I think people asked me a lot about the team that we built at Quiet Light Brokerage, where did I find some of these people that are working as brokers because as most of the listeners know everyone that works here at Quiet Light were all entrepreneurs. We've all started, we've all bought, and we've all sold our own internet based businesses. And frankly, the resume of my team completely drove some of the things I've ever done in my life. And I try to explain I've never actually actively recruited any of our guys or Amanda for that matter I'm sorry if I said just guys but the entire team. I haven't actively recruited anybody. And so the question comes to why, why do they do it? So much of it is exactly what you're talking about there; being able to connect. Finding that business where you're passionate about the business itself but also having the ability to connect with other intelligent entrepreneurs who share that same drive, that same desire for life and working in a project working towards and a goal; really, really cool. I think that's an interesting self-reflection that you've kind of come across over the past few years since you sold your last business that that's what you want to be doing. Have you thought about with the current businesses what you're going to do if they get to that point where now it's just another job? Nate: I mean … so I've kind of had … so something that I guess I gotten a lot of experience with and that I enjoy has always kind of been hiring in my businesses. And so I know many people kind of struggle with delegating and I think if anything I kind of error too much on the other side where if I ever catch myself doing something or I'm just like why am I doing this, it's just like as quickly as possible like who can I give this to? How can I find someone else to do this? And so because I'm very mindful and aware of … and increasingly so of what I spend my time on; is this my unique ability? Is this my superpower? Should I be doing this? Again also mindful of balance, like I'm not … there's a lot of things that I enjoy in my life and there's a lot of different pieces that I think contribute to having a good life. It's not just business and so if things are kind of starting to get too time consuming or heavily on the business side or if I find myself kind of doing some things that I don't think I like I think that even maybe a step before that kind of happening I would kind of be aware and look to delegate that to someone else on my team or find a way to change that situation. Because at this point in my life and career I want to work and I want to be productive but I want to do it in ways where I can have the biggest impact. And I know that there are certain activities where I can have a really big impact and it's just not like … and I also know that on the other side there are activities that don't have a big impact and so I'm just trying to focus on the big impact activities and the least amount on the lower ones. And so yeah I would I think maybe a step before it gets to the point where I'm doing all these things I don't want because I am quite mindful and intentionally thinking about these things I'd kind of like made a strategy or a plan to offload or get some of those things off my responsibility. Mark: Really cool. I love the whole purpose driven entrepreneurship that sort of outlook of things. Nate thanks so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. Nate: Yeah thanks for having. This is a lot of fun and yeah if anybody has questions, comments, ideas, wants to connect like I said I love people, I love connecting with people. Anything I can help with feel free to reach out. My website is nateginsburg.com or nate@nateginsburg.com. If you like inspiration and also yoga balance stuff feel free to check out my Instagram Nate Ginsburg. Yeah, I'm happy to connect and chat. Mark: And you also know quite a bit about Amazon marketing which is actually what we originally were going to talk about but I got sidetracked here but you know this amount about that. Nate: Yeah if anyone is looking or interested in the Amazon space I have a lot of experience there as well as a team with a lot of experience in those things. And yeah I'm broadly open to opportunities and chat. I'm always looking for win-wins and yeah I would love to connect and help if I can. Mark: Alright very good. Hey, thanks, Nate. Nate: Yeah thanks for having me. Links and Resources: Nate's Website Nate's Instagram SellerPlex.com

The Quiet Light Podcast
The Private Equity Process

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 12, 2019 45:55


Since 2013 Quiet Light's average transaction size has grown up to ten times. Back in those days, there were no private equity firms poking around the e-commerce space for these listings. Today it is a completely different story and more often than not we're seeing private equity firms come into the buyer spectrum. In fact, once a business reaches a certain size, it is more likely than not that a seller's potential buyer is going to be in the private equity space of the buyer pool. Today we are going to dissect the PE process a bit further. We'll delve into the process, the advantages and disadvantages, and give a general education on the subject for those who are curious about it how it works. Today's guest, Brian Rassel, is Vice President of Private Equity with Huron Capital. He's responsible for sourcing, evaluating, and analyzing investments made by his firm. Brian delves into ways he finds that e-commerce has entered into almost sector of investment that his group is involved in these days. Prior to joining Huron Capital, Brian was an Associate at Prophet, a global growth strategy consulting firm. Prior to Prophet, Brian was a consultant with New England Consulting Group where he led project management in their private equity practice for buy-side clients. Brian is sharing his wealth of private equity experience and how PE is entering more and more into the e-commerce space. Episode Highlights: How Brian defines private equity. How PE funds traditionally start up and get solidified. The difference between small, medium and large equity funds. The holding periods that private equity funds usually need to secure capital. Is PE all about acquiring to grow and sell or is there a category for buy and hold? Do evergreen funds exist? The difference between platform and bolt-on investments. Three things funds do to generate deal flow and types of business spaces they favor. The behind-the-scenes processes of putting a deal together. How many people are involved in the deal on the PE side. The backend investors committee and if that hinders the deal for the seller. Why time commitment is actually a good thing. How many deals Brian's PE firm evaluates per year. The defined process that gets them through the numbers. The growth potential for e-commerce – multiple appreciations and the role of private equity. Brian frames an ideal acquisition structure based on the general private equity model. Why the buyer/seller fit really matters. How private equity can work for sellers who want to get their business to the next stage. Transcription: Joe: Back in 2013 Mark I closed 23 transactions. It was a busy year for me. Do you have any idea what the average transaction size was? Mark: I … what do I guess? Well, it's you so I'm going to say like seven million dollars. Joe: I love putting you on the spot because you do it to me all the time. The average transaction size— Mark: You got to be like 250. Joe: It was 125. Mark: Holy cow. Joe: 125; very small. Mark: Okay. Joe: And at that time there were no Private Equity Firms poking around the e-commerce space for these smaller listings. Today it's a completely different story and my average transaction size was 10 times that last year. And a lot of buyers or a lot of sellers, the question I get asked all the time are who are your buyers? And it's a mix of everyone but more often than not now we're seeing Private Equity Firms come into this space. And I understand you had an expert in that area on the podcast. Mark: Yeah private equity is a topic that's coming up more and more frequently with sellers especially on the higher end of that revenue spectrum that we really work with. And it makes sense because once you get to a certain size of business your buyer is more likely than not going to be at least somewhat in the private equity place … area of the buyer pool. In addition, we've talked before … I had Ryan Tansom on and we talked about selling to a strategic buyer versus a marketplace buyer. And obviously, people always look at this especially at the higher ends and say I kind of want to have a strategic buyer. Well, one thing to keep in mind here is that this is kind of a spectrum right? It's not binary; you're either strategic or marketplace. But when you get into that private equity world, private equity is almost always going to be something of a strategic play. So I thought … look this private equity world is something that people keep asking about let's actually start to dissect it a little bit. So Brian and I talked and we spent probably about half of this interview just kind of going over what is private equity. How does that work? What is the definition of this? What are the sizes of it? And really just trying to ask some of those silly questions that maybe you kind of wonder about but don't want to ask because you don't want to sound like you don't know what you're talking about. And so we went over a bunch of those questions but then we also went over what does the process looked like. What does it look like to sell to a private equity firm? What are the drawbacks to it and what are the benefits of it as well? And really it's kind of a general education podcast but I think also … and maybe more importantly for those of you out there who are thinking about selling down the road and you're looking and trying to peg the different values that you want to get from an exit and maybe you think well I want a 10 million dollar exit or a 15 million dollar exit, if you get to that point what's it going to look like to sell to a private equity and what do you need to do to really make yourself appealing for a Private Equity Firm? And how does the deal change when you're signed to private equity as well. So we really covered a lot of ground in about 30 minutes. Brian is super knowledgeable obviously. He works in this space. And I really appreciated him coming on the podcast because … again I just downloaded a ton of information. Joe: Well let's get right to it. Mark: All right Brian thanks for joining me on the podcast. I really appreciate you coming on. Brian: Yeah I know. It's great to be here. Thanks for hosting. Mark: All right so I don't expect people to listen … my guests to have listened to the podcast in advance and I know … I don't know if Joe's been doing this, he records like 9 out of 10 episodes and I don't know if he's continued on the tradition but we like to have our guests introduce themselves mainly because you know your story better than I know your story and I figure it's a little bit easier. So why don't you give just kind of a quick 30 second to one minute rundown on who you are? Brian: Yeah I'm Brian Rassel. I'm a vice president with Huron Capital Partners which is a middle market private equity firm based at Detroit Michigan. The firm is 20 years old and has invested in … we're typically enthralled buyout investors where we'll buy a majority of a business and have done that through five successive fawns starting back in 1999. And the industries that we play in are business services, consumer, and specialty manufacturing. You know it'd kind of be interesting how I got to know you Mark for those listening is that believe it or not all of those basins are being affected by e-commerce or different kind of SaaS business models that are internet based. And I'm taking it upon myself to maybe be the person of the firm who is trying to understand those influences on all of our companies and make sure that we're in a position to incorporate those changes that are going on out and new coming at large number and being done by a lot of people who probably listen to your podcast and make sure that we're bringing more of the [inaudible 00:05:51.4] in the businesses we own so that they can be successful today and be well into the 21st century. Mark: All right, well I got a lot of questions for you because this world of private equity is encroaching or coming into the internet business acquisition world more and more. And whether it's because at Quiet Light our deal value is moving up or private equity is starting to look at different price ranges and maybe this convergence of these worlds and also private equity looking more in the online space is just becoming an increasing topic that we're seeing more and more of. We're also seeing individuals that have started up on their own raising funds to do large acquisitions or to string acquisitions together. Brian: Yeah. Mark: So what I'd like to do and I already kind of told you this in our conversation before I hit record, I'd like to go over some of the basics here of the private equity world and how it looks in the Internet space as well. And then know a little bit more about your fund and some of the things that you guys are doing over there and all that. So a quick shout out to Chris from Centurica and Rhodium I know that we've talked about him so much that it's almost as if he's a sponsor. He's not. But this is again how we got introduced. You spoke at the Rhodium and then you and I had a chance to speak after that and a good conversation. So thanks Chris for the introduction again. So let's start out really really basic here. How do you define private equity? Brian: Private equity is capital … private capital being put to work in private businesses. And so I like to name [inaudible 00:07:22.6] for folks who really don't know much about it a little quick stat just kind of on the US economy. There are half as many publicly listed companies as there were in 1996 or 1994 something like that. So even if the value of the public markets is larger the amount of places you can park that capital in the public markets is small in the total number of listed names. Private equity is a big part of either big institutionally managed money. Whether that's from insurance companies, [inaudible 00:07:52.4], pension funds, universities, those kinds of things. This is their way to go participate in the forces of economy that are still private companies that they can't get access to otherwise unless folks like me help them get access to it. It also includes folks that can kind of go into different flavors of private equity but depending on the size from the bing capitals of the world down to very very small funds that are more entrepreneurial. There's sort of every flavor under design in certain family offices and other things like that. That would be private equity, pooled private capital going into private businesses. Mark: Well how did these funds start-up traditionally? And I imagine that there's a lot of ways that they can start up. You've listed a number of sources of money and I think sometimes we forget just how much money there is in some of these places. So yeah [crosstalk 00:08:46.6]. Brian: For sure I mean there's just [crosstalk 00:08:49.4] I'm going to get this off, I'll be wrong by a hundred billion dollars. But I think something like 600 billion dollars flowed into private equity firms last year. So these … and the source of a fund or the way a fund works is that a fund manager like the folks I work for here where I'm a part of, they go out and they make their pitch about how talented their professionals are and what their track record is and the fact that they can get access to great deal flow and great opportunities, places to put private capital where it will go earn a reasonable return. And they raise this money from these other institutional or independent investors. It could be high in net worth individuals or anybody like that but … so they get started that way. They'll hold this farm estate back to the 1960s and there are new ones being created all the time. And frankly, as hedge funds have declined I believe in a large way in popularity just because of the efficiency of public markets there's been more and more money directed towards these private pools of capital and the private equity market. And when I say private equity I mean both kind of traditional buy-out funds for more mature businesses that have healthy positive cash flows on the one hand and on the other hand I mean venture capital is the son segment of private equity. And that might be for really really high growth businesses like the next dewberry of the world or whatever it might be. Mark: Right, absolutely. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. And as far as the breakdown as to sizes what would you consider to be a small private equity firm and what are we talking about in terms of their capitalization rates when they start up? What would be the difference between the small, medium, large type of firms? We can get an idea for how much money we're actually dealing with? Brian: So I would say just kind of from my understanding again all this caviada being dead this is sort of Brian Rassell's take on private equity and my interpretation and may not really be the opinions of United Capital, I can only speak for myself as an individual but they have a dedicated fund. And when I say dedicated fund these are groups of people that other folks, other investors have made a promise and a pledge that is legally binding and written their name at the bottom that that dedicated fund, the small one might be 50 million dollars. That'd be very small. Folks who are trying to invest less than that, generally speaking, have something more akin to a pledge fund. They have a number of people that they can pass the hat with to raise money in a deal by deal basis versus having committed capital to go invest in five, six, 10, 12 companies in that particular fawn. So just kind of … back at the envelope type map that you can think of is every firm should have plus or minus roughly 10 investments that have enough diversification in it. So a 50 million dollar fund is looking to put five million dollars to work in the 10 different companies. And that would be the equity capital going to those companies. There's oftentimes a mix of equity and debt coming into those companies and we could talk about that later. And then a midsize fund might be three or four hundred million up and pawn up to the 2KR's of the world or Apollo or the very big managers who are doing 15 billion dollar funds and so all different world. Mark: Very. Brian: They're taking hotels private or something like that. Mark: I was going to say they're buying something completely different than your Amazon business. Brian: Yeah that's right. It's a whole different world. Mark: All right you talked about you have successive funds. In my understanding again is that we go through these rounds of investment that coming up. We had Andy Jones from PrivateEquityInfo.com on and he talked a lot about the holding periods that private equity looks for. Can you just again quickly touch on that? We're kind of doing private equity 101 here. Brian: Yeah. I didn't hear Andy's remarks but just as it relates to a whole period I would think of it just to be linear about it that a private equity firm once our capital is raised [inaudible 00:13:01.9] the time that it takes to raise that money they committed capital or even the past they had capital they're going to take that money and let's just use this fictional 50 million dollar fund. And they'll take something like four years to deploy the first 80% of it. And the goal would be you take 20% of that money and get it into a new platform company. Companies they had no money in before. In the first year or the next year next 20%, next year next 20%, next year next 20% thus 80%. The point at that point you can't do necessarily new investments you're reserving that last 20% for either a company that's struggling that you need to give more money to to keep it going or to do an add on investment to buy something else and add it on to something that's in the portfolio. That might take four or five years to really deploy the majority of it and then another four to five … you know an investment from year one that you only … you're exiting that investment three to seven years later and let's just use five as kind of a round middle of the road number there. So an investment from year one is maybe gone in year six so it's being harvested. It could be sooner, it could be later. And the investment that was your last platform investment from year four might be heading out the door in year eight or nine. So fund life is something like eight to ten years. It can be longer. And a traditional as you kind of draw it up on the whiteboard like I have behind me here is sort of a five year hold. Now there's … I've seen many that are much much shorter and many that are much much longer but those are the fat parts of the [inaudible 00:14:36.2] if you want. Mark: Sure. So is private equity … is the goal of all private equity companies to grow and sell? So acquire, grow, sell, or are there other strategies? Buy it and hold for long periods of time? Brian: There are certainly evergreen funds out there. They're much more … when I say evergreen they have the ability to hold and recycle the capital. They may be designed to have heard of a number that has committed capital from particularly family offices that never want to do the tax consequences of becoming liquid in an investment and actually realizing the gains so they're structured to reinvest the money that they make. Or if they sell something to quickly find someone else new for it to go into. Now that would be a more unique situation. And then certainly family offices there's a number out there that looks for longer hold periods and there are certain funds that are designed for a longer hold period. Mark: All right so this is going to be again another basic question but I want to make sure our terms are all well-defined here. We hear these terms of platform versus bolt on or add on investments. Just real quick the difference between a platform investment versus a bolt on. Brian: Yeah I'll just keep it simple. I'll say anything that is a brand new business, new industry for that firm to go into. They don't currently own something in that space. Whether that's a tiny initial acquisition or a big one that would be the platform investment. So let's just say with a … I don't know Internet broker pencils, I'm just making this up, all right? And they don't have any other investments in the internet broker pencils space and they invest in a company in that space that would be the platform [inaudible 00:16:17.1] that. And maybe there are 10 companies that make … that do internet broker pencils and they buy two other ones of their competitors and they make it bigger or somebody [inaudible 00:16:25.3] and now they're putting it all together those might be add-ons to that original entity that they purchased or recapitalized. That's what we mean. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with size which can be confusing. Sometimes you start with something small and you get the opportunity and do an add-on that's much bigger than the original investment. So it's more just where is the starting point in you can do a space or an industry. Mark: And if we think about the terms it makes sense right? Brian: Yeah. Mark: You build on top of the platform and you add-on top of the platform. So it makes … that makes complete sense. Brian: Or bolt-on, yup that's where the nomenclature comes from. Mark: Or bolt-on, absolutely. It's amazing when you dig in to definitions it's like the terms actually have a meaning and it makes sense. Brian: They do. Generally, they come from somewhere. Mark: They come from somewhere. There's logic to this stuff. I love it. All right so now I'll get into questions that I'm starting to be genuinely interested in and that is how does a fund develop a thesis or an entire direction to go after a particular platform investment? I mean if you're selling blue widgets and also if somebody comes and says no you don't need widgets what you really need are sprockets, if you don't do anything with sprockets at all how does that enter into a fund's psyche at all? Brian: There's really three things that we're doing here to generate the sort of deal flow and the ideas and spaces we want to go into. So here I'll speak more from Huron Capital. There are other firms who follow a similar philosophy potentially. So the first is businesses we didn't know about but are being represented by a broker or an investment banker like yourself Mark who … those are opportunities that are coming to us. They are being listed. They're being actively shopped around. We may have never thought of the sprocket industry before or we didn't know too much about it or we read materials on it and we say it has a lot of characteristics and things we like; great cash flow, seems very resilient, seems countercyclical, if the economy goes down it'll still do well, it's a leader on its space, any of those kinds of things. Those are opportunities that come to us and that is more of a passive thing. And then we get active once we realize that it fits a lot of criteria and we believe we could be successful with it. And that sets into motion a whole chain of things where we kind of prove out of the pieces that we might like this business and we try to get educated. The second that we spend a lot of time on is networking with executives from a broad, broad variety of industries. Those people know where there are spaces that are changing. And generally speaking, change creates opportunities. Change creates winners on one side and losers on the other side. And less be to the losers but you need that kind of disruption to create any sort of sort interesting investment outcome. The study ID is probably the market's sufficient enough that the study ID is not going to return the greatest returns. So we've spent a lot of time with executives unless I knew them about spaces that could be interesting and trying to listen to areas they know about and start to build some [inaudible 00:19:37.4]. And then even more proactively than that there's a lot of opportunities where we meet the executive who has a view of one particular thing they want to do here at Huron it's got a registered trademark or the like of the firm. We call that an exact factor investment where we will actually flip the process and say we really believe in the sprocket industry. We met Phil who is going to be our perspective CEO in the space and he has this vision that is going to totally turn the industry [inaudible 00:20:11.5]. To do that we need to go find the platform, we call that like getting fuel behind the wheel. We need to find a car to fulfill the drive. We believe he's the best driver in that industry. And we will do all the work, we'll go write a hundred page white paper on it to prove to our investment committee why it's such a fabulous opportunity and Phil is the greatest operator in this space. And then we will commit dollars into going and finding businesses in that space and find Phil the car he can drive and we'll get off to the races that way. So it starts with a commitment from our farms for a certain amount of money behind Phil to go do an acquisition more and more in this space. So it … I guess ranges from that passive we find things and then we get educated too. We educate ourselves as much as possible and align ourselves with an executive who can execute and work the process the other way. Mark: Cool. All right that [inaudible 00:21:04.07]. So let's talk a little bit about the process that goes on behind the scenes when you are evaluating an opportunity. And I think for a lot of potential sellers this sort of conversation is going to be really insightful. So let's say we have somebody that they have an e-com business, 30 million in revenue, eight, nine million in earnings on an annual basis and they've got a couple of private equity firms looking at their business. Where does that start and what is the process going through? And you can talk about maybe Huron's process and then if there are variations that you know as well. The number of people that are going to look and touch that deal as it goes through the steps. Brian: Yeah. Mark: What are some of those behind the scenes looks? Brian: Yeah so once you've got that moment where there's a couple of firms interested there's going to be an incredible amount of information about the business across insurance, benefits, compliance with laws and regulatory statutes, information about the market; anything the business can possibly produce about itself, fairly every file that's off the shelf that they have, every non-disclosure agreement they have with somebody that they on boarded or employment agreement, every contract they have with a customer, or maybe it's an industry where you don't have a lot of contracts with customers but you have a lot of contracts with suppliers. All that information needs to be made available for these perspective buyers to digest. And the more they can be made available, the more that that's organized into different pockets of legal, employee, insurance, benefits, all of that, the better. It's going to save the company a lot of time from serving requests versus being proactive by getting that stuff out there. And you know well everything here all the buyers be under a non-disclosure agreement and that's just a very kind of well-oiled machine around making that information available to give your last few buyers down to the one you would like to choose and have them under a Letter of Intent. And that starts to be an exclusive relationship where the buyer is going to spend a lot of money in due diligence and in exchange for spending that money, they would like the exclusive right to [inaudible 00:23:19.3] business for a period of time. 60 days … 90 days where they engage and here is where it starts to get to be a lot more kind of in your trousers and really analyzing your business but they're going to engage in quality of earnings earned to go and understand did you actually produce the amount of revenue, if you put it in the right time periods, if you really counted for every cost etcetera. They're going to engage legal professionals who are going first to sort of just again a full work up of registration, compliance, [inaudible 00:23:51.9] and then those folks are going to work on the actual transaction documents as well as a host of other advisors. And that would be like again a 60 to 90 day process. It could be 30 days on the short end. There are firms who can do it in that time particularly if you're a smaller business and an add-on to a much larger or a very simple business. Mark: So how many people are we talking about there that are going to be involved in the process? Outside of the consultants like a Q of E … a quality of earnings report that's going to be an outside accounting firm right? Brian: Yeah. Mark: So we're not going to— Brian: Okay so from the acquiring firm? Mark: Mm-hmm. And we can start at the beginning. We can start at your interns that are digesting deals. That's going to be part one. Brian: Sure call it four and they're going to be answering to the remainder of their firm particularly their investment committee. Ideally, it's a tighter team and there's four and if it's an add-on expect more. So you'll have the management team of that kind of platform investment as well. So four to eight and then when you get to the advisor well now you're talking 20 something more. Mark: Right, getting all those outside advisers. Now one of the things I know people get worried about during this process is you start out again with that guy who's that in deals up front and he sees some he passes it on to the team and they end up liking it so now you're dealing with a handful of people that are asking the questions digging deep in that due diligence right? Pages and pages of collecting information possibly even submitting an offer because on the surface things look okay. Brian: Yup. Mark: There seems to be these back end investors committee as well which can also kind of wash the deal far in the process. What would you say to people that get kind of frustrated when they hear that and they think do I really want to work with private equity because there are so many people that could potentially disrupt this deal? Brian: So I would think about the time investment to it. So the private equity firm is in no way interested in wasting any of their time. Huron looks at something like little over a thousand deals a year. That takes a lot of time and we're very thoughtful about moving things to the funnel and connecting our firm's resources to evaluating an opportunity. So if somebody is spending the time I would tell the listeners that they are encouraged. If everything checks out the way I told to them so far or they've written so far about that business then there are absolutely no issues. The firm, an organized and real firm is going to be thoughtful and time is kind of their most valuable resource and they're set up to be able to make a number of staged gates kind of we're interested and we're not interested. We're interested subject to confirm affirmation I want two and three. And you can have a very quick conversation like you and I are having now to say is this the case is this not the case? Here's a big concern we have, should we be worried? And they will both take your answer and that gives them that kind of gumption to proceed. And they'll probably have to go validate that as well later. And that validation just has to support what's been told to them. But they are also making a big commitment with their time in the same way that the seller is and I would take it as genuine on their part that they're not looking for it to fall apart. It's just things do. Certain deals fall apart because new information becomes available. I've seen that happen a number of times where the seller learns things about their business or thinks about their business in a way they hadn't before and can agree that that's a genuine risk and may be something they want to work out within a course of another year and then they might be back to market. Mark: Yeah, that happens often. We see that all the time even in the amount of work that we put a seller through upfront it pales in comparison to what you guys are going to be doing in your actual dig deep due diligence. And the number of times that we have people come back and tell us that was a lot of work but that was really useful. Brian: Yeah. Mark: I have learned a lot about my own business, right? Brian: Yeah a great advisor like somebody like you and using a broker who's been through and understands the questions that are going to be asked is going to save a tremendous amount of time. And we call folks like you Mark a river guide we're using on our side and we love them. Sellers use them too because they're that much more prepared for the process. Mark: Yeah. And I can tell you like the one thing that … I'm going to play both sides here, I would say the one thing that can be difficult with working with private equity is because there are so many people that can come in with a dissenting viewpoint. You're not trying to … convince is a bad word but show the opportunity to one person and have them agree to it; you're having to show a number of people. But the great thing and I love working with private equity on is that it's completely unemotional throughout the process. Brian: Yeah. Mark: I mean it really is does this check the boxes we needed to check and if it doesn't we're going to find out as quick as we can. You said something, I was going to ask this question, you guys evaluate you said about a thousand deals per year? Brian: Yeah the pipeline you think about now it's working its way down at the top of the funnel and so we're a thousand and then that's working its way down to 250 that real solid time is being spent on and then 75 that we're spending real tons of resources and traveling around to visit them … maybe 80. Now I'll get these numbers wrong this is kind of directional and then down to the 30 or so that are getting a Letter Of Intention and we'll close 22 transactions a year. Mark: Yeah so that's an amazing amount of data to be pulling in. And you guys have criteria at every stage I assume that you're looking for up front? Brian: That's right. Mark: Okay. All right that makes sense. Do you publish those criteria? I know we get a lot of just the very broad stuff sent to us. Brian: We don't only because it's just so bespoke for every company. There are so many things that really are as you just said that are check the box and we're highly confident that we will go confirm later. We're highly confident that's not an issue and we are trying to get to it very, very quickly. The three or four things we want to make sure are the reasons we're most excited and confirm that that is factual and that was going to continue. Whatever that might be; on the customer relationship or the recurring purchasing or … whatever it might be. And then at the same time the three or four things that are kind of we're concerned that could be deal killers. We believe we're spending the time because we think that's going to turn out to be true or we need to get to a yes no about is this a real problem very, very quickly. And so you know it's just they're different for every business. Mark: Yeah I know a lot of people listening right now you guys are buyers that are out there looking to acquire. So technically Brian you guys are somewhat of competitors although I think that you operate at a range that a lot of our buyers wouldn't. But I think one thing interesting that they should hear is this idea of having this defined process number one and then number two the amount of deal flow that you have to look at. I've talked to buyers that been out there looking for a year, year and a half but then you find out the number of deals that they're actually looking at doesn't really … this is a numbers game. I mean it's purely a numbers game. Brian: It is and one thing I want to say on that numbers game for us and it may be different for some of your buyers or not is that we're looking for situations that are great for us and we're also looking for situations where the seller in some ways choosing us. Now I don't want to overstate that but I do want to say that there has to be a great fit in every piece and why we're a better owner than someone else for that business. Some angle that we have, some affinity we have for what they do, or some prior experience or something. Otherwise and it could be a little different for particularly small businesses. Maybe it's a little bit less like that and it doesn't need as much of the chemistry but that's a big part of what we're looking for, for sure. Mark: And we talk about that a lot on these pockets. I know you guys are probably tired of hearing Joe and I talk about the need for a buyer being a good fit. And we talked a lot about this general concept of being likable because sellers do eventually choose and for most of these sellers they do have a choice. I mean right now it's a seller's market. They do have a choice of who they're going to work with. I want to talk about the exciting stuff. Let's talk about the actual deals; the money. Brian: Sure. Mark: Why is selling to a private equity something that people should be excited about? Brian: I think I spoke a little bit about this at Rhodium but I just … I see then the difference in multiples that are paid for businesses that are exclusively e-commerce or SaaS based businesses. Those multiples are so much lower than what private equity firms are paying for more traditional businesses out in the economy. And I believe that those worlds will come together. And I believe that businesses that are a hybrid of both or have excellence in both and are flipping both worlds are going to be extremely, extremely valuable. Because on the one hand, they have the relevance for the future, it's coming from kind of the types of businesses that you represent. And also they have that anchor of the traditional business that makes them more under writable and it makes them more predictable because it's a less dynamic place that they're out in. And so that's where I think private equity firms in the coming two, three, four, five years are number one going to become much more comfortable with standalone e-commerce business models that are exclusive that and there are going to be people participating from the much more kind of like formal private equity world participating in your markets. And then I think there's going to be a convergence where a lot of more traditional business models are going to look for the influence and the DNA as well as the revenue and the profits but the influence and the DNA and the growth that comes from the types of businesses you work with Joe. And I think that means that the market that you're playing in, the multiples will rise there. For every dollar of earnings they'll be more valuable in the future and I believe that's for now in a very significant way in 2018. Mark: Yeah and we talked about this this idea of multiple appreciation that we see. And a lot of it reaches over to the fact that this is where private equity starts to play right? So we often talk if your EBIDTA is less than a million dollars per year the … just again for the sake of a multiple, it's going to vary for each business but maybe 3 … maybe 3.5 would be the multiple on that EBIDTA depending on the type of business that you have. But once you start getting up into two, three, four million dollars of EBIDTA now we start seeing the multiples jump up in the different ranges. And the reason for this again is that we're no longer playing as much with an individual investor who really has a much higher risk profile because they don't necessarily have the entire team behind them or a portfolio behind them to be able to take some of that risk but also get the staff in the background and all the resources in private equity. Brian: Yeah. Mark: So let's talk … I am not going to pin you down because it would be a really bad idea for you to say hey we generally paid 25x on earnings which I know you don't. What does a deal structure often look like? Because I know these deals structures do change as well when we're talking about a private equity acquiring a small company. What does an ideal acquisition look like for you in terms of its structure of cash that the owner is going to be getting, maybe equity or debt that you would hope that they stay around and I'd also like to address the idea that a lot of private equity likes to have or prefers to have an owner stay on board with the new company and why that's a good thing also for that owner to think about that. So that's a lot; the general structure, the ideals for a structure. Brian: Okay so let's keep this out of your space and let's just talk about the general PE model. When deals were cheaper a couple of years ago you might get a higher ratio of debt than equity in a deal but for this sake, I'm just going to make it 50-50. I think that more reflects the market today in terms of underwriting. But let's take a deal where a private equity firm is paying at least eight times. That's still a relatively rich multiple. I could have said six but let's use eight times. So we're paying four times the earnings in their own cash that they're talking and they are going and putting the company on the hook or raising four times and they do it. Private equity firm does it but on behalf of the company of debt for the business to take on. So let's say it's a business with 10 million dollars of EBIDTA. So it's an 80 million dollar transaction and a firm like Huron is putting 40 million of equity and raising 40 million of debt in that transaction. And that 40 million of equity can come either from Huron or some portion of it could be rolled over from the seller. If that seller has no debt on the business today, no capital leases or anything else that could be thought of as indebtedness over the normal trade payables. And in your day to day you've got cash coming in and cash going out; that thing that keeps the shop running. And they have no debt on the business theoretically on the day of closing they're getting a check for 80 million dollars. If they choose to roll over some of that … let's just say 10% of the purchase price, eight million of it I would argue that a private equity firm or somebody like me would take that as them stating a high degree of confidence in the future of the business that they want to continue participating and have a relatively [inaudible 00:37:34.7] portion of their net worth tied up in that outcome. Or that they see the opportunity to turn that eight million into 16 or whatever it might be that there is a great opportunity to continue driving growth and equity value in that business. They'll … I start there that the rollover investments are very useful because if you're saying you want to do no roll over whatsoever and you just want to walk away from the business it's not conveying a lot of confidence in the future of the business. There are certainly reasons to do that but it's not conveying a lot of confidence in the future of the business. And where somebody might have been agreeing to pay you eight if you were rolling over and giving that kind of tacit support for the business going over, they might kind of say this is we're not so sure. It makes them a little more nervous and it might be a seven times deal. So you may actually be shooting yourself in the foot in terms of the total proceeds you perceive. Again so it's an 80 million dollar deal, 40 million of debt, the seller is choosing to roll over. They got their 80 million dollar check, it doesn't work like this you're actually [inaudible 00:28:28.9] but they got their 80 million dollar check and maybe we wrote one back for eight and so Huron holds 32 million of the equity and that seller holds eight million of it. So Huron owns 80% of the business and they own 20% and we've got some obligations to pay. That would be kind of the middle of the road structure. There's certainly a lot more that happens as it relates to creating incentives for management teams and that's a very, very big part of what we do to make sure that if we do well they do well and vice versa so that we're all talking in terms of growing the underlying equity value of the business. And that can often be very different for a business that didn't have that before. And it was just solely kind of the founder driving it or minding the growth of equity value. We believe in creating a broad base of ownership so that we're all on the same page. Mark: Yeah. Brian: Our management team is on incentives exclusively through their salary or bonus or both. Mark: Right so one of the things that I've talked a lot in the past especially on like the main street sort of deals is this almost dichotomy and it really shouldn't be set up as a dichotomy of a marketplace based sale where you only have an investor looking to acquire business in a strategic sale where you have a company that it would effectively be like an add-on acquisition in your world right? They already have the sort of strategic advantage to acquiring that company. Within your world, it seems like so much of what you do is going to be the strategy based type of acquisition anyways. Brian: Right. Mark: So it's like you're not going to do an acquisition unless you think that you have a strategic advantage. And when we … you and I talked out in Las Vegas back last October one thing that you talked about quite a bit was we want to pour gasoline on the fire that's already existing. So whatever that might be and so as a seller who's out there thinking about this and saying man I've been growing my business like crazy but I'm investing all this cash back into acquiring more inventory and expanding the product line and I'd like to take money off the table and then keep growing it. This is that perfect sort of handoff to a private equity because you can say you know what you [inaudible 00:40:54.0] your income statement rich in cash flow pour. Brian: Yup. Mark: We got cash. We'll help you out there. You're going to get some cash on the table and then let's grow this from a 30 million dollar business to a hundred million dollar business. Brian: Right. Mark: And so there's an incentive there for that owner to double dip that [inaudible 00:41:11.7]. Brian: Absolutely. Particularly in situations … we see this all the time where additional capital is going to be an accelerant to growth. So capital is what we have and we're trying to find a smart place to put it work and if that means we can buy a business and continue and support that business with more dollars and we believe in the strategy and what's going on in the way it's being operated there's nothing … that's the easiest dollar for us to put out versus the whole re-under writing process of a new investment. And then for that seller to have all their eggs in one basket … I don't care what their life situation is they could be in their 30's and just want to diversify or they could be somebody who's looking at kids who are about to go to college and it just doesn't make sense to have 100% of their net worth or close to it tied up in their business. And if they could diversify a little bit or generate a little bit of cash but their vision hasn't changed at all that's a great situation to bring on a strategic partner like a private equity firm. And that's where that [inaudible 00:42:11.9] fit it really matters and the chemistry between the seller. For the most part, you're not going to sell it to a private equity firm, they don't want to be in the business or definitely not in the business of operating these companies. So round the business and investing in them helping to bring the right resources to it and bring the right capital solutions or capital availability all that. Helping them set strategy and all the other things but the actual day to day operations. So it's not going to be for your sellers or for buyers [inaudible 00:42:45.1] sellers who are looking to exit the business and hand it off somebody else private equity is not going to be the right solution. But for those companies that they either want to go to be a division of something larger and they think they can be a great cross selling opportunity or the way they've built their mousetrap if just they had more to sell in the same way, and I'll say like let's say you're the number one muffler seller online and you also want to do transmissions and drive cams and stuff but you don't have the capital and you don't have the ability to go source and expand that way, going and selling to a larger entity and being that e-commerce division is a very powerful idea. Or just continue and do your own business and double down … accelerate the organic growth, private equity firm could be a great partner. Mark: Yeah, we're just about out of time in fact we've gone a bit long but one thing I wanted to emphasize here, you said that capital obviously is the resource you guys have and are able to invest and I know a lot of people that I talk to say look I don't really need money from this, the business is making money and I feel good about this. But what I find when I actually start to dig in with these guys is I say well what would it take to move to that next level. Oh well, I would have to hire out this other division or create this other division and you know okay but what's the obstacle to that? I don't want to invest in it. It often comes up. Okay, that's the area where a firm like yours can also come in and say well look we have the capital to be able to invest in this. You know what you need; do you want to invest in it to get to that next stage? And even if that means bringing in someone and you can help with that let's do it. Exactly we can do that and we could— Brian: Not to mention that I think we find that often business owners are willing to do one out of their five ideas that are like that and were willing to do all five knowing that three won't work but two should work out beautifully and we're willing to go [inaudible 00:44:39.4] the bodies of the business and the capital and have the appetite to take two steps backward to take four forward and understand that they're not going to all work. And where maybe an independent owner would do those sequentially, try idea one it wasn't really working, didn't feel pleased with making that investment and losing that cash flow, fired that new sales person who was supposed to do something else. We're willing to go do things faster and make sure that that doesn't hover around in the business and the core of what we're interested in the first place. And so we'll work through that with the business owner by giving them that support and the dollars needed to make that happen. Mark: Brian, I really appreciate you taking the time here [inaudible 00:45:19.8] some of the small questions I had but really good to get those things— Brian: No it's my pleasure. It's fine. Mark: So thanks again and maybe we'll have you back again in the future at some point. Brian: That sounds great. Yeah, I enjoyed it. Thanks, Mark.   Links and Resources: https://www.huroncapital.com/member/brian-rassel/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianrassel  

The Quiet Light Podcast
What Type of Business Gets 9 Offers

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 26, 2019 37:26


It seems that with certain Quiet Light Brokerage listings, there is just a mad rush of activity as soon as they come out. Most of the listings that we put out will receive at least 100 inquiries right away, but what does it look like when we put out a “hot listing” that garners two times that much interest? Today we are discussing the type of business that gets 9 offers. We go over how many inquiries those types of listings get, how much discussion and conference calls happen around these potential transactions in a short time frame, and just what it takes to get these listings under contract. We hope you enjoy this little case study of how to set up for a successful sale from the seller side and tips for how to act from the buyer side. Being thoroughly prepared and running a real, viable business are keys to success. Episode Highlights: The main characteristics that made this business so attractive. How the pricing decision played into the transaction. The process of selecting the 15 buyers we entertained. The conference call screening process between the seller and potential buyers, facilitated by the broker. How to choose a buyer and deal with disappointing those who lost out. The 4 pillars of success and how this business checked them all. The one intangible thing that took the business to the next level and attracted the buyers. How the packages that Quiet Light puts together tell a story about the listing and the journey of the brand and its seller. Transcription: Mark: It seems that with some Quiet Light Brokerage listings as soon as when they hit the marketplace there is just an absolute mad rush of buying activity towards those listings. Now to be clear most of the listings that we put out at Quiet Light Brokerage, the vast majority, in fact, it could be an exception to the rule is going to receive at least 100 inquiries from buyers and calls right away. So what does it look like when it we come across a “hot listing”? Well, it looks like a lot of conference calls scheduled very, very shortly and just a mad rush of inquiries probably upwards of 200 and 250 within the first 24 hours in some cases. What's the difference between a listing that is not as hot like that that gets on a 100, 150, which is still a lot and something that doubles that? Joe, I know you launched a listing 3 or 4 weeks ago from the time that we're recording this episode that we would definitely throw in that hot category. What were the top line statistics on that? Joe: It was a let's call it a 95 to 98% Amazon business. It was 30 months old. It was in the category of America's fastest growing recreational sports. It was run by a single owner operator that was a stay at home dad that was a CPA by training yet outsourced the bookkeeping to an e-commerce bookkeeper. $440,000 in discretionary earnings and we went out on a 3.3 which is lower than my recommendation. But in this case, the conservative CPA said no I don't want it to be listed for too long. I really like to get it sold let's … can we go out at a three. I suggested a 3.5. Rarely does somebody come back and say can you sell it for less and he did in this case and we ended up [inaudible 00:02:50.9]. Mark: The guy sounds like one of these unbelievably likable guys. How many inquiries did you get within that first 24 hours? Joe: You know I didn't count the first 24 but I know that you and I were … we were in Dallas and on the way to Houston for a meeting and I think we pulled it up and within the first 4 hours, we had something like 185. So within the first 24, I think it probably doubled to close to 400 would be my guess. Mark: That is insane. Now I do remember obviously these are all loaded questions so anyone listening like I know the answers to most of these questions— Joe: No, he doesn't. He forgot them all. He can— Mark: I actually— Joe: Yeah. Mark: I was introduced by the way this is completely outside; a complete diversion here. So sidebar I was introduced at a group of CEO's yesterday. And in front of the entire group of CEO's the guy that introduced me said “And Mark, by the way, took his son, they have seven kids or is it they're expecting their seventh kid. He's got so many kids he forgets their birthdays because he took his son to urgent care the other day and he got his birthday wrong.” I'm like thank you for that. I'm so glad to be known as the guy who forgets his kids' birthdays. Joe: You've got a lot of kids man. Mark: I got the month right. I didn't get the year or day right. I know the answer to this. We were in the car together and your phone was blowing up. We were at a conference. You were trying to schedule out all of these people wanting conference calls and you did this right over the conference itself which maybe we can talk about in just a little bit here. Within that first 24 hours if you would just guess how many conference call requests did you get? Joe: Well, let's keep in mind that that our process requires that the buyer either speak to me first before requesting a conference call or we've spoken in the past. So in this case in the first 24 hours, I had at least 10 requests for conference calls with buyers that I've already spoken to in the past that have looked at prior listings of ours and they wanted to make sure they were on a call with this one. We wound up with a total of 15 on this. As I said the owner of the business, Paul, is a stay at home dad. It's funny and I don't know if they loved this or just love making fun of Paul for this but he's a stay at home dad right? His son is a couple of years old but he takes his son to daycare at eight and picks him up at five. So I'm not sure how stay at home that is. Anyway so … but the beautiful thing is that he maybe … Paul if you're listening I'm sorry, maybe it's nine to four and you expanded it. Either way, you're a great guy and people love you and your business. I am not getting a Christmas card from Paul this year. Mark: I'm sure you are. Joe: Anyway, he was able to clear his calendar which was great. I was getting so inundated and I was at eCommerceFuel and I'm like I can't do these conference calls. And I had said to Paul on the way through eCommerceFuel look I want to bump this launch a week because it's going to get crazy and I'm not to be able to be on this conference calls. He says oh god really? Come on I really want to get it launched and it totally got my heartstrings so we launched it anyway. So I took the two days … it launched on a Wednesday I think and I took Thursday and Friday and all I did was talk to folks and schedule the calls for the following week. Paul cleared his calendar. We set up a link so that people could just grab a link and schedule them. We did a max of three a day separated by at least an hour a piece and we wound up I think by Monday closed the business. We had all 15 slots scheduled. We capped it at 15 which is really five too many. You just don't have to have that many conference calls. Normally we have three to five conference calls and we have at least one acceptable offer. Here we had 15 scheduled and we wound up with nine. Mark: These are 45 minute slots or are they an hour long slots? Joe: They were hour long slots. I go with an hour yeah. Mark: So just to put this in perspective for people that have not been on the sell side, I know I had this with a listing last year that I represented where it was just a really favorable price on the business and so we had that 15 conference call sort of scenario that we were doing in one week. For anyone on the receiving end of that our clients, the sellers, that's exhausting to go from one conference call to the next to the next; an hour where you're being asked the same questions and you're doing the majority of the talking during that time. This might be a little bit beside the fact but how did he hold up throughout all those calls? Joe: He did pretty well. They were spread out which was nice. He usually had … he had a minimum of an hour but usually, it was two or three hours in between. And we had one drop out so it ended up being 14. But he did pretty well. He had to keep moving around the house. That particular week his son was home because he got a fever a couple of days before and he was quite sick so he couldn't take him to daycare. And his mother flew up from Arizona to be with his son while he moved around the house to be in an appropriate place to do the conference calls. Most of the time he was actually in the nursery doing the conference calls from his laptop. Mark: Right. So I want to get into a couple of big topics here. I want to talk about what were the characteristics that made this business and you already talked a little bit about this but what were the characteristics that made this business so attractive? Because I also know that we suggested to Paul going out at a 3.5. He's the one that wanted 3.3 for the asking price on this. That's the multiple that we're asking on the earnings. So I want to go into what was it that made this such a hot listing where people just needed to look at the teaser that we gave and that alone generated 200 plus inquiries within the first 24 hours? So what's going on there and then second I want to go through a little bit more of the process that you went through in selecting the buyers that were going to get those conference calls. Because out of 250 finding 15 you know I know a lot of buyers out there would be like well how would I become one of those 15 if I'm going to be competing against this? And then last I mean this is kind of the darker side now or the bad side I guess of what we have to do when you have a hot listing like this is we have to disappoint a number of people that actually really want this business but lose out in a bid for it. So I want to go over those three categories with you and then obviously Joe you're better at this podcasting thing than I am so if there's something I'm missing let me know. Joe: Can you repeat that last part again, please? Mark: You are better at this podcasting thing than I am but I still have the number one episode thank you. Joe: And two and three, yes you've got them all, but you do the title so I think there's a little trickery going on it. Mark: And I used to do the promotion too so … your podcasts easy for me what with number one. Joe: I mean you talked about the four pillars; risk, growth, transfer ability, and documentation. And when you go through these things Paul's business just checks all of these off and all the subcategories within those checks them all off. He owned his own brand. He developed it himself. It's in a niche that is out there and there are other brands but he picked a … he specifically chose a niche within a larger niche to serve a certain segment of these people to start with. So there's a growth opportunity to go. He picked the sort of beginners in this sport. He didn't go with the top end of the product. He went with a middle of the road product that beginners … a price point that beginners would enjoy. So right away you could say okay well I'm learning this business and now I'm going to take this to the new level and go with the more professional people that play this sport. It's not quite professional but retired professionals can play. So he did a really nice job there in picking the category. It was just by happenstance. He happened to be on vacation visiting his folks in Arizona and saw this game that they are playing and said what the heck is that? Looked it up, studied it, researched it and it started growing like crazy and chose to go in that category. A registered trademark, beautiful brand, beautiful packaging, and again let the business age. We've been talking for probably nine months and it was getting close to the 24 month mark but we got through that Christmas holiday season. This particular business is not fourth quarter heavy seasonal. It's actually better in the spring and summer months. So we got prior to the spring and summer months so that a new one would have a great advantage with an upswing in the summer months. It was clean books, SBA eligible which helps cast a broader net to probably half the offers. I can't say half because they were nine. So four out of the nine offers, five out of the nine were SBA offers. The growth trends were fantastic; 80, 90, 100% year over year, month over month growth. It looked really good comparing month to month and from year to year. Transfer ability; super easy, he owned the brand. He wasn't reselling anything. He had a good relationship with his manufacturers. And the documentation, of course, good SOP's in place. He did it all himself so there weren't VA's that were combing [inaudible 00:11:42.3] anybody else or people that works on his house or anything like that needed to transfer. This sort of intangible thing that I think took this to the next level is the person behind the business. He's not transferring with the business but he is so, so likeable and so trustworthy; just the full story behind him. And I'm not suggesting that everybody goes and becomes a CPA, quits their job, and works from home and be a stay at home dad. But people want to invest in a business and buy something from somebody that they like and they trust. As Mike Jackness said on a call recently you have to be a good human being in order to get the deal done. It needs to work for both parties. And just describing who Paul is and then how he is in the video and how he came across, he's just a good person and people wanted to buy the business from him. Mark: Yeah, I'm looking at the teaser right now. It's cool if I read some of the teaser, right? Joe: Yeah of course. Mark: All right so again I'm just looking at this. I'm … this is selfish on my part, the next listing I put out I want to get 250 inquiries because that's awesome. I mean that's great for our clients. All right so I'm looking through this and look in through the prism of those four pillars of risk, growth, transfer ability, documentation. Risk; Amazon businesses, this is primarily Amazon. The biggest thing that I find and maybe you'd disagree is that it needs to be defensible against competition. In here I see towards the bottom there's a trademark and the brand is brand registered, there we go. There are over 2,000 reviews you are … these are getting harder and harder to fake. So you're speaking towards this … the main risk that people associate with Amazon. Right away people are thinking oh awesome that's great. Growth; this is rapidly growing. You leaved this but this is rapidly growing as one of America's fastest growing sports. So A. this business is growing, B. this niche is growing; two really good things, so growth is checked off pretty easily. You have some other stuff in here. Transfer ability; the owner, single owner, dedicates approximately 15 hours per week running the business. I could do that right? Who can't do 15 hours a week on something? And then lastly documentation; the owner is a former CPA. Do you need to say anything else? I think you checked each of those boxes with a giant red check mark to say everyone looking at this; this thing is going to check all of these boxes and become really valuable. It turned out surprisingly enough to be true. These four pillars work. Joe: Yeah, they do. They do. And one of the pillars is growth but within that is growth opportunities and growth trends. And the opportunities I'll dig into the package itself. I can't quite remember but he had launched new SKUs in 2018 and so we look at the revenue when did he launch those and the revenue by SKU during that time period. And it was clear that some of these SKUs had gained some traction in 2018 but they hadn't been available for the full 12 months. So that's a built in path to growth. So it's one other thing that buyers liked. And then when you … I mean that teaser it obviously checks all of those four pillars but then when you get into the package and we recorded a video, a video interview with him via Xoom like we're doing now. Obviously, people are listening to mostly audio but we do the video as well. And he's in his home you can see the kitchen in the background and he's got the packaging and he holds up the packaging and it's just beautiful. It's a really nice product and this is again hard for people to duplicate but this particular product it's just cool. It's just a cool niche and a cool place to be and he did a really nice job with the packaging. He did everything right as far as I'm concerned and obviously as far as buyers are concerned as well. Mark: Yeah, one thing I want to touch on here because we talked about this a lot for buyers that you want to be likable and come across well to the potential sellers. But it works both ways too right? I mean obviously, somebody who's selling who's a complete jerk probably isn't going to get too far with us because the process is just too difficult. So most of the … most of our clients are great people anyway but there are some people who have just magnetic personalities. And for this deal, you for I think one of the first times we experimented or you experimented by doing more video conferencing between buyers and sellers on that. How did that impact the deal and what should buyers take away from boy these guys want to do a video conference should I turn on my camera or should I, oh no, no I don't really have good lighting for this and a good set up for it. Joe: Do it. One of the best calls we had was with a guy named Noah. And he hadn't planned on doing video because he was on his dad's party boat. I know he's 35 years old but he's helping his father move this big boat from one port to another because it's being sold. And Paul and I are on video and we said the video is optional and said it's recommended but optional. And he said well both of you guys are there and he goes I'm kind of embarrassed. I'm on my dad's boat. I'm on a boat. I'm like we have to see it, turn it on. Mark: It's great. Joe: Yeah. His dad was in the background moving stuff around and he's shooing him out of the frame. It was fantastic. So Noah was like able and memorable and that stuck with Paul. Paul wanted to sell the business to Noah at the end of the call. So that makes a huge difference. Not everybody did it. There were two or three that were in the top three. Yeah, obviously three when the top three but two or three that stuck out. Two of them did a video one of them didn't do video. The very first person that we had a call with he chose not to do video. He made a great offer and he … we came close on having him but we ended up … Paul ended up choosing someone else. But I think you do the video. I'm doing it more and more and if you've got an opportunity as a buyer to do a video if your broker allows that then, by all means, do it. Mark: I think on the sell side this is something just to note. To people listening, we're going to be doing this more and more because it really makes a difference on the sell side as well. Sellers most likely will be doing video. And I love that he was able to just hold up some of the product on the video to be able to show it there directly. I mean how cool is that? Joe: People are … I mean they're buying a business potentially just based on the black and white information that we put in a package. It's worked for years but we moved to doing videos in the interviews and making it part of the full business summary. 24 months ago I remember doing the very first one. It was horrible. I just did audio actually. I recorded it on my phone and it was horrible but beneficial. And now we've moved beyond that to video. You get to look relatively in the likes of someone's eyes and gauge whether you trust them or not and if you're going to put your life savings on the line and buy their business. And I think it just makes a tremendous amount of information. Mark: Yeah, absolutely. That's really cool. And again this is coming from somebody like myself that does not like video … doing video personally. I tend to be one of those shut the camera off types of guys but I'm more and more warming up to it and definitely getting more accustomed to it as well. So that's pretty cool. And also the odd story, by the way, I know our content director Chris Moore and Chris I know you're listening to this you're going to hate this that I'm saying this but some of the most memorable conversations I've had with people have been in the oddest places. The podcast with Chad Annis where he was in his RV and I could see the pine trees out in the background or Andrew from ECF Live, eCommerceFuel, awesome forum, he was in his van holding up a microphone. I'm like this is great. It's this weird background that only entrepreneurs understand. Joe: Exactly it's classic entrepreneur stuff. You know people when I'm having calls with them and valuations and you hear the dog barking in the background oh I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm like you're an entrepreneur you're going to hear mine any minute. This is the life that we live. It's great. So back to the points, the last point I want to make in terms of what makes a difference … what made a difference for this particular business I think is the images. Paul provided me with great images for the package. And he had them because he had professional photography. And it helped. Obviously, everyone knows that runs an Amazon business what a difference good images make. But he had great images of packaging, of the product being used by human beings having fun and all that stuff. And I was able to litter them throughout the package and it just brought the whole thing to life. And I think it made a bit of a difference too. Mark: Yeah, you know something I've said over the years I've told you Joe and the others here at Quiet Light is that some of the packages that we put together are supposed to tell the story of the business. And I look for that with every business I represent. Like what is the thread that I want to tell you? What is the common thread throughout this? The data and everything else supports a story. And hey people love stories right? That's … we're all drawn to them. Joe: Right. And you said data, I just want to say one more thing I keep looking at the package and I'm like there's another thing. One more thing they gave me was data; data from the outside world that proved that this is one of America's fastest growing recreational sports. So I was able to link to outside magazine articles and newspaper articles and outside sources that backed up what he was saying and what I was saying in the package which is really, really helpful. Mark: Okay, I might regret this question because I don't want to go long on the episode here but you said more than once that he was just a really likable guy. Do you know what made him likeable? It's such a hard question to ask, right? How can somebody be more likable than another person? We've identified when Walker did an acquisition through Quiet Light Brokerage thanking the seller; taking the time to thank our client and saying thank you for agreeing to sell me your business and how much of a difference that made at that point. Was there anything that kind of stood out outside of the video that really made him stand apart? Joe: He was who we described him to be which was a CPA, a stay at home dad, and honest, and uncomfortable in front of the camera, and vulnerable, and real. He never watched the video that I did with him. I told him. He's like I might watch it because I hope that was okay. I was really conscious here and there. I'm like well let's not watch it because you were great. You were human. You were real. And I'm not editing anything out of it and I'm not redoing it because you were great. People are going to love you because you're just normal. And he never watched it. I don't know if he's … I ought to ask him if he's gone back and watched it since we've got it under contract. But he was just real. Just real and honest and he wasn't selling. He was just stating the facts and that's one of the things that we do … I get excited so maybe it feels like selling but stating the facts is what he did. He didn't try to pitch or sell. He was just being himself; likable. Mark: That's … I think I heard that somewhere recently about authenticity among like millennials and I would broaden that out and say among those within internet realm because we've seen so much stuff that it's so easy to colossal or make yourself look bigger or better or more polished than you are. I think people within the internet world we tend to value authenticity a bit more than people might think. And so that vulnerability I think is a key. I'm not saying that you put on a show like oh look at me I'm all vulnerable. Hey, look if you are really confident in what you're doing be confident. Be true to who you are. That comes through. You can tell that in people, right? You can tell when they're being real or when they're trying to make themselves sound better than they actually think they are. Joe: Absolutely, no doubt about it. You want to go on to process and what we do there? Mark: Yeah. I want to know. So 15 conference calls tell me … again mistake that you probably made in this and you told me this, I'm not accusing you of this; launching a listing during two conferences. You were sick that week. You were flying to two different cities, driving to one city with me as well. So how did you manage getting that many inquiries, that many requests for conference calls with everything else going on? Joe: Well, it actually worked out pretty well because I was not feeling well and I was at the conference and I said I am not doing this over the next two days we're going to push it all the next week. And it enabled me to communicate in writing with all the people that inquired, all the people that … look there were a couple of hundred in the first few hours of course but those that I've spoken to before that know the process they reached right out to me. They called me, they texted me, they e-mailed me and said, Joe, I want to talk to this guy. I want to get on a conference call. Because they know that's the process. And so those that have followed our process, looked at as many listings as possible so you know the right fit when it comes along and you can act quickly did just that and reached out to me. And so I just walked it all off and we scheduled the calls. For the process when we had the calls if anyone hasn't been on them, us the broker we talk as little as possible. We make introductions, hand the call over to the buyer to give a little bit of background on themselves and then go right into their calls. We put ourselves on mute and in this case, I took myself off camera as well and we listen and we jump in if we can help out but for the most part we stay quiet until the very end of the call and then we just wrap things up. At the end of each day, I had a quick wrap up call with Paul and I said okay you've had three today, its Monday, you've had three, who do you like the most? And then on Tuesday, I said all right you've had six who are your top two? And the same people kept rising to the surface. Although people near the end of the week very quickly got to the … Noah I think was probably on Wednesday or Thursday. So we ran through the process and I think one mistake I made Mark in hindsight when I look at it, I knew it was going to be a frenzy and as much as people think oh multiple offer situation you going over asking price etcetera. We did. Yes, we had them and yes we did go over asking price because we priced it right. We didn't price it too high or too low; we priced it right. And that gets more increase than anything else buyers know. We chose to go best and final. And I think in hindsight I probably would have had two rounds so that … you know what we did was we told everyone we're going to have a call with every buyer. You may submit offers prior to the following Monday at noon if you wish too but we will not be making a decision until close the business the following Tuesday. You've got to have it in my Monday at noon and we'll make a final decision close the business Tuesday. It gave us a little time to review. Everyone gave it to us in the same exact format that I provided so it was easy. We didn't have to interpret different offers. And most kept it simple which is what I knew Paul was looking for and what I suggested that they do. One made it a little complex but I know them and I know what their goals are. They're raising funds so they've got investors to satisfy. And then tell me what you did? We get a clear deadline of Monday at 12 pm Eastern Standard Time. I got one that came in maybe at 4 o'clock that day and one that came in at 9 o'clock that day, pm, with apologies and a text saying I thought it was midnight. Would you have allowed those offers to be presented or would you've been cold and said no? Mark: I don't … it depends on the situation. That's a tough one especially because of the [inaudible 00:27:08.9] when you said 12, and 12 is I mean you can interpret that both ways. Joe: 12 no we had a total of nine offers. We ended up with 14 conference calls because one fell out. We had nine offers. Mark: No I mean you put your deadline at 12. Joe: Why? I said 12 pm Eastern Daylight Time. Mark: Yeah but I mean you have to think like 12 pm, you think night and you know. Maybe I'm the only one that can read time but— Joe: I don't … I only speak Eastern as I tell everyone else in every other time zone. There's too many time zones and I just say Eastern. I try not to coordinate with their times anyway now we were accommodating. In hindsight I think we probably should've narrowed it down to the top two or three and gone back out to them. But the reality is that when you have a seller that has multiple offers it's hard on the seller. First is that they're on … in this case 14 conference calls that are lasting about an hour each. That's 14 hours. And then he's talking to me for 15 to 20 minutes at the end of each day as well. That's a lot of time in one week. More time than he spends running the business right? 15 hours a week of running it. More time selling it than running it. And then you've got to make a decision based upon we had one offer that was … let's see; it was $150,000 over asking price. Mark: Wow. Joe: A pretty big jump. Mark: Yeah. Joe: That one was an SBA offer. So the benefit there is that not only is it $150,000 over asking price but it's going to take upwards of 60 days longer to close than a cash buyer. So he's going to put another $50,000 in his pocket by waiting an extra two months. I mean just a cash windfall right? Mark: I want to disagree with you on something real quick before we get too far away from this point because it said that— Joe: Is it back to me being the better podcaster or something else? Mark: I'm going to say that to the end after this because I think I'm doing such a stellar job at this interview. Joe: You're doing great. Mark: It's easy when you know the person you're interviewing and you know the story as well. But I'm going to disagree with you on is should you have gone a second round with the offers. Okay, that would be the standard process when you're not expecting multiple offers and when maybe … like if I have a listing that's been sitting around for a month and we narrowed down and we happen to have three buyers that kind of called us around the same time then it makes sense. Because the buyers don't know that they're in a competitive situation but … and I might sound a little harsh here but hey if you're a buyer and you're in a situation where you know it is competitive, and the buyers, in this case, knew it was competitive, that there was a lot of stuff going on. Joe: Yeah. Mark: My guidance has been the same like put in your best and final. There's two sides of that coin; the first … one side is don't try and necessarily get a discount because the market is going to speak. It is going to push that price up necessarily. And two don't over bid what you're comfortable bidding. Find out if I get it at this price I'm going to be happy or satisfied at least? If I go above I'm always going to wonder if I paid too much. Find that, make the offer, and get it done. So I actually think that you did the right thing by doing one round instead of two rounds. I would recommend the two round again if it was kind of a surprise multiple offer situation. Joe: Well, I think … you know I had one person tell me they wish there was a second round. But it was crystal clear in writing in black and white that it was best and final. And so I took his suggestion and constructive criticism in a way that I thought maybe was worthwhile and we could do a second round next time possibly. But when you're in a multiple offer situation it's emotional for the seller. Mark: Yeah. Joe: Believe it or not people it's hard. It's hard for the broker as well. So I just want to reemphasize one thing that you said and that is you don't want people to get … the buyers to get emotional in their offer. We want them to make an offer that they're going to be happy with after they're under letter of intent because we want two happy individuals at closing; the buyer and the seller. It has to be a good transaction for both of them so we don't want them to overbid and so we work really hard to make sure that they're making an offer that they're comfortable with that assuming everything's good in due diligence that we'll get all the way through the closing with. Mark: Yeah and I think if you're a seller out there you're thinking why wouldn't you want to get something above what they're comfortable with? The reason is simple; the offer is the beginning of a longer journey, right? You've got to go through that due diligence, you've got to go through transition, planning, there's a lot of time in there for those cold feet to really, really freeze up a little bit. And for the buyer to say I made a mistake I got caught up in the heat of passion and now yeah. And I want to emphasize one other thing that you said here and that is we think multiple offers is a really good situation and it is but for anyone that hasn't been in that situation before where you have multiple buyers all of whom are very qualified to buy your business and given you good offers. It's really tough to choose because you can't choose five offers. You've got to choose one. Joe: Yeah. Mark: And in your head, you're going to be thinking I've got to get this right because I don't want to go through this again or I don't want to go through this due diligence process and then have to go back and what are people going to think I have to go back. So it's actually really stressful and one of those good problems to have but still a problem. Joe: And that's where I think the video … the folks that did video you know a better connection with Paul little bit although one of the top three didn't do the video but just a super nice guy. I mean I just wanted … we both, Paul wanted him to be able to buy the business. He travels all over the country all the time and has two teenagers that he just doesn't see enough and he wants to work from home. Mark: So there was that personal connection. Joe: Well, it's that personal connection tugging at Paul's emotional heartstrings, at mine. I think he's a great guy. I would love to help him find an amazing business so he spends more time with his family and becomes an entrepreneur which he's not now. He's in the corporate world. Mark: All right we're getting close to the end so let's wrap. I want to get to the end here and talk about— Joe: Sad news. I'm sorry. Sad news having to tell eight people they didn't get it. Mark: Then also I want to know the metrics. Because I know you had recommended to him go out, we should go out at a 3.5 multiple. We covered that the beginning and he said I don't know if we need that you know as … being and Paul sounded like a great guy 3.3 is what it went out at. I'd like to know where the highest and lowest came in and then also the sad news portion having to tell so many people that wanted this business sorry we're going to keep you in mind, we'll keep looking for you. Joe: Yeah, again I wanted it to go at a 3.5. I thought it was worth a push and I let him know it's a bit of a risk. We haven't sold one at 3.5 that's 100% Amazon business with discretionary earnings this “low”. It's still 440,000. We wound up with the highest one being at 3.6, 150,000 over asking and the one that he chose was 50,000 over asking at 3.4, 3.41. And it was an all cash buyer and had the funds on hand. Had had the funds and had the experience and has bought Amazon business before so he looked at the full package. Cash buyer, close in 30 days, hiring Centurica for due diligence but understands Amazon really well and that training and transition was going to be a breeze. It's the full package and that's why he chose that particular buyer. Mark: Yeah, again we've talked before about people winning with lower bids. Not necessarily being the top bidder but still being able to win. And we've also talked about the idea that financial motivation isn't always the sole motivation right? People sell for a variety of reasons and so being able to understand, as a buyer understand some of those secondary goals can really help you out quite a bit. Joe: Let me just jump in, it's not always a cash buyer that wins as well. If everybody remembers the story I've had Syed Balkhi on the podcast and he chose a buyer that was an SBA buyer at full price on his business versus a cash buyer because he just really bonded with that SBA buyer. And he carried a 10% seller note on that particular listing too. So he chose an SBA buyer and a seller note over an all cash buyer. So SBA wasn't necessarily the problem it was just a combination of a number of things and Paul really wanted to get the business sold. And he is kind of a nervous guy a little bit so he didn't want to have to wait upwards of 90 days; 30 was comfortable. Mark: All right what final thing should people know about this particular deal? Because this is a fascinating little case study of just a listing that's going crazy, how to act on the buy side, and also how to set your business up from the sell side. So what final things should we probably round this episode with? Joe: Well I hate to finish it with … you know just because this one sold a 3.4 doesn't mean yours is worth 3.4. This one has all of these little points and metrics to it. I launched one this week Monday at 3.3 and some of those same buyers, those eight buyers a few of them have looked at it and said no. Others are comfortable with the niche and like it and see the upside to it so I think we'll get at or close to asking. But just being prepared running a real business, think about it from a buyer's point of view. They're going to be investing their life savings and if you were them what type of business and what type of person would they want to buy that business from? We want them to succeed. You want them to succeed. And that's really what you need to focus on. Mark: That's fantastic. Hey, thanks for sharing all of this. I know that you always have the best case studies mainly been because you do the most deals at Quiet Light. So thanks for sharing this one. The next one I'm going to write a better teaser than yours and I'm going to try and get like 251 inquiries in the first 24 hours. Joe: You taught me how to do it so I know you can do it. Mark: Well, then I'll make sure that I'll let you know in every podcast. All right cool, hey thanks, Joe. I appreciate all of it. Joe: You bet.     Links and Resources: https://www.quietlightbrokerage.com/ Listen and subscribe on Itunes  

The Quiet Light Podcast
Benefits of building a business without working yourself to death

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 12, 2019 31:35


Here at Quiet Light we often like to hire people who are just a bit smarter than us. Amanda Raab is one of those people. She has been helping our clients through her own expert entrepreneurial experience since 2012. Having started the famous Pure Pearls online retail company at just 25 years old, Amanda has gone on to buy and sell multiple businesses. She's with us today talking about the benefits of building a business without working herself to death. Amanda shares tips on how she's acquired multiple businesses, outsourced their growth, and sold them successfully. The buy versus build topic truly never gets old and every time we talk to a guest about it there is something new to be learned. Amanda makes a good case for both. Episode Highlights: Amanda takes us back to how she got started in the online world. Her pearl company story and the press surrounding her success. What it took for Amanda to realize she could hire people to run her businesses. The absentee owner business model that she's been able to replicate several times over. Reasons to hire someone who is good at every component of your business. What Amanda looks for when she's hiring and what building a solid team requires. How much she manages her creatives and monitors their input. Where Amanda lands on the buy vs build spectrum and why. The first areas Amanda outsources when starting a business? The last thing she would outsource. Amanda's number one piece of advice for buyers looking to invest in an internet business. Transcription: Joe: So one of the things that you and I have talked about over the last few years is that we keep hiring people that are smarter than us, maybe smarter than both of us combined which may not be saying much. Mark: Yeah you set the bar pretty high there Joe. Joe: For you anyway but Amanda is talking about a number of different things in this podcast coming up. Amanda and I started at the same time back in 2012 and I'm really looking forward to listening to it because honestly, I don't know that much about her history. But every time a new broker connects with her, talks with her, they get kind of blown away with her experience. Walker, as we all know, wrote a bestselling book and we like to make fun of him and prod him on and we're proud of him for it as well called Buy than Build and in this episode, Amanda's doing the opposite. She's talking about the benefits of building a business, outsourcing some of the things that people don't like to do themselves, and then actually selling them off. Kind of the opposite of what Walker talked about. Mark: I mean you're right she's kind of a more private person and I think I was working with her for three or four years before I realized that she was … or I even learned that she was featured in Time Magazine when she was in her young twenty's for some of the entrepreneurial work that she was doing. And she actually had a documentary filmed on her about sourcing pearls from China of all things. Joe: Oh. Mark: Yeah I know right? Joe: I didn't even know that. Mark: Yeah to think we've been working with her for seven years and you didn't know that there was a full documentary on this person that we've been working with. And also that she was invited and actually spoke at a conference. Did you know this Joe? She actually spoke at a conference in the past. Joe: She did? Mark: I know right. Joe: I have absolutely no idea. We're underutilizing her talents. There's no question about it. Mark: That's what I'm saying. And she is actually crazy smart, one of the most talented entrepreneurs that I know and have known. So in this conversation we ended up just talking a lot about her background because I wanted to find out just in this conversation what wisdom would come out and what revelation would come out of this and getting in a couple of things right away, finding out how did she start multiple businesses, grow them but not work herself to death because she's always building a new house or a new rental property. She's always got some other project with a business on the side. And then she's been working with us for as long as she has. So her time management skills are great. So we talked about this idea of how do you outsource your business people. And I know we've covered this before on past podcasts but I don't know if this topic really gets old because people are doing this in different ways and every time I talk to somebody about this I learn something new about how they're doing it. And so I asked her what is the first thing that you outsource when you start a business? And I'm not going to share the answer now because it actually surprised me a little bit as to what the first thing was and what the last thing was that she does. And then we talked about this idea of is it better to actually build a business or is it better to acquire a business and when should you look at both options? And I thought it was a pretty good conversation, a very honest conversation as well that hey there's room to actually start a business in this entrepreneurial world of ours where people might think we only want to talk about buying a business. She made a pretty good case for when it makes sense to actually start something from scratch. So a fun conversation honestly and really just lots of interesting tidbits of information throughout the entire podcast. Joe: Well I think it goes to the depth and breadth of the quality of people that you've hired at Quiet Light over the years so I'm looking forward to listening to it. Let's go on and so people can stop hearing us chatter. Mark: Well I'm going to say one more thing. Joe, did you know that she decided to start an affiliate business and within four months became the number one super affiliate for that product? Joe: You know I had no idea because the only one who I thought was ever a super affiliate was Jason because he wrote the Bathrobe Millionaire. Mark: He's our other author. Joe: He's our other author, our super affiliate. Wow, no I didn't know that. She's never said a word. I wasn't— Mark: Exactly, I love it. So anyway let's get to know Amanda a little bit and hear some of her past and some of the things that she has to say about online business. Joe: Let's go to it. Mark: All right Amanda thank you so much for finally agreeing to come in the podcast. I've been trying to get you on the podcast for a while but I know you've been building houses, building rental properties, doing business … starting businesses, and of course helping Quiet Light Brokerage clients as well. Amanda: Yes, I've been busy that's for sure. Mark: That's for sure. Amanda: So now I have some down time and I decided to take on the challenge of doing one of these podcasts. Mark: Yeah well, of course, doing the podcast is always a little bit interesting but I think again we're just going to have a conversation here about your background and everything else. So I tell … I don't want to embarrass you right off the bat here but when I talk about the Quiet Light Brokerage team to people I often say well Joe is a client, Jason is the one that kind of forced his way in the door of Quiet Light and I tried to scare him away by giving him all these awful leads and the next thing I know Jason is breaking every record in the book. Joe came on and has been doing the same. But when I talk about you I said … I always say one of the smartest buyers I've ever worked with. And that's how you and I initially met; you were looking at one of my transactions … a deal I had. Do you remember that deal? Amanda: Yes I do. Mark: Yeah. Okay so … and a real lot of competition for that deal but of all the buyers you're able to kind of hone in on some of the key metrics right away. [inaudible 00:06:06.8] was super impressed. I deal with a lot of buyers so super, super impressive. So let's do this. Let's go back a little bit to how you got started in the online world because you actually started with a website called PurePearls.com. You were featured in Time magazine at a super young age. And then you filmed a pearl documentary in China as well right? Amanda: Yes it's kind of crazy to think about it because that part of my life was much of a whirlwind. But I was actually in grad school when I started my pearl company and thought it would make a great hobby. Something as a creative outlet outside of the day to day just what I was doing already in grad school. And so it kind of just snowballed and I just loved it. I was super passionate about learning the business not just the pearl business but just e-commerce, internet marketing, what it would take to get in front of customers. And that opened up so many other opportunities from public relations to search engine optimization. At the time those were big channels for marketing and it just kind of went from there. At the time I was focused on the pearl company I realized there's much broader market and I started getting interested in other opportunities as well. I was invited to a conference in DC to do a speaking engagement for Yanik Silver's Mastermind Group. And as much as I do not like public speaking I decided to face my fears and do it. And I met so many awesome people there. And I just kind of basically looked at what everybody was doing and thought wow there's just so many things that we can be doing with this internet space. And that was kind of a long time ago so I'm thinking that was probably around 15 years ago. So at that point, I just started another company and built that company, sold the pearl company because it was exploding at the time and I just … I couldn't manage it all. So I kind of started small with my new company in the printing industry. So its check printing and I started five new websites. So I just kept building, building, building and developed relationship with manufacturers and started printing basically our own custom products. I scaled that up and realized that I could develop a team to make sure that was a lifestyle company and I didn't have to be in the business. And that's kind of where I got the idea of starting my self-company. Businesses that I did have to work in that I could work on building teams to run them and basically allowing me to do a lot of different things. And so I didn't have to focus on just one niche. Mark: I've just run being been in the business. I've met a guy over the weekend. I was at a conference in Los Angeles … not it the Internet marketing world it was just kind of a more generic business conference. And he used to be a professional fighter and then we were talking about his business career. He said well I have 13 companies so I founded 12 and acquired one. I'm like oh my goodness and he said well I don't really do that much I've put teams in place. And we've talked about this on the podcast as well. We had Shakil Prasla on twice talking about this and how he hires CEO's and puts people in place. And this seems to be kind of this recurring theme with a lot of what we're doing here talking about that. At what point did you learn to put people in place with your companies? What did it take for you to be like you know what I'm going to hire people? Was it … well did you have kind of like a moment where it kind of struck you or was it more organic over time that you realized this is a good way to go? Amanda: I'd say both; a combination. With my pearl company, I realized I needed to put systems in place because I wanted to do a lot of different things. And so I went to an event and I heard somebody speaking about outsourcing things that you don't like to do. And I was like wow that's really smart because when you run a business there are going to be things you don't like to do. There are those dreaded tasks that you put off and put off and put off right? But you need to do them to run a functional business. And so at that point, I started outsourcing things for the pearl company. When I first started obviously I was wearing all the hats in the company but then I started hiring a customer service person. I was lucky enough to have somebody to handle all of the manufacturing and the shipping for me, the packaging so I don't have to actually even touch the product. And from there I hired a marketing team, content writing and things like that. So basically all I did was make sure that the marketing was on point, develop new ideas for marketing channels, and keeping the books in line. And then when I brought on my new company Check Printing, a financial printing company, I kind of used the same system and developed it for that business and it worked really well. I started that from the very beginning and so it was very much an absentee owner business outside of me looking at new marketing channels and keeping the books and whatnot. And so I was able to replicate that with each of my other businesses as well. I think it comes out of a necessity because when you want to do a lot of things you realize you have to create these systems right? But also I don't think you can be really good at everything and I'm not. And so you hire people that are really good at each individual component. So somebody who's customer service is likely not to be the greatest at book keeping, right? And somebody who's great at Search Engine Optimization may not be that great at Facebook Marketing. So I think it's really important to hire somebody that is really in tune with each different component of the business. It just makes more sense. Mark: Okay so we're going completely off script here because we're going to talk about the buying versus building and kind of building off of Walker's episode that we filmed. You know Walker who is a … we always have to say now best-selling author Walker Diebel because he's done such a great job with his book Buy than Build. People are like … we're at CapCon this past weekend and we gave away his book and when people realize he was there like oh the author is here, oh that's super cool and like he's kind of a big deal. So we'll get to this I do want to talk about building versus buying and making sort of the argument of why would you want to build a business someday. But I want to go back something you're talking about here, hiring out different pieces. Okay, it sounds so easy to do to say hire a marketer and hire somebody who's really good at what they're doing. Okay, great. Look I've hired people before, I've fired people before, these are all … it's usually in the agency sort of roles. When you're looking for somebody to hire specifically for marketing let's delve into that, how do you A. qualify them or what do you look for? Are you looking for an agency? Are you looking for an individual that works for you directly? Or does it really matter to you? And then also how do you … you said keep the marketing message on point? How? What are you doing to keep that marketing message on point and to check that? Amanda: That's a great question. I was actually reading something last night that said there's no such thing as a getting rich quick scheme. They often take a lot of work to get there. Even though it sounds simple it's actually really difficult. And it kind of goes with the same thing that success is like an iceberg, you only see the top part but there's a huge component at the bottom to making that work. And so there's a lot of trial and error with that to find the right person. Obviously, there's going to be a lot of hiring and letting go and finding somebody else because you learn what you don't want, you learn what you actually need. And sometimes that can be an agency if they have all those components built in. So if they have everybody you're looking for and they're doing exactly what they say they're going to do and holding themselves accountable then great since that makes sense. And to me, that's ideal because there's less hand-holding and less training involved. A lot of times though, it does involve finding one contractor to do something very specific. And it does require constant monitoring to make sure that they're staying on task and basically meeting those milestones that you've put in place for them. So I think that building that team does come with trial and error. It does come with some unfortunate firing of team members because they're not performing. But at the end of the day finding those quality team members are what kind of drive your business. So it's really important to stay on top of it. Mark: Yeah and I think it's important as well when talking about letting people go. Like this is the unfortunate part of being an entrepreneur, sometimes you have to let people go. But I do think it's important to look at the options available to you as well. Maybe like you said somebody is really better suited for customer service and you can really apply that. I often think about like sports teams and what do they do right? Sports teams are often handicapped by who they actually have on their teams and so a lot of times they play to the strengths of the team members that they currently have. And so this is something that for those of you that are currently like me that kind of cringe at the idea of letting people go this is something that you can do; it's invest in the people that you do have to find out where they do thrive. That doesn't mean that you should just need and see hold on to somebody. Everybody is an adult and should understand that obviously, it has to be a good fit. But you can definitely invest in people as well. How involved do you get with that marketing message when you are taking a look? Let's say that you hire somebody to do some Facebook Marketing for you and they're going to set up the creatives and everything else. How closely are you monitoring their ad work and how much are you kind of saying okay I'm going to let you run and possibly fall and this is your gig … I guess my question is how do you avoid micromanaging versus letting them run wild with a completely wrong message? Amanda: Well that's a good question because I think that first of all I am a natural manager and anybody in my family will tell you that … so especially when it has to do with your marketing dollars and getting a return on investment. However, there are things that I just don't know how to do really well and … for example Facebook Marketing or an email, like Amazon PPC or something of that nature. And a lot of times you will be told that they need a ramp up period so they can kind of test campaign. See what's working and then dial in on a more targeted marketing after they do broader match term. And so they do require a period of time to really get those conversions up or an Amazon to take the a-cost down and so with that I really only check in every three months to see if they are meeting our goal. And if they're not then you have to decide okay am I going to give them another three months period or do I need to move on? And so … I mean it really depends on what it is, what channel. Obviously, with SEO, there is a really long period of time that you kind of have to wait to see if its working and that can be really hard for people who are not patient enough. Because with Google with all of the algorithms that have come through in the last couple of years it can take a lot longer than it did previously before that in the old school days to get results. So it just really depends whether it'd be Instagram, Facebook, where I think you can see a lot quicker results versus Amazon or Google PPC and SEO. It's just a completely different ballgame. Mark: Are you an old enough internet marketer … and I don't want to call you old but are you old school enough to remember the Google Dance? Amanda: Yes. Am I showing my age now? Absolutely. Mark: I'm so glad that we got that recorded that I'm here calling you old publicly to everybody. No, I just … you know I often … I love talking to entrepreneurs. I have been doing this for a while because we remember the Google Dance. Every 30 days or 45 days and then the forms will light up like all right the Google Dance is happening and you'd want to see where you … everything is shook out and did you gain, did you lose? How— Amanda: Worse than the stock market. I tell you … unbelievable, yes. I don't miss that. There's a lot more opportunities for diversification now it seems so— Mark: Yeah. I think Google has done a good job of … because if you got edged out by like a spammy site or somebody that was just been [inaudible 00:19:19.4] the search results you're done. Amanda: Right. Mark: You had to wait 30 days minimum to be able to correct it and it was just torture but exciting at the same time. All right let's get to the topic that we were going to talk about. I want to talk a little bit about building versus buying. And I know I brought this up with Chuck at CapCon and he's like why would you guys talk about this? You're going to shoot yourself in the foot because we obviously make our money when people buy businesses from us. But there's an argument to be made as well especially for creatives for building something. So let's start right there and just ask you've done both, you've bought businesses and you've built businesses. Amanda: Mm-hmm. Mark: Where do you fall kind of on that spectrum and why? Amanda: Well I'm more on the builder side. I'm just a natural builder, a natural creator. I love the challenge of it. I love actually creating something from nothing. That is very much who I am. And you can't buy something without having somebody to build it right? So there is the other side of that coin and so somebody has to build a business, hopefully, a great business for a buyer to want to invest in. And so I love talking about building businesses because that's really where I'm passionate. I'm also very analytical as you know with data and statistics and marketing. And so I just … I think that when you're looking at buying a business versus building I think there's great opportunity for both right? If you're … if you have a portfolio of businesses for example like Shakil does and obviously he's willing to buy businesses because he doesn't want to invest the time to just necessarily or take the time to grow because they have a team ready to jump into something and run with it. Whereas I like to take some time to build it and see kind of where it's going to go and then run with it that way more organically. And that's kind of where my passion lies. And I like to kind of have that control of what I'm … the product how it's being made, packaged, the overall message around it. And that goes with pretty much everything whether I'm building a home or a business kind of my thoughts on it. Mark: Yeah and I met him. You've built multiple properties physical like … since you've been with Quiet Light one rental property, two homes at least that I know of. Amanda: Yes, three. Mark: Three? Wow. Amanda: Uh-huh. Mark: Holy cow. And I know you're really involved in the design process as well. When we met down in Austin you've had floor samples and everything like that in the car because you were going through all this. You do like to get in to that. Do you think it makes more sense? Let's just talk purely investment strategy here from just an investment standpoint. So I'm looking to place money into something and really kind of grow from a financial standpoint, do you think that there's a benefit in buying versus building in that scenario? Amanda: Today it is harder. It's more competitive to build. There's no doubt about it. It's much harder than when I started out. When I built my pearl company it was in 2003. We launched in 2004. Obviously, that was a total different time, kind of similar with my check manufacturing company. And then with Amazon, I still think that there's easy room for building obviously and even with Facebook Marketing you can see some pretty quick growth there. But there is something to be said for businesses that have really paved the way and are established and the foundation is there. And so I think it just depends on how you want to invest and so if you want to invest in something that's established and that has a history, a foundation that's already been done, they've already built a team for you and you're just walking right into it. That makes for a very sound and smart decision versus taking a risk and just seeing where it takes you in building a business. Because I mean I've experienced this, I've built a lot of businesses that haven't been successful either because I either burnt out or the marketing just didn't pan out. But I've learned from those and so I think one of my greatest successes is built off of just learning from the failure and then building off of that platform. So I think there's something to be said for both. From an investment standpoint though I'd say if you're looking to invest in something investing in a business that's established makes more sense. So I guess it's just different. I am a creator and a builder but at the same time, I do like to invest in sound vehicles so I've done both. Mark: I've asked this question to a few people before. If you were to guess how many domains you own right now how many would it be? Amanda: Oh gosh I don't know. And I'd hate to look because I'm sure I'm spending a lot of money just wasting away. Mark: Yeah. Amanda: Yes I actually purchased domains for my daughters as well because I don't know where this internet space is going and so I just want them to have the opportunity when the time is right. So yes I have a lot of wasted domain right now. Mark: Yeah I've logged in to my domain account and it's kind of like going down memory lane of bad business ideas or maybe— Amanda: Yes isn't it? Mark: They're not always bad but some of them are bad. Some of them are like oh my gosh what was … was my diet bad when I did that … decided to because this is— Amanda: The someday businesses; yes, what I might do someday. Mark: Exactly, there's a couple in there like you know what I actually still want to do that. It's just a matter of A. it doesn't pay anybody if I do it and B. the prime. Amanda: Right. Mark: But I think before that you were actually getting on to a point that I thought was really interesting and I found this with buyers. You've been with Quiet Light now seven years I think? Amanda: Yes, seven going on I think eight; crazy. Mark: I know right? So you've dealt with a lot of buyers over the years as well and I find that buyers tend to be … tinkers a lot right? The people that love to buy and do really well they're great at taking something existing, tinkering, modifying it, improving it. But a lot of buyers … and this is speaking generally; this is the rule for everybody. The creative process of starting up something from scratch and having to create and have that runway isn't really of interest to them. You know those are things that kind of bore them. And I know in Walker's book he talks about this. He starts out saying that he had start-up companies and they … it failed, including companies that received quite a bit of funding. And that process, that ramp up period was really painful. But once he started buying he really enjoyed that part of it. That was super exciting to him. So I think some of it does come to just personality. Amanda: Yes. Mark: What do you get excited about? You are a creator. You're a creative person. You love design. You love creating systems and you are data driven and data oriented. So that makes sense that you are going to really go towards that starting side to help exercise some of those creative muscles. So what are some of the first areas that when you're starting a business you like to outsource? Amanda: Obviously, the website design that would be the first step and it really depends on what the business is. But the first step would be product manufacturing, a website design, and how to start your first layer of marketing. And I would outsource all of that. And basically, I would just be managing that process to make it look and feel like I want it to so the business imparts the message that I want to integrate into the business. But that part is the hardest part I think of running a business. It does require a lot of thought, creativity, and management. At the same time for me, that's really what drives me when I'm creating something. That push and that challenge is what I look forward to everyday or stay up super late at night thinking about. And so I think it really is important to start outsourcing from the beginning. Because I'm obviously not a manufacturer, not a web designer, and I don't do the day to day marketing per se. I hire all of that out. Mark: Yeah and I've heard it a lot. Start at the beginning don't try and run a bootstrap with and then think that it's going to be easy. It's going to be easy just to hand that off because it's really hard as an entrepreneur to do that. What's the last thing that you would outsource? Amanda: Probably bookkeeping, to be honest, because … yeah, it pains me to say because I want everybody to have clean books right? But the last thing for me is bookkeeping because I know how to get a bank account and a credit card. That's easy; those are things that most people can do if we're generic. But running your books, you actually need to have a history of at least a couple of months and so it's pretty easy to integrate that into Quick Books or whatnot from your bank statement. So typically that's the last thing I would hire out because it seems to me that it doesn't take them very long to catch up. Mark: That's interesting. So I'm actually reversed on that. I like to outsource books first because I just don't enjoy it at all. Amanda: Right. Mark: And like you said outsource the stuff that you don't enjoy and keep things that you do so cool. Well, this has been interesting, it's been useful, it's not everything that we planned to talk about but I actually liked what we talked about and that there was something interesting. So I'm going to end with this, you've been advising buyers and sellers for a long time now and most of the people that listen to the podcast are looking to buy, there are some people selling. If you were to give one piece of advice for people buying an online business whether it'd be through Quiet Light Brokerage or through any other place; you find it online or another brokerage firm, what would be just kind of the one thing that you would advise people on? Amanda: I think the best thing that you can do is take some time to research just overall broad marketplace. Don't just look at a few packages. Really allow yourself several months at least to get a good feel of what's a good fit for you. There are so many different models of businesses, SaaS businesses, Amazon, to e-commerce and so forth and so one may seem more attractive to you. It may not necessarily need to be a certain niche but it may just be a certain type of model that is attractive. And I just want to add to that that the other thing that I recommend is don't basically pigeonhole yourself into a certain niche because you might find a business that doesn't have an attractive product but everything else could be right; the lifestyle component, the workload, the margin, the net profitability. And so I think that's really important to keep an open mind. Mark: Awesome. Well, hey, thanks, Amanda for coming on the podcast. I really do appreciate you coming on and I'm sure everybody else will as well. Everybody knows where to reach you, amanda@quietlightbrokerage. If you have questions about buying, about starting, about … you know or just have really general questions about this I will stand by the fact that your entrepreneurial background speaks for itself. And I think the success that you've had repeatedly speaks for itself. So we appreciate you sharing some of the wisdom you've gained over the years of doing this entrepreneurial thing that we do and everything else. Amanda: Yeah. Mark: So hopefully we can have you on again sometime in the future but we'll wait a year or so before we do. Amanda: Yes please do. Mark: All right. Amanda: Well thank you, Mark. I appreciate it. Have a great day. Links and Resources: Contact Amanda About Amanda  

The Quiet Light Podcast
How to Make an Incredible Acquisition Using ROBS

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 5, 2019 48:00


Today's episode is the first installment of a new Quiet Light series entitled “incredible acquisitions.” In these features, we'll bring you guests involved in successful acquisitions of Quiet Light listings. This is something we're trying out in order to feed our listeners what they want to hear – so email us your feedback! Today's story is interesting because the buyer made his deal using ROBS. Rollover for business startups (ROBS) allows you to invest retirement funds from a 401(k) or individual retirement account (IRA) into your business without paying early withdrawal penalties or taxes. Rick, the new owner of the website Gunskins, a financial executive looking for another income stream to take him into retirement, knew his stuff and made the decision to make his purchase with ROBS. Today's episode is the soup to nuts of the acquisition process and will be beneficial whether you're doing this for the first or the fifth time. Episode Highlights: The process of searching – how long did it take and what approach did Rick take? The depths of the search process – how far Rick dug into each potential business. When the focus narrowed to selling physical products. How he structured the finance for the purchase. ROBS vs. SBA What was it about this particular business that stood out to Rick. The importance of the person behind the business for sale. How many other business Rick looked at in his multiple range. Whether a buyer should look beyond their multiple range. We (re)stress the importance of due diligence. Rick walks us through the first days of the takeover of the business. The transition process is never easy nor stress-free and escrow agents are key. If he had to do it again, what Rick would do differently. Rick's plans for building out. Staffing changes Rick worked through in transitioning. Rick shares last minute thoughts for buyers and sellers. Transcription: Mark: So a few years ago I had a couple of experts … I had a call with a couple of experts for a way to buy a business called ROBS, right? Roll Over for Business Startups. It's kind of an unknown or pretty little known way of financing a purchase and we mixed up in a lot of red tapes and everything else but is it a viable option to be able to buy a business and run a business and finance that purchase outside of kind of the traditional spend cash or SBA loan. I know you and I are starting up this new series within the Quiet Light Podcast called Incredible Acquisitions. We don't have a great schedule for it yet but this is the first installment of that episode and I'm excited because you've got somebody who made an incredible acquisition thus the name using ROBS. Joe: Yeah absolutely and it's an interesting one because the individual behind the purchase, a guy named Rick. He's about 50 years old; very mature high level CFO in public corporations. So he knows his stuff. He gets the numbers, he understands it. And so it's not a light decision that he decided to go with the ROBS. He was going to do an SBA but he and his wife who's a CPA decided the best approach for them would be a ROB and they purchased GunSkins, closed … I want to say about nine months ago and we talked about his search. We talked about his due diligence process. We talked about his take over, what training and transition was like and now whether or not it's a family run business. Mark: Yeah this Incredible Acquisitions is really everything soup to nuts about doing an acquisition for people that have actually done an acquisition. And hopefully, it'd be able to give some insight especially to first time acquirers or fifth time because there's more than one way to go about this. So I love the fact that this is a family run business not just because I'm a family guy but … his son is doing customer service. Joe: At 14 years old, that's right. It's amazing. Well, he's not going to pick up the phone it's all … let's go back, I launched this business or I was going to launch it. I think I did … maybe I did just before Christmas of '17 and the guy that owned the business was overpaying his brother dramatically and my advice was to let his brother go. [inaudible 00:03:02.7] before Christmas remember that? Mark: Yeah we had … I remember that I called you all sorts of names on the podcast. Joe: You did and so did his brother. He's a predator off the podcast. But we worked it out, we did an adjustment that just was logical mathematical and it made sense. And you know it turned out that the brother stayed on during the transition and training period and then literally the 14 year old spends about five to ten minutes a day doing customer service by just doing … choosing the auto responder in the chat focus … in the chat like itself. It's great. It's a great story and I think it's great to hear buyers talk about their process and what they did to purchase a business and then to have some pretty amazing growth along the way which is a good part of what he talks about. Mark: All right I got a quick message for the listeners here on the podcast. We've been doing this now for about a year and a half if I'm … or actually less than a year and a half but we have a lot of episodes and I spent some time recently going over what you guys have actually listened to and responded to. This Incredible Acquisitions is something that we're trying … a new way to do it, it's not something that we're going to be able to do every week but listen to this episode and send me an email mark@quietlightbrokerage.com. Let me know what you think. Do you want more episodes like this? We're trying to be a bit more intentional this year about the guests that we bring on to be able to feed what you guys want to hear. So let us know is this right up your alley or do you want us to continue bringing on experts to … that specialize in PPC or whatever. We're going to still have some of those guests. Let us know. Let's get into the … today's episode of Incredible Acquisitions from Rick and hear this awesome story. Joe: Hey folks it's Joe Valley from Quiet Light Brokerage and today I have a client on the phone. Actually, it's a buyer. We're starting the Incredible Series in 2019 and this is the first of Incredible Acquisitions. I have Rick on the line. We're not going to actually share Rick's name for confidentiality purposes but Rick how are you today? Rick: I'm doing good Joe. How are you doing? Joe: I'm doing fantastic. We are going to talk about the site that you bought. We're going to share that. We're going to share a lot of information. Let's start first though with a little bit of your background. What was your professional life and what is your professional life now that you own an e-commerce business? Rick: Sure, that's a great question. I graduated from college with a degree in business specifically in accounting. I spent a good chunk of my career working for public accounting firms. And then over the last 15 or so years, I've been a financial executive for mid-sized companies, companies as large as one billion in revenue. Joe: And it sounds like you are about the same age as me. Do you mind sharing how old you are so the folks out there that are in the same boat can— Rick: Yeah, no problem at all. I turned 50 this year so it was a big year for me. Joe: Oh happy birthday in 2018. Good for you. It's a big number that's for sure. All right so you were in the corporate world and at one point you said all right I'm thinking I want to get into the online world, spend a little bit more time with family and friends was that the goal and objective? Rick: Yeah I mean it started off with look I'd like to diversify where my income streams are coming from. And my wife and I over the years have done many, many passive investments in the real estate, in the stock market like many people have. And we're really looking for something that was going to be … that we could be a little more actively involved and engaged with. And at the start, I wasn't at all convinced that I needed to throw my pencil down so to speak and run out of the corporate world. I was just simply looking for another source of income that would keep me active when I wasn't sitting at my desk. Joe: I'm recalling now that your wife is a CPA or something along those lines right? Rick: Yeah. We're both CPA's. We met in world of public accounting and as you might imagine we have a stimulating dinner conversation, CPA things. Joe: Okay so for those out there that own online businesses and are thinking maybe I want to exit someday Rick and his wife are the caliber of buyers that we're going to bring to the table. They're CPA's, they understand financial documents. So as always get your financials in good shape because someone's going to come through them in great, great detail. All right let's jump into a little bit about your process of searching for a business, how long did it take you and what approach did you take? Rick: Yeah, boy it took … I got to think about this, I'm going to say we probably were looking for at least 18 months maybe two years. And you know we started off quite broad and we were looking at everything. Not just e-commerce but also brick and mortar opportunities ranging from franchises to mom and pop businesses etcetera. And as we learned more, we looked at more businesses … and this is something I can't emphasize enough because it's really important to look at a lot of businesses. There's no cost to doing that as a perspective buyer and you learn a ton. You learn how folks are doing things right and maybe how folks are … some things you might want to avoid. And so we looked at a ton of different businesses and ultimately became convinced that the e-com was the way to go for us for a variety of different reasons. I continued to be amazed by the tools and resources that are available to e-commerce businesses and the low overhead, low touch nature of e-commerce businesses and that was really attractive to us. We were real about it, we knew that we weren't just going to buy something and then it was going to magically grow on its own and increase revenues but on the other hand we wanted to use the tools and resources available to run that business as efficiently as possible. Joe: A couple of things there that you're repeating so thank you. I say it all the time I feel like I could put on my hand on my desk or my head occasionally that looking for a long time. Finding a great business … and I think you bought one of the great ones, finding a great one is like looking for a needle in a haystack inside of a ginormous haystack. So it's doubly hard. The more you look at … you looked for a year and a half, the more you look at the more you knew the right fit when it came along and you were able to act quickly. Now when we talk about look at them you're not just looking at the listing online and saying yeah that sounds good or no that doesn't sound good. You're digging in and looking at the full details of a business listing right? All the way down into the financials. Rick: Yeah absolutely and you guys at Quiet Light make it really easy to do that. You sign … I think it's still this way anyway, you sign an NDA on the front end and then as you guys post listings and send out emails or put them on your site all I have to do is click a button to receive that information. And you know I think it's important to have the courtesy to follow up with a broker and let them know what you thought of the business and whether you want to move anything forward. But just the ability and the ease with which you can do that; get the information, look at it, and start to learn about the business and about e-commerce, in general, is amazing. And I'm sure there are some other brokers out there that operate similarly but I found your … Quiet Light's process to be very clean and easy in that regard. You know for a prospective buyer it's … you make it easy to look at businesses which is great. Joe: And just for clarification purposes I'm not paying you to say that or give you any kind of discount on the commission correct? Rick: No that's … not yet maybe we'll circle back to that. Joe: Maybe someday I'll buy you a cup of coffee how is that? At what point did you narrow your focus from everything in the possible entrepreneurial world to physical product e-commerce? Because e-commerce can be a broad term meaning anything sold online but you narrowed in to physical products. At what point did you make that decision? Was it simply because you came from the CPA world and it just made sense and you were comfortable with it and not necessarily SaaS or content development? Rick: Yeah you know … I think that's a good question and I would say that there's a step before that, before I narrowed it to physical products I narrowed it to … initially, I was looking at any and all businesses that had … that were the right size and had the right cash flow that I was looking for. And my first narrowing process was really to say okay, I need … if I'm going to do this it needs to be something I'm actually interested in. And initially we were looking at everything from e-commerce businesses that sold ballet tutu's and the other ones that sold toilet products and so forth and so on and that may well be interesting to somebody, it wasn't that interesting to me. And that's where I said okay I need to narrow this up a little bit and make sure that if I'm going to move forward with something it's something that I actually have some passion around. So that's number one. As far as products it just sort of … I don't know if that was a real conscious decision on my part but we did just sort of gravitate that way and that's what appealed to us. And I would say as we got closer actually to pulling the trigger and moving forward on an LOI we found ourselves looking more and more at product companies. It's just … it's what suited us. Not to say that SaaS or something else isn't something … it's something we would definitely consider but for whatever reason, we just sprinted towards products. Joe: I got you. Well, let me get into the business itself that you bought. But before we get there and talk about that particular business can you … one of the things we always talk about is sort of get all your ducks in a row and you and your wife had determined how you're going to do … how were you going to finance and purchase this business? Can you touch on that briefly? Because we did not do an SBA loan in this situation and it was a little creative. Go ahead and talk about that for just a moment. Rick: Yeah I'm happy to because I think it was a really good solution for us. We actually started thinking … we started down the SBA route. We got SBA approval. You've got a great contact with Stephen Speer at Bank United. He's a great guy and it was a smooth approval process. We are sitting there, we had it ready to go and the more my wife and I started looking at it and thinking about it it's like oh gosh. You know I've been working as an executive for over 20 years and over the years we've put some money into 401K's, both of us and that's sitting there idle or not idle but it's in mutual funds and the stock market and so forth; basically passive investments. And we ran across a program that the IRS created called the ROBS program R-O-B-S and it stands for Roll Over Business Startup. And there's a company … first of all you need an advisor to do this but … and there's a company called Guidant Financial in Bellevue Washington that we worked with that are very professional and have a very good process to kind of help you through a ROBS financing. But essentially what you do is you use your 401K money to purchase the business … the target. And what the real beauty of the ROBS program from my perspective is that one I can take that money that's invested in the stock market that I have less control over, I can put it into a business that I have complete control over and as dividends are paid out or when I exit this business those proceeds go or those dividends go tax free back into our 401K. And we don't get taxed on that until we start going on it for retirement which is outstanding. So it was creative and I'm glad we stumbled upon it. It's been really good for us. Joe: That's a beautiful thing. Mark here at Quiet Light wrote an article on it. So folks if you Google ROBS and Quiet Light Brokerage the article will come up in Google and you'd be able to figure that out and take a look. And of course, you can Google Guidant Financial as well. They're quite well known in the space. Okay so let's talk about this particular business. It's rare in my experience and I've been doing this since 2012 that we get a listing that has a utility patent on it. When this one came across my desk it was kind of special. Not only did it have a utility patent for a SKU that was generating about 40% of the revenues but it also had the majority of the revenue coming from its own Shopify store which is in contrast to what we see with a lot of physical based e-commerce businesses these days when they're selling on Amazon as well. Amazon is just growing so quickly that no matter how much they try to build their Shopify Amazon eats up a larger percentage. So what was it about this listing … and it was called GunSkins. I like to call it stickers for guns. What was it about this one that stood out to you right away? Rick: Well, first of all, we don't refer to them as stickers; they're high quality, high performance vinyl. It's the same vinyl that folks put on the cars and trucks and buses and so forth it's … or in boats too. I have seen boats wrapped. But what it is is it's a protective camouflage wrap for your gun. Now there are products out there like Sera Coat or solutions like hydro dipping that allow you to either camouflage, protect, and or dress up your gun … those guns are your standard black. Both hydro dipping and Sera Coat allow you to do something similar to what we're doing with vinyl. The difference is that those processes are both fairly technical. They're fairly expensive. And they're also basically permanent. So you've got to really like whatever it is or whatever pattern you're putting on your gun because you're going to live with it as long as you own that gun. Joe: Correct. Rick: Our product is a vinyl wrap. It's a 3M vinyl. Again the same vinyl they put on cars, trucks, buses, and etcetera. And it's … so it's a do it yourself solution. Our prices range from 10.99 to a high of 64.99. It could generally be applied in two hours or less to your gun. And getting back to your point Joe the patent … the founder of GunSkins applied for it to receive the patent related to the vinyl kit … the template that he created for the AR15. And we happen to make vinyl wraps for a variety of different guns from pistols, to rifles, shotguns, air fifteen's, AK47's, and etcetera. But he received a patent specific to the AR15 which is pretty cool. And so yeah that's the product. Joe: Was it the product category that stood out or the price point of the business with the discretionary earnings and the multiple or the utility patent or it was the utility patent not the design patent, right? Rick: Yeah that's right. Joe: So was it that that stood out that made you go okay this is what I'm passionate about or maybe the category itself because I believe you're a hunter too, right? Rick: Yeah I mean I'm not necessarily a gun nut. I have many friends who are and there's nothing wrong with that. But yeah I have hunted and shot most of my life and so that was attractive. There was a number of things that were attractive about this business and a number of boxes that this business checked in terms of what I was looking for. We were looking for something that had strong growth potential that had multiple sales channels which this one does. We sell on Amazon. We sell through our own website on Shopify, we have eBay, Walmart, FC believe it or not and so … and they also have multiple SKUs so that's another box. And probably most importantly we were looking for a business that had a good foundation. And by that, I mean that it was built in such a way as to it has got good processes. Processes that are relatively simple but also well documented and scalable. And the other adjective I guess I would add to that is portability. So it was very easy for us … I mean I didn't have any previous e-commerce experience outside of my own experience as a consumer to come in and get our hands around this business, understand it very quickly. That's not to say the learning curve wasn't steep. It was quite steep and we expected that but the founder of the business just did a really good job setting it up. That's the number one biggest factor. You know the other things are boxes I need to check like interesting category and the patent and things like that. But the number one box for us was this thing has good bones to it. We're dealing with a seller that has … that's trustworthy and has high integrity. And by the way, you know … and again I'm not being paid for this but also a broker that has the same characteristics, particularly on your first e-commerce purchase. I think that we could go and find our way a little bit easier now having gone through what we've gone through in terms of the acquisition and running this business that wouldn't be as important. But on the first purchase, I think it's critical. Joe: Yeah. Rick: You feel good about the seller. You got to feel good about the broker. And if you don't I wouldn't do the deal frankly. Joe: I agree. We've got a big thing here at Quiet Light and that is follow your gut. And you've got to. You're putting a great deal of your life savings on the line and you might only have one chance and you want to get it right. So for the business owners out there what Rick is saying is that who you are matters a great deal. You want to get yourself put together. You want to get those financials in great shape. You want to be a professional. You want to be somebody that you would buy a business for. There's a lot more to it than just those gross revenue numbers and trends. The person behind the business is often what I see makes the difference in the sale or not. And believe it or not in a 3.0 multiple to a 3.2 multiple you do make a difference. On that point, though Rick this was a good strong multiple. We went out at 3 ½ times multiple I believe … gosh was there any negotiation on the price? Folks I didn't look this up before we decided to— Rick: [inaudible 00:22:30.4] down just a little bit. But yeah it was a 3 plus multiple. Joe: Yeah I think we went out at 3.5 and it was pretty darn close. We're not going to talk actual numbers. We'll just talk those numbers. We won't talk dollars but did you look at many listings that were in that multiple range before making a decision on this one or did you go oh wow that's high I need to look anyway? What was your initial response to the multiple? Rick: Yeah well my initial response was well that's high and … but it was an interesting business. And as I dug into it it's like okay I mean … and as I started checking off those boxes that I was talking about it's like okay well maybe this is just the [inaudible 00:23:09.8] as I went through the diligence process I could see where there is opportunity. I think that the founder and the owner … he was a brilliant guy. He created this idea. He created this business. He built the foundation but everybody that comes to the table brings with them a different set of skills. And when I was looking at it through my eyes I thought okay well I can do X, Y, and Z, and I think leverage this opportunity that much more. So yeah my initial reaction was that's high. I ultimately got comfortable with it and it was the right deal for us. Joe: Yeah. You know it's the valuation process I think with this particular listing because it was mostly Shopify, 60%, 70% Shopify at the time, they get to own their own customers; more value. It had a three plus year track record; more value. It had a patent and 40% of the revenue came from that SKU that the patent was on; more value. The lower the risk, the higher the multiple and in this case there were multiple conference calls. I cannot recall if there are multiple offers. Again I didn't really prepare for this I just wanted it to be a casual conversation. Rick: You told me there were. Joe: There we go. So you remember I don't. You see I've done 20 deals. And I wouldn't lie I mean the reality is that we're going to be forthright and honest with every single person we work with. So even at that 3.5 my point everyone is that sometimes the first thing you look at is the multiple and then you make your decision and that's not always the best choice. In this case with Rick, you've had what 20% month over month of growth since you bought – Rick: Yeah. Joe: Okay so simple math is … go ahead and double check it up for me but if you've got a business listed at a 4 time multiple you buy it at a 4 time multiple and you've got 25% year over year growth and that sticks after you buy the business you're going to make your money back in 2.7 years. In Rick's case, that's going to go down dramatically because of that 20% month over month growth and the multiple is a little lower than that; that 3.5-ish times maybe a little bit lower. All right so let's talk quickly about due diligence. We only have one snafu in due diligence and that was the question I think about when a business owner writes things off that are personal and they put them down as let's say office supplies which I think was the case here. You being a CPA, your wife being a CPA, you got an export of all of the expenses on the American Express or Visa credit card and literally went down through every expense and said: “Well why is it that this trip to Staples is a personal expense?” Because what we did folks is instead of making Kevin the seller go back and re-categorize every single thing that were office supplies I said okay these are normally personal expenses because Kevin worked from home. If any of you saw the listing and watched the video if you remember Rick I think he was building this house and he shot it on his … we interviewed him and he had his iPhone and he did the circular view and mountains in the distance in the background and yeah it's a beautiful. But very casual work from home, the expenses were clearly mostly personal but we went down through them item by item. Or you and your wife did and we had to work on that negotiation a little bit and we worked it out ultimately. But your due diligence process was pretty thorough right down to that level right? Rick: Yeah it was. And our approach was really to grab the P&L that you and Kevin had put together and go line by line and understand what was in each one of those categories and look at different fluctuations and variances month to month or year over year or quarter over quarter. And there's really two questions you're asking yourself if you do something like that. One is: is there anything here that should be particularly on the expense side? And then the other question is: is there something not here that should be? In other words are there expenses that you would expect to be in this business that you're not seeing anywhere and maybe they financed it personally for whatever reason. And so you're really looking for those two types of anomalies and just asking questions and make sure you understand them. Joe: Right, right for sure. Okay so we got through due diligence, we moved on to the asset purchase agreement and then closed. Can you recall the time it took roughly from the letter of intent to closing with the ROBS program that you were involved with? Rick: You know it wasn't bad. It's like anything in life it comes down to organization both theirs and ours. By theirs I mean Guidant … our advisor that helped us through that process. They have a highly structured organized process. And if you follow their process they will help you be organized as well and it will go pretty smoothly. I would say I think it was … well, I don't remember Joe. I'm going to say 45 days. Joe: That sounds about right you know for … this is in effect to cash deal and not on SBA deals. Cash deals take anywhere from 30 to 45 days to close, SBA you're going to add another 30 to 45 days. You did disappear for a little while on us there. You went silent on me if you recall and that was just an incredible job opportunity for you that you took and had to get that going and relocate briefly and make it work and you still managed to juggle that and due diligence and getting the business closed and eventually take over. So let's talk about that we closed and then there is the training and transition period where generally it's up to 40 hours over the first 90 days after closing. Talk briefly about the first few days and what it was like for you when you went to take over the business from Kevin. Rick: Well sure and just to go back very briefly Joe on what we were struggling with and you said I went silent a little bit on you. That's true and what we are struggling with was gosh this business is big enough and has enough potential is this what we want to commit ourselves to do and forget me going to the corporate job. And I struggled with that and I continue to struggle with that. You know I've been struggling with that last frankly because I think we have a pretty good balance and a pretty good system and cadence going now where I can enjoy doing both. You know helping manage the GunSkins business as well as my corporate CFO job that I have. So that's what we're struggling with and who knows that could change as the business grows or changes or what have you we'll see where that takes us. But in terms of transition, I would say we put a lot into due diligence. If I had it to do over again I would probably be better dialed in on transition and really making sure that it was clear between the buyer and seller and sellers/buyers employees or contractors who was going to do what when it was going to get done and so forth because this isn't a small business it's … I'd say a medium sized e-commerce business. We do about 20,000 orders a year through both our website and through Amazon and there's a lot of moving parts that you got to get transitioned over. Simple stuff like making sure that your postage is going to the right credit card. Making sure you've got seller central transitioned over. Making sure that PayPal is set up correctly under your name etcetera, etcetera. And I would say that … and that's probably my lack of … our lack of e-commerce experience that contributed to being a little less organized as it relates to the transmission. It was with a case where we didn't necessarily know what we didn't know. And so I'd probably spend a little bit more time on that. It went fine it was just … it was a little bit anxious for us because the light bulbs are starting to go on. It's like oh gosh or what about this or what about that, well if we got to do this then we have to do this over here and it was … it ultimately was all seamless but I wouldn't say it was stress free. I mean it was a lot of learning. Joe: There's never a transaction like this that is stress free. There's always a lot of emotion involved. And you know part of the purpose of doing recordings like this is to learn. So look we've been at this for almost 11 years as a brokerage firm and we don't have a transition checklist that should probably or could probably help ease those nerves a little bit. So it sounds like maybe what we can do as a brokerage firm is to have the seller create … and we do this but it's not very formal, a complete list, this is in the asset purchase agreement of course. But a list perhaps in Google Sheets of every item that is going to transfer and during the transition period you're going to check each box and ensure that you've got complete control of it before the asset … before the funds are released. That is the way it works folks. Rick wires funds into Escrow. Kevin transfers all of the assets over to Rick's control. And once Rick has control of all of those assets he informs Escrow … the Escrow agent and they release the funds. But we could formalize that process a little bit but it will never … I'm sorry be stress free and emotion free. That's the biggest challenge in these transactions. It's just … it's a big deal. You're making a big life changing investment, putting your hard earned money … your 401K money on the line and you want to make sure you get it right. So we we're going to make sure it's stress free but obviously, it's not always and cannot always be that way. Rick: Correct. And the other thing I would just add to that Joe is that with a [inaudible 00:33:23.6] it's unrealistic to think that you're going to fund Escrow, transition all these assets over and accounts over in 24 hours and be done. It simply takes longer than that. And part of it is out of the control of both buyer and seller. You're dealing with the different tools and resources and platforms that the company is using out there and it takes time for those folks sometimes to work through their process of transitioning that to a new owner. Joe: Yeah. And that's part of the process and that's why … regardless of the size of the deal, I want Escrow in the middle. I want that money that you've invested safely with an Escrow agent. And for your seller to know that as he transfers control over all the assets that he's money is safely … which is his future money, is safely in Escrow as well. Let's talk a little bit about if you had to do it over again what would you do different? This just business as you say was mid-sized, is it big enough to support you financially so that you can quit the corporate world and never go back and if it's not do you think maybe in hindsight you would have held off and try to buy something bigger or are you really happy with the decision and purchase that you made? Rick: Yeah. You know that's a good topic and I'll go back to some rules we operated under in the corporate finance world [inaudible 00:34:51.0] acquisitions in the corporate world. And [inaudible 00:34:54.5] said that the smaller deals take just as much time and are just as hard to work if not harder than the larger deals. And it's absolutely true. It's something I've always found to be true. And so I would say that my advice would be look do something that is going to be meaningful to you. And by meaningful I mean that the investment is meaningful, the cash flow that the business is going to generate is meaningful. Because if it's not … you know I love playing poker and sometimes you get in a poker game where the stakes are too low and it sort of distorts the game and people don't play the way that they ought to play. It's kind of a similar analogy here where putting up at risk so that it's meaningful to you. You're going to pay attention to it and as it bears fruit it's going to mean something to you because you're going to work hard on it. It's not … there's no free lunch. You're going to put blood, sweat, and tears into it. Make sure it's going to be meaningful when it comes out the other side. Joe: Yeah. Rick: So for us, the dollars that we invested out of our retirement savings were absolutely meaningful; they're significant. They're dollars that I don't want to lose. And moreover, the cash flow that this business generates is meaningful. It has the potential to equal or exceed my earnings as a corporate CFO. So yeah I … and the other thing tying back into what we were talking about earlier is what you'll find is that when you start looking at the larger businesses they generally are … they generally have a better foundation. Joe: Right. Rick: You could get into an e-commerce business on the cheap but I think the probability of getting into one that has a strong foundation like the one that we have that GunSkins has is low. It's lower I should say. You got to be a lot more careful and you are at higher risk that when you start getting into the actual processes, how the business is put together, maybe even the integrity of the seller you just … it's a little messier in my experience. Joe: Yeah for sure there's no question and that's why the multiples go up the larger the business. When you get into six, seven, really 7, 8, 900,000, a million dollars in discretionary earnings it's a larger more well established business and therefore as Rick just said it's lower risk. With lower risk, the multiple goes up. Smaller businesses lower multiple because there is more risk without question. Rick let's talk … we're running a little short on time but I want to talk about what types of things you thought you were going to be doing with GunSkins in terms of marketing channels that worked or didn't work, what surprises there were, and we got an audience of both buyers and sellers and there's people out there that are e-commerce experts that may be able to point you in the right direction in terms of getting this marketing in certain places. So let's talk about what worked and what didn't and what are you're hoping to achieve in terms of marketing channels with the business. Rick: Sure so I would say going into the acquisition and early on in the transition I was absolutely convinced that we needed to aggressively build out our dealer channel, our brick and mortar dealer channel. Not necessarily e-commerce stores but brick and mortar dealers like gun dealers, pawnshops, etcetera. There's thousands of them across the country. I thought well maybe we take a look at big retail as well, big box retail. I wasn't as convinced in that but I was convinced on the gun dealerships and that we needed to invest time in building that out. And I'll tell you … and this is again what I learned pretty quickly is that to build out a dealer network, a dealer channel through brick and mortar stores is labor intensive; labor and cost intensive in a very large way. It takes a lot of boots on the ground to go and knock on all those doors and try and sell that product. And what I learned was the cost per conversion on e-commerce is so attractive, it's so incredibly attractive compared to other sales channels. And if you can build your scale and build your brand through e-commerce the dealers will come to you at least in our case, in our business. Joe: They are finding you now. You're not going out and getting them. Rick: Absolutely. Joe: [inaudible 00:39:34.4] they're finding you. Rick: Absolutely. I mean we love our dealers but I think investing a lot of time and money in trying to grow that channel on its own is a little bit silly. And it surprised me because I didn't think that going in. Where we spent our effort is really reinforcing and building our brand, our brand awareness, and private awareness online through social media, through Google Ad Words, etcetera, through Amazon etcetera, etcetera, blog posts and the like. And what we find is people hear about us … dealers in particular and they come to us. Even some of the online distributors, very well-known online stores for guns and guns accessories have reached out to us and say hey we'd like to talk to you about distributing your product on our site. Joe: Excellent. Rick: And that's the way to build a dealership for our business. You can't go out there and put enough boots on the ground to do it otherwise. Joe: Excellent. One last question we talked about staffing very, very briefly but there were two VA's I believe or virtual assistant or remote contractors. You are here in North Carolina where I am and I believe they're both out west or were out west. Are both of the individuals that were working for Kevin still working for you? Rick: One of them is, one of them is not. The gentleman who's continuing with us we call him … but really he's a lot more that— Joe: You broke up right there. Say that one more time for me what do you call him your? Rick: Graphics genius. Joe: Your graphics genius, okay [inaudible 00:41:09.0]. Rick: It really doesn't do him justice to be honest because not only is he our graphics design guy for our patterns and so forth but he also handles a lot of the e-commerce side of things as well; our website and Shopify and Amazon etcetera. He's invaluable and he probably puts in maybe 20 hours a week something like that. Joe: Okay. Rick: So he's continuing. The other VA that Kevin had handled customer service and social media and we've picked that up on our side. My son believe it or not … my 14 year old son does a fair amount on the customer service side answering customer questions. Joe: Excellent. Rick: And this again goes back to the tools and platforms available to e-commerce businesses. We use in Zendesk on the customer service side; it's spectacular. I mean it makes it so easy and so he's enjoying doing that and making a little bit of money. Joe: That's great. I have to tell a brief story … I mean in talking to Kevin we listed this just before the holidays in 2000— was it seven … '16 right? I forgot. Just before the holidays and the customer service person was Kevin's brother who he loves dearly and here I am going man you are so overpaying a relative. It's crazy what he was paying him; I'm like you need to fire him just before the holidays. And he didn't fire him but we … because it just … it was logical and used logic and math and we made an adjustment in the profit and loss statements for really still overpaying a virtual assistant. We made the cost of the VA probably twice what it would normally cost to put that in as the cost to make the adjustment. Full disclosure put that in black and white right in the package. But he did stick with you for a while and you eventually took it in house which is great because you're saving money on the bottom line and teaching your son some business skills as well. Rick: Yeah I mean he's a great guy by the way and he was doing a great work and was very flexible with us on the transition and so … but yeah ultimately we took that over after about three months I think it was. And it takes probably 20 minutes a day something like that. Joe: Yeah I know okay so he was even more overpaid than I thought. If he's anything like Kevin he is a great guy. Kevin spoke very highly of him and I know he did a good job and the transition and training period Kevin and he worked it out and you worked it out so that he was there for you. Because the last thing you want to do is you have to jump in and take over the role of a contractor when that is not what you're intended to do. Rick: Yeah absolutely and again making sure your seller is trustworthy and is operating with high integrity. And Kevin I can't say enough about, he's an outstanding guy and he did things and handled himself in such a way he cared about the business, he cared about our success in taking on that business and that makes a big difference. He didn't have to be as cooperative as he was but that's just who he is and that makes a difference. Joe: Without a doubt, we'll try to get Kevin on the podcast as part of the Incredible Exits series. Rick: Yeah. Joe: Instead of just the Incredible Acquisitions. Well, listen, man, I'm so happy that you bought GunSkins. I'm excited for you. I'm excited maybe to have you on again as an update and talk about where you were able to take it. I mean you've had it for about a year now and we can do it again in another year. Any last thoughts, any last advice or suggestions you can give people that are considering selling their business and what they should do right, do differently than what you normally see or anybody that's buying a business any last minute thoughts for them? Rick: That's great, for sellers we've touched on it a bit through our discussion but really have yourself organized. Have your processes documented. There are great tools out there that you can use to document your processes. Also, have your financials put together. Both my wife and I are CPA's we use a partner in CapForge bookkeeping here out in Carlsbad, California. They use these Quick Books and they are e-commerce experts. I don't know how they make money with what we're paying them but that is money well spent because they— Joe: Perfect and let me just interrupt and point this set down. I'm pounding my desk people. We have two CPA's who own the business and they still hire an e-commerce bookkeeper. Please, folks please do what Rick is doing and get your books in good order. Okay, I'll stop pounding my desk. Rick: No, look I agree it's cheap and they do [inaudible 00:45:51.7] when you go to exit you're going to have all your ducks in a row and Joe's going to be very happy. He won't have to recreate the financials on the Excel spreadsheet. Joe: And you'll get more money. Rick: Yeah. Joe: You'll get more money. Good books instill confidence in buyers and confidence increases the value in the valuation and the multiple so without a doubt. Well, Rick if anybody has a great idea and wants to reach out to you how would they find you? Rick: Right through the GunSkins site, support@gunskins.com and that email is us as owners and we answer every inquiry we get. Joe: Awesome and for everybody out there that is a hunter or owns a gun of any kind please go to GunSkins.com check it out. Go to the YouTube site, you'll get to see the before and after of lots of different guns. The wraps are very, very cool; camouflage wraps, different seasons for camouflage, and even just the American flag and things of that nature if you want to spice it up a bit. Or if you're female and hunting I think there's even some wraps for females too right Rick? Rick: We're going to be launching some great ones here in the next 30 days. We're launching real tree patterns and those include … there's a tiffany blue camouflage pattern. It's popular with women as well as we have paradise pink barrage in the theme as well. But yeah there's something for everybody also visit our Facebook page. We've got over 70,000 Facebook followers and we'd love to count each one of the listeners as a follower as well. Joe: Fantastic. Rick, thanks for your time. Thanks for being a professional. I look forward to having you back on the show to talk about maybe your incredible exit someday. Rick: Absolutely. Thanks, Joe. I appreciate it. Joe: You bet. Links and Resources: Gunskins.com support@gunskins.com Gunskins Youtube Gunskin's Facebook Guidant Financial Quiet Light ROBS article CapForge Bookkeeping Quiet Light ROBS Article

The Quiet Light Podcast
How to Use Podcasting as a Tool to Build Your Business

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 29, 2019 45:46


Hosts can talk faster than they can type. Followers can listen while doing any number of other tasks. A business that comes with a podcast following of 15,000 is more valuable than one that comes with a 35,000-person email list. Podcasts are pretty hard to get wrong. They can diminish the laborious reading and writing aspects of emails and blogs by automatically offering content within the conversations with guests. Today we are talking with podcasting expert Craig Hewitt about ways that adding a podcast to your business can be beneficial both for a recent acquisition and a potential sale. Craig is the owner of Podcast Motor, a company that handles the end to end podcast production process for businesses. He's an entrepreneur in the podcast space, running two service companies and producing 35 podcasts. He believes, and we here at Quiet Light agree, that a good podcast is a great tool for building your business. Episode Highlights: How podcasts differ from blogs. Where podcasters should get started. Whether they need all the “stuff” to get up and running. Why podcasters use external services to create their episodes. Craig's solution for launching a podcast quickly and easily. Challenges hosts face in getting started and putting themselves out there. Why it's important to find the right guests and create relevant conversations for your business. How podcasting can be a fit for different types of businesses. Ways starting a podcast with a newly acquired business can help promote ownership. Why businesses need fewer followers for a podcast than for a blog. How a podcast can create repurposable content. Ways a podcast can benefit a business you are getting ready to sell. Whether podcasts are transferable. The basic technical tools you need to get started. How long you should test for success. Transcription: Joe: So Mark today's episode we're going to talk about why someone should start a podcast. Stutter, stutter, stutter, Chris edit that. Mark: Chris don't edit that just keep that in there. Joe: Yes let's keep it in because folks this is about podcasting and I was going to ask Mark a question … oh, man, did somebody put something in my coffee this morning [inaudible 00:01:34.2] in my coffee … it's a Northern thing. Do you have to be well spoken, intelligent, and an expert on the subject matter to start a podcast? Of course, the key is to have a successful podcast to build an audience and a brand and a reputation but what do you think? Do you have to have all of that to really begin? Mark: No absolutely not. And look at the risk of narrowcasting and just talking about what we're doing here which is running a podcast, I thought it would be interesting to have Craig Hewitt on the podcast here. Craig owns PodcastMotor. They do the editing for all of the Quiet Light Podcast episodes. He also has a podcast hosting service Castos.com which he's recently started. He's an entrepreneur cut of the same cloth that all of us are made of. He likes to start, he likes to buy, he likes to grow businesses and living in France actually. He's an expat living in France so a pretty cool backstory there which unfortunately we didn't have time to get into. But I wanted to talk to him about why anyone who's out there looking to buy or even grow your business and create something really unique and special might want to consider adding podcasting to the mix. And look I get it we're looking a little bit at our own experience here and how beneficial a podcast … the Quiet Light podcast has been at Quiet Light brokerage, but I asked Craig this question. Joe, I'm going to ask you and put you on the spot here again like I do on a third of these intros I try and ask you a question that we didn't prep for. If you're looking at a business for sale and it's got 30,000 e-mail subscribers, okay and that's one option and then there's another business in exact same niche but they have 15,000 podcast downloads per month, where do you put more value in your opinion? Joe: Oh without a doubt on the 15,000 because those people are listening. They're hearing your voice and they feel like they know you already. We've gone to events where people have come up and said hello and they joke and they say I feel like I know yo. I've heard Mike Jackness talk about that as well. But I think the number one thing that this podcast has done for us … and John Corcoran was a guest on the podcast as well where we talked about networking and how important it is to a business. And I think if you're a business owner, if you're launching your own products, if you're a SaaS product owner, you just look to prior examples of huge podcast success like Michael Jackness or Scott Voelker for instance. Scott has got a quarter of a million people that listen to him every month. You network and learn things from the people that you network with to grow your business and grow your brand and I think it's invaluable and it blows away the e-mail. Although the e-mail is something specific and different because you're probably trying to sell a product right then and there, I think on a podcast you're talking about the bigger picture and your brand. If you're a SaaS business owner I think it's a great idea because you can talk about what updates you've got to your product and the market in general. But I love the podcasting and obviously, I'm not very well spoken or eloquent so if we can do it anybody can. Mark: That's right. So this is a bit of an advertisement for starting a podcast and I feel confident in doing this because I know a lot of people out there probably will listen to this and won't start a podcast. You'll think about the technical challenges, you'll think about the fact that your voice has to be out there and Craig and I go over this. There is an element of fear because you're a little bit more intimate with your audience when you have a podcast. There's a third dimension that gets added, right? When you are just writing a blog post it's very two dimensional, you're words are out there, you can go back and edit it whenever you want, people don't hear your tone … your voice, they don't hear you screw up because you get to go and edit it. And of course you can edit a podcast but there's still … it's still you, a little bit more real and raw. So I know a lot of people are going to listen to this and not start podcast but I'm going to make a pitch to just say look if you're trying to build something unique, if you're trying to build something valuable, if you're trying to grow your existing business with the [inaudible 00:05:24.7] towards selling it down the road, there is some value to starting up a podcast which is going to make it different if you are able to grow a good sizable audience. And I think in the 11 years we've done Quiet Light Brokerage I can't think of a single business that we have sold that actually came with a podcast attached to it. Joe: I don't think I've ever had one. And as far as return on investment I would think that the podcast and the cost associated with it, the ROI would be huge and probably not measurable; an invaluable. But one other thing look this is we've got Craig from the podcast company that manages ours but we've talked to lots of people like Taz from the Amazon Entrepreneur. He launched his podcast, does two a week and he does it all himself. So it's possible to do it for very little or nothing at all if that's … if it's a budgetary problem and you still want to get started. Mark: All right let's hear it directly from somebody who's been in the podcasting niche for a long time. He knows all … a ton of what he's talking about, Craig Hewitt. Let's get to it and cover this topic and I'll hopefully inspire maybe one or two of you guys out there to go ahead and start a podcast with your business. Mark: Hello Craig welcome to the Quiet Light podcast. Thank you so much for agreeing to come on. Craig: Hey Mark thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Mark: All right you and I know each other from a ways back at Rhodium; do you remember the … I don't remember when we met each other at Rhodium, do you? Craig: Gosh yeah. Like I'm optimistic with my time projections these days I want to say it's three years but it might be four years ago. It will be four years in April probably yeah. Mark: All right my wife does this thing I call it Megan math where she'll … something would be 2 months away and she'll somehow compress that down to like just two weeks away. Craig: Yeah [inaudible 00:07:06.4] great exactly. Mark: Again full disclosure and I'm sure I probably said this in the intro. We always do the intros after … we record the intros after we record the interviews themselves but I'm sure I will say this just out of full disclosure I do pay you professionally. You have been doing the editing … probably it's your group that has been doing the editing for the Quiet Light podcast so thank you for that. Craig: No it's my pleasure. It's my pleasure, yup. Mark: Awesome, all right so we're going to talk about podcasting today and whether or not somebody should consider adding it to a business. And I obviously with Quiet Light I want to focus a little bit on does it make sense to add on to an acquisition like if you buy a business, does it make sense to add that on? What's involved in starting up a podcast? What are the impacts that you might see? And I also want to … if there's time allowing probably talk about the personalized aspect of podcasts and how that's going to affect the buying and selling of businesses as well. We can all just talk a little bit about SaaS. I know you have some SaaS work as well which could be an interesting thing to get into as well. But let's start off real quick with your background and your history and kind of how you came into doing what you're doing. Craig: Yeah so we know each other through kind of why my first successful online business and really the way I escaped the rat race of the professional kind of corporate world which is called PodcastMotor. So PodcastMotor is a product tied service that does podcast editing and production, really kind of like end to end everything from Mark records an episode, sticks it in Dropbox and an episode shows up in iTunes a week later. We really try to take care of every aspect of that whole process for our customers. And that business has been going since … it just turned four this year so a couple of months ago. So we've been doing it a long time in the podcasting world. And we have about 35 customers that we service on a regular basis. So weekly or every other week that they have a podcast come out. About two years ago I acquired a WordPress plugin also in the podcasting space called seriously simple podcasting. And on top of that, we built a podcast hosting platform that we now call Castos. So I run two different businesses in the podcasting space and it all happened just by chance. To be honest I started a podcast … jeez, four and a half years ago I guess and saw it really quickly like a lot of people that podcasting is really difficult. There's a lot of nuts and bolts and technical stuff and gear and all this junk that you need to start a podcast as opposed to like a blog where you just get a WordPress site and a keyboard or your iPhone and you could start blogging as good as anybody else. Podcasting there's a technique and gear and equipment and all this stuff that you have to have to be decent. And then to be really good is a whole other level. So we started offering the PodcastMotor service based on me seeing that pain I guess. Mark: Yeah and I don't want to scare people right at the gate but let's get into that kind of a scary different world of podcasting because it is a little bit different. Let's start with just the hosting side and you talk about Castos your podcast hosting service. Isn't it enough to just have a regular website? I mean I think one of the things that was confusing to me with podcasting when we got into it before we started the Quiet Light podcast was well why do I need all this stuff? Why do I need Libsyn? Why do I need all these other things? Why are we … why do podcasters use these extra services? And what are some of things that if somebody is thinking about podcasting what do they need to consider from a technological standpoint outside of the equipment just from the webhosting setup, the technical setup? Craig: Yeah so the logic around having a dedicated media hosting platform with you know hear, Libsyn, and SoundCloud, and Castos or whatever, the idea there is so you have a hopefully a very popular podcast and you have thousands of people downloading your podcast every Tuesday morning when it comes out right? Mark: Just like the Quiet Light podcast, thousands and— Craig: Yeah okay so thousands of people listening to your podcast and downloading this 60, 80 megabyte file every Tuesday morning. If you're a business like all of your customers are and a lot of ours the last thing you want is this enormous strain on your web server on Tuesday morning when customers are coming to your site and trying to buy your stuff or schedule a meeting or something like that because both the streaming and download of the podcast will be bad. And your website will at least be very slow if not crash. So you separate the resource strain from podcasting and serving up your website and have a dedicated hosting platform just for those audio files and let your website run on you know WP engine or flywheel or wherever it's running so that the two aren't using the same resource. That's kind of the logic around why you needed a dedicated media hosting platform. It's just like you don't put your video files under use Wistia or something like that. It's the same kind of idea. Mark: All right exactly. Okay so there's this whole other technological world with podcasting and then there's also the equipment side of it. And then there's the editing side of podcasting as well. Craig: Yeah. Mark: And then there's the distribution to the different podcast networks. And we're kind of jumping on the deep end or I guess we'll swim to the shallow end because I'm going to talk about listing the praises of podcasting here in a little bit. And specifically as kind of a leading tease here for anyone listening why I think it's a really, really good idea for any acquisition that you do, any business that you're looking at to potentially acquire to consider adding a podcast and potentially even on the sell side as well. But let's talk about the setup here a little bit as well and the equipment. Now I've got as you can probably see from the video that you can see and we do these podcast over video is just a little more personal. Craig: Yeah. Mark: I got the road podcaster and I got like three other mics back there as well. [inaudible 00:12:52.1] and everything else. And you, you got I see a pop screen of yours, there's pop screens, there's mics, there's the Vulcan power stuff, it's a whole different world, isn't it? Craig: Yeah I mean so it is totally a different world and this is the bad scary thing about podcasting is that there's more opinions and resources out there than are necessary honestly. And there's so much information that so many people get scared and they go and read five or six different articles just about the best podcasting mic and what web … what podcast hosting platform to use and there's everyone has an opinion about that and you know how long should you're episodes be and blah, blah, blah. Do you need a pop filter? Do you need a boom mount? Do you need all this stuff and so actually we created a resource to kind of counteract this and we call it launch in a week. And the idea is we're going to give you like one or two options not like all these million things out there that all these other resources give you is like they create the analysis or paralysis by analysis. So we … so castos.com/launch takes you to launch in a week and we give you like in a week seven day, seven e-mails and videos exactly what you need to launch a podcast to dispel a lot of that over information and misinformation that's out there a little bit. Like microphones I only recommend two microphones you know it's like this one that I'm using Audio Technica ATR2100 and another one is called the Shure SM7B. That's a really really really good mic. This one is $65 that one is about $500. And so it's like kind of whatever you feel like you want or need. We try to do a lot of that like you can do this or this and don't overthink any of it because you can get in way over your head. And the unfortunate thing is a lot of people never get started because they just think so much about all this stuff. Mark: All right let's talk about that point because I think this is the biggest obstacle to podcasting right? With writing a blog you can put it out there and you can get it up and going. Everybody knows how to write something even if it's not very good but there doesn't seem to be as much of a barrier to getting started. Maybe it's because of the technical challenge but I think there's also a mental challenge of getting out there. And I know for a podcast standpoint we toss around the idea forever. I actually had a false start at starting the Quiet Light podcast and I think I recorded three episodes, launched two, and then stopped because I didn't record enough episodes. I think one of the challenges people have is the idea of being out there and trying to get this audio presentation perfect from the get go. But like you said just get out there and start. You have to actually start doing it. Craig: Yeah I mean I think part of it is with writing you can write a blog post and save it come back two days later and edit it and tweak it and you haven't even be published by someone else on your team if you want maybe it's your name it's not associated with it. But like right now you and I are seeing and talking to each other and like covering a lot of the senses all at one time. And when you're podcasting your literally in someone's ear for 45 minutes every week or whatever it is. So I think it's just the senses that you're covering and the emotional connection you crave with somebody which is why it's so great if you can do it and get it right. But it's also why it's so scary to just get started and overcome some of this fear of putting yourself out there. You know I think about … I've done a little bit of video work and it's a lot harder because then you have to get the voice and the physical kind of presentation right the first time and there's no editing. You can't just edit out a flub in a video it looks horrible. And so I think in a way if you're already doing video podcasting is so easy because you can just cut it up a million ways from Sunday and it's no big deal. But it is so much harder than writing. Mark: Yeah and I think one of the other obstacles that we run into is written content can be repurposed in so many ways right? Craig: Yeah. Mark: And there's different focuses that we can really measure written content from an SEO standpoint. So you can definitely say hey I'm going to optimize for this keyword. And I know I'm going to get this keyword density out there and then I can actually turn this into a downloadable white paper. And I can go out and I can maybe use the same sort of topic and write you know 10 different guest posts and get involvings. So there's that other benefit as well but you actually lead into one of the benefits and maybe this way you could [inaudible 00:17:18.0] to segue into that. And probably the number one reason that we started the Quiet Light podcast and the number one benefit that we've received from it is that personal touch that having a podcast creates. I'll tell you a funny story. You'll actually like this because you listen to our podcast by default from doing some editing. Craig: Of course. Mark: And I know you're not doing all the editing yourself but- Craig: No I do listen to the show though, yeah. Mark: Okay well here we go … thank you for that. That makes me feel better. So obviously Joe and I host the podcast and we were at Brand Builder's Summit. And somebody came up to our table at Brand Builder's Summit and said “hey it's Joe here” I'm like “ah no Joe is [inaudible 00:17:54.7] right now” and they go “oh man I really wanted to meet Joe, I absolutely love his podcast” I'm thinking “wow that's great you love Joe's podcast, I'm so glad that you love Joe's podcast” and he goes “yeah I know I was really hoping to meet Joe”. And Walker was staying right next to me and goes “no this is Mark over here he also does the podcast” he goes “ah is Joe going to be back soon?” I'm like “yeah Joe will be back soon”. Craig: That's wonderful, that's wonderful. Mark: But you know one of the things that this podcast has been able to do is it gets us in people's cars. It gets us in people's ears for a certain amount of time and it really breaks down some of that barrier that I think can happen when you're writing. Like you said it's very two dimensional. Craig: Oh yeah. Mark: It's the words on a page, you don't have the voice of the person in your head. This is … it's not as full-on as video but it's a little more personal. And I'm sure you've seen that a ton with what you're doing because I know you work mainly with businesses right? Craig: Oh yeah I mean for PodcastMotor all of our customers are businesses like yourselves. You know like small, medium size business and entrepreneurs, startups. And I think that the medium of podcasting is unique in two ways. One like we're having right now it's a conversation. It's not you on a video and your YouTube channel talking and everyone else is listening. That's not so helpful. And it's not so helpful in a very particular way when it comes to businesses and that is rapport building and networking. And this is like the secret sauce I think when it comes to like B2B podcasting is you have this podcast to reach a broader audience of buyers and sellers … of buyers maybe but really probably to get sellers in the door right? And so like for PodcastMotor we have a podcast. If we're going to go kind of strategically and think about who we're having on the podcast it's thought leaders in the podcasting like B2B podcasting space. So they can say wow you know I had this podcast with Craig last week, we talked for like an hour and he really knows his stuff. Dean my friend over here who runs a coaching business who wants to start a podcast should really talk to Craig because he really knows what he's doing. He can help him be successful. Like that really like micro networking opportunity that you have in interviewing a thought leader in your space on a podcast is not something you can measure by like download statistics or something like that. But for a lot of people should be the reason they do a podcast. It's not your listeners that you do the show for it selfishly a little bit is yourself and the networking ability that the podcasting medium allows for. Mark: Yeah I would agree 100%. And this is one of the main ancillary benefits that we received from the Quiet Light podcast. One of the biggest benefits is that it just keeps us in touch with people in a very personal way. And in some ways it's a little bit weird when people do come up to you and [inaudible 00:20:44.9]. Craig: Yeah. Mark: But I shouldn't listen to my voice that's weird but kind of cool at the same time. But that secondary benefit of that micro networking that you talk about I know we've had this happen actually recently we had Ezra Firestone on the podcast. And sure enough I had opened up my e-mail the other day and there's an e-mail from Ezra promoting his podcast episode with Joe, Joe's podcast. And I mean just think about that, I mean he's just one of the biggest Internet marketers out there right now promoting this one episode. And how many extra people are going to be exposed to the business, to us in general just because of that one episode. So this is definitely a benefit and might not be my number one goal but it's definitely one of those goals of the podcast is to be out there spreading our network for referrals. I think any referral based business that's out there this is a fantastic medium and probably a must that you should do is having some sort of a podcast if for nothing else to be able to bring in that network and grow that small network. Craig: So just to pile on there a little bit for folks who might be a little bit outside of the agency or consulting world so like starting from really high dollar and down to more transactional type businesses the other thing I think that podcasting does is it allows you to showcase publicly your knowledge and expertise. So if somebody sees you on another person's podcast they're going to say “wow Mark really knows what he's talking about when it comes to buying and selling businesses”. It automatically boosts your credibility with that person if they're looking to do this thing down the road. Yeah, I think that's massive. It's kind of like your little online CV that you build along with your social media and YouTube and all this kind of stuff but podcasting should be a part of that for a lot of people. Mark: Well and that actually leads to my next question really well and that is what do you think about podcasting on the more just B2C side as somebody selling baby shoes online. Craig: Yeah. Mark: I mean how can podcasting fit into that fold … with that type of business? Craig: Yeah I mean there's really two … in my mind there's two ways to go and admittedly this is a bit outside of the wheel house of what we do at PodcastMotor but there's really two kind of schools of thought or areas that you would run into there. One is just hobbyists, right? And so like you're a hobbyist you like the Pittsburgh Penguins, you want to have a podcast about that. That's just a hobby and that's great but it also does the thing about like building your social proof in the world. And so you want to go do something with that later on. You have this bank of 200 episodes that you want to do something with. If you're thinking about like a B2C area I think that you can either provide useful content to … you have a show about being a parent, provide useful content to other parents about how to be a good parent, organic parenting and all this kind of stuff. Or you have what's called like sponsored content and this is where a company would pay a creative agency like I believe it's Pacific Media is the real big one in this to create a show like Serial. So Serial is the Gimlet Media podcast from a few years ago. They would create a podcast like that and it would just be you know this podcast is brought to you by Huggies Diapers or something like that. And it's this totally awesome show about parenting and motherhood or whatever but it's just sponsored by this B2C company. And you see more and more sponsored content out there these days where a business is saying look this is a massive branding opportunity for us. We're going to create this piece of content that we know our audience will love. It probably doesn't have a lot of like direct business impact, people are not going to go buy our diapers because of this podcast but they're going to know our name really well because every week the show they love the most has our name all over it. Mark: Yeah that makes complete sense. I also think of the episode we did with Mike Jackness from colorit.com and the show is on email marketing. So it had nothing to do with podcasting but we were talking about how often he was sending emails. They were sending emails to their subscribers every single day but the vast majority of what they're sending is ridiculously useful content that is not selling their clients in any way, their customers in any way. And the result of this is that people end up looking forward to communications from them. So I can imagine that impact as well if you have a B2C company and you're in this hobby, this niche, or you really have a very unified sort of product that you're selling. Or it can even be a type of service as well. You're growing an audience that is kind of a group of raving fans for what you're doing. And you're offering so much value that when you do offer that sale when you do go out there and promote something you have this group out there that's just super excited to hear from you. And that's a nice problem to have, right? Craig: Yup. Mark: Yeah all right let's talk a little bit about this from an acquisition standpoint. Obviously, we should bring this back into this and I want to talk about from an acquisition standpoint and also selling and we'll end with the selling question because I think there is a pretty significant question there. But on the acquisition side the one struggle I can see … I did an acquisition recently my guess and that's almost two years ago now and – Craig: It's not funny, math coming back in there. Mark: Yeah [inaudible 00:25:57.8] absolutely, time flies too. And you and I have actually talked about the starting up a podcast on this acquisition. It's a little bit weird though you know like Quiet Light Brokerage has started … I own, I've kind of grown with it so I feel like I own it. It is a little bit weird to start a podcast with something that you don't own. But I wonder if there is almost a sense of growing ownership if you start building something on top of that like a podcast with an acquisition. Craig: Hmm. Mark: Kind of an open ended thought but I don't know if you've had any experience with that or any thoughts on that. Craig: Yeah I mean I think that … so I had not run into this personally like with some of our customers having acquired businesses that they didn't want to start a podcast around. But having acquired several businesses the one thing that I think is really important and often times really difficult is for an acquirer to really know the business model and the types of people that kind of live and breathe this product or space that you're in. And there is nothing better than to say I want to go interview the 50 best people in Instagram for kids whatever … whatever niche it is you know than a podcast. Mark: Instagram for kids sounds like it should have some predatory laws about it I'm just saying. Craig: Yeah sure whatever it is right … it's underwater basket weaving. I mean you interview the 50 best people on underwater basket weaving. You're going to know basically everything there is to know about the influencers and the things that really matter to people in that business. So for me it's like someone who is always looking to acquire businesses and kind of dabbling as like a serial entrepreneur if I was going to get into a business I didn't know a lot about lot about starting a blog or really continuing a blog would be really daunting because I … there's a lot of opportunity to waste a bunch of time and money there. You can write a bunch of articles about things people don't care about but it's really hard to have a podcast that's bad if you will in a space you don't know a lot about because you just go interview people and ask them interesting questions. And what they have to say is the content it's not what you have to say, it's what the people you have coming on the show. So I'd say for people looking to … who have acquired a business that might be a little out of their wheel house just start a podcast, interview the thought leaders in that space and you have like the nexus of all the really interesting content for your audience. And you as the new owner know exactly what's so important to everybody in that space. Mark: Yeah and I'm going to compare this actually to the blogging world because I went from the blogging world pretty heavily into the podcasting world almost exclusively now. Libby has been writing blog posts on every one of our podcast episodes so we can keep up with some blog content. But in the blogging world, you would have to sit down. You would have to come up with your own idea for a blog topic. You would have to research that topic. And then you would have to write on that topic. And the way blogs are going you have to write more and more and more. I was writing 1,500 to 2,500 word blog posts. I was doing four of those per month plus four outside of Quiet Light blog posts per month. So I was doing eight blog posts on average 2,000 words a piece. And then best practices after you publish that blog post you should go out and you should do outreach. So you should reach out to the influencers and say hey take a look at this and how easy is it for an influencer to ignore your e-mail or give it a cursory look. I'd flip this around for this I'm doing my research right now on this interview with you I'm reaching out to you and you're an influencer on the podcasting world so I already got my influencer locked in as well. We're getting great content at the same time. It kind of brings all of this into one hopefully easily digestible format. So that's a huge benefit I think as well. And when you're looking at getting into a space like you said trying to network and get to know the influencers in a space that you don't know is one of the biggest challenges. And having a podcast I'll tell you what when I ask people to be on the podcast I'd get one of two reactions. One is no I'm super shy I don't want to do it. And two is yeah that sounds great because who doesn't want to be in front of a big audience and get heard. People like to be on podcasts. They'd like to think that they're important enough to be interviewed. Craig: They want to take their Joe Rogan. Mark: Exactly even though … you know I'm not going to tell them that there's like three people that listen to the Quiet Light podcast but they're still excited. Craig: So you brought up two things I really want to touch on quickly. One is three people listening to the Quiet Light podcast, one is not true right? But in a B2B sense and even a B2C sense in your niche, the number of people listening to your show doesn't matter at all. So if you have a hundred people listening to your podcast that is great. Those are a hundred really passionate people about what you have to say. As opposed to a hundred people reading a blog post that has almost no impact whatever. You need tens of thousands of people reading a blog post for it to really be impactful in the in the greater sense. But 100 people in your niche listening about your podcast is fantastic. So they're really high intent people for whatever your business purpose is. The other thing is talking about repurposing content. I think podcasting has the ability to repurpose content really easily right? We're doing audio, we're doing video, it will be created in to show notes for a blog post, you have it transcribed, you can syndicate the video to YouTube. Like you can do all of these things with one … what we're going to talk for 45 minutes today piece of investment and your time and you have a team or someone do all of the extra work to produce all that for you and you have two or three or four pieces of content you can syndicate to everywhere that people consume this media. As opposed to writing a blog post it can ever only ever be in your blog. You can't go create a podcast out of a blog [inaudible 00:31:29.4] could but that's just kind of silly. Mark: Right and you're absolutely right as far as the repurposing content. Again if people haven't checked out in a quick plug in the Quiet Light brokerage blog, I think it was last fall we brought on [inaudible 00:31:41.3] and she listens to every one of these podcasts. Hi, Libby thanks for all the work you're doing. And she's putting together awesome blog posts like I've been reading these myself and she's taking the information that we're picking up in the podcasts and then she's going out and supplementing it with outside research as well by putting together a full on blog post with quotes from the blog post as well but bringing out a slightly different narrative than what we cover in this this conversation. It's a great way to be able to repurpose this content and give it just a little extra layer and a little extra dimension. And so that is one way to repurpose the content. And again I can't emphasize this enough the amount of time it takes to do a podcast significantly less time than it takes to do the blogging side. Let's address the question of a podcast in a business that you hope to sell someday. And I think this is a question that is a little bit more difficult to answer here because we talk a lot … let me ask you this have you seen the Princess Bride? Craig: Yeah of course. I have an eight year old daughter, yup. Mark: Well I always like to say that getting a business prepared to sell is you have to follow the Dread Pirate Roberts rule right? You don't want to be actual Dread Pirate Roberts. It's the name that counts right? That's the quote from the movie; it's the name that counts. The actual Dread Pirate Roberts has been retired and living like a king in Patagonia. That's what we want to be able to do. We want to pass on the name of our business. We don't want to actually have to be tied to the business. Well, we just talked about podcasting, it's being in somebodies ear and being that personality in somebodies ear. And so from a standpoint of selling maybe, it's a little bit of a disadvantage on that when you go to sell. But I don't think it has to be a disadvantage but I'm going to put you in the uncomfortable spot here and see first have you thought about this much and what are your thoughts on it? Craig: Yeah so I guess two things; one, I know that podcast themselves have definitely been bought and sold more and more right? We're recording this in beginning of 2019, you hear more and more about people selling and buying podcast especially in a space. It's like buying and selling a blog in a space. If you're a business and you acquired this blog redirect it and then pour your content into your domain and you already have this audience that's seeing your brand. The same can be said for podcasting so people want to come in and buy a podcast in a space because it has a built in audience. I think it's a really good kind of audience and customer acquisition strategy for a business that already kind of exists and has their own podcast to look at selling the business and transferring the podcast to the new owner. I think that a lot of the standard knowledge and business process transfer things apply there. Like if you have a process around Mark how you identify the guests that you want to have and how you invite them and you send them a [inaudible 00:34:23.3] like an as a zoom thing in it and you have an outline you send them three days before and all this kind of stuff and you have a team behind it to edit and produce the podcast. Then someone buying your business that has a podcast in it is not nearly as daunting as just saying like I wing it every week. And the new owner is saying holy crap I can't imagine doing that. So I think that … I mean the truth is a podcast is not really hard. Like once you do a couple of them it's not really that hard. So giving the buyer of the business that would acquire this asset but kind of responsibility of a podcast, give them the tools to be successful and I think it's definitely a net win. The worst thing I can see though is you have a podcast and you have an audience and people that really enjoy and want to connect with you through the podcast and the acquirer comes in and drops the ball, obviously, a big negative. So if people have podcasts and they're going to be selling their business or business with podcasts I would definitely make sure like the rest of the business like you said with the Dread Pirate Roberts thing it's like make sure that it's totally transferable and that the person's going to be successful. That intimate nature of the podcast I think can transfer from one person to another pretty easily. You know the new person is going to have some level of domain expertise and you'll love a different spin on the podcast and that's cool. Yeah, I think it's definitely a net win as long as the person is set up to be successful. Mark: Yeah and I would agree. And the other thing I would point to is that when talking about an exit strategy when looking at what you need to do to prepare a business for sale there's going to be this push and this pull on various factors of the business. And when you're looking at this, when you're looking at the business holistically it's always going to be better for you to build a strong, loyal, happy, faithful audience right? Craig: Yeah. Mark: That's way, way more valuable than anything else. And is there maybe a little bit of a demerit when it comes to having something like a podcast which may be tied to your voice. Yeah, okay there's … I think just being honest yeah I think there's going to be a little bit of concern about the transferability. But that can be addressed right? That can be addressed pretty easily. You can agree to do the podcast and co-host with the new owner for six months and have a very warm hand off that way. That would be a very natural way to do it. I think the benefits that a podcast adds in building an audience, let's think about this real quick here what is the value of an online business when we actually look at it and when we do all the tax returns and everything else on it we allocate most of the purchase price towards goodwill. The sort of nebulous who knows what it is that makes this business successful. Successful and having a podcast is really a big part of building that good will. So if you take the time and build a lot of good will through a podcast and that's a good source and driving avenue for customer acquisition within your business that's going to be a net plus in the grand scheme of the things. So I think people that are out there thinking about podcasting thinking well I don't want to start that because it's going to hurt the transferability of the business. I wouldn't necessarily say that. I wouldn't necessarily say don't do in fact I'll probably say the opposite especially if you have enough time. If you're looking at a year, two or three years before selling and you're able to build that audience I think it actually makes more sense because it's really hard to replicate that. Craig: Yeah the value you can get in those two years is so much more than the potential drawback of the new owner flubbing it and your audience being upset which is basically the worst thing that could happen right? Mark: You're totally biased in this but I'm going to ask you this question right now. If I could give you a business with 30,000 e-mail subscribers or a business with 15,000 podcast listeners what would you take? Craig: Yeah I mean the podcast listeners are going to engage with your message a lot more. You probably also would get all of them on an email list so you're already halfway there to having both. I mean you're literally … and we say it all the time, you're literally in someone's ear creating like some kind of like different neural connection with those people. I get your e-mail; I read your e-mails fine. I hear you on the podcast; I hear you talking about your kids and the Dread Pirate Roberts and all these kind of stuff that like has a different level of meaning. And it is that personal stuff that in a situation where you're going to be transferring it to a new owner is a little different. But for the time that you have the business or you're looking in acquiring a business that has a podcast it is a huge benefit. Because a lot of people are scared, right? You didn't start the podcast for some period of time probably because you're like … I don't know this is an onerous task I don't know if I'm up for it right? I mean maybe I did sure like I didn't start a podcast because I was like I'm not going to talk into a microphone and then put it out on the Internet for anyone who wants to hear it to hear because I sound like an idiot right? Like a lot of people don't like the sound of their voice and you just have to get over that stuff because the net is such a huge win. Mark: Yeah. Craig: Think about like you're at a conference now and like you know Mark I heard you on the podcast right? Mark: Right well it was that conference question that actually led us to do the podcast because we've been going to so many conferences and conferences are expensive. You have to fly out there for sponsoring and now that the sponsorship fees are ridiculously high and … but the benefit of being there in front of somebody and having those little jokes here and there or just playing… we'll play it a game. Well, we've done golf, we've done jenga, we've done darts … or something like darts it was actually sharp objects that we're throwing out our booth but that'd be dangerous they wouldn't let us do that. But that actual physical presence being there it really relaxed people so much more and allowed us to connect on more of a one on one basis. And that's why we started the podcast and sure enough, I think that happened. Given that choice between e-mail list and podcast, I would take the podcast audience as well. I think you can mobilize a podcast audience much faster. I think they're more engaged. I think they're more likely to quite literally listen to you but be more attentive to what you're saying. I think there's … that's just different [inaudible 00:40:07.3]. Craig: Yeah I would say like that one look at guys like you know Gary Vaynerchuk right or Pat Flynn or whoever that you look up to in the business and marketing world they all have podcasts right? So like that says something I think. The other thing is the volume of information that we are relaying in this episode is massive. Like … you know we transcribe episodes for customers a podcast and a typical you know 45 minute conversation is about 15 pages in a Google doc. Mark: Wow. Craig: So you're like how are you going to relay 15 pages of content to anybody ever? That's impossible, right? No one is ever going to read that blog post or email but they'll listen to that podcast every week. Mark: Yeah absolutely, in fact, I have our director of content marketing now Chris Moore who also listens to the podcast, hey Chris how are you doing? He's been going back through every one of our podcasts and pulling up quotes. And he was telling me just earlier this week about how much volume is there that we put together in what feels like a very short amount of time of doing this podcast. It is a ton of information. Craig: Something … a bit of a carrot I think for both the buy and sell side you know of your audience is you can bet your bottom that Google will be indexing audio very soon. Mark: That's a really nice tease. Craig: Oh you know the SEO impact of podcasting ya-da-da-da-da, you're going to create like show notes that are like 700 words or whatever for an hour long conversation. 100% guarantee that there will be an audio tab in Google whatever soon in the next couple of years. Mark: Yeah all right so let's go to this. We're almost up with our time I want to end up with what does somebody need at a bare minimum if they want to test a podcast for their business? How long … we don't have to get in the details of the equipment like we don't … I mean you want to give a couple of recommendations there and what are the basic things they should think about if they want to get and test it out for say two or three months and how long should they test it? Craig: Yeah so I think that the basics you need a microphone. I mentioned the two microphones before. If you really just want to test use the Apple ear buds they're actually quite good. Mark: They are actually. Yes, I'll second that actually, yeah. Craig: Get in a quiet place; don't have your kids running around or the train going by with the window open or something like that. Do some kind of environmental safety measures for the sound quality. You need something to record and edit the audio with. A tool that does both of those is called Audacity. It's open sourced and free in cross-platform so Windows or Mac. So you can record and edit with Audacity. Something to record with select a microphone or the Apple ear buds perfectly good and then you probably want something to store the files on so like a podcast hosting platform like a Castos or Libsyn, or SoundCloud and then you need to create what's called an RSS feed. And that is the thing that places like iTunes and Stitcher and Spotify read. And then share information about your podcast like as a whole like the title and description and image and all likely stuff and about each episode. That's kind of how podcasting works is you submit this RSS feed to these directories and the directories read the meta information about your show as well as information about each episode as it's published. So that's kind of a 20,000 foot view of podcasting. How many episodes? I think if you can't come up with 20 good guest interview or topics to cover or something like that then you have a couple of problems. But you probably shouldn't get into content generally but you really, really, really need to think about at least having a couple of episodes to launch with. Two, three, four something like that and but you really should have a general idea of what the first 20 episodes is going to look like. Mark: Yeah and I recommend actually recording probably about two months' worth just to start. If you're running a business as well I know like the recent first … my first go with Quiet Light podcast didn't really happen as I recorded three episodes and then I got busy and three weeks goes by really, really fast. And we do this here at Quiet Light we will get like a nice buffer of about two months but next you know we're staring down an empty set again of episodes. So get a nice buffer set up for that first trial and see what happens. It's a great medium and I'm going to do a plug for you just like you don't have to come across self-promotion. Honestly, your service makes this whole thing dead simple. Like I don't think about it at all, I don't think about what I'm doing. The only thing I thought about was what sort of graphic are we going to use for the podcast. Outside of that everything was set up, everything was done, the introduction was done. It makes it really, really simple. And so if you are looking to go this direction don't add a bunch more to your plate. Go out talk to PodcastMotor I recommend your guys service highly enough. Craig: Cool. Thanks so much that's great to hear. Mark: Hey thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it. If you guys have questions feel free to reach out to Craig@podcastmotor. We'll put contact information in the show notes and yeah if you have any other questions or suggestions for podcast episodes send me an email mark@quietlightbrokerage.com. Thanks, Craig. Craig: Thanks, Mark. Links and Resources: Podcast Motor Castos Contact Podcast Motor

The Quiet Light Podcast
How to Hire a CEO

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 15, 2019 44:42


The most popular Quiet Light podcast episode to date was all about buying multiple businesses without going crazy. That episode featured Shakil Prasla, who at the time had already acquired eight businesses. Shakil is back today answering the number one client question we got from that eipsode – how to hire a CEO for your new acquisition? How can you acquire an e-commerce business, do due diligence, get it up and running well, and simultaneously bring someone in to run it? Shakil has taken on two partners since that episode and together they run ProClick Ventures, a family of e-commerce companies. They now focus mainly on acquiring larger companies and are up to twelve in total. Shakil is here answer our CEO questions and many more while emphasizing the notion of learning to delegate. Doing what he does takes a mindset that focuses on owning multiple companies where HE takes care of the big things while delegating the smaller stuff to others. Episode Highlights: Why Shakil always looks to put a CEO into place when buying a business. His techniques for finding good candidates. All his CEOs are hired locally or nationally and based in one office location. How Shakil manages payscale and bonuses. What he looks for in a candidate. The salary vs. longer term incentive factors. Managing the CEO. How Shakil handles a poor performer. Factors that stop a CEO from going out on their own after a while. How long the longest-tenured CEO has been with Shakil's group. Shakil describes the greatest growth story from his portfolio. How he avoids conflicts among CEOs who are using shared back-office resources. Shakil's top listener tips for hiring CEOs. Transcription:   Joe: Hey Mark how are you doing today? Mark: I am doing really, really good Joe. I want you to tell everybody what was the most popular episode of the Quiet Light Podcast back in 2018. Joe: This is just an intro to tell people that you have the majority of the top 10 episodes. I think that's what that's all about because the top one is Shakil Prasla. You did the interview with him and you had him back on right? Mark: Yes that's right. Yeah, and it really is it's just me trying to make myself feel good. Joe: I told stats on the top 20 and we're even at 50-50 but I don't think that's very impressive because I knew you were going to bring that up on this call today. So I was hoping I'd have something much more impressive like you had the majority of the top 20 but I had the 80% of the top 20 but it's not the case at all. Mark: But you know you hold the records that count in Quiet Light such as largest deal closed and most transactions so you can rest easy with those. Joe: Fortunately we've got people that are incredible coming up like Walker and Chuck and Brad so those records would be shattered by all three of those in the future someday. Mark: Yeah well getting back to the podcast here. Joe: Oh yeah. Mark: Yeah that's why we're here. Shakil … Shakil Prasla, the most popular episode that we've recorded in the year and a half that we've been doing the Quiet Light podcast now. And the title of that episode was “How To Buy Multiple Businesses Without Going Insane”. If you haven't listened to it, go back take a listen to it, a really interesting podcast episode. Shakil at that time had bought eight businesses in two years. And unlike RJ who we talked about with 101 Commerce who had a whole system and team built up, Shakil kind of did this and grew this organically, right? He is sort of buying these businesses organically. He started as a buyer … an owner operator and has moved out into a different format. Now in that first podcast, we talked a lot about how is he getting the financing? We talked a little bit about how he was structuring this as well to keep his time just in check because eight businesses is a lot. But we didn't get into the heart of the matter which is how is he actually going through in managing all these businesses. And the trick to it really at the end of the day, the trick to it is hiring CEO's. He hires a CEO during the acquisition process. So while he's in due diligence he goes out and he finds somebody who's going to run that business. Now the number one question that I've gotten from that episode when I've talked to people afterwards is not funding questions but where does he find these CEO's and how does he structure that so that it works. So I decided to have Shakil back and he was super gracious with his time. You know I was really worried about him giving away company secrets and everything, Shakil just like he does just said “Yeah no, no company secrets. I'm happy to share whatever you know … let's just talk about it and see what we can do to help people”. And that's what this episode is, how to hire a CEO to run your business. Joe: That's great you know we have dozens of folks that have the idea to buy and build a portfolio of online businesses and Shakil has done it. He's … he did it before most people were talking about it and he's done it successfully. So I think it's a great episode to re-air or have somebody back and talk about it in detail; looking forward to listening to this myself. Mark: Yeah let's get to it. Mark: All right so the most popular episode that we've had on the Quiet Light Podcast over the past 15 months that we've been doing this now I think came when I had a conversation with you Shakil. And we talked about your somewhat insanity of buying multiple businesses. And at the time you have bought eight businesses over two years so we titled the episode “How To Buy Multiple Businesses Without Going Insane”. And we talked about just kind of the high level stuff about what you were doing. One we focused a little bit how you were acquiring these businesses and putting people in place to run them from day one but we also talked and probably spent more time on how your financing these acquisitions as well. Well, again this is by far the most downloaded episode that we've had over the Quiet Light Podcast history and the number one question I get when I talk to people about the podcast and your episode comes up is how you're hiring CEO's. And I'm going to step back a little bit and just say look since I've been an entrepreneur and since I sold my first business now [inaudible 00:05:19.3] years ago I've received this question why don't you just hire somebody to run the business for you and live off the cash flow? And has this phrase trite sort of quaint phrase that we like to just tell people just put somebody in place to run the business. But the devil's always in the execution right? How do you actually do that? How do you find somebody? How do you pay somebody for that? How do you set up a system that is still working and at the end of the day how do you manage CEO's? So thanks for coming on board back on here defending your number one title. Maybe you can get number one and number two. And let's start to delve into some of this. Thanks for coming on. Let's start with a very easy question last time we talked which was a year ago you had eight companies, what does that count up to now? Shakil: Yes so now we're at 12 companies now and still aggressively acquiring companies. Now we're acquiring the larger deals. So any company that's making at least half a million dollars in their seller's discretionary earnings is what we're aiming for now. So we're definitely going for the larger companies. When I initially started it was dragging my feet wet, get some little businesses, get the cash flow going and you know long delay I wanted to start acquiring larger companies … yeah and here I am now. Mark: Yeah so now it's not just you doing this now right? You do have a few people together or working together oin this, right? Shakil: Yeah so as you get larger you don't want to … your risk exposure gets higher and so what I've done is I've partnered with a few folks in Houston as well that were already in the e-commerce game. And so what that does is things that I lack or I become the bottleneck that's where my partners excel in. And so it's been a great sort of marriage in that my weaknesses are their strengths. And so … and the way I met them was they're part of my community but we're a part of this Facebook group and we are to make introductions and stuff and [inaudible 00:07:21.6] for Johnny introduce himself saying “Hey I'm in e-commerce”. And so I messaged him and I'm like “Hey I'm in e-commerce too we should meet up”. This is five years ago and we met up for coffee and we brainstormed ideas. I was like yeah I'm acquiring companies do you want to partner up and buy something larger? At this point, I didn't even know this guy, right? But like yeah, let's do this. We had no partnership agreements in place; nothing like that. The trust factor was there, the friendship was there and so we're able to break that off … get that going and so we've been able to acquire much larger companies since then. Mark: That's awesome. So up to 12, you're still not insane? Could go I'm insane at some points, right? Shakil: Oh absolutely I mean a few days ago I have to color my beard as well. It's getting white. It's definitely a different mindset you need to have to be able to run multiple companies. You're not able to do everything for each of the companies, right? So you have to focus on the high level growth goals, two or three things for each company and then that's it. Everything else … everything small tedious has to do … be done by the rest of the team. Mark: Right. You know I often look at people like Elon Musk obviously kind of a figurehead, especially for entrepreneurs. And a lot of entrepreneurs look at him and you look at the fact that he's got how many companies. And it's not like these companies are doing “small things”. I guess our companies in comparison would be doing a small thing compared to what he's doing. He's literally sending people to space digging tunnels under the ground and the other question is how in the world can you possibly do it? But it's that idea of let's focus on the big things and only get into the weeds and the details or necessary but it comes down to having those right people in place. Again the number one question I got from Europe the last time was the idea that you're hiring CEO's. So let's start with this first, when you're looking to acquire a company and I would assume and correct me if I'm wrong, I would assume that you're always looking to put a CEO in place whenever you're doing an acquisition. Is that the case? Shakil: Yeah, absolutely. So the thing is when I buy a business I'm not trying to buy a full time job either. And so the strategy I use is when I make an offer on the business and send them an LOI at that point I know I want to buy the business, so while doing due diligence at the same time I'm looking for a CEO. And the process of that … usually, due diligence if it's 30 to 45 days or if it's SBA it'll take a little longer but during that whole process of due diligence I actually go find a CEO in 20 to 30 days and bring them on at the tail end of due diligence. And so the future CEO gets to kind of see the process, gets to see the operations and everything. And once I acquire the company I keep the old owner on always, whether it's consulting agreements or whatever at least for two months. And I keep them on for two months the old seller so that way they could transfer all the knowledge to me and the new CEO in place. And what that does is it makes this transition much easier and it empowers or gets the CEO ready to start making their own decisions for the business. So yeah, I do definitely keep the CEO in place always. Mark: All right so there's a thousand questions that we can be asked after this and I'm going to … I know people listening are probably asking their own questions. I hope I get to all the ones that you guys have in your heads. Let's start with I think one of the obvious questions and that is where are you finding these CEO's? I mean how are you putting these job listings out? Are these all coming through your network? Are you just advertising on job boards? And what are you doing to attract the candidates? Shakil: Yes so the first thing first because you have to create the role. There has to be a need for the role. It's hard to find a CEO for a business if it's only … if the business is only making $100,000 in profit because the CEO … depending on the caliber of the person you'll at least need to pay him at least $50,000. So half your profits go there so the income has to be there and then he has to be there. Second, you have to create the role right? So with the role, I put on my job listings that hey you're going to be the CEO of the company. You're going to be doing everything A to Z. You're going to be doing vendor management, employee management, hiring and firing, growth goals. And so the type of people that I would look for to apply or would be good candidates are people that have some type of project management background, some type of senior leadership background, some type of digital marketing background; that's a huge thing. A lot of people will apply with the digital marketing background. And so I guess the perfect type of person that would apply would be a digital marketer that works for an agency that has VA's that meet them or that has junior assistants that meet them. They have that sort of project management role. They've worked with clients to get their goals aligned and they have the marketing experience. So that would be a great candidate to kind of fill that CEO role. Mark: Where do I look for them? Shakil: You know it's … I go to a lot of conferences. I go to a lot of networking events. I talk to a lot of people. Podcasts like these help too and so there's a lot of people reaching out to me. There's a lot of people I'm reaching out to through that network to just tell them hey I'm in e-commerce and I'm looking to hire a CEO always but stay in touch. So the network is one thing but there is the job boards that also help, right? So there's LinkedIn. I think LinkedIn is a great platform, ZipRecruiter which is another great platform. There's E-commerce Fuel Jobs, so that's specifically just for e-commerce jobs. That's a great one as well. And then there's to also staffing agencies I've used where they pretty much will go to different candidates in the Austin or Houston area with people with e-commerce jobs and just message them on LinkedIn saying hey we have a job available would you guys be interested. So there's multiple ways with all these different ways of kind of attracting. And remember I'm … you're sort of on a timeline because during this due diligence phase it's not going to go on forever. As much as I want to have patience to find the right candidate, I don't want to be in a position where I buy the business and the CEO is not training me or I have to bring another CEO from my other company to come in either. That doesn't make things efficient and so I have to be aggressive in finding someone but I have to find the right candidate. And so I have to look everywhere and I think those … these places where I talked about networking, job boards, staffing agencies, they're all going to help you find several candidates. And then the process is next how do you identify the right CEO through all these applicants. Mark: Right and that's … I want to get into the process a little bit here. Do you mainly hire a local or are you open to hiring across the country or does it depend? Shakil: I'm open to hiring across the country. And so part of our listing we also offer a job relocation bonus as well. Because if I'm only going to be looking in Austin and Houston you have a … sort of that limited parameter and limited people apply. That only works with staffing agencies because they have like the local networks but on LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, E-commerce Fuel Jobs, that's nationwide. It's open to anyone. So if you're in New York City, if the position can be remote we'll keep it remote but the new strategy we're going for now is just keeping everything in house; getting everyone to the headquarters. We could brainstorm easily but we would give a relocation bonus to come to our headquarters in Houston. Mark: So do you have like a … this headquarters in Houston do you have all these CEO's coming into one office complex? Shakil: Yup. So we have a nice sized office there where we have our CEO's. So each CEO has his own little office every Tuesday or Thursday that's when our weekly meetings are. We will have weekly meetings with the CEO. And then once a month we also have a meeting with all the CEO's. So if a CEO for one business has a certain strategy they'll share those. If something's not working out for another strategy they'll share those as well. So it's a nice collaboration of sharing strategies. And then we also have a what I call a shared back office which is our content folks, we have our design team, we have our SEO specialists, we have our ad guys as well too. So we have that shared resources across all the platforms which all the CEO's and companies are able to utilize as well. And then that's in the headquarters Houston. Mark: Awesome. Well, let's talk a little bit about pay. Because one thing I look at with this is you hear CEO and I think really expensive. It sounds like … you said that you started as low as $50,000 for that are people actually responding to that sort of a pay scale? Shakil: Yeah look I mean the higher the salary the higher the caliber of folks. This all comes back to how much the company is making. If … you know I'll give you an example, one of our companies I think when we bought it was making 300,000. I'm not able to afford $150,000 a year person just based off that rate. So it depends on how much the business is making but yeah our CEO's make anywhere from 50 to well over 6 figures … 50,000 to well over six figures in salary. Mark: And then do you work on different bonus structures as well? So kind of salary plus a bonus? Shakil: Yeah so at the end of the day you want to incentivize these folks to treat it like their own business. There's a reason why they're not starting their own business. There's always that thought at the back of my mind that … or even others as why don't they just go and start their own company? And at the end of the day some folks like a steady income versus business cash flows that are not steady. So there's that one aspect. To answer your question the incentives, so yeah our CEO's do have incentives. We do multiple incentives. One of them is besides salary you get an incentive based off the profit of the business. So we used to do topline incentives, top line growth but it wasn't helping our bottom line either. You could spend a bunch of money on Google AdWords or Facebook and grow the topline but that does not mean you're growing the bottom line. So our CEO's have access to Quick Books, our financials. They get to see how the business is doing. So they get a percentage of the profit. That's one incentive. Number two is we do what it's called an anniversary bonus. So if they stayed on for one year they get a bonus. If they stayed on for two years they get a bonus you know and 3 years and so on. And the reason for that is you're spending so much time with these folks to train them, get them on board, learn the business and if they're really good you don't want them to walk away. So you kind of give them that little incentive to keep staying on for those anniversary bonuses. And then we also have another bonus where if we sell the company they get part of the sell price as well. So that's another incentive for them to stay towards the end, right? My goal is not to keep all the companies forever. It is to sell the whole portfolio to a larger buyer. Mark: Sure so when you're working out these incentive it sounds like you're … one of the incentives is just the bottom line profits of the company and I would assume certain growth percentages there. Either just a flat percentage on maybe if you get this much growth. Do you work with CEO's to identify maybe other metrics that would be important to grow within the company whether that be more efficiency in ad spend or anything else or do you try and keep it just simple that's for a percent of the profits? Shakil: Yes so that's a good question. I would clarify that. They do get profit sharing but it's based off the growth of the company. And so I'm not trying to … I mean the goal is definitely to grow the company so yeah the higher the business grows, it's a tiered incentive, right? So the more the business grows the more they make as well. I apologize what was your original question? Mark: I'm wondering about the different bonus structures that you set up for them. So I know we had Bill D'Allesandro on recently and I know he incentivizes some of his people based off of other metrics as well right? So he's looking at … maybe it's with his deeper metrics and I know with like Quiet Light Brokerage one of the metrics that we measure here are conversations. It's a really simple sort of thing that we look at to say how many conversations are we having because we know it provides the rest of our business. Do you do that with your CEO's or do you try and keep it just simple and say let's focus on the profits and you're going to worry about identifying what's going to drive those profits. Shakil: That's a great question. My only incentive is the bottom line because everything that you do, improving conversions to making ad spend more efficient, to making operations more efficient, to make it more lean, everything adds back to the bottom line and that's what it comes back to. So part of our weekly meetings is we look at where are we being inefficient? Where are we spending too much? Where is our ads the … return ad spend too high? And we identify those and we lower those because at the end of the day as we're being more efficient it should lead to a better bottom line and that is extra money going into the CEO's pocket. So yeah my only incentive is definitely the bottom line. Mark: When you're looking to hire a CEO how much emphasis do you put on them being able to understand that business model? And I guess maybe some of that would come from who you are hiring and knowing their background but let's say that you're selling right away and ready to fire away and … do you look for somebody who is familiar with the toy industry at all is that really a concern of yours? Are you looking more of just generic e-commerce experience? Shakil: Man, that's a great question and that's the thought process I have too is if I bought a socks company I want to make sure that they're sort of familiar with the industry. But at the end of the day it's pretty hard to find those kind of niche focus people. And so that is something, it's a plus, it's preferred. If I don't find that then I'm okay with something else. As long as they understand the model, as long as they understand e-commerce and digital advertising and management, learning the product or the industry is sort of second hand. It becomes … if you have the skill sets of what I just mentioned, learning the product isn't going to be hard for them. And so yes it's preferred but not required. Mark: Okay I'm going to ask you another question and if I'm getting to detailed and I know that you have … you've built something that works really well and I don't want for you to necessarily have to give away the company secrets and everything so feel free to gloss over this if needed. You brought up something that I thought was interesting and something that I want to get into in a little bit here and that's the idea that why wouldn't these people just start up a business on their own. And the answer, you answered your own question and you said well they prefer that steady income. They like to have that steady income. So I'm looking at this mix of steady income kind of a base salary plus a bonus structure on top of that if you find that there's a sweet spot in there of mixing those two things together? I think people inherently like the idea of a bonus. You know it's out there is like this nice frosting on top of the cake but is there a balance? But obviously, you can't be 100% performance based because if you were there then these people will be like forget it I'm going to go do it on my own. Do you find there's a sweet spot there? Is that based off a percentage or is it based off there as just kind of a floor to the amount of money that somebody needs to make before they can really be incentivized and then the business tells the rest of the story as to how the bonus has to work? I don't know if that question makes any sense or not but… Shakil: No, it does and again there's no secrets to anything I do. It's just a process that we really refined. Whenever we look at a lot of candidates even folks working with us, even people that have applied, it's definitely the people that have applied … it's first one it's hard to be an entrepreneur. You're now working an eight to five job Monday to Friday, you're working every single day so having that mindset, first of all, is hard. Not everyone can do it. But people are okay to work for entrepreneurs, learn from them as well. And the different part about me is I don't expect these guys to work for 10 years for me. My goal is a three year sort of timeline. And you know I'm pretty open with everyone too, it's just we're looking to grow aggressively for the next three years and then just sell. And so in the back of their mind, they're going to try … what they try to do is learn as much as they can in the next three years and stay on and then well hopefully when we sell they also get a bonus there, right? So it's definitely you have to have the right mindset. It's hard to be an entrepreneur; it's hard to work every single day staying up late at night. And then number two it comes back to the pay as well. You know and I look at so many businesses and stuff what if … if you're getting a lot of traffic from Google what if you get a Google update, your income now is slashed, right? How are you going to pay for your house? How are you going to pay for your family? That's just the stress that a lot of people do not want to have. They want to have a fixed income, right? And so we offer … our salaries are very competitive especially for our larger companies they are very well compensated. And then the bonus is just the cherry on top. It's just for them to show us that they are really into this for this growth. And so as they grow the company the valuation of the company goes up. And so I definitely want them to have the upside on that as well. So your salary has to be good enough just in case the incentives are not met, right? They have to not only live off it but be happy with it as well. Mark: All right cool. Let's get into managing the employees because this is the second half of this question, managing the CEO's I should say. This is the second half of the question, one obviously is how do you find these people, how do you compensate these people, you know that upfront sort of process; the back end of it is once you have all these people in place and it sounds like you have multiple now, you have probably 10 or even a dozen CEO's, managing the CEO's on a regular basis and that's not a small feat by any means. You already alluded to it a little bit but let's go over it again. You do meetings every Tuesday with those that are local and then once a month for everybody all together? Shakil: Correct. Mark: Okay. And then how often do you check in on their performance of their company? So is that a monthly task? Do you meet with them individually? How does that work? Shakil: Yeah so we look at the numbers every week actually. And so we use a template where it should show month over month growth, week over week growth, year over year growth, and then it's broken down by where the revenue is coming from, how much we're spending on ads, where our conversion rate is, any notable achievements in the last week, any disappointments, any customers that walked away. So we have like this template … this checklist which the CEO's have to fill out every week and that's where … that's what our meeting is based off of. Mark: Okay so you'd meet with them weekly. Let's ask the uncomfortable question, the one that is kind of in the back of my head. I was saving it but I'll ask it now. What do you do with poor performers? Shakil: Yeah so you know and I am not going to make this sound easy or anything, this is … when you're … when you buy a company you're investing your own money and now you're trusting someone else to run that for you. You're pretty much making sure that they … make sure that your investments work out, right? That's really hard to do. As entrepreneurs, we try to hog all the work. And it's true like you do what you do the best. I do what I'm doing the best. But at the end of the day, you have to let go of that … those tasks, those powers. And when you start to do that you start to be able to delegate these tasks much easier. I haven't started these businesses from the scratch. It's easier for me to empower these folks to sort of go do these tasks, right? If it's someone that's starting off they've been doing everything; customer service, graphic designing, SEO and everything. So it gets a little harder when you … I started something but when you buy something it's a little easier to let go of those tasks. So does poor performance. Yeah, we've had CEO's that have not done well. You know when you're interviewing someone you try to build that relationship with them, you try to build that trust with them. And their job is to sell themselves. And they do really good job. Sometimes they're not trust … you know sometimes not truthful in the experiences and the skill sets that they have that we're looking for, right? If I'm looking for someone that has … for example an IT background in our custom platform. We had someone that said yeah I have really good experience in it. They checked our backend and they said some really good things that made them sound so experienced and when it came time and we hired them they weren't able to perform. And so when that happens you have to terminate and move on quickly. And one thing I forgot to mention is my CEO's … these ranges but we always do a contract basis first. So this is called a trial period where for three months we get to sort of feel each other out to make sure this works for you and for me. We want to make sure that our goals are aligned. And so during that trial period, I'm able to really tell … me and my partners is this going to work out or not. So yeah sometimes they don't work out and we do fire them and we have to move on to the next person quickly. Mark: The CEO's pay … this three months trial period after the three months is their pay guaranteed after that? Shakil: Yeah, exactly. Mark: Okay, yeah that makes sense. So that three months is really important for you guys to be able to do that. If you have to let that CEO go after those three months are you looking for a CEO in month two because you know that you're going to be replacing them? Shakil: That's where our stress happens quite often, right? You have this whole plan of transferring knowledge more from the seller to the CEO. You're going to be dependent on the CEO to running … working 40 hours a week. What happens when there's no CEO and you have a seven figure revenue business and all these customers, employee, supplier relationships. Who are they supposed to go to? So that's where one of us partners will have to step in or we … the CEO's that are with us right now they're amazing. They're really good folks and they understand our systems well. So temporarily we may have to kind of make the CEO or one of our other CEO's come in place of this one just to work a little bit as well while we look for someone else. Or we may reach back up to that old seller and say hey let's kick in our consulting agreement. We'll pay you whatever it is to run the company while we look for someone else just because knowing this is during the three month process. We haven't had anyone leave after the three month process and that's what makes this kind of system work flawlessly right now. Mark: So you brought this earlier on, why wouldn't these people start their own business on their own, and I know I've had some … early on in Quiet Light days when I would hire a broker because I'd hire entrepreneurs. These guys look at the deal flow and they're like you know I want to buy these businesses myself. And I've actually had a couple of them back out so that they could pursue other ventures. Have you had CEO's after they've run the business for a little bit whether in a friendly way or maybe not so friendly way either compete or end up leaving? Shakil: All right so, fortunately, I have not. However, that thought is always in my mind. And you know as much as I want to reason with it saying people want a fixed salary, people want to take on the risk; they can leave. I mean it's … they can leave at any time. They've learnt so much through these acquisitions we've done through all the systems we've built. They're very capable of starting their own business. They're running our business. So yeah that thought is there luckily we haven't had that happen yet. But if it does happen that's unfortunate. But we do have a really strong SOP's in place to where if someone were to leave … it's me and three other partners so there's four of us and so we'll just jump in and run the show. And so that's what's helpful with a big organization now is I could pull in a CEO, I could pull in a partner if someone were to leave. Mark: What about some of the great success stories that you've had with your CEO's? It sounds like … let's start with how long is the longest tenured CEO been with you? How long have they been with you? Shakil: So when I first started buying acquisitions Mark I was buying them for cash flows. I was running them myself. I think the first three I was running myself and I think I bought my fourth one 2015 so that's when I first hired my CEO and he's still here. So I got into e-commerce five years ago. I hired my first CEO in 2015 so three years. Mark: All right and out of these are you able to share maybe the greatest success story of growth that you've had with one of your properties? Shakil: Yeah this was actually a company I bought from you guys from Amanda was … it's called metalpromo.com. We make metal promotional items; coins, pins, metal business cards. It was doing … I think when we bought it it was doing $600,000 in sales and we want … so that was the business we bought in 2015 and I … so that's 10X now. And when we bought the company it was just the best. It's dealing with different suppliers. It's not having any quality assurance in place because these are custom products. It's made in China shipped directly to the customer; 10 to 12 days lead time. It's just nothing in it to make sure that everything goes well. So we were able to refine the process, grow the company through a really good SEO and AdWord strategy. And you know at that time we had a team of two 2015 now we're a team of 20. And so that was a great success story. My … the CEO he's a partner as well; William. He's amazing and the unique part about him was we went to MBA program together. He had no e-commerce experience at all. He had a drive for success. And because I knew him and he was a good friend we decided to partner up. It was a little smaller acquisition at that time and man things worked out really well. And he's running the show. He's happy running these. We're both being paid really well from the company. So thank you, Amanda, for that deal but it's … you know that's a great success story. Mark: Yeah I have a theory that you only buy from Texans because you bought multiple businesses from Amanda. In fact, I'm trying to think if you bought any business through us that have not been through Amanda. I think they've all been through Amanda. Shakil: Yeah well … we're working on one deal right now through one of the other guys so hopefully, that works out. Mark: Well hopefully. Amanda is one of those ones … I mean she's a little bit quieter at Quiet Light. She doesn't come on the podcast and stuff. We're working to get her on the podcast but man she's effective. All right one last question, I've been taking up a lot of your time now. I mean we're running a half an hour or so more than half an hour here but you guys have the shared backend office here with content writers and other people doing other sort of work. Do you ever run into conflicts between the CEO's when it comes to those shared resources? Do you have any way of allotting those resources on the backend? Shakil: All right so that's a really good question. Yes, we do run into issues sometimes because when all the companies are on growth kind of mode you want to utilize these certain people more than the others. And so then that resource becomes a bottleneck then we have to go hire someone. But during that process, we do have a trailer board that we use that basically shows what that specific employee is working on. So if it's a content writer, our content writer can do so much articles a week, right? So we have this calendar as well sort of built in trailer where it shows our December 25th to December 31st they're going to be working on this property so on and so forth. So it is a sort of a tug of war so to speak there. We do run into a little bit of problems but I always consider that good problems because we need these resources. We'll just continue hiring until we don't have a bottleneck. Mark: Yeah that makes a lot of sense. All right I think I asked all the questions on my list here and I know there's probably people in the car screaming no you didn't ask about this question and I apologize for that. So I'm going to have two things here to end. First of all what question didn't I ask that you think people should know about hiring CEO's? Shakil: So I think first thing first is you have to have the correct mindset. As I said before it's hard to trust someone with your business when it's worth let's just say millions of dollars right? And it's … if they do one small mistake, if they piss off one of our suppliers you sort of cut off that relationship, right? So you're really trusting this person to do a good job. So definitely deal with … do a good job of trying to find that person. If you have time, use that time. Be patient. If you don't do a series of tests with them to make sure you hire a good CEO. Do personality tests. Do a bunch of phone calls. If they're not in your city fly them in, get to know them. Go to casual dinners. If you want to see how that person interacts, how they are off the business as well. So definitely get to know that person really well. And number two as I said the mindset has to be there. You have to be willing to empower these folks. You cannot micromanage anyone if you want to go. When you want multiple companies you cannot focus on the small things. Yes, sometimes the small mistakes will happen when you want to step in and fix it. You're going to have your step back and let it sort of absorb the situation. You have to let it kind of fix itself. One thing I think I'm really good at is I empower these folks. So I will intentionally … if they have a question on Skype, e-mail, I intentionally will take my time to respond to the majority of these questions so they can go figure it out themselves. They could go ask the supplier, they could go ask our customer service reps, they could go look it up. And it's because I want … it's a mindset I want them to have to go figure these things out themselves because one of the main reasons why I have these CEO's in place is because I want to be able to relax. You know acquire these companies make the money work for me but also just go on vacation and if I'm always just working in the business that kind of defeats the purpose of having a CEO in place. Mark: Yeah I think that balance … you've said that several times, that balance of empowering somebody to run the business and the idea that as entrepreneurs we're not very good at this. And I can totally relate with that and I bet a lot of people out there who are entrepreneurs can relate to this as well. It's very very difficult like you said to take that step back and just say this … I'm going to let you do it. I know in the episode with Bill D'Allesandro I listened to him speak and he talks about the comfort that he has knowing that there are people that he's paying to obsess about one particular aspect of his business day in and day out. And that is something that I think as you scale up and grow up into more businesses you realize that you can't obsess about every detail about everything that you own. There's just not enough time to put them into bandwidth into the business. And that's going to be … I mean that's some skill that you think that you've grown better at or is it something that you think that you're pretty naturally good at beside of being able to empower and take that step back. Shakil: It was something I had to sort of self-groom myself into. It's because my initial few acquisitions I was doing everything myself and it's … you know it becomes stressful at the end of the day. So I'm pretty obsessed with processes and procedures and SOP's and stuff. So I have well built out SOP's in place where yes the CEO has it but it became … you had to train yourself to be able to let go of certain things and so … and I've become better at it. I understand as entrepreneurs we want to hog everything up. That's the thing; it's a natural thing to do. That's just why we're good entrepreneurs but at the same time, you do have to step back and let other people do these tasks so you could focus on the high level goals so you could focus on acquiring bigger customers, bigger companies as well. Mark: Fascinating. All right so the second that I want to end here is if people have questions that I didn't ask how can they reach you? And I'm going to just throw in here a quick [inaudible 00:42:40.5] and just let people know look please be respectful of your time. You're always very generous with your time and I definitely appreciate that. I know you talk at conferences now and you've come on our podcast twice. But if you have questions for Shakil then give them straight to the point how can people reach you with any questions that maybe I missed? Shakil: Yes so just feel free to email me at shakil@proclickventures.com. Mark: We'll include that in the show notes. You can go to the Quiet Light Brokerage page and you'll be able to see that on there. You're always respectful of your time and I really do … generous of your time I should say. I really do appreciate that very very much. And if somebody is out there who's been thinking about maybe buying but they hear this and think you know what maybe it'd be better if I actually took that intermediate step and became a CEO. Are you open to hearing from those people? Shakil: Yeah absolutely. I mean we're in acquisition mode. We're always acquiring companies and we're always looking for talented individuals that could run these companies. So yeah if you … if anyone out there is interested in sort of this role definitely reach out, please. Mark: Awesome. Well, hopefully, you'll get a flood of resumes from that and maybe a couple of good candidates as well. Thank you so much for coming back on and talking about this fascinating topic and I have a feeling it's going to jump towards the top of the charts again. Shakil: Awesome thanks a lot Mark for having me. See you in a few weeks. Mark: Yes absolutely. For those that don't know that's going to be E-commerce Fuel Live, right? Shakil: Yup. Mark: All right very good. See you then. Shakil: All right, take care, Mark. Bye-bye.   Links and Resources: shakil@proclickventures.com https://proclickventures.com/ LinkedIn ZipRecruiter Ecommmerce Fuel Jobs  

The Quiet Light Podcast
Beat the Competition to the Best Deals. Here's How.

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 8, 2019 44:53


At Quiet Light, we recently sent out a survey to our buyers to get insight into what they really want to learn about the buying and selling process. Today the hosts of Quiet Light are sharing the number one thing that first-time buyers want to know about getting the inside track to a deal. How do they break into the industry if they lack the experience in acquiring? This episode is just Joe and Mark, guest free, talking about breaking into the business for the first, second, or even the tenth time. They are sharing five things to keep in mind when shopping. There are a whole host of things you should do as well as things you should not do. Joe and Mark have built, bought, and sold businesses and have helped countless deals come to light, so you can trust that they learned all of this from hands-on experience! Episode Highlights: Give really good feedback. Review as many listing as possible in detail. Put time into the process. Make it a job. Prepare your financials. Get out on the conference circuit. Make a checklist of wants. Act quickly. Be likable to the buyer and the broker. Tell us what else are you doing. Be willing to overpay for a great business. Transcription: Mark: As you know we recently put out a survey for our buyers. And by the time this airs we're already going to have closed on that survey … that poll and we should have some really good conclusions. Nobody at Quiet Light other than myself knows the results of the polls yet. And I've been maniacally hitting refresh seeing what people are saying both the good and the bad and sometimes the ugly of what's being said. But I'll share one thing with you, Joe, right now that has come through that we've heard from a number of buyers and that is wanting to know how to get the inside track on deals. Basically feeling like there is this completely competitive disadvantage if they're a first time buyer. And there's some truth to this right? I mean if I've got three buyers looking at one of my deals and I have one that we've done four deals with already I'm probably going to prefer that buyer just because I already know them. They're a known quantity. We're going to be able to go through due diligence with them. We know what to expect. We know that they're going to not get cold feet at the 11th hour and so it's a problem for new buyers. How do you break into this industry? How do you break into your first acquisition? How do you get the best deals when you're competing against some guys that maybe have done three or four deals with us already? So this episode is containing no guests. We don't have any guests. It's just Joe and me talking about how to get the inside track to deals. And Joe I gave you an exercise at what … like 7 o'clock this morning I texted you and I told you to write some things down. Joe: You did. But first I want to say that to those listening that are first time buyers I've been at this for seven years, Mark's been at it for more than a decade, and I can only think of one buyer that has bought three listings from us. Maybe two actually if I think Shakil and 101. So there's only a handful of people like that that have bought more than three and then maybe a few more that have bought more than two. So I think the competitive advantage is in preparation and instilling confidence. We've had new buyers that beat repeat buyers. So I don't want anyone listening to feel like they're second in line, there's no way to break in. And that's the purpose of this podcast correct? So yes you gave me a task this morning. Thank you. I did not sleep last night and I know I'm doing the podcast and then you send me a text that says “Come up with a list of five things buyers can do to get the inside track on our listings.” Thank you for that. Mark: You're welcome and I came up with a list a little late like 10 minutes ago of five things as well. And I had to think about it because five was just kind of an arbitrary number right? If we want to get really minute we could probably come up with 12. If we want to talk about the big points it's probably three or four. But I think that what you said is true. I hope people that are listening to this, especially first time buyers that maybe have been looking a while and feel like they don't have inside access to deals will end this episode knowing that there is more myth to that than reality. And you can be an established buyer by following some basic principles. We'll go over some of those today. So I think the reason I sent you that text Joe I thought it'd be kind of fun to compare lists to see if you and I would agree on what these five things are. And honestly, I made my list a little bit with the knowledge of what I thought you would be putting on your list. So I purposely tried to avoid things and also get a little bit more creative. Joe: I did the same. Oh my God, we're a match made in heaven. Mark: Well no doubt. Now we're not going to be hitting any of the key points because we're going to be avoiding the obvious. So if we missed the key points we'll include them at the end here. But I don't know how you want to go about this, do you want me to just go with my first and then you talk about your first? Joe: Yeah. Mark: All right the first is really simple. It's super simple. Give really good feedback. Like just give us some feedback on what you like and didn't like about a listing. It's really easy … if I'm talking to a buyer and you look at one of my listings and you don't like it, it doesn't fit, that's totally fine. Let me know. But in addition to letting me know maybe give me a call and say “Hey I really appreciate you showing this” now you don't have to say that but you can say “I took a look at it it's not a good fit. I was kind of looking for something more along these lines”. The more conversations you have like that with someone like myself or Joe our anybody at Quiet Light Brokerage, the more that sticks out in our minds. Not only does it A. give us really good feedback on our listing which we can use to help get that listing sold but it also helps establish a relationship between us. And when we're bringing a business to market oftentimes we think about well who's a good fit? Who are some people that I know? And obviously, we can go into our database and start to do some matching. But if there's somebody that we know and we know they're a good fit yeah they're going to get … we're going to think of them, they're going to become like top of mind. We actually had this recently with a discussion we had internally at Quiet Light. Often when somebody is taking on a new client and they want some feedback on maybe the valuation or their approach or any strategy we'll have an internal discussion about it. We have just a generic email address and we all talk about it. And one of the brokers, Bryan was talking about a client that he was kind of worried about whether or not he'd able to find a good match for it and he wanted some feedback. And what immediately came to mind was one of our buyers Matt and we said maybe you should talk to Matt and see what he thinks about it and you know this will give him a chance to have an advance look at the listing. And sure enough, Bryan came back and said I already talked to him. And you know why two of us thought of him? Because we talk to him on a regular basis and he reaches out to us and we consider him a friend of the company. So that's my first item, give good feedback. Don't just say not interested. You can say thank you, you don't have to say thank you. I had somebody say that recently and said “thanks not for us”. All right that's nice but that doesn't really help me that much. Tell me why. Explain to me why so that I can at least have that in my mind. Joe: And that's the building of the relationship. Whenever I get feedback … I ask for it every time, all of us do saying if it's not for you, let us know your thoughts on the listing. And the professional buyers … meaning they're just professional people, thoughtful people they send us that kind of email. And my response to them is “Understood. Thank you. We will find the right one for you eventually”. If I've written that 500 times, I've written it a million times. I'm not sure if that math makes sense but I write it all the time. And I mean it because I know that it is an arduous search trying to find the right listing and these people are trying really hard to find it, they're reviewing the listings and it's a long, long process. So that goes to my first list of things to do here and these are in no particular sequence. But the first thing I wrote down and I've said this at least a thousand times over the last few years, review as many listings as possible in detail. And I wrote in detail in capital letters; IN DETAIL that's the most important thing. The more listings that you look at … not just the teaser that's on our website or a competitor's website; you can't really learn anything from that other than well that seems interesting but you don't really know what it is. You dive in, you look at it, and you learn what it is that you like about these listings and what you don't like about these listings. You learn what excites you about it and what scares you about it. And you begin to develop a sense for the right fit when it comes along. And that's really important because when that right fit does come along you're going to want to be able to act quickly and you've already looked at 300 listings. So you need to look at them in detail, digest the financials, look at the history of the business, look at all the products and the SKUs that are offered, and everything that we've prepared in our packages and really digest it and make your decision. And you're going to look at a lot of them. It's not an easy process. It's not a quick process. It takes a long time. One of the things that I love when I'm talking to … I'll say a new buyer, someone that I haven't spoken to before and they tell me they've been looking for a year. To me, that's great because they've gone through a lot of this and they've worked really hard to find that right listing. When someone says they've been looking for a couple of weeks or a month to me I know that they've got a longer road ahead of them and this is one of the things that I advise more often than anything else. Mark: It actually fits in really well with the next point that I had in my list and a point on there will just kind of piggyback on what you said are two just kind of general philosophies when you're talking about this process. Obviously, what you're talking about Joe it takes a lot of time and everything else I think to complement the first point I had and your point here would be two things. One, when you're looking for a business and you want to get that inside track be intentional about what you're doing. Intentionality right? So it's taking that time like you said to actually digest what you're looking at and reviewing it. I can't tell you how many times I deal with buyers or I talk to buyers who summarily dismiss a listing based on something which is frankly not an accurate assessment. But because they've already made that conclusion and despite the best efforts to be able to explain otherwise that conclusion becomes gospel truth to them and this is … they're missing out on some really good opportunities because of that. Or maybe they're not missing out, maybe they would say no otherwise but they will say no for more appropriate reasons than what they're saying no to. So that would be the first thing, intentionality. The second thing is … to piggyback on what I was in before is this is a relationship based business right? At the end of the day finding that really good business for sale is going to require some level of relationship and you need to find that blend. I think as internet entrepreneurs we love our processes. We love automation. We love efficiency. I mean that's the hallmark of what makes internet businesses so great. But you have to find that blend between slowing down and taking the time being intentional and having a process because there are a lot of listings out there that you can get a lot of deal flow coming your way. I know RJ over at 101 talks about how many deals they have looked and the numbers stay green. I mean it's well in the hundreds so you do have to have a process. But processes should not take away that intentional spending of time. And that leads into the point- Joe: Let me jump in I just want to say something in terms of the relationship Mark and being intentional. We're talking about the five things to do in between each of those five there are a number of things that you should not do. And one of them is in that relationship building don't send an email that says “I think you've overpriced this business it's only worth a 2x multiple, it's not for me”. Because the 10 year old in me wants to send an email back to them saying “thanks for your feedback it's actually currently under LOI at this time at full price”. And I've been in that situation a dozen times where I get a semi rude email on a listing that … it's been out for a week or two and some folks have looked at it we've had some conference calls and somebody sends me an email that says essentially “Joe you're a fool, you've overpriced this business. It's not worth merely what you and your client is saying it's worth.” and then that very same day where just prior to that email it's under contract at full price. That little boy in me wants to reply to that person and say “thanks for your feedback it's actually under offer at full price”. I say “thanks for your feedback we'll find the right one for you eventually” because I'm not 10 anymore but I want to. And so it is the relationship thing … again in between each of these five things to do, there's probably a half a dozen things not to do and that's really one of them. Mark: I admire your restraint. You know an appropriate response there … because look when it comes to valuations I tend to get very philosophical on this sort of stuff mainly because I've been around for 11 years and I've seen multiples that have went up way higher and I've seen a market where people weren't willing to pay more than 2.5, 2.6x on anything at all. Rather than saying you overpriced this business you can just simply say the price is too rich for me it's not a good fit at the price that it's at. That's fair. Well, you've got a price that makes sense for you. We get it. Don't tell us though that it's overpriced for the market. We listen to what every individual buyer is saying and if every … if all the individual buyers say not for me then yeah you're right. So I think that's a good point to have. All right so my second point, you're talking about going in detail. We're talking about making sure that you're talking to the broker and giving us some information about who you are, what you're looking for, why you like that, why you didn't like this. You might be hearing all of this and thinking that sounds like a ton of work. Yes, it is so that's my second point; make it a job. If your goal … when we did the survey by the way this … I'll give you another insight when we did the survey I'll tell everyone listening who took the survey a little secret. We actually had two surveys. One was just open ended questions the other one was very quantifiable information. Those that filled out the ones … the survey with very quantifiable information we asked how many businesses have you bought and the vast majority of our buyers have not bought their first business and are seeking their first acquisition within the first year. Okay, if your goal is to find a business within the next 12 months make that your job. This is what you get up in the morning, this is what you think about when you go to bed at night; how are you going to go about finding that business? Deal flow is difficult. When we put out a listing … I put out a listing recently that was 8 figures and we had almost a hundred inquiries within a couple of days. Okay, that's a substantial amount of inquiries on a single listing and that's not even close to what we get on something that's going to be in a more accessible price range. It's a competitive field so you have to make this your job. You have to dedicate the time to it. Read up on it. Subscribe to the podcast if this is the first one you're listening to it subscribe to the podcast because we're going to tell you how to do these things better and hopefully give you some insights. But read up on these materials, learn just like you do with any other thing and apply yourself to this in a full time way. Set up those processes to be able to filter through all of the noise and to be able to really take a look at the information in depth. So that's my second point; make it a job. Joe: And along those lines, my second point is prepare your financial approach. You can't get to the end point if you don't know what it is. If you're a cash buyer it's a little bit easier to understand what you're capable of stroking a check for but you also have to figure out okay if I'm buying an ecommerce business I have to buy that inventory too right? Okay is there a seller no possibility maybe on much, much larger listings but I'm over listening certainly not for the most part but that goes back to well … to whatever other points coming up. You need to prepare your financial approach if you're … if you have a limited amount of cash and you're going to do an SBA loan I love to hear from folks that are doing that that they have been pre-qualified for an SBA loan up to X dollars. And then they tell me the name of the lender. If it's somebody I don't know I'll reach out to them so we can build a relationship. If it's somebody I do know it's great, fantastic. I feel good about that because it's people in the network that we know and that we trust and that we know work hard to get deals done for buyers and sellers. If you're going to do get something under LOI now where somebody is going to be rolling over their 401k … I think it's called the ROBS. Mark's written an article on it “Quiet Light Brokerage and ROBS” and you'll find that article in Google. But that's another way to source funds to buy a business but it also … you need to understand the timelines there and how long it takes to do that. Mark, can you do a ROB without having the asset chosen that you'll purchase yet? Do you recall; yes or no? Mark: I don't recall, no. It's been a few years since I wrote that article. Joe: If you can … well read the article everyone if you can, which I think you can and you know you going to buy a business; do it, roll it over. Are you going to incur some cost up front that you're … if you're committing to buying an online business and making it a job like Mark says then you'll be prepared to buy that business because going back to my point number one you got to look as many listings as possible in great detail so that you're going to know the right listing when it comes along. And then you're going to want to be able to act fast because other people are too. It's not like you're making a quick decision here because you've been doing this for six to 12 months and looked at a hundred listings and you're prepared to act fast and you've got your financial ducks in a row. Because I can assure you if it's a great listing other buyers are looking at it and they've done this; they've prepared. It doesn't matter if it's all cash. It doesn't matter if you're rolling something over into a ROB and it doesn't matter if you're doing an SBA loan as long as you're prepared and instilling confidence in the broker and the seller of the business that you're capable of going from letter of intent all the way through to closing that's the most important thing be prepared. Mark: And to answer a question no you do not need to have the asset chosen before you convert to a ROBS. But take a look at the article; consult an expert on it because it's definitely a trickier thing to do. It's not something to do on your own I should say. You definitely want to have a consultant. All right, cool. All right I'm going to diverge from some of the traditional advice with my third point that I'm bringing out there. And it's not too crazy and it's pretty simple and that's get out on the conference circuit. More importantly get out on the conference circuit where brokers are going to be and you can meet them in person. And this comes back to this basic principle that this is a relationship based business. If I see you in person, if I have dinner with you you're going to be far more memorable than somebody who sends me an email once every two weeks saying “Hey do you have anything in this sector with this sort of EBIDTA?” you know what? I get a lot of those emails and I don't have a face to go with that email. It's very impersonal. If I see you at a conference and we spend a little bit of time together I get to know what you're doing. I get to know what your background is. That's way more memorable and honestly, the conference circuit is a great place to just meet all sorts of different connections that can help you. I know Stephen Spear who we've talked about from an SBA lending standpoint he's gone to a lot of these conferences. And think about this you're now dealing with people that you've met in person. Maybe an attorney, Shawn Hussein who shows up at a lot of the conferences, Stephen Spear who might end up helping you get an SBA loan. And then any of us here at Quiet Light Brokerage, you've seen all of us, you've met all of us, we've all talked, we've all joked, we've all had drinks together and everything else. It just helps pop of the mind and get to know everybody a little bit more closely. So that's just a very simple way to get some of that inside track. Joe: Let me add to that. For those folks that are spending a full time job on top of a full time job and pinching pennies to be able to buy this business, if you cannot do what Mark is suggesting which is a very very wise suggestion because there's nothing like human contact; emails doesn't work as well. This podcast is a great example. Mark had written amazing content for 10 years and then we started the podcast and we've been at it for just over a year now and people call us and they say “I feel like I know you already, I just listened before to your podcast”. We never got that kind of call when someone said “I feel like I know you already, I just read four of your articles”; very different. So if you cannot go to the conferences and get that face to face contact, Scott Voelker from The Amazing Seller gave me a great great tip about a year ago. We were talking and he said he was trying to break through to an [inaudible 00:20:25.5]. He read the guy's book, he loved it and wanted to have him … I forgot if he wanted to have him on the podcast or just have a conversation with him and straight up email wasn't working and he didn't have a friend to introduce him. So Scott turned the camera on himself clicked record and said “Hey so and so this is Scott from the Amazing Seller I just want to tell you I've read your book. I loved it and it's fantastic. I'd love to chat with you for a few minutes because I've got some things that maybe we can help you with and I've got a very large audience yada, yada, yada” 30 second video inside of an email, hit send, he had a response within about 30 minutes. If you can't go to the conferences, that's a free option. If you're uncomfortable in front of a camera, that's okay. It puts a face to it. It's one of the things that we've started doing with our listings. As many of you know that are looking at our listings we now … for the most part on most of the listings we do a 15 to 20 minute recorded interview with video and audio of the client … our client, the person that's selling the business. We don't do that to convey a lot of detailed information. We do that so that you can get a feel for who they are. If you feel like they're a good person. If you feel like they're likable. If you feel like you could trust them, feel, feel, feel. If you can't get to the conferences that little video I think … shooting email to one of us or all of us with something like that. But I tell you what don't do a template email … a template video because that's the … again the thing not to do, I want to throw it in here between, don't send a template email to every broker in the industry because we'll know it's a template. And generally, those are unpersonal … impersonal and we don't pay much attention to them. Okay, why don't I go ahead and I want to jump to a different … it's my third one I guess right not my fourth one? Third one, create a checklist of your wants. Now, this isn't necessarily a thing that you could do to get the inside track to our listings because it's all of the other things that we're talking about. But for you, it will be conveyed to us that you are preparing, that you are really diligent about your approach. I was at eCommerce Fuel a few years ago and someone that we sold a business to got up on stage and talked about his processes and his experience. And he put a checklist up on the screen and it had a checklist of all of the things that he wanted to buy in a business; all of the features the business must have. Whether it's re-locatable, whether it's got virtual assistants, whether it stores its own inventory, whether it's a software as a service business, etcetera. And then on the right hand side, he had a checklist of the business that he bought from Quiet Light and all of the boxes down beside it. And not all of them were checked off and he still bought the business. So if you've got this list and Kevin Petersen was on the podcast Mark a while back and he's got a portfolio of SaaS businesses and this is what he does. It is a checklist of things that they know what they want and then they always, always, always, always use that checklist on a listing that they were viewing and see how many of the boxes and checking. They've developed a process to score it. They've made this a job like you talked about. But doing that gets you away from the emotional approach and more to sticking with the logical approach. Because this as a buyer you're going to put your life savings on the line it can get emotional. You can get frustrated, you can know that there is a deadline … a horizon to your job, to the bonus that you've taken and it's going to run out and you're going to feel pressure to buy a business. You want to avoid the emotional decision of buying a business and buy it with logic and reason and a checklist I think is a great way to go. Mark: Did you know Joe that I tried to start a podcast before we actually started this one? Joe: No, I didn't know that. Mark: Yeah I actually did like two episodes and I had four recorded and as anyone who's trying to start a podcast knows getting started is often the most difficult thing. Because you get the first few done and you're kind of excited about it and then you realize it's difficult to keep the momentum up. It's not easier when you have somebody else on the podcast, a co-host who records 70% of the episodes like you do Joe. I did and I think the second episode … I don't know but you can still find this this somewhere back in the industrial archives of QuietLightBrokerage.com. There was a blog post and a podcast on do you have an acquisition checklist. It was the exact same thing, right? How do you process these deals quickly and how do you keep it objective. And it was … I have a checklist that you're looking for and modify that checklist and understand that it needs to be this balance between being too broad and too narrow. And that you're not necessarily going to check off all the items in the box on the checklist but are you hitting the major points enough to warrant that deep dive, that deep investigation that somebody makes. So that's one of the good tips as well. I see a thing developing in these as well right? An overarching thing that you want to have this blend of having processes in place but also somewhat of an analog approach … a non-digital approach to this as well. So Joe is talking about … you're talking about recording a video of yourself, just a personalized introduction so that we can see your face; that's very personal in human relationship and somewhat analog in that sense or going to a conference and meeting there some person or calling and having a conversation but also making sure that you have a process and you know what you're looking for as well. And I'm going to pirate I think my last point … I'm going to flip them around and that is when you see something that you like act quickly. And I'm going to put a couple of sub points on this. One, speed … when you're in this space and you're trying to buy a business and you're talking to us and maybe you set up a call and all of a sudden that business is snapped up, it goes under LOI with somebody else, you might think that person must have had an advance notice or they have some sort of an inside track. Speed is really the product of solid preparation. It's executed by people who know what they want and are putting in the time to have the processes in place to be able to evaluate these deals quickly and get back to us in a timely manner. I've dealt with buyers who are looking at an opportunity or they inquire on an opportunity, I do my follow ups with everyone that inquires and then I hear back two weeks later “Oh I haven't had a chance to look at the listing yet”. Okay, well you know what … very good chance that you're not going to get this. It's just the nature of it is that there's a lot of people looking at it and those that look at it within the first 24 hours and get back to us are typically going to be ahead of “the inside track”. So the basic lesson here is pretty simple, learn to act quickly. That doesn't mean that you have to make rash decisions. It just means that when you receive the information if you like what you see send out an email and get on the calendar right away for that conference call. The buyers who are first in line often do get some level of preference when it comes to that offer time and there's nothing [inaudible 00:27:28.1] to doing that. So act quickly is my fifth point now I'll do my fourth point last. Joe: And there you go now on Mark's point he said review it and get in line to be on a conference call with a buyer. I don't allow conference calls and we'll do most of the brokers at Quiet Light allow conference calls between a buyer and seller unless or until I have spoken to the buyer. So this goes back to reaching out and connecting with us and getting that out of the way. If we've had a conversation we're not going to have to take an extra 15 minutes to schedule that before scheduling a call with the seller of the business. Okay, I actually have a few more points I'm going to blend two into one. One is be likeable and the other is be likable and squeaky, all right? We're repeating things a little bit here but that's very important. It's because we are trying to hone in on these because they're critical and they make a huge difference. So the be likable first one is actually be likable to the seller of the business. When you get to the point of being on a conference call with the seller of the business your objective is to ask the same questions we asked. See if they answered in the same way. Get to know them a little bit. Get a feel for them. Be on the video. Be on the client interview. Determine whether or not you can trust them and move on with an offer of the business. That's the upper level objective of the call. The hidden thing, the most important thing I think is to make sure that when the call is over that seller doesn't want that call to end or that they hang up that call and think god man I really like Mark I hope he's the buyer of my business. Because if it's a great business as Mark said you've got to act fast. There are going to be lots of people that are really prepared to buy a great business and it's going to move … what feels like fast? Fast maybe three or four days all right, you get 24 hours to review the package, you ask for a conference call, you have a conference call and 24 hours later you make an offer or shortly thereafter you make an offer. We don't let things go under contract one hour after they've been listed simply because there's no way for you the buyer to fully review the package. There's no way for you to get on a conference call with the seller all within one hour. It just doesn't happen. When someone presents an offer this is one of those don'ts in between the lines don't make an offer without having gone through the process of a call with the seller within an hour. Because we know you're just trying to tie the listing up under a lot of intent and then make a decision. We want you to make a decision about a business go under letter of intent and go all the way through the closing. Okay, so be likable. Make sure as a buyer that your seller likes you on that conference call. And then the be likable and squeaky is be likable to the brokers. We're human right? I didn't sleep very well last night. I had a bad day. When you call me and you're hard on me I'm going to remember that the next time you want to buy a business. I have a particular buyer that comes to mind right now where he did just that what I said a few minutes ago. He said “I love it I want to go ahead and put in an offer.” and I said great well let's have a … he and I have already spoken before. He'd given his LinkedIn profile. He was preparing. I said “Great. Well, let's schedule a call with the seller first. When are you available?” total silence 24 or 36 hours … total silence and then the listening goes under contract three or four days later because there were multiple buyers because it was a great listing. And he sends me an email on the next listing that launches and says “I really like this one Joe can we get on a call with the seller of the business?” I said “Yes we can. What happened last time? You're ready to make an offer and then you disappeared on me.” and he emailed me back and said “Well my wife had decided that it wasn't really the business for us. There were some things that she didn't like.” to me that that's fine, that's okay. You got to do your homework first before you say I want to go under contract but it also tells me his intention was to tie it up under a lot of intent and then make a decision to buy it. And that's a big no-no because this is a very emotional process for both the buyer and the seller. So be likable to broker and respect their trusts … our time, respect our time and build that positive relationship. Okay, so that's my fourth I think. Be likable and be likable and squeaky. Mark: So yeah … and I'll just say as far as being likable to the broker, we're not asking you to sit there and give us all sorts of praise and compliments. Unless you're talking to Jason in which case that'll probably get you somewhere but when it comes to the … it's just the basic manners, right? Joe: [inaudible 00:32:02.5] by the way Jason doesn't listen to the podcast. We need to stop making fun of Jason because he doesn't even listen to it. Mark: Well, who can we make fun of at Quiet Light? Joe: Oh, let's make fun of you. Mark: Well, I'm always game but I'd say we pick on the new guy and the best-selling author Walker. Joe: You know what … yes, Walker. Right and we're not making fun of him right now I want to pay him a compliment. Before Walker came on as a broker I had a listing and we had three conference calls with three separate buyers and one of them stood out. He didn't end up buying the business but he stood out to me and I'm going man oh man that guy is awesome. I hope I can find him a business. It turned out to be Walker. And so when you like two months later had a great listing and your seller said “Look I really don't want a million calls is there anybody that comes to mind that would be a great broker, a great fit for this business, a great buyer, a great fit for this business?” Walker came to mind and I introduced you and guess who bought the business? Walker did folks. And now he's, of course, an advisor broker at Quiet Light because he's fantastic. But it's that be likable [inaudible 00:33:06.7]. Mark: Here where I was about to pick on him and just kind of tease him but I'm going to pile on with the compliments because if you guys are listening to the podcast you've heard me say in the past the story where I had a buyer after his offer was accepted told my client at the end of the … you know hey we just got under offer let's plan due diligence, took the time just to say “thank you for agreeing to sell me your business”. Well, that was Walker and the impact that I had on that deal was so significant. I mean it was again such a simple little thing that you can do and just … it wasn't disingenuous it was a genuine hey look I get it it's your asset. It's what you built and you're agreeing to sell it to me. I really appreciate that. Take the time. Be intentional. We've said that before … be intentional and think about all sides of the transaction here. Everybody hopefully benefits from this transaction so we shouldn't be sitting there and thinking man I'm giving you a lot of money you should be grateful. You should also be thinking I'm also getting a great opportunity by buying this business and being respectful of that … of the person selling their business. For the person selling their businesses especially if it's their first time, this is probably the biggest revenue event they're going to have in their lives at least to date and so it's a very personal thing for a lot of people selling their business. Take that time be respectful. I think that helps when you're in a competitive situation and you have multiple buyers. Like you said Joe we have people get off the phone and say “I really hope I get to sell my business to this person” right? Now everything else needs to line up, the offer has to be there but you can definitely help your case with that. All right last point I have is … I'll just go over it quickly because I think we've covered it pretty well but tell us what you're doing. What other businesses are you part of? What are you really good at? Are you really good at CRO? Are you really good at SEO? Are you really good at SaaS businesses? Are you really interested in getting into something different? Are you really interested in certain niches? Don't just send us a blank email on can we get these all the time and if you're listening to this and thinking these guys just want us to cater everything that we're doing to their way. That's not the case. Look work whatever way you want to work but understand we get a lot of noise that comes in through our inboxes. The whole point of this podcast episode is how do you stand out from the noise? How do you distinguish yourself from other buyers? Well here's what other buyers are doing they send us a template email telling us what they want. That's what everybody else is doing. We do look at those. We do categorize those. We have a spreadsheet that we share internally with that data but it's a spreadsheet with a hundred other names on it and growing every single day. If you want to stand out do some things in different. And one of those things is when you do talk to us or have an opportunity to have a conversation with us tell us what you're doing and don't just talk to us about what you're doing in the monologue. Let's talk about your business a little bit. Let's get into it a little bit. Share some details with us. Not because we necessarily want to know but look we're entrepreneurs we like to talk about this stuff anyways. It's always fun. I was talking to a guy the other day who is not a client, probably won't be a client of ours but a fellow entrepreneur and we just spent probably 45 minutes talking about his business. It was a fascinating conversation. I gained some things from it hopefully he gained some insight from it. And you know what that's now in my mind and if he ever does come to the point of buying or if he ever does come to the point of selling one of his businesses that's something that's always going to stick out in my mind. So how do you cut yourself out? How do you stand above the rest of the noise? Again and have a conversation and let's get into some of the things that you're doing because it's a lot easier for you to be top of mind if I know that you're like a Shakil buying just a gazillion businesses or if you're looking for that first time acquisition. I can think of a buyer right now, I've met them for coffee in person here in the Twin Cities. A husband and wife team I know that they've been looking for a long long time and I have a general sense for what they want. And I'll tell you what because I had coffee with them, because they shared a couple of opportunities that they're looking at with me I know what they're looking for pretty well and hey I'd love to find something for them. So if you're listening to this know I'm still looking for something for you and it's still on my mind. So that's my fifth point, let us know what you're doing. Tell us a little bit. Let's get into the details not just the high level details. Joe: Yeah, back to the human part. When you have coffee with them you talk to them as entrepreneur … as a broker in this industry, you get excited. I want to find them that business. I want to see them succeed. I want them to be another Quiet Light success story and five years from now come back to us and sell the business worth five times the value. Or hear that they're traveling the world while running the business and just changing their lives completely because there's something that occurred over a cup of coffee. So I think that's fantastic. All right my last and final point may sound a bit crazy but if you listen to our podcasts and you've heard Ben Carpel on the podcast … Carpel we always pronounce your name wrong Ben I'm sorry. You're awesome though we love you. If you have listened to Ben and if you have listened to one that aired in early December of '18 RJ you would have heard two pretty, sophisticated, intelligent, likable, passionate buyers say the same thing and that is be willing to overpay for a great business period. There are lots of great businesses that come out and when they do they get sold quickly [inaudible 00:38:37.3]. Mark: Hold on Joe are you just saying this because you're a broker and you get paid on commission for the deals that you're doing? Joe: No. They said it not me. I'm quoting them. And it's true I mean … look it's true we had a listing that I put up in August right? We had 10 offers on it. It was squeaky clean. It had the four pillars. It had age, growth, transferability, documentation. Everything was perfect in it. It was just fantastic. I knew it when I looked at it. We priced it right to achieve the buyers and the sellers goals. We didn't over price it because it was perfectly priced at right still and we had 10 offers. And one … actually, several buyers were willing to overpay for it. One buyer got it because of all of the things we've talked about. He was really likable. He was going to be easy to work with in due diligence. He was going to be easy in transition and training and he paid a little bit of extra. And he was okay with that because this is a great asset. We've got an email from him since then about the crazy growth that they've had in the fourth quarter. And my thought is oh I should share this with seller and then my thought is no that might put him in a little bit of a bad mood. But he achieved his goals. He wanted to get out at a certain time in a certain price and we actually overachieved that. So if two people like RJ and Ben are saying it I think there's some validity to it. Because if it's a great asset, if it's a great business and others only were willing to pay a certain amount it's great for you. It's not going to be great for everyone; that's the thing. Be willing to overpay for a great asset that's great for you. If you're into hunting and fishing and it's a hunting and fishing ecommerce business that's doing amazing things it's something you're going to be a little bit more passionate about. And in my experience when you've got some passion for something it's going to help you overcome those hurdles and those tough times that will come to you as an entrepreneur. So if it's a little bit … if you pay a little bit more for it I think you're going to get that return investment quicker than if you buy a complete fixer upper that's going to take some time. Mark: Yeah so I'm going to … based on that go back to what you said earlier about people who email you and say “you're way overpriced like there's just no way that this is priced right. It's overpriced by a ton”. Valuations are relative. That is just the reality of it. In that survey that we put out we had people give us feedback that said I love you guys but I think that your listings recently are getting overpriced. And then I had other feedback come back that said we love you guys but the perception is that you kind of underprice your properties. So we have these two conflicting things where we have some people saying hey you're overpriced and other people saying no you're underpriced. Look when it comes down to it the price of these assets varies based on the economy at the time but also probably, more importantly, they're based on the individual ROI that you can get. And what you can get from a particular business is going to be different from what somebody else can get from a business based on your specific skill sets. And so if you find something that's a good match it comes down to return on investment. What can you do with this business? If you can make that thing work be willing to pay more than what the average person in the marketplace is willing to pay. You're still going to get a good deal. But with the competitive nature of thinking am I going to overpay for this you know crush your ability to get a deal done because somebody else will pay a little bit more. When we price a business one of the big mistakes I think happens in our industry is that people price a business for the marketplace average. That's a mistake as a broker. And for those that are on the buying side here, I'm sorry about this next point but it's just the case, we work for the seller. I'm not looking for the marketplace of buyers. I'm looking for a buyer within the marketplace which means I want to aim towards the top end of that average range or the marketplace range so that I can find that buyer. Be that buyer at the top of the range for the business that matches for you. Otherwise, you're going to be competing against the full marketplace of buyers. I don't know if that makes any sense or not but again the idea of finding that opportunity for you and standing out and making sure that when you find it move on it. Joe: Absolutely I'll just wrap up my side of it with the fact that we're all entrepreneurs as Mark said. And we love what we do. It's crazy but a lot of what we're doing is simply helping people. We're giving up our time and we're getting something in return for it. We are making a living but we love it and it's exciting to work with great buyers, great sellers who are achieving their financial and personal goals. It's a lot of fun and we want to help each and every one that comes through our email or over the phone or text or whatever it might be. Help you achieve your goals whether you're a buyer or a seller. And all of these things that we've talked about we've talked about it through direct experience. We built and bought and sold our own online businesses and now we get to see what thousands of people do both on the buy and sell side. And so it does come from experience. It comes from the school of hard knocks more than anything else. We've learned a lot of things that people shouldn't do and a lot more things that people do right that stand out in these five things that we've each talked about or all these things. Mark: Right. So, Joe, you know what I'm going to do right now? Joe: I have no idea. Mark: I'm going to end this podcast episode because I have an appointment with somebody who wants to buy a business and wants to spend some time talking on the phone with me. Good for this guy. He's doing the right thing. Guys if you're listening to this and you have ideas for an episode like this where you have a question … again that survey [inaudible 00:44:06.9] some great feedback from everybody. If you took it thank you, thank you, thank you. And I'm serious- [crosstalk 00:44:12.5]. Mark: Answer a question that we're trying to tackle in your quest for your first acquisition or your tenth acquisition. Yeah, send us an email … send me an email at mark@quietlightbrokerage or joe@quietlightbrokerage.com. We'll either find an expert to bring on the show to talk about it or Joe and I will jump on it on a show like this. And we'll cover the topic as best as we can. Joe: Perfect. Go and hunt that buyer. Mark: All right, sounds good.     Links and Resources: https://www.quietlightbrokerage.com/  

The Quiet Light Podcast
Sell on Amazon Like a Pro

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 2, 2019 31:21


Some sixty percent of people go to Amazon when they shop for a physical product. If you have one to sell and you're not on Amazon, this episode is for you. In today's product market every seller has got to learn the Amazon ecosystem. Today's guest is the person to turn to when looking to save, grow, and make more money on Amazon. Michael Zagare was doing something he hated for many years. He was ready for a change and finally sold his Physical Therapy practice and began dabbling in internet sales. Amazon FBA was a great fit. Mike now owns PPC Entourage and runs his own profitable Amazon business. PPC Entourage is an Amazon Seller software that analyzes all of your sponsored advertising data and then optimizes everything for you. Today Mike shares his insights from his own selling experience and from helping countless Amazon FBA sellers. Episode Highlights: When you should start optimization. Finding a niche in the marketplace and breaking in. Organic rankings versus paid rankings. Lowering ACOS with optimization. Your average ad spend. How to go about optimizing a paid spend. Sifting through the search terms in order to fine-tune your listing. How much data is needed to draw a good conclusion on a product's optimization. What to look for in opportunities to expand through optimization. Creative tips and strategies to use for sponsored ads. What Amazon sellers can implement today in order to start optimizing. Ways sellers can protect against the competition and dying out. Continual product development and brand building. The importance of the intellectual property portion of your products. Transcription: Joe: So, Mark back in the day … I could say that now because I have gray hair on my chin. Back in the day I learned Google Ad Words I used to spend a little bit of money and eventually grew it and grew it and grew it and grew it. It got to the point that I was spending $50,000 a week on Google Ad Words. I maxed it out and then you know just do that on a monthly basis. And I didn't take any courses and I should have. And I didn't hire any experts and I should have. And I didn't outsource it and I should have. Maybe they didn't exist, I don't know what the issue was, it was probably just inside my head. Today there's almost too many experts and in every possible category and some of them really just take your money. But you had someone on the podcast specifically talking about Amazon sponsored ads which if … folks if you've got a physical product and you're not selling on Amazon simply because you don't think you need to … I personally will not shop for anything other than on Amazon. I will go there first. If I can't find it there I think it doesn't exist. So, I think something like 60% of people looking for a physical product shop on Amazon. So, you've got to learn the Amazon ecosystem and sponsored ads and their marketing and things of that nature. And you had Michael Zagari is that how you pronounce his last name talking about this? Mark: Yes, that's right and he is an Amazon ads expert. And you're right back in my day I don't have the same gray hair mainly because I don't have a chin … I'm sorry a beard, I have a chin. Joe: It's very revealing about how you feel about yourself. Mark: Why do you think we've stopped the video? I have no chin. So, I had Michael on and you're right back in the day it used to be that you could setup campaigns with pretty much every advertising platform. Set them up run them and take a little bit to get them up and going but today really need to be an expert in each of these categories, each of these advertising platforms. Amazon is really no different than that. And what Michael does is he really helps people. He's developed a platform that people can use which will help manage their advertising platform through Amazon. Be able to identify those keywords that maybe they are paying for and add them to this negative keyword list to be able to make their ad spend a lot more efficient. In our conversation which … it's pretty funny actually, so he actually has an Amazon store and they sell litter boxes and other cat things and they're in the video which hopefully we'll get some clips up. That's a note to our editor Chris you've got to get the clips up. His cat was literally like walking around all over the chair behind him and everything else so very, very appropriate. We talked a little bit about the strategies that- Joe: I want to say “ah cute” but I'm not sure if it actually was. Mark: I made a joke that we developed into cat videos here at Quiet Light Brokerage just to get more views. We got over some of the strategies that he's employed over the years to be able to get some really crazy returns on his ad spend. And I don't want to quote them off hand, we'll let you listen to this because there are some solid numbers that he puts out and some solid techniques. We really talked about some other techniques that you can do to help out with your organic rankings as well on Amazon. So, anyone that's an Amazon geek or has a business or mobile business on Amazon put this episode on. We got somebody here who's doing this at a pretty high level and very interesting as far as adding that paid portion and maximizing that paid portion to your acquisition channels. Joe: I think you know even if you think you're an expert at it and you do pretty well listening to other folks that do things maybe just slightly differently in the next 30 minutes you maybe will pick up a nugget that will help boost one of your campaigns or decrease your CPA. Mark: All right Michael thank you for joining me. Mike: Hey glad to be here, what's up guys? Mark: All right let's go ahead and start with an introduction and I'm going to let you go ahead and do that like we usually do. Mike: Sure, yes. So, my name is Mike Zagare. I am a recovering physical therapist and I always lead with that because I was doing something from nine to five that I absolutely hated for many, many years. I love that it's helping out people but it was definitely not my passion or my dream job. I'm a thorough grade entrepreneur and I think that runs in my family. And I realized that as I was going through college that this is just like not what I want to do the rest of my life. So actually, my hair is starting to fall out and I kind of went through and was a physical therapist for 10 years. I started and sold a physical therapy home care practice in that time. Thankfully I no longer have that and I can focus now fulltime on Amazon. It has been an amazing journey along the way and a part of that journey was discovering how to build an Amazon business and how to scale that business and get as much traffic and eyeballs to our listings as possible. And that's why we started working with sellers to help that as well. To help them get as many [inaudible 00:05:31.8] for as sufficiently as possible to their listings. Mark: So, when did you start your first Amazon business? Mike: So, I started in 2015 and at the time I had a bunch of … I had a homecare business and I had a bunch of losing entrepreneurial ideas. Actually, the first time I dipped into Amazon it was started off as eBay and I realized well that's not something I can do full time; it's just too time consuming it's not scalable. And then I tried to do retail and online arbitrage. And if you guys have ever heard of that, it can be profitable but I think you really have to be in the right place at the right time and I had no experience. I ended up ordering hundreds and hundreds of the wrong units on my house and completely shut down the post office in doing that. So, like I really had the energy and the intensity but it really had to be channeled in something that was like … something where it was streamlined. Like Amazon FBA was perfect for me because you get to combine value creation and creativity. Create something that's really, really great and new to the marketplace and then it's much more scalable and it's like kind of out of your hands at that point once it gets to the FBA warehouse. Mark: Sure, so with retail arbitrage you're going out and you're finding this kind of products in other places, ordering them, and putting them into Amazon FBA, right? Mike: Yeah that's retail arbitrage. And online arbitrage is finding discounted deals on sites but then the problem with that is if a lot of people found the same deal. So, by the time you got your inventory over to Amazon your profit margins were gone and then you're left with a lot of inventory. So, I just felt like the model wasn't right for me and Amazon FBA was like lethal … definitely the way to go in terms of selling on Amazon. Mark: Sure, and we've had kind of a hierarchy here at Quiet Light as far as the businesses we like to see on Amazon that we consider to be most sellable with the retail arbitrage obviously being towards the bottom of that list because it really requires that special skill in being able to find products. And like you said the problem with that is there's a lot of arbitragers out there. They are looking for all the same opportunities. Everybody has the same equal opportunity for those and it can be pretty difficult to scale that. Not that it can't be done, I've talked to some people that are doing arbitrage at a really, really high level but it's pretty hard to transfer that as well. So when you're saying that you were doing Amazon FBA are you doing private label or did you create a brand and a product? What … where would you fall on that ecosystem? Mike: Yeah, I do private label and we have a brand that we're building. We sell cat products around litter solutions. We started there and basically, we started with one product that did really, really well and we found a niche in the marketplace, made it better, and then we just were the first ones to the market. And then we reinvested all that cash into other products based on the search term report. So basically, we got into the minds of people who are shopping for our products and you can see what they're actually looking for and what they purchased and sometimes it's not always the same thing. So, we would try to find the search terms that were similar to the products we were selling and then come out with those products because we knew that there was an audience there and we knew we could cross sell. And then it steamed rolled into that okay we have a bunch of litter solutions products, why not cat toys and why not this and why not hospitality item and now we're going to health and skin care as well for pets. So, it's just kind of branching out from there and now we have a brand and we're more focused in on building that brand. We have a community manager, we have all these different channels that we're engaging people on. We're getting Facebook groups, YouTube channels, stuff like that to really build up the brand which I know when you get to sell a business I feel like this is the secret sauce that people probably can utilize. Mark: Right and I would agree that brand … being able to have a good brand set up is towards the top end of that scale, right? So, the arbitrage is kind of at the bottom end because it's really, really tough to sell those businesses. It's really tough to transfer those businesses and a brand you obviously have a protection of the brand and the goodwill that comes with that. And even in the pet space too that's awesome man. I know we don't put up our full interviews anymore, we're hopefully going to putting up some clips but your cat is literally like obviously are behind you so. Mike: Yeah, I locked him in the room so he wouldn't make any noise but yeah, he's here and he's the inspiration behind the whole thing. It was me and him. I was a bachelor when the whole thing started and he's been the … he tests all the products so he's at [inaudible 00:09:39.3]. Mark: So, we're now devolving into the world of cat videos at Quiet Light Brokerage. Mike: There we go. Mark: In order to stealth views videos. All right cool so the heart of what I want to get to let's get into like the real meat and potatoes and that is paid product placement on Amazon. And I think there's a lot that we can really talk about here. And I want to start with just sort of the basics with this. And when I say that when I think about an Amazon business, when I know a lot of our buyers are evaluating an Amazon business they're going to take a look at its organic rankings in Amazon. Obviously, you want to have good organic rankings but there's also a really big role that paid placement can take in any Amazon business and especially from a buying opportunity being able to maximize that just in the same way that we would have organic rankings and Google versus paid rankings they are a little bit different they have different flavors too. I'd like to pick your brain for it in the next 20, 25 minutes here about that whole process of paid products within Amazon. So why don't we just kind of start there … what would you describe the difference and kind of the role maybe that a paid product placement on Amazon should take in an Amazon business? Mike: So, it really depends on your strategy. If you're going and you're launching a new product and you're trying to get of the best visibility on Amazon then paid advertising is the way to do it. You can get top line visibility right from the very beginning. And that's something that we've been really doing really well is because now we have an audience and we do paid advertising and we target people from our list over to Amazon and we have them purchase but we also use the paid advertising to supplement that. We love paid advertising because it gives us massive visibility for specific keywords. And we know what people are shopping for and for those specific terms we want to dominate the marketplace. We want to have what's called the sponsored branding ad which is the very top of the ad. We want to have a sponsored product ad which is basically an ad directly to our listing. And then we want to have the organic placement and we call that the swimming the competition approach. Because now we have a lot of visibility for our major keywords and if people see you two or three or sometimes four times because on sponsored branding ads you can have your image in there a couple of times then you're more likely going to get that sale. And the way we look into it is that we make sure that our … what we call the true ACOS which is the average cost of sale which is our ad spend is about 10% of our … [inaudible 00:12:08.7] margin is about 10%. And as long as that's happening we're cool with that. We want to get as much visibility and as much exposure to our brand as possible. So typically, what we look for is what we call an average cost of sale about 40% or less and then we scale at that level. And if it's affecting our account about 10% in total then we're cool with that. When it starts to get more than that then we start to optimize because there's a lot of ways … you can spend a lot of money on Amazon. You have to know how to optimize the right way otherwise you can lose your shirt. You have so many people on that site. And there's different ways to do that with keyword, bid traces, and negative exacts, negative phrases, that kind of stuff. Also sending traffic to the right listing. There're various things you can do but there's a lot to talk about so I'm interested to get into it. Mark: Well let's back up a little bit here because you threw out a couple of numbers here I just want to clarify here. So, it's a 10% into your margins so what do you mean by that? Mike: So, your ad spends, let's say you're spending $10,000 a month and you're making 100k a month then that's 10% percent right there. Mark: Okay and then you said 40% percent of ACOS. Mike: Yeah, so if you're spending 10k a month, let's say you're spending $1,000 on ad spend then you want to make the fourth … so basically the $2,400 you want to make 1,000. That would be 40% ACOS. So, it's 400 in ad spend to make a thousand return on ad spend. Mark: I got it. Thank you. Okay so let's start with just kind of the how this all works. How do you go about optimizing a paid spend because we get a lot of our buyers who … a lot of our listeners are buyers right? They're going to be inheriting a company that has an existing paid account or some paid advertising going on. Where do you start in that evaluation process to find out what you need to do to be able to optimize it? Mike: So, you start by looking at the search term report to see what people are actually searching for and how much the bid prices are. And there's a couple of different ways to optimize you can do on a keyword level. If a keyword is too expensive and it's really not … it's driving a lot of traffic but it's not doing it at a profitable level then that's just not a good thing. You want to start to lower down that keyword bid price to get a lower cost per click. And you really want to determine how many clicks it's going to take you to get that sale. And if it's too many clicks and your average cost per click is too high then you're simply … unless there's another advantage of getting that traffic, maybe you're getting a lot of return customer. You're selling sport supplements and you got to do 100% ACOS to get them in one time and have them come back again and again and again that would be a good idea of wanting to do that. You could be a little bit more aggressive but for somebody like me who sells cat products typically about 12 to 15% of our customers are return customers so we take that into account. But we try to keep it so that it's within our 40% ACOS because of that. And you have to tailor the keywords to make sure that they're not too expensive and that you're wasting all of your ad spend on keywords that are just draining your ad spend. Mark: Okay. All right so you start with a keyword report and then you look in to see what's driving sales right now, the cost, the areas that you could drive that down right? Mike: Yes. Mark: Okay and then where would you go after that? Mike: So basically, we'd start with the keyword report … search term report and then you would also find the search terms that are really, really not doing well at all. Some of them have zero like sales whatsoever but tons of clicks. And those are the ones that you want to start to do a negative exacter phrase on so that you can start to fine tune who's going to your listing and what you're paying for in terms of your ad spend. So, we use a tool inside of entourage called negative word finder which will tell you the words that are never … that have never been associated to a profitable sale. And you find those and you can do a negative phrase match which means any search term that the customer puts in you're not going to get that exposure to your listing and you're never going to get hit again. If you do it on a campaign level your entire campaign will be sensibly shielded from any time somebody types in that word. And then negative exact is like if you could take the exact search term that's not generating any sales and you could use that as a negative exact so that's why you're not getting any exposure to that that search term in its entirety. Mark: How much … this is exactly the same process that you would use with say Google Ad Words itself like you're taking a look to see what people are searching on, the stuff that's not really related or not really driving the traffic to a site, what have you driving conversions that's within the ad words world, how much data do you think you really need before you can start ruling out certain phrases or certain words and adding those negative words? How long do you have to let it run before you can really know and draw any good conclusions? Mike: There's a lot of factors that go into it; seasonality, how new the product is, is the listing seasoned. Because you can make some decisions early on where a listing doesn't have a lot of reviews and doesn't have a lot of questions that people could ask. People could ask questions on a listing so there's a lot of factors that go into it. Typically like a general rule of thumb it could be 10 clicks without a sale is when you start to make some adjustments and optimizations and that's to a really, really good well-seasoned listing. If it's earlier on then there could be a little bit more leniency in terms of when you start to optimize but really the fundamental thing is you have to have a really good listing. You have to have a solid product. You can't just sell a me-too product that's up there just competing based on price. It's got to have a really good high value to people who are searching for it. So, if you start with that then you can really get a better understanding of when you should start to optimize. But the rule of thumb is basically 10 clicks without a sale is when you would start to do some work. Or 10 clicks with a relatively high ACOS you would start to optimize that cost per click so that it's at a better cost … the bid price is better and not as expensive. Mark: Okay so in this case if we're evaluating a business for sale and taking a look at it one of the first things we'll be looking for that low hanging fruit of hey these guys are wasting money on their product sponsored listings spend right? They've got a lot of keywords that they're paying for. We've received 10 maybe 20 clicks we're not getting any sales from them and that cost is pretty high. So that seems like a pretty low hanging fruit there. When you're evaluating the campaign and let's say that it's pretty clean that way and looks like they're doing a decent job of going through and eliminating those nonproductive keywords, where do you look for or what do you look for opportunities to be able to expand a product that they currently have? Mike: So, there's a lot of opportunities when typically you can see keywords that are performing really, really well within the desired ACOS range. Meaning if you're … let's say you got an ACOS of 15% that means for every $15 you're spending you're making a 100. So, you may be missing out on some of the potential opportunity because your bid price is a little bit too low or Amazon doesn't really … maybe your campaign budgets are a little bit too low. So, you want to give Amazon more room to breathe. You want to basically tell them hey this works out for me you know I want to do this any time of the day. And you would then go ahead and optimize your keyword bid price and also raise your campaign budget so that you can get as much exposure to that opportunity as possible. And now it's a lot easier to see that stuff in bulk with software. You can see all of the individual keywords that are performing really, really well over a given period of time and where they really could use a little bit of a boost in terms of their ad spend. So, you can give that more love and then direct traffic there and then negate it elsewhere. Mark: Okay. Do you ever use paid sponsored listings for anything other than just the direct sales? I mean are there some more creative strategies that people can use with these campaigns to be able to maybe do some other parts of like with their organic rankings or other aspects of their account? Mike: There so many things you can do. Yeah, it's really exciting. There're different things that Amazon is coming out with. Now they just came out for sellers and sellers central sponsored brands, headline search ads. So basically, there's a big … there's a much bigger creative element to that and you can really brand to get massive exposure to your brand doing that. And if you've ever seen on Amazon they're very top ad when you go there. There's a [inaudible 00:19:53.2] to the left, there's a headline, and there's three product images and you can direct your traffic to a storefront which is basically your website on Amazon or you can direct it to a single list of items on Amazon. And there's a whole bunch of strategies to do that. Very creative headlines, you have to be really good at copyrighting, good main images, you have to connect the copy to the main image and to the three main products. It is very simple but I feel like there's a lot of opportunity and a lot of sellers really don't take the time to make a good headline. They just kind of put stuff up there and just kind of set in and forget it. And I think that's a really big headline. It also sets the stage for sponsored products and for organic visibility. It's like the first line of defense when people see your brand and then they see unsponsored products they may not want to click on it and they see you organically. And as long as your numbers are right we find that approach really sets stage for a sale. Mark: All right so you're talking about this again once you could be on multiple places so that people have those multiple touch points with you. Okay what are some of these other strategies? You said that there's lots of opportunities, I want to get in to one of these here and see something that the listeners can take away here as something that they could actually implement today. Mike: Right so if you have a brand I think the biggest opportunity is to dig into your search form report and actually find out what people are looking for. That has been the best opportunity there still that people just don't really dig into that as much as they could. So that's like instant intelligence as to what people are looking for and how you can build and expand your brand. The next opportunity I would say is to really dive into sponsored products and headline search ads because a lot of people … well there's opportunity moreso overseas now with sponsored products it's getting a little bit congested in the USA. Canada, UK, Germany, all of these overseas markets there's plenty of opportunity there. If you have a good product in the US that's an easy way to expand. We're getting better numbers over there in terms of our PPC recently as we are in the US. So that's a killer opportunity. And since the world is really open right now there's … the doors have come down. There's plenty of opportunity out there. But in terms of opportunity really coming up with creative ideas and creative products and really diving into that is the way to go in my opinion. Mark: Are you able to share any creative things that you've seen over the past six months? What's one of the most creative … obviously not explaining or giving away anyone's trade secrets here but what are some of the most creative things you've seen in the last six months? Mike: Yeah so, I like to build a listing that incorporates the entire product line. And this basically is you're getting … you're paying for traffic anyways, you're spending a lot of money to get your people to your site why not cross sell your other products, why not … and there's like five or six ways to do it within your listing that I think a lot of sellers aren't doing. You can have an image that has basically a visual of all the products in your line. A bullet point that explains that this is part of a product in your line. You can have a coupon that allows them to purchase another product in that line for a little bit less money. You could have what's called enhanced brand content now which shows the entire product line and has comparison charts with links to your other products and also you can link people to your storefront. So, I feel like that's the big play right now is to get traffic over but then really build the customer [inaudible 00:23:11.7] retarget them with emails and then get them on your sequence and then go from there. And then launching becomes very simple because you have this entire list. We did that process and we have about 7,000 new emails in one year which doesn't seem like a lot but these are customers who came to our site. They basically gave us their information, they registered for a coupon. They're loyal customers and now we're retargeting and also, they're part of our fanbase and we can grow at that rate. That would be a great thing for us. So that's one tip is to get more exposure to other products in your line. Mark: Okay let's talk a little bit about competition this is something that I hear from a lot of people that are looking at the Amazon space looking to possibly buy but aren't quite sure about it and their number one fear and even among sellers for that matter. What I hear is this kind of worry about competition and taking away from that share that maybe they've built up over the years. What are some ways in your opinion that sellers can start to protect against that slow believe that happens so often with product lines? Mike: Yeah it does happen it really does. I mean there's going to be competition within 60 months or less of whatever you're selling. That happens to us with all of our product lines and it's always been about reinventing and coming up with new stuff. If you're not reinventing I feel like there's the entropy is going to take place and that's just inevitable. Also, just keep in mind that Amazon consistently raises their fees. And then also from a PPC perspective there's more competition so the cost per clicks are going up not down. So constantly squeezing out that margin which is something that you have to be very mindful of. So, the protection mechanism that I feel is the best thing is your audience. If there's so many who is loyal to your product brand outside of Amazon … if someone loves you outside of Amazon they're going to come to Amazon to purchase your products even if it's a little bit more expensive. So, you can maintain your profit margins that way. The other thing is having … going where people typically don't go, so oversized items. Like really, really big items. People that are just usually scared away because the cost per unit to purchase that may be a little bit too expensive and basically there's a less … there's a bigger barrier to entry and it scares more people which I feel like is a bigger opportunity. So, if you combine that and even if you sell five or ten of those a day versus 100 widgets a dollar profit it just pays off that way. I think those are ultimately the mechanism to really scale. Mark: And those are things that we've been emphasizing for years. I'm glad that you said that because it makes me look smarter than I probably actually am. But these things, the less desirable is just one that we see you know not with Amazon businesses alone it's actually with any online business, right? The barrier to entry which might be a little bit scary from a buying standpoint. I remember we had a business that was selling a certification program and a lot of buyers are worried because they we're thinking I don't know anything about this how can I actually teach people how to get certified with it. Well you know what that's protection against competition. And so, when you get into that sort of less desirable niches where you have to solve a problem … and I think that's the big thing if you can figure out a solve a problem that problem is something other people are going to have to deal with as well. That's really key. And you're echoing as well with something that Chad Rubin from Skubana told me on the podcast several episodes ago and that is that continual product development. He made the point that Apple comes out with an iPhone every year and pretty much cars come out with a new car every year. It's not that the previous cars don't work well, they do. They could continue to just produce those ones but they want to create some new excitement among their consumers. And then finally get I know I'm literally just reiterating what you said but I think it's important to do so. Moving that brand so it's not just Amazon centric and dependent but creating that brand and kind of loyal customer base outside of Amazon as well. Mike: Yeah so … and one more thing I want to add to that is intellectual property especially at Amazon. I mean that we … I'll give you guys a quick story. So, we sell cat products and we started selling this cooling pad basically two summers ago. And it was a huge seller; a very seasonal item obviously but it was a huge seller. And then the next summer we got an email from a company saying that they had intellectual property rights to that thing. It basically kicked off everybody on Amazon and they are just doing … just normally you can't … now obviously we can't compete with them. And they're making so much money. So, if there is a product out there that you think is … and I've actually had trouble with this. I'm not … I don't have a lot of experience with this but I've never really come up with a product that is truly patentable but I feel like if there is something, some intellectual property you can get and you have something great on Amazon and there's no other competition because you're the only one man you do really well. Mark: Yeah and nobody thinks about the IP portion until it gets crowded right? I mean that's when you start thinking about IP. At first, it's like hey it's a big pie everybody can have some and then you're like why actually this pie is starting to get a little bit crowded. I'd like to be able to protect my slice. But you're right being able protect what you have through intellectual property is a really, really key thing to do and do it early as well. Mike: Oh yeah and then on Amazon it's almost inevitable you'll come up … there'll be people who will try to get your slice. I mean sooner or later and maybe from random countries and sometimes they don't always play the right way. So, it's important to make sure you have that in feel. Mark: Awesome. All right I feel like we could probably branch into another topic but then we would end up going completely off our existing conversation. So, I'm going to have us wrap up right there. I know that you also started PPC Entourage and that is to help Amazon paid accounts correct? Mike: Yes, it is, yeah. Mark: Okay do you want to tells us just a little about what you're doing over there? Mike: Yeah absolutely so in 2016 is when I … I started my business in 2015. 2016 I spent a lot of time with sponsored products and it was just a pain … it was great because we got a lot of visibility but it was frustrating because it just took forever to get it done. So basically, it's my first experience working with a software … a SaaS business and it has been an amazing experience. Basically, what we did is we made sure that everything that we did to scale our business could be done in like a fraction of the amount of time. So, if you're looking to get more exposure to your Amazon business, if you're looking to spend less on ad spend, if you're looking to optimize in a quick efficient way PPC Entourage can help you do that. Now we have bulk edit tools which allow you to look into campaigns … all of your campaigns all at once to see what those winners are. You can get more money and spend more money on those particular keywords and campaigns. And then also we have something called auto pile which is becoming much more intuitive. Basically, something that goes in every single night looks at your metrics looks at the settings that you place and make sure you calculated adjustments to your keywords so that you're not spending a ton of money on ad spend. It makes adjustments every single night. So that's one of the really cool, we also just launched Spotlight which is our headline search. Basically, our solution to headline search which allows you to create 27 different variations of headline search ads. Anyone who's on seller central knows it's one at a time. It's a huge pain in the butt. It takes forever but this allows you to find the best products. It allows you to find the best images. It allows you to find the best headlines. We have a headline creator. It lets you find 27 different combinations and you can slowly send them off to Amazon over time and then optimize those ads. So that's PPC Entourage and PPC Entourage spotlight and yeah, it's a growing business and we're so excited about where it can go. Mark: Awesome. Well thank you so much for coming on the podcast here and if anyone wants to reach you what's the best way for them to contact you? Mike: Sure, you can go to PPCentourage.com or you can also go and email me at mike@ppcentourage.com. Mark: Awesome. I'll include those links in the show notes. All of those will be at the bottom. Just scroll past the transcript and you'll be able to see it. Thank you so much for coming on and let's have you on again in the future. Mike: All right thanks. Take care Mark.   Links and Resources: PPC Entourage Email Mike  

The Quiet Light Podcast
Wrapping up the Year and Looking Ahead to 2019

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 25, 2018 11:34


Merry and Happy Holidays to everyone listening! We thought we would take a chance on this mini-episode to say thanks to everyone who has supported Quiet Light over the past 11 years – especially over the past year with this podcast. We're also taking this opportunity to go through a year in review and look ahead to 2019. It is truly our pleasure to do what we do and provide you the expertise you need to buy or sell your business. We have plenty more in store in the upcoming year! Episode Highlights: Highlights from the past year. Looking ahead to 2019 with exciting guests queued up. 2018 was a record year for Quiet Light Thanks to all our brokers and veterans at Quiet Light. Quiet Light's referral program. Hear about surprise guest coming up. Success stories are also coming up on the podcast. Transcription: Mark: Merry Christmas Joe. Joe: Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you Mark. Mark: Happy Holidays, thank you for being so politically sensitive. I really appreciate it. To everyone listening, Happy Holidays … Happy New Year. This is Christmas Day when this is being released so if you're listening to this turn it off, it's Christmas. Actually, listen for about 10 minutes and then you're going to turn it off. We're not going to do a regular podcast episode today because it is Christmas and we want you to be able to spend time with your families and friends. And if you don't celebrate Christmas be able to take a day off while everybody else does as well. We thought we would take advantage of this episode today just to give a quick thanks to everybody that has supported Quiet Light Brokerage over the past 11 years but especially over the past year that I've been supporting this podcast and do a mini year review. So Joe how has your year been? Joe: It's been fantastic. Yeah, I want to say thank you to everyone as well. Thank you to the folks listening to the podcast. This is our first full year right … 2018 we started late in '17. The feedback that you're giving us is fantastic and we feel like the guests that we've had on are really helping which is the most important thing. One of the things that I want to do for 2019 and beyond is do some of those sort of under the hood calls like Mike and Dave do and what the Ecom Crew would do for people that are looking for valuations so we can dissect your businesses in recorded calls. Keeping it confidential, not naming the business but having people see what it's like to go through a valuation because the most important thing I think is to understand what the process is like to someday sell your business. But it's been a great year. Look we've brought Walker Deibel on … Walker and his folks and we like to joke about this recently about Jason's chops about his Bathroom Millionaire book but Walker is truly a bestselling author. He wrote Buy then Build that launched in the fall; a fantastic guy, honest, hardworking, a great addition to the Quiet Light team and then Brad Wayland as well. Brad is unbelievable in terms of what he's accomplishing in terms of the volume of transactions and people that he's helping. These two are going to essentially replace me very quickly in terms of the volume of work that I've done over the years. But then the rest of the team is all coming together and we're just still that. You and I have swapped … talked about boutique brokerage firm. We are in a sense but it's been a great year where we've grown tremendously. Mark: Yeah we don't publish our numbers. I know this is something that some businesses choose to do to publish their numbers publicly. I've always opted not to. No particular reason other than I just haven't seen the specific advantage compared to some of the drawbacks. But I will say this 2018 was by far a record year for Quiet Light Brokerage. We more than doubled in growth this year in terms of the volume of deals that have been done both in total deal value and also in the revenue that Quiet Light Brokerage has brought on board. A lot of this is due to the new brokers that we brought on board over the past few years. It's also due to some of the vets that we have on the team now as well such as Amanda and Jason. Joe and I were just talking before this podcast about how nice it is to have those two on board who have been doing such a phenomenal job. For such a long time they seem to understand this industry just instinctively at this point where they know how just to find a good deal. And that's kind of what being boutique is in a way right? Being able to be selective and knowing what you're taking on board. And I'd be remiss not to also thank Bryan. Not only is he bringing good deal flow and he does a great job for his clients but he also has been helping Quiet Light here on the backend with some projects to help us get better organized, create better business summaries, in continuous to find ways that we can improve our fishing seas. You know when I started Quiet Light Brokerage … about six months after I started Quiet Light Brokerage I went out and I hired five sales people. And I was just looking for people with sales experience because I thought well we're selling businesses I need somebody who can sell. And they all flamed out pretty quickly. Some of them had moderate levels of success, some of them flamed out very quickly, and one by one they kind of dropped off. And it wasn't until Jason came on board and literally bugged me to come on board as a broker that I'd literally stumbled upon this model of having entrepreneurs who have all been there done that and have been successful on their own right. And the result has been pretty amazing because Quiet Light Brokerage is this group of entrepreneurs where I get feedback all the time. Sometimes I really want to tell everyone to shut up but at the end of the day, I get really awesome feedback about what we can do better at Quiet Light. Joe: That feedback is from the brokers, not the buyers and sellers just for clarification purposes. Mark: Yeah, thank you. Buyers and sellers you can tell me anything and please do tell me whatever you want. It's from the different brokers you know because as entrepreneurs what we do? We always find problems with other people's businesses or we think how we could run it better. But it's pretty phenomenal, it's like a built in board of advisors. Joe: Absolutely. Mark: So yeah and guys like Chuck, he gives us great feedback. And Chuck has been with us for a year and a half then. He's one of the best connected brokers that we've brought on in terms of the industry and the relationships that he has. So you're absolutely right it's an incredible team, a board of advisors. Maybe this podcast is turning into a thank you to our team more than anything else. Well, I was actually going to move on from the team because I do want to say thank you to the team. But I just want to say thank you to our past clients and also our buyers and those out there who have been referring business to us. Honestly the referrals, when somebody comes to me and says “Hey I was talking to so and so and they said I should talk to you” it doesn't even have to be about selling their business, it can just be I have a question about my business. Look that's completely something where it's flattering to hear that we're a referred source. So thank you for thinking of us as a resource. For those of you that are referring potential sellers over to us keep in mind, we actually do have a referral program where you can get paid on that referral. I know most of you … the vast majority of you, you don't do it because of that because most of you don't know it exists because we do a terrible job of actually advertising this. But we've received lots of referrals from people where we've done sent them a referral payment and like woah I didn't know this was coming. Joe: But you do that intentionally. You don't advertise it. We don't put it out there. We don't have it on the website because it's kind of fun to have someone refer a client to us, we close that transaction and then we send them a wire form saying “Can you give us your wire details we're going to send you $23,000?” that's kind of fun. Maybe it's selfish on our part and we should talk more about it on the podcast. Hey, we do referrals folks, we pay referral fees. Mark: We do referrals. Just let us know if you give it. Again we know that's not why you're doing it. We don't want you to refer us just for the referral fee we want you to refer us because you think that we're high quality. So thank you and then also to people that took the survey a few weeks ago, thank you for that as well. That's the thank you's unless you have anybody else, Joe. Joe: You know I just looked at Facebook last night and one of our clients posted something of a photo of about five years ago when he was in an airport and he was stuck in the airport with his four year old son and they couldn't afford the taxi fare to get to where they needed to go. Their flight was canceled and they couldn't afford to go back somewhere so they stayed in the airport for the night to catch the flight the next morning because they couldn't afford it. We sold his business for almost 9 million dollars last summer. And for those folks that are in situations like he was 5 years ago stick with it. I had a conversation with somebody this morning that's throwing their hands up in the air and is about to give up. Stick with it. Have faith. Listen to this podcast and the experts that we bring on, the people that are here to help, our entire team. Have a conversation. Pick up the phone and say I'm not ready to sell but I want to get better where should I go? Who should I talk to? What should I listen to? That's … strangely enough yes we get paid to do what we do but for me to read that story this summer and know that I had an impact on that person's life means more to me almost than the job itself. So thank you for allowing us to help you guys make differences in your life and grow and change and impact whether you're a buyer or a seller because that's what we're doing. I think more than anything else Mark is we are having an impact on people's lives and I get a lot from this. So thank you, everyone. Mark: Absolutely. All right let's look ahead real quick to 2019 first in terms of the podcast, the podcast we have some good episodes cued up. I know I have a few really exciting guests queued up ready to go including our number one ever listened episode … downloaded episode. I have that guest coming back on for a reappearance just like to try and take the top two episodes. We'll also be doing an updated SBA in 2019 episodes soon. But I need to get on the calendar still with whoever we're going to bring on for that episode. And then I have a surprise guest from a pretty big company, founder of a pretty big company and we're going to get him on board here for an episode which I think will be pretty exciting for everybody listening. Good stuff coming up Joe. I know you probably have a stable of episodes coming up as well. Joe: Yeah I've got a few coming on with their success stories either as buyers of businesses that they've bought through us and just to look back in the first six months on under ownership, what it's been like and people that have sold. I want some real actionable items and experiences that they could take away from the podcast. And a little bit more of what you're talking about, big guests that have big names but I really should inform or impact. You and I on a whim we didn't have a guest one week and we decided let's just talk and we ended up talking about the things that can improve or plummet the value of your business and now it's in the top 10 podcasts. We need to do more things like that that are actionable and that's one of the goals for 2019. Mark: All right so moving forward we're getting long on this and I want people to get back to their holidays or if you're listening to this the day after be able to get back to families affairs. Families are still in town. So I'm going to wrap it up and just say once again thank you for everything. We're looking forward to 2019 very very much. Our pipelines are very very full so I expect a good amount of deal flow coming out early 2019. Everything continues to seem to be pretty strong right now. Yeah definitely looking for 2019, thank you for 2018 and always feel free to reach out to Joe or myself or any of the members of the team with any sort of feedback; good; bad; otherwise. Direct all bad feedback to Joe all great feedback to me and I think we will be good to go. Joe: All good feedback about me to me that's fine. Mark: All right very good. Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays. Happy New Year. We will see you guys in the next year.   Links and Resources: https://www.quietlightbrokerage.com/ Listen and suscribe on Itunes  

The Quiet Light Podcast
How to Avoid Email Marketing Mistakes

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 27, 2018 38:19


Multiple streams of income bring more value to your business. One stream of income people often forget about is email marketing. Today's guest Ken Mahar, founder of Email Broadcast, has been in the sales and email marketing arena for many years. Business owners nowadays are quick to find an expert in other media marketing channels, but when it comes to email marketing, they often implement it unprofessionally, ignoring the potential for campaigns to generate income. Ken's company sets about optimizing your email marketing strategies by carefully preparing them months ahead and sticking with them, therefore nurturing that ongoing relationship with the buyer. Email marketing is the dinosaur of digital marketing tactics, yet remains one of the best. Ken has over 18 years of email marketing experience, going back almost to the dawn of the online space. Ken's experience, along with the expertise of his team, helps clients launch and maintain successful email marketing campaigns. Today he's sharing some of the mistakes people make and valuable ways to avoid those mistakes. Episode Highlights: Common mistakes people often commit with their email marketing strategies. What content planning takes place between the firm and a client before starting a campaign. How Ken helps clients bring a lead through the funnel. How often he refines the client's automation processes and tracks the campaign's performance. The importance of segmenting your audience. How personalization is important – to a degree. Tips for learning how to implement the technical side of an email campaign. Why outsourcing the email marketing side of your business can pay off. The importance of grabbing that email address! Why business should always offer something that people want (and not something they don't). Transcription: Joe: Multiple streams of income bring more value, right Mark? Mark: Absolutely. Joe: All right. One stream of income so many people forget about because it's hard, you have to learn things and it seems so old school is email marketing. But I understand you just had Ken from Email Broadcast on the podcast and he talked a lot about the benefits of email marketing. Mark: Yeah. One of the things he started out with in the call which I find to be just really poignant to so many entrepreneurs is we are really quick to hire people that are specialists in Facebook marketing or AdWords or different paid media but when it comes to email marketing a lot of us just say I'll take care of it. And then we make it like this after thought, right? It's kind of out there or is like okay we're going to send out a couple of broadcasts e-mails. In fact, the number of people I talked to that own businesses and we talk about their different marketing mix they tell me oh yeah you know if we would be using our email list that would be a huge opportunity for growth but we just haven't really done that yet. It's staggering the number of people that are doing this. And I think the reason why we are not necessarily using our email lists the way we should is because it's actually kind of tough to do. It's easy to send out a broadcast to our list of potential clients or customers that are signed up for email notifications. But it's really hard to actually sit down and say okay I'm going to segment that list. I'm going to set up automation sequences. I'm going to set up follow up sequences to these people. And I'm actually going to be intelligent about how I'm emailing my list. And so much of us just kind of give it this kind of head nod of like okay we're doing something with our email but it's not really optimized. And Ken from EmailBroadcast.com, that's what his group does entirely. They help people set up an email automation sequence, email broadcast like editorial calendar months in advance so that you're intelligently talking to your customers and your newsletter subscribers in a way that could actually nurture those relationships. One of the tidbits that he gave me which I absolutely loved was this idea of going to a conference. How many of us collect just dozens of contact cards at conferences and then what would we do with those? Maybe we send out an email after … maybe; most of us don't,  saying it was nice to meet you but what Ken does is he takes all of those and he drops them into a sequence with his email system. And so we talked a lot about these ways that we can look at email marketing in probably a more sophisticated way than most of us are doing. And if nothing else this is a pitch to saying you have an email list but you probably aren't using it the right way. And so I thought it'd be good to have him on since this is all his firm does to talk about some of the mistakes that they see in how entrepreneurs are running their email lists and what we can do to start to actually implement a few changes today and actually start utilizing that email list more appropriately. Joe: Yeah, I think people that are running their own internet businesses or buying one and wanting to grow it should seriously look at this. You know I've probably done a thousand valuations over the last six years and there are only a few … a tiny little handful, a fraction of a percent of people that focus on that and it makes a difference. Michael Jackness is one of them and he now travels around the country, actually sometimes the world giving presentations on his email marketing campaign that he does for one of his coloring books. It really is something that you can and should do and the customers actually when it's done right they appreciate it. When it's done wrong it's a problem. We are imperfect ourselves in this regard Mark. I think you've sent out some emails in the last few weeks where I get it and it says that it's … it's to me, to joe@quietlightbrokerage and still says it's dangerous, right? So doing it on your own even though it's coming from Quiet Light to a Quiet Light email address stuff like that can still happen so I think doing it on your own is … it's a gamble. So hiring somebody like Ken unless you've got the resources to really study it up and do it is a pretty smart idea. Mark: Yeah I mean just to bring it up into different sections; you have the technical side which is what we were running into. I had to setup the SPF and the DKIM records- Joe: What? Mark: Yeah right. Joe: I'm so glad you do that and not me. Mark: Exactly. So we had to go there but then you look at okay you have an email list but you don't just treat it as one big blob of people that you're talking to. You need to actually set up and start to segment that list. And then how are you actually interacting with these people. These things multiply. So if you segment your list into four segments which isn't that much. And then you would consider okay these four segments are going to get distinct emails and there's going to be an eight email sequence between this four segments. Now you have to write 32 emails in order to get all of these sequences in place. And then you have to measure and go back and do these and continually improve. It's a lot of work and honestly the fact that we're doing a lot of this on our own as entrepreneurs, is it a good idea? Maybe … maybe not; maybe it's the time to hire somebody out but I think if nothing else think about it. Think about what you're doing and how you're using your email list. Are you treating this audience as one big blob of people and sending them all the same message? If so you're leaving a lot of money on the table. Joe: I agree. If you can get a 2 or 3% lift in your discretionary earnings because of email marketing as long as it's a profitable lift; it's important. That adds a lot of value to your company. Jackness I believe you a little 50% of his revenue for his website comes from his email marketing campaign so that's something serious to consider for people that have the right type of product. So let's go to it, let's see what Ken has to say. Mark: Sounds great. Mark: All right Ken thanks so much for having me. This is Ken Mahar. Did I pronounce that right Ken? Ken: Yup. Mark: Awesome. Thanks for joining me. You come from EmailBroadcast.com so this is going to be an episode really focusing on email habits, some of the mistakes people make with email marketing, and we'll also wrap into this episode hopefully things that maybe what you should do from sell side to be able to prepare for selling your business and making sure that that part of the business has good opportunity and is well set up. But let's start out real quick, Ken, if you can provide everyone just a background or a bio on you. Ken: How much time do we have? I'll try to keep it short I guess. I'm Ken Mahar. I'm the founder and CEO of Email Broadcast. I've been running this company for 18 years so back before email marketing was really even a thing was when I got started. I actually have a sales background and I used email marketing for my own sales efforts. I found it to be tremendously helpful and successful. Itched it to some other businesses that I had worked for before, I'm saying you should guys really do this and then they're like we don't know how to do it so I started serving them. So yeah my background in sales is everything from retail to business to business. And then I got into inside sales for a high tech firm, I took over a territory. It was 11 states. We sold direct and through the channel. So I've kind of done everything there is in the sales arena. And the reason that I am still running Email Broadcast is because I found that email marketing is one of the best channels to impact sales. And so I kind of combined my expertise in the sales arena along with delivering email marketing from my entire team. We have the technical aspect; the writer's, the operations and all that stuff and then I do my part on the sales and the strategy part. So I guess that's a quick background on me. Mark: You've had the company for 18 years? Ken: Yeah. Mark: Holy cow man that's ancient in the world of internet businesses. You've seen a lot. Ken: Yeah. In fact I thought about naming my business Constant Contact or they ever existed and I just thought that sounds a little too aggressive so I didn't do that. But Email Broadcast is a pretty good name. Mark: Constant Contact aka we're always going to be in your inbox is really really what we're saying. Ken: Exactly. Mark: All right; pretty cool. You've seen a lot, 18 years is a long time. I've been online for about 20 years myself … actually, 2018; 20 years. I've been online for 20 years. I started my first site back in 1998 so that's a really long time; cool. All right, email marketing; there is a lot that goes on with email marketing and I want to get from you some of the common mistakes that you see people do with email marketing. Everybody knows that you should be doing it. I know here at Quiet Light we recommend pretty heavily that people establish a good list and use this as a channel to acquire more customers. Primarily because out of all the things, all the customer acquisition channels that are available out there email is one of the only ones that you actually own and have the ability to control. Google you can't control. AdWords you can't control. Facebook you can't control. Amazon you definitely can't control. Email you can, so let's sort out some of the common mistakes that you see people make with their email marketing strategies. Ken: Sure. Yeah, I think strategy is a good place to start. I think the big picture that I see people make mistakes around is thinking that email is about them. And what I mean by that is they look at email as just another channel for them to promote and to use their sales messages. When in my mind email is more of a relationship builder and a two way communication channel. And so I see a lot of people these people do a lot of mistakes made … in a strategy where people say okay let's talk about what we want to do in our next sale and our next promotion and us, us, us, us, us, and it just becomes a channel for commercials. And if you think about it email is a media channel. And in media channels you should have content that people are interested and excited to hear; whether it's educational or inspirational or whatever. And then you might have a commercial message every now and then. But if you are only commercials how long would you listen to that radio station? And people treat their email like that. They just promote, promote, promote, and they don't add any value to their audience's lives. So one of the big paradigm shifts that our clients go through is to realize this isn't about you, this is about your audience. What do they want to learn? What are they into? What inspires them and to get them to think in that perspective. So I think that's a pretty big mistake. What else? I think the second biggest strategy mistake I see is that people think that copy writing is email marketing. And they say oh yeah we need to get an email out, we haven't had one for a while. Let's get one out today and let's make it really good. And that's just a terrible, terrible strategy because the chances you'd be coming up with a great idea, creating great, well written, well researched content; actually having something so valuable to your audience that they're willing to forward it to someone … you know one of their friends, getting your … making sure that every single link works, making sure that it's grammatically perfect all like in 24 hours is just a recipe for disaster. So we look at it and go you should be planning this stuff out weeks or months ahead. My team is already done with November and we're scheduling December messages right now. And we've been working on the November stuff for a while already. So planning ahead and having like an overarching strategy is a big mistake that people make. Mark: Let me go back actually to your first point. Mark: Yeah. Mark: We had Mike Jackness on the podcast several episodes ago and he talked a little bit about their email marketing that they do. They see crazy open rates of 30% plus on their stuff and they're emailing their members almost every single day. So it's a pretty heavy and intense email marketing strategy but really the key behind what he's doing really isn't a surprise. And he's trying to offer ridiculous value with every single email so that people look forward to it. And your point about making it all about you, there's a great BuzzSumo article where they analyzed 100 million headlines to see what got shared the most. I love this blog post. I actually go to it once every few months just to revisit some of the concepts in this. But one of the big things that they do there and I found that these headlines is that headlines that get shared, the headlines they get opened, the emails that get opened are the ones that promise something to the user. Who is the person that's actually opening this? Is there a promise in that headline? And when you decide with this headline I'm going to promise something to the user that's a much better reason to open it up. Nobody really cares about your big news for the day all that much but they do care about what they're going to get if they're going to open that email. Ken: Yeah, it's funny when people put on their email marketing hat they're like … they disconnect from their own mind about what do I want in my own inbox, right? Mark: Right. Ken: It's something that I would really appreciate in value and go wow that was really good. And in fact, that's kind of our litmus test where we ask ourselves is this so good that you would forward it to a friend? And if that's a yes then you're probably on the right track. Mark: Right, so you got to start with that value prop, make it into something about the other person and let your subscriber know what are you going to get from this is email. If you take the time to open it if you're going to take the time to click it if there's a link in there you've got to get something in return and you got to make that promise up front. I'm sorry to step all over what you're saying. Ken: No, it's okay, and I think … and this is a really important point. So it's you take a page out of Gary Vaynerchuk's book right? Jab, jab, jab, right hook. Of course you're doing email because you have a strategy in mind and the strategy is you want a return on your investment right? But you need to think about the ratio, and 3:1 is a good ratio. Do you give, give, give between each ask or are you ask, ask, ask, ask, ask and maybe give once in a while, right? Mark: Right. Let's talk about that strategy of you guys just finished November and for a reference, for people that … because this probably won't actually air until maybe first day of November, it's October 25th today. So we're not even done with October. You guys have finished out your planning for your clients all the way through November. When you're planning that out are you looking at sort of like this rhythm to the emails as far as … like you said give, give, give, sell, give, give, give, ask, or is it also kind of moving along with holidays? What sort of planning are you doing on behalf of your customers to plan that far out in advance? Ken: Right. Yeah, so that actually opens up another great strategy idea that I think people blow it on. One of the first things we do when we onboard a client is we come up with … in fact I got a meeting in about an hour on this where we come up with 50 to 100 different content ideas before we even get this campaign started. So we have this giant treasure trove of content ideas. Once we learned about the audience we think we know who they are. We think about what would be important to them. And we come up with a lot of ideas. Some of them are just plain nuts but we document everything; we put it in a document. And so as we work with our clients, the November emails aren't just planned, they're actually planned, executed and already scheduled. So they're in the can just waiting for the days to tick by until they get released. So we actually started working in November last month. So yeah probably another big mistake that people make beyond if like not thinking of content ideas ahead is not planning for email work. And it is weird people will just kind of go oh dude I tried to sneak it in between something else because that is blocking out real time and saying this is an important part of my business, it's a huge channel for me. I've got to schedule time for this and they continuously under estimate how long it takes to write brilliant copy, have a copy edited, come up with great images, get it scheduled, think about how they can enhance it. And it's one of those things that if you put it aside for a second and then you come back to it you have fresh new ideas, a fresh perspective and you can always make it a little bit better. So scheduling that time, getting on a rhythm, and doing it ahead of time is big paradigm shift for a lot of people. Mark: Yeah let me ask you, I don't want to divert too much from kind of the thread we have going here but in the world of email marketing, we have a couple of different concepts as far as when people receive emails. Well if you start off at the very first contact with somebody who just joins your email list they might automatically be put into a campaign where they're going to get different emails at certain times versus your … maybe your entire block of subscribers where you might just be sending out broadcast to those subscribers on a regular basis. I want to ask you a little bit about that. How much emphasis do you like to put on one versus the other? In other words if I come to EmailBroadcast.com and you have a lead magnet there and downloadable resource or something else, how long are you going to put me in a pre-defined process where you're going to lead me through an arc and trying I guess funnel marketing right here but bringing you down that funnel to a certain point versus taking me out of that campaign where I've got this ready written emails that everybody else has received earlier and now I'm in your general kind of flow into your general broadcasts. Ken: Yeah well, I'll speak to exactly what's happening right now on our campaign. So we have a year-long champion going on right now that is a story format. We have some brilliant writers … in fact actual published and award winning authors and so we've tapped that and we've written out a fictional story about a guy who owns an RV lot and has a huge competitor move into town and is trying to figure out how to handle it with his marketing. And so right now when you sign up on our email list we kind of thought of it as kind of a Netflix situation where you binge on episodes until you get caught up. So right now when you sign up you get an email from us once a week until you're caught up and then we do a monthly broadcast. So I'm not sure that completely answers your question but it still kind of depends on when you join but I think we're in episode eight or nine right now. So for seven weeks in a row, you would get the next chapter of the story and then once you're caught up it comes out monthly. Mark: Yeah, that makes sense. So it sounds like again when you're planning out your broadcast schedule here for November and December as you go get into those months you really need to think about the fact the person that's been with you now through that time they've already been through that. In this case a year-long journey, that's pretty significant and they've already had that exposure to your company. And so you're going to write and create that general broadcast strategy with that in mind that these are not people completely new to who you are. Ken: Right and then what we've done is we did have an interruption in the story, like a commercial interruption like the old school radio shows or something. But we had a message on like July that was like hey here are a couple of things you might think about and there were something promotional. There was a blog post. There was a different value ad but it was just kind of a little interruption in the normal sequence. So if you think about it we actually planned … the emails that are going out on November and December we planned last year; last fall when we outlined our storyline and figured out what chapters were going to go when. And so right now we're working on our 2019 campaign which is going to be all different. We've been working on it for a month and a half or so and we're kind of finalizing our strategy around that and so we hit the ground running in January. Mark: Yeah so much of marketing and I don't think really matters what the format is whether it's AdWords or Amazon Ads or email marketing, so much marketing seems to be this idea of measuring, refining, repeating. So you're going back and you're taking a look at what worked, what didn't work, you're testing things against each other. How often is your team if you have a client on board and you've drafted this this kind of initial sequence that people are going to get when they enter into one of the many different funnels that you have set up. How often are you going back and refining that for them? Ken: Well, we look at it monthly. It's part of our process where … it's on our checklist to go and review the automation for instance. So if we've built an onboarding series or a welcome series for a client we look at it monthly and we kind of track the numbers and we start and we look at it. If it's not performing to our expectations then we'll think about tweaking it. And so we'll dig in in the messages and think okay what are people on the activity that we are getting what are people most interested in? Which of these has the best open rate? What clicks are … what things are people clicking on and maybe we should refine the message a little bit. So we look at it once a month. There's a danger at looking at it too much. It's like looking at your stocks every single two hour period, things go up and down and so you want to avoid the small sample bias and look at it over time but we look at it monthly. Mark: Okay. Let's talk a little bit more about some of the mistakes people make. I'm going to throw one in and then you tell me if I'm spot on or if I'm off base here. I would say one mistake that I see is people taking a one size fits all approach to their email list. So everybody gets the exact same emails regardless where they came from. Ken: Yeah and a good example of that is we are on boarding a new client in the cosmetic medicine practice which serves 90% females but we are … and so part of our strategy is that we're going to ask people to identify their gender when they sign up for our email list. And if they do say that they're male we're going to have a completely different first message for them making them feel very welcomed as a man in what is otherwise a woman dominated consumer market. And we think that's going to be a big deal. It's going to grow their practice through male audience without much effort at all. So yeah not segmenting your audiences is … you're right it's another big mistake. People think oh I'm just going to broadcast to everybody. Okay well, there are certain messages that are good for that and that maybe most of the time but really you should be thinking about your email lists thinking about what segments can I target. For instance, another example we have a large furniture retailer in Louisiana, Arkansas in Texas and we came up with this idea that we should target the people who have their private label credit card. And we also identified another sub market of people who are on their … so private label credit card is for people with pretty good credit and then they also have a kind of a buy here pay here market. So we get a different message to each of those segments. It turned out combined they were only 7.8% of the list but in one message to each of them we ended up driving $430,000 in new sales for the weekend for just that one segment. So by targeting a message just specifically to them with a specific offer that was really relevant; that we had huge response. Mark: That personalization is a huge issue right now. I saw one thing that was really cool. It was somebody who is qualifying their email subscribers before they signed up through a quiz. And the quiz was kind of fun and it was actually in the cosmetics field. So it was what's the shape of your face? And it just had cartoon characters. It wasn't offensive or anything like that. What's the shape of your face? What's the tone of your skin? And they went through probably about six, seven questions but then you were able to break out into this really cool like super segmented this is a female with this skin tone with this shape of face with this size of eyes this sort of thing and you can really cater the messaging. And this was more than … they were doing email marketing but also some other recommendations that is super super cool. Ken: Yeah, the danger around that … well, not the danger but the recommendation is don't ask for anything you're not actually going to use. So a couple of things around like I see a blast for last name in their email sign up forms and I think that's like one step too far of getting a little too personal a little too quickly off the bat. And unless you'd actually have a use for somebody's last name why are you asking for it? Even … but also people take that in the wrong direction as they say here sign up for our email list and all they ask for is the email address. Okay well, that's not enough, right? It's like at least get their first name because if you don't you're giving up on a huge personalization opportunity with putting peoples name in the subject line and addressing them by name and actually creating a relationship. When you're saying give me your email address what you're really saying is I'm going to blast you like I do everybody else on my list and I don't really care who you are or anything about you. So there's a check for your listeners if you're only collecting email address you're doing it wrong. Mark: Yeah and I'm going to make a plea here as well, this is turning into my great show here but one of the things I can't stand with email marketers when they're … when I get on a list is the hey buddy buddy sort of approach that comes without me even knowing who you are. Like there's a point where you got one of the so corporate and stiff to the point where it just feels stale and separate. But if you come in and pretend like we went to college together that's equally off putting to me. I want to have somewhere in the middle where I can get to know you a little bit and again kind of test out to see do you have value to offer. But I guess that's where that copywriter comes in, having a copywriter who's done thousands of these emails before. Ken: Yeah, and I would actually say that I would rather somebody do that if that's really their authentic voice and that's really who they are where they want to be buddies with you and if you're not ready for that then fine get the hell off my list. I think that's a better approach than trying to please everybody. You know I'd dig into authenticity around email marketing, it's one of the things that we really drive home with our clients is to say I want people to know who you really are not who you're pretending to be. So if you've only got six people on your team let's celebrate that. You're feisty and small and responsive and adaptive versus trying to pretend like you're some mega-corporation. But yeah everybody's different and you have to realize that. So really you should concentrate on attracting the people that you want to attract. Mark: Yeah. Ken: So if that's important to somebody that they'd be buddies with you and you didn't like that then maybe they did themselves a favor by not winning your business; who knows. Mark: Yeah, absolutely the authenticity is definite. I see sometimes with these people also lack of authenticity trying to win me over by being a little hokey. But if it is authentic to me then well so be it. The rest of the people buy me dinner first. So I want to shift gears really heavily here because I want to get to this before our time is up and I want to talk about the technical side of this. Ken: Yeah. Mark: This is just the hairy issue. There's a lot of systems out there. We use drip marketing at Quiet Light Brokerage. I like the system but we also have an external CRM which means we need to get these two things to talk to each other. What tips would you have for people on that technical side? I know that's really an open ended question but I'm going to have to throw it in your part as far as just the tips of working with the technical side. How much effort should people be putting into that sort of that technical side setup? Ken: Yeah, this will tie back into the strategy question too. One of the most under-utilized aspects of email marketing is the use of automation. When you can define what your sales process is and know where people are falling out of your funnel or use an automation series to take people from not step A to step B but from step D to step E. You know there are all kinds of opportunities to use email to kind of leverage your time. Basically having the platform do what you would do if you had a million hours in the day and all you did was write emails all day. Setting up the platform to do that is important. But you're right that does take some technical integration stuff. So my tips, I would say work with the bigger players in the market is probably a good tip because they've been around for a while. They likely have the integrations for some of the bigger … so if you're trying to choose an email marking platform and a CRM go … I wouldn't go with a guy that's brand new yesterday because he probably doesn't have a very well developed API and it's not a plug and play situation. So if you're trying to save yourself some headaches go with bigger players in the market that have been established that have an API that already potentially connect. Look at the integration possibilities. But I'd also say that it's generally worth it, right? There may be some pain involved in trying to figure it out but don't give up. Get help, hire somebody and figure out how to get those things integrated because it can really make a big difference for you. You mentioned the CRM right? So we've got ours dialed in so I can fill out a single form and it populates both my email marketing to start a drip series but it also sends that exact same data to my CRM to save me from double entry. So yeah integration is the key. There is a lot to integrate; getting your sign up forms cracked on your website, getting the email thing dialed in, connecting your CRM. We're going to be connecting in a medical records system for this latest client that we did and getting an API expert on that and we have that in house so we do not have that problem but it's important. Mark: Yeah, so when we get into the actual set up of these things … I have another company that I own, I know those folks that listen regularly probably know about it but we use a lot of automation on our email side there. And even with that I mean you talked about the multiplying effect here, right? Let's say that what you are going to segment your audience into just three different segments and then you're going to set up automation sequences with a series of 10 emails in each. Well now you're writing out 30 different emails with different email copy and on top of that you have your broadcast emails that are going to go out. And on top that may be some other campaigns and you have to try to make sure that these things don't duplicate where people are receiving multiple emails because they're accidentally subscribed to two different campaigns within our system and then figuring out how to make all the technology work together. So this is the part where I'm going to just make this quick pitch for the stuff that you guys do over at EmailBroadcast.com which is you guys do all of this. You are the full service sort of provider for this email automation of marketing right? Ken: Yeah, I have a team of people and I think that's the key thing because each of my team members is a specialist. So I have an engineer that thinks in bits and bytes. I have copywriters. I have a sales strategist which is me. I have an operations manager to help keep things on track and then an account coordinator. We designated an account coordinator for each account so they truly understand who our client is, what their business is, what their goals are, what they're trying to accomplish, and can really feel like a member of their team. So in effect, we are an email marketing department. Imagine a Fortune500 firm that had an entire department to handle email marketing. Well, we are that but for much smaller businesses who can get us for the cost of a part time employee. So yeah we handle everything from strategy to the copy writing, to the design, to the engineering, the mobile optimization, integrating it with the CRM, integrating it with medical record systems, setting up all the automation. Making sure things aren't overlapping and you have people getting multiple stuff and somebody looking at it; somebody thinking about your campaign a month in advance. Thinking about the seasonal stuff like Q4 for us is heavy so we've been thinking about Q4 since July about how we're going to get ready, which of our clients are going to want to do extra messages. That's the value we add. We're the people that you wish you had an entire department … and I think this is a different … I think this is an important point because some people go okay great this email something I'm going to outsource and I'm going to look for that one guy. Well, I've been doing this for 18 years and I'm not even that one guy. I'm not … I can't be the best copywriter, the greatest sales strategist, the engineer to integrate everything, the operations manager to get it all done. I mean maybe that person is out there but you're certainly not going to get them for a song. And so I think dividing the labor … you know divide and conquer and having each person in a team that's used to working together is a great solution. And a lot of people don't realize that this kind of solution is out there. They think that email marketing is something they have to do on their own even though they struggle. They've written the messages a bit inconsistent, the branding is not where they like it, they're doing stuff last minute, they know they're abusing their audience's trust, they have low engagement, they're like hell and they know there weren't any other options. So we are out there. Mark: Yeah, fantastic. Regardless of whether or not somebody is going to use an outsource solution like what you guys offer which would be like an outsourced email department as you said it is something that I think people need to really pay attention to that aspect of the business. And you're right, I look at a lot of businesses … I look at the health of a lot of businesses and see where they're putting their time and efforts. And sometimes I see this really just beautifully built out Facebook campaigns, this really beautifully optimized Ad-words accounts, but it's only been on a rare occasion where I see that applied in the email world. And when I do see it applied though it tends to be sort of a cash machine, right? All these other customer acquisition strategies are able to just funnel in there. And once they funnel in there those people are in because the systems are set up and ready to go. It does take time to plan. It does take time to refine. It does take time to go back there but this can be one of the biggest customer acquisition channels for pretty much any business that's out there. So I think the work that you guys are doing is awesome. I love some of the tips that you had in there. I know that there are a lot more tips that we didn't cover. I mean on one of our conversations you talked about hey what are you doing with the conference cards that you get? Do you actually follow up with them and is it just kind of one quick follow up or do you drop them into a sequence of some sort where they end up getting a series of emails; that's brilliant. There you go, look at that you- Ken: I just attended a conference so I'm holding up a fan of contacts that I have and I … you know we walk or talk. I put these people into a segment in our email list and we've already emailed them twice which is more than anybody else who went to that conference has done. We have a third message already scheduled so yeah that and we advise people about their offline activities. Like we have customers … I had this customer one time, he literally interrupted my … our phone call to take a call. I only heard his part of the conversation. He sat there for five minutes helping this person out, they sell this rooftop tent deals and I'm like how many conversations like that do you have a day and he's like I don't know 15, 20. I go how many people are you getting emails from? Zero. I'm like wow okay huge opportunity for you. Ask for their email address after you just spent five minutes helping somebody. They're going to give it to you. Put them on your list and now you've got a chance to market to them and then they'll buy a tent. So yeah there's a lot to email marketing and I hope your audience takes it to heart and really goes after it and figures out how can I add value? How can I make this amazing? And don't worry about the immediate payoff. Trust me it'll it will pay off in the end. What can I offer people that come to my website to actually get on my email list? If you're saying sign up for my email okay you need to rethink that. What value is there? People don't know what your email is. They probably haven't defined how often it goes out. They don't know what they're going to get in return and so sign up for our newsletter you know who wants to do that? But if you can give me the top five tips in selling my business in the next year oh okay yeah that's why I came to your website, that's what I want to know about. So that's the kind of thing you need to offer. Mark: Awesome so if people have questions about this or just want to bounce ideas off with you how can they reach you? Ken: Yeah, ken@emailbroadcast.com the phone number is 805-316-3201. And if you want a little branding tip or just have some fun call that number just to listen to our auto-responder. It's pretty funny that we put together. You could go to our website at EmailBroadcast.com and on there there's a pretty easy to find that you can schedule a 20 minute call with me free of charge just to be asked about your email. I can give you a couple of ideas, find out if … work out something that might be right for you but kind of get your head in the right direction. So hopefully that helps. Mark: Yeah absolutely. I'm actually going to call that number because that's a pretty good tease to get them to call the number. Well put links to that on the show notes page so feel free to go to the show notes page and you'll be able to see those links as well as contact information for you Ken. Thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Ken: Thank you, Mark, it's been a pleasure and I hope everybody here is reinvigorated to do great email marketing. That's why I exist in the world, to get people to up their game around email marketing. Good luck. Links and Resources: Email Ken Mahar Email Broadcast Website Call Email broadcast @ 805.316.3201  

The Quiet Light Podcast
The Potential Impact of New Tariffs on Ecommerce

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 30, 2018 35:14


Change is scary, and yes price trends do matter in the online marketplace, particularly if you are in the market for buying or selling a business. Today we're discussing the frightening possibility of tighter margins, particularly for Amazon businesses, as a result of the most recent US government tariffs on Chinese products. Here at Quiet Light, we get a lot of questions from buyers regarding what we can expect from the Amazon marketplace now and in the future. The reality is that entrepreneurs need to learn to see these changes as par for the course as well as opportunities for growth. The internet today is so much different than it was 11 years ago when we started Quiet Light Brokerage. In fact, we started the same year the first Iphone came out  – to give some perspective on just how much things can change! When it comes to the geopolitical nature of e-commerce, specifically as it relates to the US, who better to bring in than a Canadian? Today's guest, James Thomson, is a Partner for BuyBox Experts, a managed services agency specializing in marketplace management for brands, manufacturers, and resellers. He was formerly head of Amazon Services, the division of Amazon responsible for recruiting tens of thousands of sellers annually to the Amazon marketplace. He's crazy knowledgeable about everything Amazon. We're talking all about the tariffs and their potential impact on the e-commerce marketplace. Episode Highlights: What tariffs are coming out and what tariff trends are going to affect business? Impact on first party sellers. Ways to work with and around these tariffs. How the manufacturers in China will see that they can suffer too. The length and scope of the tariffs' impact will have a lasting effect over time. Parallel imports may happen eventually, creating retail arbitrage. The foreseen impact for third party sellers. How the tariffs are creating more incentive for Chinese manufacturers to become sellers and sell products directly to customers in the United States. We discuss the consequences for Amazon sellers holding inventory. How Amazon monitors expected sell through rates to deflect inventory increases. Things sellers should keep in mind in order to keep their buy box percentages up. Indicators that there may be opportunities for competitors like Target to swoop in in certain spaces as early as the end of this quarter. If the tariffs prevail, one year from now will be the time when the retail increases will  show. What countries might be viable alternatives to China as suppliers and when to start investigating those avenues. The people who end up capitalizing and doing well in situations like these are the ones that look at these problems as opportunities. Transcription: Joe: So Mark I just launched a listing a couple of weeks ago. It's under contract already, multiple offers, it went very quickly. Actually, it's a re-launch because when we launched last year it didn't sell because of flat trends on the top side, slightly down on the bottom side and we pulled it. And the owner of the business implemented all the growth opportunities that he wrote about and now business is up 27% so it went under contract very quickly. So for those people that are listening that don't think that trends matter they definitely do because eight months ago no one wanted to buy this. Eight months later it's under contract in what was literally like four days. And I can't say the price of course but the thing that I wanted to touch about in regards to that is that he's importing products from China and the potential tariffs have changed since we last listed the business. And so we addressed that in the client interview. We're trying to stay current with it and he has a person through his manufacturer that helped him with the proper coding of the brands. And there was a slight increase in terms of the landed cost of goods sold but it was so minute it really had no impact on the discretionary earnings or profit. And I think that this is a topic that we need to address more and focus on in our client interviews and make sure that the sort of scary possibility of tighter margins is really looked into because not everything is going to have an increase and those that do it may be so small that is a very tiny percentage of that landed cost of goods sold. Now you just had an expert on to talk about it, our old friend James Thomson, right? Mark: Yeah absolutely when it comes to US issues and the geo political nature of e-commerce specifically as [inaudible 00:02:27.4] the US who better bring in than a Canadian? So, James Thomson, he is the first account manager within Amazon's marketplace. He's the co-founder of Prosper Show. He's a principal owner over at Buy Box Experts. The guy … I mean he's crazy knowledgeable about everything Amazon. And so we've been getting a lot of questions from buyers both on deals that are under offer right now and also from people just kind of trying to understand the landscape, what are we looking at here with Amazon in the future. So I thought let's go ahead and bring somebody on. Let's talk about it. Let's kind of dissect this. And he said a couple of things which are really really important about this and I'm not going to give all of it away because I need to tease of course so that people can actually listen to the entire interview but a couple of things. One, the nature of business is always changing. I mean the Internet today is way different than what it was when we started Quiet Light Brokerage. I'm actually just … I'm putting together a presentation right now for Ungagged coming up here soon early November and I'm taking a look back to when I started Quiet Light Brokerage. We started Quiet Light Brokerage the same year that the iPhone first came out so … I mean that's how much things have changed in just 11 years. Joe: Wow. Mark: I know right. So I say that this Quiet Light Brokerage was the biggest event of 2007 followed shortly after by the iPhone of course. Anyway let's get into the point here, James and I talk a lot about why are the tariffs in place, what is going on with these tariffs, what is the future of it look like, how is it going to impact e-commerce business owners, what's the hope of the US government with these tariffs. And I'll cut to the chase there the hope is that people start buying from other countries and most importantly what should you be doing about it. And on one thing that I'm just going to say here, I reiterate this at the end of this discussion with James. These sort of changes need to be looked at as opportunities among people who own businesses, among entrepreneurs. I've been an entrepreneur for 20 plus years now and the nature of the internet is constantly changing. Those who are looking at these changes and saying there is opportunity here, I have a great opportunity here to be able to adjust to the changes, find a new problem and solve that problem they do really really well. They're the ones that are absolutely killing it. Those who take a look at stuff like this and get all scared they end up leaving and not continuing onto the world of the Internet, their entrepreneurial career. So this is an interesting topic, very relevant to our time right now. Definitely, take a listen to it and then James also offered an email address if you have any questions for him to be able to speak about it. He's got a couple of really practical solutions that you can implement right away to be able to absorb some of these costs both in working with the factories and manufacturers in China but also just some very simple things that you can do on your side with your product launches and your products coming out to be able to pass this cost on. I'll say one more thing and I know I've talked a ton here; I'm kind of all around the place here. And I think it's really important to understand that everybody is facing these problems. When your costs go up 10% it's not just you, it's all of your competitors are seeing the exact same things. So it's a matter of how do you absorb those costs, how do you plan to be able to compete with that, how do you address your Amazon account so that you're not getting … losing your buy box share so on and so forth. Pretty simple stuff but you do need to have a plan. Joe: Yeah and I think you and I have been around long enough that we know it's not the end of the world, it's just another hurdle that an entrepreneur needs to get over. Get over the hurdle. And knowledge is power. If you learn about it, focus on it, and if and when you decide to sell your business you'll have that knowledge and you'll be able to address and tell people how you addressed it. And for buyers, same thing learn about it. Not every category is going to have an increase in tariffs and increase in cost of goods sold. So James is very bright, one of the smartest guys in most of the rooms he's in so I am looking forward to listening to this myself. Mark: James welcome back to the Quiet Light Podcast. James: Thanks for having me, Mark. Mark: All right so let's start off with just a quick introduction as to who you are. You have been on the podcast once before. I'm going to let you introduce yourself as far as your background … especially your background with Amazon and Prosper Show and Buy Box Experts. James: Right. Well, I'm James Thomson. People may know me as one of the co-founders of Prosper Show which is an educational event for large sophisticated third party sellers on Amazon. I am also the partner for Buy Box Experts which is an advisory and account management company at sports brands on Amazon. And I spent almost six years at Amazon doing a number of third party related responsibilities including running Amazon services and being Amazon's first FBA account manager many many many years ago. So thanks for having me back on again. I'm looking forward to talking about the ever increasing challenges of being a successful seller on Amazon. Mark: Well, I'm going to admit this is a show that I have been sort of dreading to do. James: Yeah. Mark: But it's really necessary and I know we've been starting to see more and more questions on the whole issue of tariffs. Before we jump into it real quick I am just going to give a shout out to Prosper Show. We go to a lot of shows at Quiet Light, Prosper show is awesome. If you're selling on Amazon and you're looking for a show where you can actually learn things and make good connections check it out, Prosper Show, what we're going to be there next March probably with all the booth and all that so. James: Thanks Mark, thanks. Mark: The thing is I'll make it for you because it's worth making. And also I don't want to talk about tariffs but let's talk about tariffs. And as everybody knows we've had one round of tariffs slapped on a lot of products coming from China, 10%. There is a threat of more tariffs coming out in January. And I'm going to fess up publicly to everybody to say I've really been kind of putting my fingers in my ears and saying I don't want to know about this, please make it go away. Let's get everybody up to speed on this as far as the tariffs that are coming out and what the general political landscape is that we need to be aware of in moving forward. James: So just to be clear I'm Canadian. I don't vote in the United States. I don't get to decide who does or doesn't make decisions around the tariffs that are going to be charged. But for folks that haven't been paying attention Mr. Trump is dealing … or has decided to enter into a tariff war with the Chinese around basically what dozens and now hundreds of products that are manufactured in China will be slapped with rather significant tariffs when they're imported into the United States. As many the people listening in today will know these private label sellers gosh we have a lot of stuff made in China that ends up being consumed and sold here in the US. So I work a lot with private label sellers who are saying gosh I thought I had the opportunity to make some decent margin being a private label seller but now that my products that are coming in from China with this extra 10%, 15%, and possibly 25% tariff depending on what specific type of product you happen to make, gosh that's an awful lot of money and I can't really absorb that long term without it destroying my financial situation. So what do I do? I think to tackle this problem we should split it into two parts. There are going to be those companies that wholesale products to Amazon. We'll call that the vendor central relationship and then there's all of the companies that are using seller central to sell those products themselves; two very different situations. Let's start with the … either one is really very easy but let's start with the vendor central situation. If you are a brand and you are bringing products in from China and you're turning around your wholesaling to Amazon … not surprisingly Amazon doesn't buy price increases and they don't really care about your profitability. That's your problem and so if you're now faced with an extra 10 to 25% COGS … 10 to 25% of higher COGS, absorbing that amount unless you're making insane margins most of us can't absorb that kind of money. And so the question then becomes A. can you get your manufacturer receipts absorbed? Some of that in cost reductions and we've definitely seen some situations where some of the overseas manufacturers are willing to make certain price concessions, especially if the North American sellers are buying the inventory in time to be able to avoid some of that initial tariff. So if you're prepared to load up on some of your inventories, if you load up on your inventory now then next year are the first lot of x-tiles and units your Chinese manufacturer may absorb some of that extra cost. Because the reality is the Chinese manufacturers they're also going to suffer through this. It's not just the American brands, it's Chinese manufacturers that also recognize that there isn't going to be as much demand unless they absorb some of this cost. Mark: Yeah and let me just make a point here real quick. I mean the goal of this and the Trump administration has been pretty clear, the goal of this is to get China to change some of their policies towards the US. And so they're literally trying to disincentivize business owners importing from China you know a lot of these 1P and 3P as you put it, the vendor central and the other people selling through Amazon to buy from other countries. And so they're going to make … through these tariffs they're just making business more expensive for everybody. And ideally, there is going to be this internal pressure from the Chinese manufacturers on their government to be able to change some of the policies of the US. That's kind of big picture. James: The problem is … and I speak anecdotal experience, I live close to the harbor in Seattle and I see all the used tanker ships come in and more than half of them come in from China. So if I think of all this product that comes in that we consume here in the United States is being manufactured overseas if more than half of that's being created in China the reality is our overall cost of buying stuff, whatever it is … plastic stuff, apparel, whatever … it's coming from China. And so unless some of these other countries can very very quickly not only ramp up production but more importantly identify themselves to companies here in the United States that otherwise buy from China, unless they can do that and find a way to say hey come and make your products over here instead of in China, the reality is this is going to take a while and some of this pain around higher costs is going to affect both the manufacturers in China, companies here in the United States, and of course consumers in the United States if in fact some of those costs overruns or pass through as higher resale prices. Mark: Right and just to be clear I'm not a geopolitical expert by any means but China has been pouring money in subsidizing their manufacturers for a really long time to be able to ramp up production levels that can provide basically manufacturing services to the entire world. That's why their economy has really been juiced up to where it is today. So for people to look elsewhere to other countries it's going to be darn near impossible for somebody to find prices that can be matched in other countries that may be seeing this as an opportunity. And even if a country does pop up for a particular industry it's going to take years for the capacity to be able to grow up to the level where we really need it to grow up to. James: Yes. Mark: So this is a problem. Let me ask you a question on this real quick and I want to get into specifically how Amazon is treating this as well. You started to get into it. I think it's going to be an interesting conversation but isn't this going to affect everybody the same way? And at the end of the day I mean it's the consumers that you would think are going to be left on in vague. If there's a 10% tariff on Blue Widgets, all the Blue Widget sellers have to pay that 10% tariff. James: Yes. Mark: So eventually their cost is up so they're going to have to raise the prices as well. Is this really going to impact the businesses themselves in that way since they could in theory pass that cost on? James: So there are a couple of things here, and different people go to market on Amazon with very different distribution approaches. So if you are buying product overseas, bringing it in into the United States and turning around and trying to wholesale it to Amazon through a vendor central account, Amazon has made it clear they do not accept price increases. This is your problem Mr. Brand; you need to figure out how to absorb this. So what I see happening is some brands will say gosh this is inconvenient right before Q4 our biggest time of the year. Some of these brands will say you know what, as much as we hate to do this we will suck it up and we will absorb this cost. And so many of these manufacturers will end up with much much smaller margins while Amazon continues to have the product at the same price that it had and some consumers won't see a price increase on those items. Unfortunately … and that's fine short term but long term these manufacturers are going to say unless I can find cheaper sources of manufacturing elsewhere I'm no longer going to carry these products or I'm no longer going to sell them to Amazon 1P or I'm actually no longer going to sell them anywhere on Amazon; that's one option. There is another type of distribution model that's very common on Amazon which is the product diverter, and I'm not passing judgment on the product diverter, the reality is there's a lot of product diverters on Amazon; companies that gray market source products. And so the opportunity for companies to go and proactively can parallel import and bring in products from let's say Europe that came in from China nut they're now coming in from Europe … I see an, potentially in some categories there will be a significant increase in parallel imports because somebody can buy that product in another country and to the extent, they're not necessarily answering all the questions correctly about where these products are manufactured there will be more opportunity and more incentive for companies to do parallel imports. Again so as to be able to bring products in at a cheaper price than what they would otherwise be paying if they bought directly from China. Mark: Is that illegal or do you literally have to be lying on your forms in order to be doing this parallel importing? James: Oh please deter, I'm not suggesting that anybody does this. I'm just saying I fully anticipate this is going to happen. Mark: Sure. James: And so if the other thing is if the tax … if you can ensure the tax has already been paid at least once there may be opportunity for you to capitalize on nonetheless being able to re-import it back in and be able to source it. Brands don't like product diversion and so knowing in there will be an issue there for brands long term having their products … basically, people capitalizing on retail arbitrage across borders and getting cheaper prices in one place so as to capitalize on that. What is more likely is if there is a price discrepancy in another country and you can buy the same item in Europe for 10% less than you can here in the US, some folks may decide to … depending on the math, it may decide to start buying stuff indirectly just because they can capitalize on price discrepancies in order to make things work. The logistics are more complicated but in the end, they still need to make some money and they're prepared to take on these extra logistic steps just so they can make some money. All of this is short term because in the long run if a brand wants to continue to wholesale on Amazon they have to make money. That's what … it's why we're all here. And so what I anticipate happening is some brands are going to stop supplying certain products and they're either going to go and find production in other countries or they're going to find completely different products that don't involve China at all. And so that will mean that some products that we as consumers rely on … and I think for example all the Q4 toys that get sold in this country, the vast majority of them are made overseas and a huge proportion of those are made in China. And so it will be interesting to see specifically in the toy category what happens because with Toys R Us going out of business this year, there's been a lot of discussions that some of the other brick and mortar retailers are going to be very aggressively going after Amazon. If Amazon for some reason in most of the toys that Amazon gets come from 1P, if those manufacturers for some reason say you know what we can't make any money selling you these products we're not going to sell it to you because you're not prepared to take a price increase, we may have a situation where Amazon actually runs out of stock on an awful lot of top selling toys. Which is bad, bad, bad for Amazon. So I think the toy category of all categories is the one that may push Amazon short term to accept the fact that it is going to have to absorb some higher costs in order to have inventory on absolutely critical selection in Q4. Mark: Interesting, so let's move over to the 3P and I have also some questions maybe about competition to Amazon which hopefully we can get to but let's move over to the 3P. What's the impact that you see and I know we're all crystal ball in here but what's the impact that you see for 3P sellers? And 3P for anyone that doesn't know this would be FBA merchant fulfilled, anybody that is not selling vendor central but still selling through [inaudible 00:18:43.2]. James: I'm going to separate 3P into two groups there's the resellers and there are the private label sellers. If I'm a private label seller and buying stuff from China I make the decisions myself on what pricing should look like. So if I have to raise my prices 10% to maintain my margins I can choose to absorb some of that for competitive purposes. But I always have the flexibility of saying I'm going to raise my prices. An important … a very tactical issue, let's say that you're selling your product for $25 today on Amazon and you added list price information into the Amazon catalog, you can't just raise your price from $25 to $30 to cover your extra price. You need to also increase your list price because otherwise, Amazon's going to flag you in selling products significantly above the list price and also press your Buy Box. So you've got to make both of those adjustments at once. As it relates to resellers the question becomes if you're buying from a distributor or a brand here in the United States that you're then turning around and reselling who's splitting the cost increases there? And that's going to differ widely on brand by brand. Some brands may already have a lot of inventory here in the US and they say well we're just going to ride this out and hope this tariffs disappear sometime in Q1 or Q2 in which case they're willing to … you know if they're using some kind of a lifo … I'm sorry a phyto model of inventory there may not be any price increases at all for wholesale pricing. And so the retailer can turn around and continue to sell the product at the same price. The problem is all you need is one competitor in the same space on Amazon the whole price is tight and not move prices up and if they've got lower prices and they're still doing the right thing with organic search and driving traffic they may end up with a higher proportion of total traffic on their products. Granted it's very low margined traffic but it is nonetheless higher traffic. And so the question is how long is any particular reseller prepared to take lower margins for the benefit of higher traffic which isn't necessarily high quality business. Mark: I mean in defense here we see this happen anyways where we have people come in and try to break into a market and will purposely go low margin just to be able to break into that market. But this is kind of who could hold off the longest with the higher prices. James: So there's been a very important development this week with Mr. Trump getting out of the postal shipping rate agreement with China. There was a significant subsidy that the United States was paying for overseas companies to ship products one order at a time into the United States. A lot of these individual orders today don't clear customs with any customs payments. And so if you got a 25% tax for example on those products, if they're brought in bulk but there's no tax on the individual orders, you don't also want to create a situation where there's that much more incentive for example for Chinese sellers to send products one at a time in the United States by removing some of these price subsidies on the shipping costs that will help to balance things a little bit. But you still have a situation where a Chinese seller can send an individual order into the United States and realistically most of those orders are going to get through without customs being applied on those on off envelopes and boxes. So in many ways, the tariff only creates more incentive for Chinese manufacturers to become sellers and to sell products one at a time in the United States. And so that continues to be a challenge. Mark: Let me ask you about a tactic that I've seen sellers employ here in trying to get ahead of potentially … I know there's threats of an additional tariff being imposed here coming January so possibly increasing the tariffs even more. And I've seen some sellers bulking up on inventory because of that; trying to get ahead of that. It has kind of a cascading effect though from what I understand if you're a 3P and especially using Amazon's fulfillment services. Does Amazon look closely at the amount of inventory that you're keeping with them and are there consequences for maybe having inventory sit on their shelves longer? James: No it was early this year Amazon evolved the way that they designed how much FBA capacity every seller has. And it has to do with the sell through rate of each individual skew that they choose to put into FBA. If you're selling a product that sells a thousand units a day, Amazon will let you put as much of that in as you want. If you're selling a product that sells one unit a month you can't load up five years of inventory. Amazon actually won't let you put that in the FBA all at once. And so as much as a seller wants to ramp up their level of interest they hold in FBA, Amazon will cap it based on their expected sell through rates. So if you happen to sell products that sell fast enough you're not going to be putting more than six months of product into FBA, great you may load up a little bit more. But if you start bringing in pallets and pallets more than you'll ever sell in the next six months, Amazon's going to put the kybosh on that. And you're going to have to figure out where to hold that inventory. So I think it's a system that basically corrects itself. I think it's worth a seller today if they're planning on doing this in the next four to five weeks they should create an FBA shipment right now to see if Amazon even allows them to put whatever level of incremental inventory into FBA. They may well say sorry we don't have that space because your expected sell through rate doesn't by any means justify the load of inventory. Mark: And I know a lot of sellers are using even a 3PL of sorts just to store Amazon inventory that they are eventually going to ship off to Amazon and that's … if you're not doing that and you store inventory for anywhere longer than a few months I think because of the storage rates you can get much better storage rates elsewhere but that's something to look at. James: So to that point if you do have to bring in an awful lot more inventory and hold the inventory so as to bypass the expected additional duties that come likely in January, one thing we may see is an increase in the number of sellers that decide to start using seller for full prime. And that's a mixed bag in terms of whether it's a good thing for sellers, in some situations they may be able to use the higher shipping costs that come with seller for full prime that may be adequately smaller to offset the expected cost of having to pay another 15% in a tax on imports. But you know we may see some … in certain categories we may see more sellers deciding to use seller for full prime in part because Amazon says you can't send that much stuff into FBA but you know we'll have to have to see what happens. My view is I don't see this tax staying in place indefinitely. I see this is a game of chicken between two countries. And quite frankly I think the United States has more to lose than the Chinese do because the Chinese low cost production capabilities in China will continue to be there even if those costs are a little bit higher now that there's tax added to it. And so reality is we Americans, we like cheap stuff and so if you go to the source of cheap stuff … and so I suspect at some point that there will be some counterbalancing that happens and it's a matter of how long can people hold on without going out of business. Mark: Yeah. Let's talk about the Buy Box a little bit. You touched on this earlier about things that you may want to watch out for if … when your changing prices on your site. What are some things people should keep in mind if they do decide to pass on some of those costs to the eventual customers at the end of the day? What are the things that they should watch out for so they don't lose their Buy Box percentages? James: Well the first one is you still … when you offer your product you want to make sure that it's at or below the list price. So if you're having to increase your price over whatever the current list price is today then you want to make sure that you can update the list price information. If you are a reseller of someone else's products and they haven't updated the list price then you're going to be in trouble because you can't sell that $30 item for $35 when the list price is 30. And if the manufacturer controls the list price or you as the reseller don't have brand registry ability to go in and update the list price you're going to be in a situation where you don't have the buy box because you've had to sell the product in a price above the list price. So start that conversation now if you don't have the ability to change the list price on a product you resell have that conversation now because you need to get that information updated. Otherwise, the brand is going to lose out to any other brand that has the ability to update their list prices. So even if the brand you're reselling doesn't want to do this you need to explain to them listen if you don't do this everybody that sells your product is going to be in a situation where they can't win the buy box which means the consideration of your brand or other brands is going to be significantly hampered. Mark: That's good advice. Let's move on to Amazon and their adjustments that they might be making on their side and also possible competitors. And I'm thinking Wal-Mart here who has been pretty aggressive in trying to eat in Amazon's market share. I don't know how successful they've been with their two day shipping on anything, no membership fees everything else. You've already described how Amazon is right now at least probably pretty unforgiving as far as price increases on them [inaudible 00:27:44.9] side. James: Yeah. Mark: Do you see any opportunity here for some of these competitors and even if it's not one competitor maybe that fragmentation of Home Depot taking care of their pit space and actually increasing their presence target doing the same, Wal-Mart doing the same, and have you seen any indication of this yet? James: Well what I have seen … I go back to the toy example, what I've seen is that both Target and Walmart are aggressively looking for ways that they can win in the toy space this Q4. And it only takes one or two of the big toy companies to tell Amazon 1P that they're not prepared to send any shipments unless there is some modification to the pricing. Unless that happens … oh, I'm sorry if that does happen then I think it could be a very painful Q4 for Amazon in a category that they actually absolutely need to win. But the problem with Amazon is they usually win anyways. The reality is if they can't get it directly from the distributor or the manufacturer they find a secondary source. They go and find a distributor that will unload a product at low margin, Or they will do parallel imports. So I think if these duties remain in to place for 12 months it's going to be next November or December that the pain is really felt by brands. Because right now a lot of them already have inventory, they already brought in to the United States. While they may have paid 10% extra duty it's not 25% duty but at the time you have long term 25% duty that absolutely is going to impact what their retail prices look like. So as bad as it may be coming out of this December if that tax remains in place for another 12 months that's when companies are going to have to say okay we're going to have to discontinue certain skews. We're going to have to launch new versions of the existing skews under different UPCs so that we can have new list prices on these items. I've seen situations already with some companies where they're already loading the 2019 version of an item with very slightly modified packaging but that's the product that's going to replenish the 2018 version that they're very soon going to run out of and have no plans on ever replenishing as long as the tax is in place; i.e 2019 version cost 25% more retail because everybody has to continue to make money doing this. Mark: Okay one of the things that we've been trying to educate people on especially in this e-commerce space there's a lot of people out there that want to find a couple of evergreen products that are just constantly bringing in cash. And then there's always the question of well how do you handle competition? When we brought it up time and time again now on this podcast where look good product based companies come out with new products on a regular basis and so that's actually … it's something I haven't heard before. That's a great way to be able to address this is come up with a 2019 version or a slightly different model version which your cost can absorb that new price and be able to work it out to the price that self. Last thing I want to talk about, let's assume that this does last for a while, you know a year or more. The intended effect is for US importers and retailers to move and look for other countries. So what are some of the countries maybe that people can start looking into. And I know it's going to vary industry by industry but what countries might be viable alternatives to China if people want to start looking at and look for manufacturers in different places that could possibly replace their current supply? James: I don't know how much I knew I can add to this. I mean a lot of the companies I know they look in Thailand and Vietnam today. Some of them look in Laos. I know the Southeast Asian countries, a lot of them have low cost production but they're not necessarily known for the sophistication of bringing together manufacturers the way, for example, Canton Fair does. And so I see an opportunity here for … let's say I'm the business development government organization in Thailand or Vietnam to the extent of they can put together a major event that will attract thousands of manufacturers and thousands of overseas buyers, I mean I see that as being rather significant. If you can spin up a Canton Fair like event or even a very small verison of that in one of these other Southeast Asian countries. Part of the challenge here is visibility. There already is an Alibaba that helps people find every Chinese manufacturer. Is there a similar concept in Vietnam and Thailand? To this point, it's nowhere near as visible and so it becomes something that basically has to be centrally organized either by large associations of manufacturers in country or potentially the government. And so if one of those countries is able to step up and do something like this and create visibility that will help. But let's be honest even if I said to you your product can be made in another country basically the same way starting today you're still looking at six months of testing and small minimum order quantities to verify and make sure that you have got the right payment structures in place. And so I would challenge everybody who's listening today if we're looking at a 12 month or a long term situation with this tax being in place you've got to start these conversations in January figuring out where is my alternative source going to come from. Because it's going to take time to work through and figure out am I really getting the same quality? Am I really getting the same delivery promises and so on from my overseas manufacturers that are now coming out of a different country? Mark: Yeah. So I've been an entrepreneur now for going on 20 years and the way … I would just like to close out here because some people might be hearing this and saying oh my gosh this is so incredibly scary. And what I want to say is this, these things happen. These things happen in business. The conditions change all the time and the people who end up capitalizing and doing really well are the ones who look at these problems as the opportunities that they are and figure out the way to make it work. There will be people who drop out. There will be people who do not pay enough attention to this and don't make the right moves. And so when we see these things rather than getting all scared and actually ironically enough this episode is probably going to air right around Halloween. I think we're going to publish it the day before Halloween and do our email newsletter advisory the day after … so you know a good timing for that. But to understand that there is definitely opportunity here. I think there's a couple of really good tactics. I think James you brought up just one simple one was just bringing up a new version of products that have and make them a 2019 version. That's a really simple type that we can have to see what's going to happen. And then also just have your ear to the ground as to where you can also find other products. So this has been really really enlightening. James, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people reach you if they have questions about this or honestly your work for consulting with Amazon sellers is unparalleled so if they have other questions even unrelated to this where can they reach you? James: I can be reached at info@buyboxexperts.com. All those emails go directly to me. And I appreciate your time today Mark. Mark: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for coming on. Again James is one of the best in the business by far. Prosper Show check it out and then if you have questions feel free to reach out to me and I can do an intro or [inaudible 00:34:40.8] James. Thanks again for coming on. James: Thank you, Mark.   Links and Resources: Email James BuyBox Website Prospershow James's LinkedIn James's Book on Amazon

The Quiet Light Podcast
Where Private Equity Firms Come into Play

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 23, 2018 36:32


A private equity firm is in the business of buying, growing, and exiting companies, hopefully for more than they bought it for. For every industry there is a private equity firm out there. As private equity diversifies, what are the key trends changing the nature of the deal? Today we are discussing where private equity firms come into play in the buying and selling space. Today's guest, Andy Jones, is the founder and owner of PrivateEquityInfo, a private equity database that helps investment bankers and private equity firms close more deals by taking a look at the top trends to look out for when scouting an acquisition target. One major trend we discuss is the holding periods for private equity and how those can often reveal the direction of the overall economy. Studying these and other trends are useful for potential buyers to understand what to look out for in an acquisition deal. Episode Highlights: Andy's history with Private Equity Info. A look at a typical private equity deal. What sellers should know about the private equity industry. Buyers don't want the ugly marbles. Why buyers prefer asset deals over stock deals. What ebita sizes private equity firms are looking for and why the size requirements are in place. Smaller ebitas and add-on investment trends in the private equity arena. Why larger acquisitions still make more sense. Best ways to find the private equity for your business. We touch on the topic of microfunds; what they are and how they work. Typical deal structures that Andy comes across. Why business founders don't have the same appetite for risk as PE firms. The typical holding period before an exit. How long is it? Exuberance trends typically show up when those holding periods experience a decline. Andy shares his top ten trend list for 2018. Transcription: Joe: Mark, I understand you had a great conversation with Andy Jones from PrivateEquityInfo.com. Mark: Yeah private equity is one of these things that buyers and clients that we talk to and even … I'm sorry sellers and clients that we talk to and buyers as well often ask us about. Is private equity buying online businesses? Are they buying Amazon businesses? Are they buying SaaS businesses? Where do they start buying? When do they … what are the lines for it? How does it work? Andy Jones is somebody that I've known now for probably seven, eight years. He's always been very primed by complimenting me on the content we put out. So anyone that complements me is immediately somebody I like and so we talked about having him on the podcast- Joe: Hold on just a second, you're awesome Mark. You're a really good guy and I'm proud to be your partner. Mark: I thought you're stopping the podcast here. Joe: No, I'm just complementing you; that's all. Like you see I just wanted to be liked by you today. Mark: Okay well continuing … thank you, Joe. We will talk about increasing your equity stake in Quiet Light Brokerage after this call. Joe: Awesome. Mark: It's kind of easy guys, it's really that easy. And so Andy has PrivateEquityInfo.com. It's a fantastic database of private equity activity across the spectrum. So anything from manufacturing to the online world but something that they do at PrivateEquityInfo.com is they take a look at the trends and what is going on in the world of private equity and these can be leading economic indicators. And he gave me one trend in particular, I'm going to let him get into the details of it but it's the holding period for private equity. Because private equity, what they typically do for anyone that may not know that they're going to make a lot of investments with the goal of growing these businesses but then exiting these businesses as well or at least a portion of these businesses that they're building up. And the holding period, how long they hold them can really tell us a lot about the direction of the economy and what to anticipate next. And so they look at this holding period, the average number of years that a private equity is hanging on to business before they exit it. Right after the recession that holding period went up to like a number of I think it was like eight or nine because they bought at the peak and they had to wait for the economy to recover before they could exit. So I'm going to tease here and just say listen to the podcast to see what the average holding period is right now, what number we want to look out for to be able to understand okay maybe the economy is going to start to retract a little bit and use that for the decisions we want to make. Joe: This is going to be fascinating. I think we're going to learn about the future of the economy here as well. Hey before we move to the podcast I just want to give a shout out to Mike Nuñez from affiliate manager. Mike, you're probably out riding your bike right now listening to this podcast, I appreciate all the positive feedback you've given us in the last few months. Thank you very much. Let's go to the podcast with Andy Jones. Mark: Andy thanks for joining me. Andy: Thanks for having me. Mark: All right let's start off with a little bit of background on yourself and where you come from. I'll let you do that part. Andy: Yeah I'd be happy to. So my name is Andy Jones. I'm the founder and owner of Private Equity Info. We're an Austin, Texas based company. We own several websites but our flagship website is really PrivateEquityInfo.com and this is where we provide and emanate research database that helps investment bankers and private equity firms and even the corporates close more deals. So I have an engineering background and investment banking background that's kind of what lead me onto this journey of entrepreneurship 14 years ago. Mark: Yeah pretty cool and you are one of the people … I will confess you feed my ego whenever we send out messages by saying really great content Mark. I'm like hey, I like this Andy guy. Andy: Yeah yeah. Mark: Good stuff, I like that. Well cool. We're going to talk about private equity today because you have PrivateEquityInfo.com and really good information through that site. How long have you had that now? Andy: So yeah we launched 14 years ago, January of '05 so this year is our fourteenth. Mark: I remember when everybody's site is full. It was like three, four years old and somebody who had like an eight year old site it was like ancient. Andy: I know I'm that guy. Mark: You know you're that guy right? I own a 20 plus year old site and then Quiet Light Brokerage this is going to be our 11th anniversary coming up next month. Andy: Wow. Mark: Actually by the time this episode airs we've surpassed 11 years so … really really cool. So again private equity was what we're going to talk about today. We get this question all the time from buyers. People want to know things like who's buying online businesses and would private equity be interested? At what levels are private equity interested in and how do those deals sort of differ from other deals? And you've got a pulse in the industry more so than anybody else that I know so I thought hey let's talk about this. I think this is- Andy: Sounds good. Mark: -sort of thing to go into. So let's talk about just kind of the typical private equity deals from what you are seeing and from your experience. I mean what is a good intro for somebody who owns a business that might be thinking about selling and they think well maybe private equity would be interested? What should they know about this industry in general and the different PE firms out there? Andy: Okay. Well, that's a pretty broad question; let me see if I can tackle it from the few angles there. So I'm going to come at this from the assumption that there is some general knowledge of private equity but maybe some inexact knowledge and I'll just kind of ram a little bit and we can flesh it out. But essentially let me just start with the basics what a private equity firm is. A private equity firm, they're in the business of buying growing and exiting companies for hopefully more than they bought it for. And the way they do that is they typically raise a fund through their limited partners. And limited partners are typically institutional money, pensions and retirements, high net worth individuals, [inaudible 00:06:43.1] and such. They raise a fund that has a 7 to 10 year lifetime and the private equity firm then puts that money to work by buying companies. And their hope is to grow those companies, produce cash flow, and exit at a good return on investment for their limited partners and also for themselves. So that's kind of the mechanism of how they work. We can create … we can talk about how they create value later if you want to but you know is a private equity firm the right buyer for your company? Well now that depends on a lot of factors; primarily size but also industry. So by way of size, there's a huge range of private equity firms out there and they go from billions of dollars of interest in price value, company size down to single digit millions. And so there's a long tale of the firms out there. But at some point, the transactions get small enough that it's not really just logistically practical to make investments of small sizes for a platform investment. But I will also say that for add-on investments, you know private equity firms often have this model whereby they buy a platform investment and then we have add-on investments to it. Most private equity firms have size criteria for platforms but for add-ons, it can be more strategic interest rather than size. And so usually there's not a lower limit on the add-on acquisitions. Process size is one limitation, geography being another, and industry. If you have an industry there is a private equity firm interested in it. There's a lot of private equity firms out there. The trick is finding which ones are interested in your company and that's where we come in. Mark: Yeah so I want to talk a little bit about these different sizes because we … as a broker I get these emails all the time from private equity firms that are out there. They're reaching out to just these large databases of brokers and they typically are saying hey we're looking for investment opportunities in manufacturing with this, that, the other thing. A lot of times it just does not fit what we do at all. Obviously, there's no reason but they always list a minimum EBIDTA that they want to see. And typically what we're seeing from the ones that reach out to us would be EBIDTAs of a minimum of 10 million, 5 million, 2.5, and in some rare cases 1 million but almost never below that. Andy: That sounds about right. Mark: Yeah. So what do you see with that? I mean, first of all, I think we can ask the question why, [inaudible 00:08:58.2] the listeners of everything we're all … it's obvious but for those that may not be cashing out of that why do they have these size requirements in there? And then second of all if you comment on that breakdown I mean are private equities looking for these [inaudible 00:09:10.6] smaller in the world of bootstrapped entrepreneurs a million dollars EBIDTAS is a decent deal but for private equity firm that's tiny little bits of money there. How does that break down? Andy: Yeah let me answer those in reverse. So the spread you kind of set it right. Yeah most of them are 10, 25 million in EBIDTas that's for the bigger firms. In the upper middle market, firms are going to be and middle market firms is targeting down the 5 million down to 1 million in EBIDTA [inaudible 00:09:36.7]. But there are firms that will do it. And I think really the trick there is if you're operating in that size range, the trick is not to be considered a platform investment. You want to be considered an add-on investment. And the single best way to find the right private equity firm for your company if you're selling it and if you're down in that range … even half a million, a million dollars in EBIDTA it's getting pretty low. But it is to use a database like ours to keyword search based on keywords that describe your company the portfolio companies that are owned by private equity firms and we allow you to do this. You can search almost 80 … I guess a little over an 80,000 of them now and find those portfolio companies that are currently owned by private equity firms and that is … yeah, they look like your company. So that's the single best gauge to determine a private equity firm's fit or interest in your firm and your company is if they've already made a platform investment and you might be a likely add-on. So that's the process I would go about to discover the sort of rifle shot hits that you're looking for and you can use a tool like ours to find that. Why the size limitations? Well, they have a fund and they have to deploy that money. And if you have a hundred million dollar fund and you're deploying it at single digit millions at a time it is too much work. You'll never get it deployed. And that's really just driving your limitations there. Mark: Right. I think we have addressed this at the podcast topic a while ago on should you buy big or should you buy small. I've addressed this topic in a number of times as well where if you have the resources available to be able to run a larger enterprise from just making your dollars work; the larger acquisitions make so much more sense. The workload, the resources that go into a lot of internet companies doesn't really scale at the same rate as the revenues do. And so it makes sense to do that. So for a private equity firm to come in and try and buy out a company doing 250,000 in EBIDTA just doesn't make much sense. They're not going to reach the goals that they're looking for. And also the capitalization rights, I mean how large are these private equity firms when … how much capital are they trying to deploy through acquisitions? Andy: It really depends on the firm. You know if you wanted to … I don't know off the top of my head but I've done studies on this based on our data. And I've done some data size and probably shoot to our blog. So if people want to visit our blog you can read more about it but it's very typical to have fund sizes and it'd be hundreds of millions of dollars. Mark: Right. So let me take a little bit of a diversion real quick. I want to ask you a question that a trend that I've seen in our space here in the online acquisitions space, I call them micro funds because I don't really have another word for them. Andy: Okay. Mark: But these people that are raising 10 to 15 to 20 million dollars and they're doing it following that private equity sort of model of bringing in those investors. Their goal is to bring in a few companies, have some synergies between those companies, grow them, and hopefully sell them off. Are you guys tracking those at all at this point? Andy: So at that level what we typically see is a firm that has raised capital because they have an operating partner with very specific industry experience and they're looking to buy a company or two. In that case, they're likely not in our database and it's not because we don't know about them, it's just for fit reasons. Most of our customers that we serve are middle market investment bankers and because of that, we want to provide them a data set of firms that are likely going to close the deal. And if you're buying one or two companies the probability of you closing that deal is pretty small especially if you've already closed one. Mark: Right. Andy: So the firms in our database are only those firms that have committed capital that are closing deals in the marketplace. Or sometimes they're from a sponsor but they have to demonstrate that they're actually closing deals. Because at the end of the day investment bankers and firms like yours you want to close a deal so you want to make sure that the people that you're approaching from our database have some probability of making that happen. Mark: Yeah that makes complete sense. All right let's talk a little bit about … and again you've said this a couple of times so I'm going to reiterate it but talk in generalities when I'm asking you some of these questions. Every firm operates differently. Some like the sort of incubator method … you really it's going to be different from one from the next but I want to talk about typical deal structures. And let's say that we have somebody who … they built up a company and let's say that they're in that seven figure EBIDTA range or low eight figure EBIDTA range as well. I know I'm working with people on that low eight figure EBIDTA range, they're looking for an exit down the road and they're definitely in that private equity territory where that's what makes most sense. Andy: Okay. Mark: So when you're approaching private equity firms with a business … let's just focus mainly on the seven figure EBIDTA range, the one to five million, say that we have some people there, some PE firms there. What sort of deal structures do you typically see? Are they completely asset based acquisitions, are they stock, are they management buy-outs with the managers staying on and if there's no general rule that's fine too of course. Andy: There's no general rule but there are some factors as you know that sway the rules. Let me organize my thoughts on how to answer that. So asset deals versus equity deals, there's no all encompassing rule for that. Generally speaking, let me just sort of educate the audience a little bit and there's a good analogy for this. If you think about your company as a bag with a bunch of marbles in it and marbles are the assets, buyers like to come in and pick out the marbles they want. That's an asset deal. I want this marble, this marble, and this marble and that's what I want; that's an asset deal. You keep the corporate entity and all the other marbles I don't want. Whereas a start deal … equity deals says I will just buy the bag and all the marbles in it; good, bad and ugly. Well as a general rule, buyers prefer an asset deal and sellers prefer start deals because it's just [inaudible 00:15:21.8]. Buyers don't want the ugly marbles; the litigation, the potential liabilities … you know that stuff, so just for your audience though typically we find that the buyer wins because they're the ones with the money. So if you want a deal done you're going to do an asset deal. So there's not a hard and fast rule, the exception to that is often times when there's customer contracts in place that you don't want to have to renegotiate, you don't want to create a new corporate entity and then often times those become start deals just for just the core purposes. That's the other part of your question, you're looking at a seven figure in EBIDTA deal. Mark: So the basic structure of it. I know we've run into some cases where we've worked with private equity firms but they wanted to have a management team in place before. Andy: Right. Mark: Or the structure of the deal you know as a cash or as a cash financing and as a- Andy: All right, again it's going to be all over the place but generally speaking if the owner is retiring … owner-founder is retiring, the seller that's one case whereas if they're wanting to stay on and run it and grow it that's another case. If they're retiring it's going to be more … mostly a cash out kind of deal. But if there's a continuity there and they're selling the vast majority of their equity to a private equity firm retaining a small minority stake on the order of 10, 20% that's a different sort of deal. And that's probably the preference for most private equity firms. Again we're talking generalities. All firms operate differently. If you have a strong management team that wants to stay on the private equity firms are going to be interested in that. If they're interested in your company because of its industry, its size, its growth trajectory, and its promise to go on forward they want that management to stay on and they want them properly incentivize and aligned. So typically what we'll see it's not unusual at all to see a certain sort of enterprise value established at the exit of the majority of your stake. And then the private equity firm infusing that company with capital and all sorts of tools to create value. And then having a subsequent accurate equity exit whereby the original owner's second exit is as much as or more the first exit. It happens quite frequently. It doesn't mean it will happen obviously but it's not so unusual. Mark: Yeah and I think that falls in this territory of thinking outside the box of some of the regular deals that most people think of. I talk to a lot of sellers who they want that 100% exit, they got in love with the market but they moved on. But sometimes a really good deal is if you do find that good firm involved just getting that partial exit or that first exit and then that second exit later on can be like you said just as lucrative or if not more lucrative as you got this thing behind you. Let's talk a little bit about 2018 and some of the trends in the- Andy: Let me add … I'm going to add on to that a little bit before we move on. Mark: Yeah, please. Andy: So one of the things that people I guess wonder is how … why is it a private equity firm can come in buy a majority position the equity and create value where I couldn't? A lot of that stems from they're just … they don't have their entire net worth tied up in that company or a huge swath of it whereas an owner and founder does. So they can come in and infuse it with capital where an owner would go I don't know if I want to throw the rest of my [inaudible 00:18:29.6] that I got in the basket. The same basket is already all in. And so a private equity firm and can take greater risks because it's a small percentage of their portfolio in total. And you know and as a bootstrapped operation there's a mathematical limit to how much you can grow your company without outside capital. It has to do with your profit margins, there's a straight mathematical relationship. Your profit margins are X your growth can be Y and no more. So your opportunity for outside capital is debt or equity and founders oftentimes don't have the appetite for debt and this is where private equity can come in and infuse the company with capital at a risk for them that's much more acceptable than it is for the owner-founder and try some things that are maybe riskier and get that company to grow through multiple expansion and taking on your projects and what not. So that's kind of why they're able to do that whereas an owner sometimes isn't going to take that leap of faith. Mark: I think there's another aspect to that as well. I think … I'm glad you stopped me with that, we talk a lot on this podcast and conferences, just people that we talk to in general; entrepreneurs. These bootstrapped entrepreneurs or even the guys that have come in and maybe bought something smaller and that growing it. I put them in that same category of this bootstrapped entrepreneur who this is their livelihood and if it's not 100% of the livelihood it makes up a good part of it. A lot of people are not operating with an aim towards an exit. Maybe it's in the back of their mind so a few things here and there and they do this but a private equity firm has this holding period. They have this goal of we're growing this, we're going to get the cash flow from this, and in most cases … in a lot of cases, they're looking for that exit with that company as well where they could profit from it. Andy: That's right and it drives a huge sense of urgency day after day after day. And once you're owned by a private equity firm, it's hit the ground running. It really is because they're driving that growth because they need to grow the company and exit it before their fund timeframe runs out and so it's a bit of a race. With that comes a lot of operational efficiencies, they'll add to your institutionalizing the company in terms of process fees and measurement and systems in short governance and it's all the stuff that you should do as a company but sometimes that stuff falls and kind of cracks. Mark: I'm going to make a plug so Walker Diebel who works with Quiet Light Brokerage and how he's the executive producer of a number of documentaries and one of them is Print the Legend on Netflix. And it's about the 3D printing industry. There's a really cool part in there where you see [inaudible 00:20:58.0] go through this transition of bootstrapped you know the classic starting in the warehouse garage everybody is really agile doing what they have to do and then they take outside money and it becomes institutionalized. And one of them … I cannot remember what her name was but she said just like I call this part trying to put the skeleton into the jellyfish, trying to get it back on in a jellyfish. Andy: That's a great analogy. Mark: It is. It's a great movie by the way. Print the Legend, you can get on Netflix and again that's my genius plug for Walker. Andy: I love it. Mark: Yeah. So let's talk about 2018, let's talk about some of the trends that you're seeing in 2018. Actually no let's back up we're going to talk about that in a minute because we've just said that they buy these companies with a goal of exit. What is a typical timeframe? What is the holding period that most companies are … most of the private equity firms are looking to hold companies before doing that exit? Andy: We do a report about every six months to update the holding period and we say well of all the companies that have exited in 2018 how long were they held and we compare it to six months ago and 2017, 2016, going back in time. And I set you a graph of this beforehand and we can post that if you want to or whatever or make it or you can visit our blog and see that study. But generally speaking, I think most people would say look the general private equity holding period is 3 to 7 years. That's the right answer. It's fairly generic and that's kind of all-encompassing but I wrote down some stats here. The medium holding period right now as of a couple months ago is 4.8 years. So of all the companies that have exited in 2018, they were held just shy of five years. By way of comparison, we saw a max holding period of 5.6 years in 2014. Well, why was it so long then? Well if you think 2014 and you subtract out 5.6 years, if you're looking at companies [inaudible 00:22:48.7] and say you're looking at companies that were bought at a peak of evaluations right before the recession. So those are companies that are portfolio companies owned by private equity firms that got bought at the beginning of 2008, unfortunate timing, and then just hit the recession and they just had to hold a lot longer to either breakeven or realize any value. So that increased the hold rate. And we saw a minimum conversely in the year 2000 when we have a .com boom out of 3.0 years. And we saw another minimum in 2008 you know at the peak of that it bubbled there at 3 ½ years. So that leads me to think that if you start getting around … I'm going to say holding periods of 4 years or less it might … maybe it's an indicator of a little bit of exuberance in the market. And so right now we're at 4.8 years and it is declining. It is consistently going down every time we track. So we're aiming to the 4, we're not there yet. Mark: That's fascinating data. We've actually had that conversation internally quite a bit as far as the trends in the market and what we're thinking. And what we're seeing right now we're seeing one of the more aggressive markets in the 11 year history of Quiet Light. Now granted Quiet Light Brokerage when I first started it was 2007 and we were really just getting our feet wet and getting go-ins. So we didn't have a lot of data … real useful data then we hit a recession. So you take the first six, seven years it's pretty bearish. They [inaudible 00:24:13.3] are working with. Andy: Right. Mark: So comparatively like this is the time that we're in right now feels really good and strong and that [inaudible 00:24:19.9]. Andy: And we can talk about statistics because one of the great things about having a database is that it learns itself to this during data studies and slicing and dicing a data. It really pops out interesting trends. Right now valuations are high. No secret I think everyone in your industry knows valuations are high and I'll actually tell of you guys a little bit here or your world of investment banking and business brokerage. If you are a company owner and you are thinking about selling in the next 3 to 4 years and it's even on your horizon there may not be another time that is this good for valuations. It is as good as it gets. I mean there are a couple of economic factors there. There is sort of meta … macro-economic factors that are happening that are making this as sort of sustained seller market but that'll change. Those factors are just real quickly … money is cheap right now. Monetary policy has made interest rates low. It's cheap to borrow money. It's fueling a lot of growth. Companies are growing but consequently, those people with money are looking for where can they get a better return on my capital instead of CD's and treasuries and stuff like that. So they're looking at the alternative asset space. They're putting money into private equity which has created more private equity firms than ever before, larger funds than ever before, looking for the same deals as everybody else. So there's a huge … from a financial buyer perspective there's a huge demand. And then the other factor that plays with that is a social factor and that is you probably thought this as the eye. When the baby boomers were going to retire and then we had 60's we thought that there would be these huge influx businesses for sale as they start to retire and that largely didn't happen. They just kept working. The baby boomers just kept working and that only eventually come out a buy plan but right now because they've held their businesses longer they've built up a pent up demand because they're limiting the supply. So, on the one hand, you have money in trying to chase deals, on the other hand, you have fewer deals. That's what's creating this sustained seller's market where valuations are high. It will change. It will go back down and we're going to remain. You cannot … this is my opinion not data, but you cannot make money on the assumption that someone else is going to over pay in the future years like you did today. Mark: Right … no I think that's absolutely right that when … last year on this time I wrote one of the last blog post that I personally wrote. We started the podcast instead. Before we started recording here I was telling you that I like doing this [inaudible 00:26:49.6] Andy: Yeah, right. Mark: But I talked about the history of what we've seen over the years and during those recessionary years boy if you've got a 2.7 or 2.8 discretionary earnings for a business it was a really solid deal. And today people are looking that and saying why would I ever sell for that. Understanding multiples, they're relative to the time, they're relative to the supply and demand within the marketplace and what money out there and what other investment vehicles are out there as well. Even when you're thinking about when to exit when you're thinking about buying and growing and turning this around in the case of a private equity firm that's crucial data to really kind of hone in on and understand. What are you seeing trending this year? I know I was contacted by Buzz Feed a while ago about private equity firms starting to get into the Amazon space and really looking more towards e-commerce specifically within the Amazon Marketplace. What are you seeing as far as different trends in the private equity space or is there any industries that seem to be popping up right now? Andy: There are you know we studied the portfolio companies and what's changing over time. I sort of have a top 10 list for 2018 that I'll run down with you. On top of the list has always been and maybe always will be manufacturing. Mark: I see that all the time. Andy: Everyone likes a solid just basic manufacturing company, no frills just consistent cash flow, consistent growth; predictable money. With that said manufacturing as a percentage of the portfolio companies is way less than it used to be. So coming hot on its heels are … number two and three and four positions which number two is software. So far this year software deals are a big deal. At number three is technology. This kind of go together and it makes sense. Anything that you can scale like you can with a software and technology private equity firms are interested in the ability to find the concept that scales with very low capex which software and technology tend to do. And also have this component of recurring revenue also a big theme for the private equity firms. The others I'll run down … number four was health care. Interestingly enough number five was data businesses, information services which I'm on. Six would be oil and gas which is interesting because there for a while that went away. When it went down so cheap and thus nobody … everybody was losing money in all the oil and gas services companies and the PE firms just weren't doing that but it's coming back. Seventh is medical. Eighth, construction which has been interesting, traditionally we would not see much construction related private equity investments mostly because it tends to be very capex heavy. Number nine was transportation and logistics. And number ten was engineering so another kind of services company. Mark: Fascinating. The software I presume SaaS businesses with kind of all that- Andy: Well that's the preferred. Yeah, that's the preferred model. Not always but that's where everybody's going. Everyone's going to SaaS and everyone's going to the club. Mark: Right. What about consumer products? I mean that's obviously not in your top ten list. Andy: You know off the top of my head I don't know where it is. There are a number of private equity firms that specifically build consumer product brands and focus on that exclusively. Some well-known firms they have done really well. I know that for a while food and sort of ingredient businesses we're pretty hot. I don't know if that trend is still as hot as it used to be but consumer brands is definitely a hot industry it's just not on our top ten. I hear it all the time. Mark: Sure. But what are some of the things that private equity firms just love to see when they're looking for an acquisition target? Andy: Some of the things we already touched on recurring revenue. I mean it's all about stability of cash flow. So I would say stability of cash flow spur the quality of earnings kind of companies. Scalable businesses that have strong cash flow and a track record of growth. And those firms that are maybe a little more venture capital minded might say you know what's the opportunity here in terms of can this just blow up as a trend or is this software tool just meeting this huge demand in the cloud space that's going to be the next revolution of software so that sort of thing. But really it's all about cash flow stability or scalability. Mark: All right then what are some of the things … I mean people will probably come up with conclusions but what are some of the things that they'd want to avoid? Andy: Yeah so in addition to just like the opposite of those private equity firms it would be difficult to find firms that will do project based financing as opposed to just an outright purchase acquisition. They don't want to finance your projects. They typically will not do projects that require a lot of capex. With that said I did say construction was in the top 10 so I am not sure about that but traditionally it's just hard to scale companies when you have to put a lot of money on upfront for property client equipment. And then lastly at least for the firms that we track, we do not track those that are not in this particular data site those that invest in real estate. In a traditional buyout M&A private equity firms, we just need a longer time horizon than seven or 10 years to make sure that real estate pays off like it should. So what we do track in another data model institutional real estate investor, that's a different animal altogether and probably outside of this group but … out of this conversation but they typically are just not going to buy real estate. Mark: I've got a question for you on general multiples and let's talk software and tech and if you don't have this data right now I know I'm kind of … I'm springing this on you, I didn't prep you on this one. Andy: That's all right. Mark: But we talk often that there's a bit of a multiple shift when you get to certain levels in EBIDTA. Andy: Yeah that's right. Mark: This is something that companies don't typically get the strongest multiples as you move up we see these multiple shifts. What are some of the demarcation lines that you see for EBIDTA as one of these multiples that you start to inch up? Or is it just kind of a gradual scale where you're seeing that happen? Andy: You know I don't know if there is definite lines and I don't know if I'm going to know the answer to that question but just let me talk kind of about a hand waving principles around. Mark: Sure. Andy: I think it just kind of scales generally with size. Companies that are bigger tend to be more stable. And when you're more stable that's perceived to be less risk for a buyer and therefore more valuable and hence a higher multiple. And so that is why one of the methodologies that private equity firms use is this buy and build platform an add-on strategy. It is you buy the platform company, you take a smaller add-on investment, you buy it for … I'm just going to make up a number, 6X EBIDTA and suddenly you put it in, you fold it into a bigger company and that same sort of producing asset is now repaid X because it's part of a bigger company. So you got a 2X sort of free value out of that built on. And I can remember meeting with … I won't name the name, but a private equity firm we're meeting with one time we we're working on a deal back when we used to do deals and he was outlining that strategy for me. He's like yes it's really not just rocket science, that's what we do. It's pretty simple and you buy it for a five and you get seven automatically; free money. Mark: Right. I have these conversations with buyers over the years that their first footsteps into the space of buying … in our case online businesses start with maybe on Flippa and buy me [inaudible 00:33:51.5] out of $20,000 $30,000 sites and that was their appetite. The next thing you know they're doing an SBA loan and they're buying something bigger. Andy: Right. Mark: In variable … invariably once they have enough success that light bulb goes off in their head where they look at that and say wait a minute I can bolt on my company over here which is more valuable, a company that is less valuable here and if I can fill them in I'm getting this multiple jump and I'm adding value immediately. And in addition especially with the sizes that we're looking at I can buy something with EBIDTAs of 500,000 but if I buy four of these, combined them, now I'm not buying at a multiple of 2.8 or three. I'm buying at a multiple … I'm now able to sell it maybe at 3.3, 3.5 or whatever the case maybe for that industry. Andy: Right. Mark: It's this double whammy of the valuations that go up. And as that light bulb with them goes off for where then the next thing I know they're building their fund around to be able to do that. Andy: Now it's easy for us to say it's much harder to implement. So you can say you are just free money. Yeah, there's a lot of hoops you got to jump there to make that happen and integrations and all that. And it's hard work and that's why not everyone is doing it. But if it is kind of conceptually not that difficult to understand. Mark: Right, okay where can people find you if they want more information and if they want to start kind of exploring this world of private equity outside of the blog that'd be a great place to start but what if they're finding for more information? Andy: So you can go to our website PrivateEquityInfo.com at the bottom there's contact us, you'll see my phone number and my email. I'm happy to take calls. I'm happy to answer your emails. If you have questions about private equity, questions about your business and [inaudible 00:35:32.0]. Just pick my brain that's fine. We're happy to do that. We love to talk to customers and potential customers and help people. Mark: Very good. Hey, thanks so much for coming on. I can see you having [inaudible 00:35:42.3] 2019 rolls around and we get in to some of the trends there. Start paying attention to these holding periods that are happening I think that's a really cool stat to be able to be tracking here. And also just kind of see where the trends are with these top industries that are kind of popping up as time goes by here. Andy: Yeah well thanks for having me. It has been fun. Let's do it again. Mark: Yeah thanks, bye. Andy: All right bye-bye.   Links and Resources: Andy's LinkedIn Andy's Company PrivateEquityInfo blog  

The Quiet Light Podcast
Sales Funnels and Scaling Beyond Choke Points

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 9, 2018 43:26


After 10 years in the music industry, Dustin Ray started to hear about entrepreneurs in the tech space and felt the pull towards the flexibility that the online entrepreneurial field had to offer. As Dustin points out, there is no ceiling in the industry – as long you can build something scalable, you can take it as far as you want. The notion that you can create a value and see return relatively quickly was also an intriguing concept to Dustin. Dustin's company IncFile, specializes in the formation of business entities. Since starting, they have assisted more than 150,000 entrepreneurs and small business owners form their businesses. When Dustin got his start with the company they were not thriving but he and his team managed to grow it into an 8-figure company in a relatively brief amount of time. Today he's here discussing how modifying funnels and honing customer acquisition strategies allowed for that growth. We also touch on the challenges of scaling a team to that size in a short time span and navigating the growing pains that inevitably pop up. Episode Highlights: How Dustin got into IncFile. The processes that Dustin and his partner put into place to ensure the rapid growth of the company. How IncFile is filling a gap and taking care of the stuff that no entrepreneurs want to deal with. Through streamlined tactics and low costs, IncFile has become the leader in the industry and has continued to grow despite increasing competition. Dustin shares the key elements to a good sales funnel and the tools his the team uses to work and refine their funnel. Dustin shares his a 3-point strategy for finding a good starting point to getting into entrepreneurial tech. How Dustin's company was able to pass those pivotal “choke points” that many growing companies experience. Scaling doesn't necessarily equate with hiring. Hire slow and get the right people. The importance of worrying about what you're good at and building on that rather than trying to improve what you are not good at. Double down on your strengths. Buyers who are often the most successful in their acquisitions are those who hone in on what they are good at. Transcription: Joe: So it amazes me, Mark, the people that we meet at these different events and that are just laid back casual seem like just good guys you want to go hunting or fishing with … not that I hunt or fish, it's been a long time. I live in a lake but I haven't gone fishing for a while or I haven't caught anything for a while. Anyway, Dustin Ray strikes me as one of those people. I met him at Rhodium a few years back; totally laid back. I think you introduced him to me and surprised me later when you start talking about the numbers and what this guy is doing and so humble yet doing such incredible numbers. You had a chance to have him on the podcast recently. Mark: Yeah I did and Dustin is one of those guys whenever he and I talk on the phone and you know it's not as frequently as maybe I would like but whenever we talk it ends up being like an hour and a half conversation. Rest assured this is not an hour and a half long podcast but it could have been because he's got a ton of information. His background is fascinating. He started out in the music industry promoting some of the biggest artists that we know. He was telling me that when he was driving down through Las Vegas and seeing some of the artist's stuff on the board that are coming in, I mean these are … he knows who's behind these things. This was his industry for a long time but he decided to leave that industry and was really drawn to the internet world and got his start with a company that was not doing that great at the time. He didn't know it at the time but didn't know at the time and he's now a partner of that company. And really under his guidance and some of the other work his team has done they've grown it into an eight figure company relatively quickly. And really just through being able to modify their funnels, understand better customer acquisition strategies, and get that conversion rate as high as it can and really make it a product that works well for his customers. A really cool discussion about modifying those funnels, modifying your customer acquisition process but also we touched on and I want to have him back on again. I say this with a lot of guests but I definitely want to have him back on again about some of the challenges as well of scaling a team when you go from this one million in revenue up to five million in revenue, up to ten million in revenue and then beyond that as well. There's always this natural choke points where it's not as easy to scale that team and they've been going through that. They've been going through some of those growing pains but doing it really really well. So we talked about a little bit of that as well in this episode. Joe: Well Dustin's much more interesting than the both of us so let's jump right to the podcast. Mark: Sounds great. Mark: All right Dustin hey thanks so much for joining me on the podcast. Dustin: Hey thanks for having me, Mark. Mark: I know you're a loyal listener like you don't miss a single episode of this thing so you know what we do. We know that we'd like you to introduce yourself. Why don't you give just kind of a quick background on yourself? Dustin: Sure my name is Dustin Ray and I'm a co-owner at the IncFile.com. We're an incorporation service that services all 50 states. We help people form LOCs incorporations. We've been in business for a little over 15 years now and we've helped over 150,000 entrepreneurs get their business launched. Mark: You didn't start in this though, I mean this is … you have a background beyond that and you … full disclosure you and I met at Rhodium. What was it three years ago now I think? Dustin: Yeah. Mark: Yeah and we talked over dinner a little bit and you shared some of your background. You have a background in the music industry as well. Dustin: That's right so I kind of accidentally fell onto the tech space I guess you could say. So I grew up playing sports, going to school. I kind of grew up in the music scene and that meant recording stuff with friends and then throwing parties and club promoting and working at eventually a managing company, a record label, and then I went over and launched the hip-hop division for music marketing nationally for Monster Energy Corporation. So I was in the music business for about 10 years and it was ironic that we're here talking on the podcast because literally as I'm in the music business I kind of stumbled upon entrepreneurship in a podcast about it and that was kind of how I got introduced to the whole tech space. And when I was listening to just the different entrepreneurs … you know I didn't have any friends around me in the tech space. I didn't grow up coding. I'm not a coder. I'm not a technical person. So it was very much like an outer space experience when someone mentioned something tech. And so for me, it opened up a whole new world for me and it started speaking to every existence in my body about it. I love the fact that it was flexible. It's not like a physical store that you're at every single day. You need your laptop, you need your phone and you could be anywhere in the world. So I like that flexibility and I like the fact there wasn't a ceiling. As long as you can build something scalable you could take it as far as you want. And then the other thing, of course, is the trading was I mean the value creation right? It was like you would read an article and it was like how in the world would somebody build something in 18 months and then they're selling it or it's getting acquired for millions of dollars. Like how is that even possible? That was like a foreign concept to me. I thought you got work hard, put in the time, be a savvy investor and when you have a lot of white hair then you have your money. So that was kind of how I got introduced to the tech space and then I'll let you take it from there if I'm not rambling on but that was my introduction into the tech space. And then I found my way in through Incfile. Mark: Cool. Yeah, I want to get into that but I just made a quick observation and something I've noticed over the years is that people who come from outside of the tech world depending on your background it's fascinating to watch what you're able to bring in. The music industry and the entertainment industry in general and you can correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure this is accurate; crazy competitive space right? You've got to be top of your game if you're going to be promoting artists and I mean everybody wants to be a music star of some sort. So if you're in that promotions game you've got to be on top of your game there. I mean- Dustin: Yeah just like a lot of businesses I mean competition is fierce. You got a singer or a rapper or something on every corner and just like really in any other businesses it's how are you going to stand out? How are you going to break through? It's not always just talent. That's where it starts but it's really the first events that really … it's what separates an entrepreneur, a musician, an artist, a rapper from the next. So yeah it's completely … and it's not a pretty industry either. I mean you hear some of the horror stories. I mean you've got to fight and claw your way to just get the money that's even owed to you. It's not like we have this automatic draft where if you owe me it's got to be paid or this automated payments like we do in the tech space where it's automatically … an invoice comes in and it's paid. I mean in the music industry you have to have some fight in you. You have to know how to do all of that. Navigate and fight your way through to survive. And that does translate into any business but in tech space too I mean super competitive. Anybody can come in and make you either irrelevant with new technology or they could come in with more resources and push you out. So you still have to have that the same perseverance inside. Mark: That's fantastic and I have a story to tell but I'm not going to tell it right now. Maybe you and I can talk about this another time or anyone that's listening if you meet up with me at a conference I'll tell you the story about the time I sat on an airplane and sat next to a multiple gold album recording artist who was sitting back in coach and had made millions and millions of dollars at the music industry and had almost none of it to his name because of managers and stuff like that that were taking the money from him. A fascinating conversation, a spoiler alert he was crying by the end of the conversation. So fun story but we would definitely go down a rabbit hole I don't want to get into right now. I want to talk about Incfile. I want to talk about kind of your background there, how you got into it and also the scalability and some of the challenges that come along with scaling a business like you have with Incfile. So that's about 15 years old, how did you get into Incfile in the first place? Dustin: So I've been with Incfile now for 4 ½ years in all in perspective. So the way I got in was a good friend of mine and business partner for a time; we had a graphic design company. And parlaying into the music conversation we were working with record labels in designing all the marketing packages for some of these artists that they have. You know the album covers, [inaudible 00:09:31.3], mind spaces at the time, anything graphic design wise. And ironically through a mutual friend, my business partner now at Incfile who grabbed me in, co-founder Nick he liked for what he saw out there as far as one of the designs we have put out. And by way of a mutual friend, I got introduced to him and we started working in a design capacity for Incfile. And at the time Incfile was much smaller than it is today and so there was ups and downs and I started kind of building rapport and Nick and I shared a lot of the same philosophies on business and perspective. It was interesting for me at the time because just like I mentioned I was listening to podcast and super fascinated with this world at that time and this is back in 2009 probably. You know we started working, Nick was open to new ideas and I didn't have experience but I was just kind of sharing thoughts and experience because when you think about design you think about user experience at that time. I didn't have any training but a lot of it is just psychology. It's human behavior, human nature, kind of how people operate. And so Nick and I would collaborate on these efforts and be speaking late until the night and then into the early morning building that rapport. So at the time Incfile really needed to kind of turn a corner and so I started consulting with Nick. He asked me to help him to kind of redefine our sales funnel and our work process. And at the time it was a big deal, I didn't realize how big of a project it was for Incfile it was … there wasn't a lot of business coming in at the time so it was a kind of critical moment but I didn't know that at the time or there would have been more pressure. So I started helping Nick and we started collaborating on redefining the order process and it really was our big sling at trying to turn a corner. And luckily enough through the efforts and months that we put in doing that it started to turn a corner and things started getting better and Incfile started growing. And we kind of continued helping each other out over the course of the next few years and it just finally got into a point where we're saying look what we could do part time what could we accomplish together if we are both all in? And then that's when I'd left Monster Energy and jumped in all in with Incfile at the time. And that was in 2014. Mark: That was in 2014. I don't want to get into specific numbers and ask you to be sharing numbers but you guys have been growing pretty much consistently since 2014 right? Dustin: Yeah. We've been steadily growing year over year. Our business has been growing at a healthy rate as well. So anywhere between 50% to 80% year over year and that's both top line and bottom line. And so we really are at this point we're focused on growth. We're a growth company. And we're just constantly trying to redefine and push the anvil up to continue that growth. Mark: Yeah. So let's talk about the funnel work that you did when you first came on. Did Incfile have funnels in place before that or did you come in and tweak what was already existing or did you have to kind of rewrite that book? Dustin: Now we had to rewrite the book. And I mean, to be frank, this is both from Nick who's at Incfile and started the company and then myself coming in and helping. You know these are two guys that are just figuring out at how to go. He didn't have previous experience in the tech world or building an online business and neither did I. So it's literally just two guys figuring it out. So there wasn't any specific processes in place or any sort of funnel analyzation or anything like that going on because again it's back in '08, '09. Things are a lot more sophisticated now in terms of analytics and marketing and tools and things like that. But we were literally just figuring it out. We didn't … we weren't … at the time we didn't have a lot of data to kind of drive some of the decision makings. So we just figured it out as we went and that's why I think I said luckily we did something right and it started turning around. And to be frank and to be honest I mean we're still figuring out as we go. We've been growing and I guess part of that is intuition with part of the strategy that we're deploying. The other half is having a phenomenal team. We have great team members to help. I mean everybody is … it's an understatement to say everybody is working hard because it's beyond working hard. Everybody is really pushing a full play and we've been able to grow but literally, we're starting to figure it out and getting a little bit more pieces in place to be more strategic and more structured. But up until really recently I mean we've just been figuring out as we go. Mark: One of the things that I love every time that we talk you're always talking about tweaking and finding other things of that sales funnel that you missed before. I absolutely love that because I tend to set and forget. A lot of times I'd get a sense from you guys that you're always looking, always experimenting with your funnels. Dustin: Yeah and that's a good point to touch on because one characteristic too that Nick and I share is that we have this obsession with a fish in sea and process. And so tweaking it is really the game that we like to play. So we like to be building the product. We like to be refining it. We take pride in trying to be innovative and have the best product in the industry. Not even as a strategy but just more of a personality and characteristics traits. That's what we've been doing since day one. It's just constantly keeping our head down focusing on the product and making it better every single day. Mark: Yeah and obviously having a good product helps quite a bit. And we've talked a little bit about your product privately and what it does. I mean some of the services you guys offer are phenomenal. Making sure things are kept up to date and having that subscription portion of it as well. People can literally not worry at all about their filings. It's a really cool service because I know I had to file actually in Texas for a company of mine and I started getting these notices and I'll tell you as a business owner and entrepreneur you get all these things from the government all the time and you're like I don't want to deal with this. I don't want to have to spend an afternoon trying to decipher all of this. And so you guys are really committed to filling that gap which is cool. Dustin: Yeah and I'm sitting in the same seat as you. Having private companies to even working at Incfile same thing, I didn't know even what a registered agent was or what a franchise tax report was for the state of Texas. Somehow I must have put myself or something down for it but it wasn't until I got to Incfile where I actually even understood it. And that's where I think we fill a big void in the entrepreneurial journey. It's just taking care of that stuff that really no entrepreneur wants to take care of. It's not a sexy business in terms of like the way we might talk about the music industry or celebrities but it's a fundamental core piece of running a business. If you're going to be an entrepreneur and you're going to be in business you're going to have to take care of these things that we offer. So we try to make it … we streamline the process and make it easy. So we're constantly innovating to make things faster and at the same time, we're the low cost leader in the industry so we drive the price down. So where most people that may go to … historically speaking it's a little bit more out there now because a lot of people are comfortable with doing business online now versus 10 years ago. But it really was the kind of fundamentals where people would know that they need to have a registered agent. There's this state mandate that's saying you have to do these things. But like I said it just frankly isn't fun or people don't want to deal with it. When you're starting a business you've got 15 hats you're wearing and you're putting out fires, and you're worried about sales, and doing all these other things. So we've really drove down the prices well to make it convenient and affordable to where a lot more entrepreneurs these days. It's just part of starting a business nowadays. Nowadays it's like okay I know I don't want to worry about that it's only going to cost me this much money so let them worry about it and they can deal with it for as long as I'm in business. Mark: Yeah, that's cool. I want to go back over to the funnel stuff and ask you kind of a basic question. What in your opinion makes up the key elements to developing a funnel, a good sales funnel? Dustin: One is always … I mean some of this stuff may sound rudimentary but simplicity, right? Because in an industry like ours where things are very technical, you've got secretary of state, you've got government agencies, and the IRS and a lot of formalities with these bureaucracies that it could become intimidating and cumbersome when you think about legal services in general. So us not being attorneys for one has kind of served and helped us in a lot of ways as well. We are entrepreneurs our self so we can put our own hand on and think about how would we want this to work and simplicity is number one. I mean don't make me think is the philosophy. If I had to think about something it's already too difficult, too hard, and our sales funnel isn't as fast as like selling a t-shirt. I mean you still … even though we've simplified and streamlined it you're still going through in some cases depending on which package you have you may go up to 15 pages to get through the end of the funnel. So it's very important to be fast. Just ask me the basics of what we need and in some cases, we'll [inaudible 00:19:15.7] process where we will gather additional details that may be needed. But if you frontload your funnel that's a recipe for disaster because people get exhausted and if you get in too many decisions you give them too many chances to change their mind. And really they want to get it done that's why they came there. So if you can make it a simple process to go through and then worry about making the connection and introducing yourself and working one on one if need be to solve the rest of the information gaps. But we see a lot of our competitors … I mean it is very word heavy and very cumbersome to go through their cellphone. So we just try to streamline that. Mark: Yeah, keep it all simple. When you say front loaded you mean asking all the questions on that page one and somebody sees this big huge form and they have to get through that he would form it with complex language? Dustin: That is one but also I mean front loaded just meaning the entire funnel. So if once you get to the back end of our system, if there's additional information or if there's something that is unique to your business that we may need additional information on those are emails and conversations that we can gather afterwards. But I mentioned we may have a funnel that could be 15 pages but if we put everything into the funnel they may need … it could be much longer and people don't want that. They want to get in, they want to pay, they want to have information; know that we are taking care of it and if you need something let me know but I'm already … once I click pay if you're handling it and I'm off to the next thing. Mark: What are some of the tools that you use to really work and refine that funnel? I mean it sounds like you're trying to gather some intelligence from your customers and watch their behavior to see where is the sticky points, where people are tripping up, do you guys use different tools to be able to collect some of that information and figure out hey you know what this is just not working? Dustin: We do not. Like I said we were just figuring it out and working along intuition for years. It's kind of how you are where any business is focused on sales, you're focused on sales and then you're focused on servicing those sales. So years go by and business grows and at some point, we're like man it's a lot harder to implement these processes now that the train is moving at 120 miles an hour to implement the process. So that's been an extreme challenge for us for the past couple of years. But we're at the point now to answer your question about tools where we now have complete tracking setup for all engagement. So a lot of it goes through GA but we're using a lot of different … whether it's a UDM code or whether it's an event tracking code on the website to understand where people are coming in and coming out. We're using user testing on the back end so things like VWL for user testing and constantly refining that. Just tinkering with every page or basically not everybody married to anything on the page. So it's kind of a philosophy where hey just because we've stared at it so many times for so long don't get stuck in it. Everything is fair game, anything can go. And now we're using VWL and Google Analytics and a lot more tracking into Google Analytics to tell us some of that data behind what's happening in there. And we just started doing live user testing as well. So besides the quantitative data we're using web services that actually have live users coming in that aren't familiar with your page and then going through and giving you kind of like we are with this podcast a stream recording with their … they're speaking while they're going through it and giving you all the pitfalls and challenges and get things that they like and don't like about it. So marrying that quantitative data with qualitative has really helped us just in this year alone. Mark: Yeah and just to be clear GWL being Google Web Optimizer I would assume right? Dustin: Yeah we use that as well, the search console but VWL is a— Mark: Oh VWL. Dustin: VWL. Mark: Okay. Dustin: In other words, it's a Visual Website Optimizer; VWL.com for user testing. There are other competitors for that but that's worked for us so far. Mark: If you can answer this … don't feel like you have to but how many experiments would you say that you guys run in any given month? Dustin: Not that many. Because we were running at least … or I should say we wanted to run five to 10 in a week and just kind of push it up, push it up, push it up. But now we're content having more patience and so we want to get it right. So we're not being short sighted with it and now we're really trying to really just run things that don't interfere. It may just be one test a week, two tests a week at the most that we're introducing only because we want to compare apples to apples. So if we make too many variable changes then the numbers and the statistical significance get kind of skewed and then assumptions come into play. So we limit it to one to two now. Mark: All right so you're throwing around words statistical significance and you're looking at biases and you're looking at all these different assumptions that are coming into it but you started off on this without really any background in CRO and kind of this funnel optimization. Somebody listening to this that they just bought a business or maybe they're looking to do something similar on their own, what's a good starting point in your opinion for somebody that is just starting out in this area? Or maybe somebody that's intermediate and knows a little bit about it but hasn't really seen the returns yet from focusing on this continual tweaking and improvement? Dustin: Yeah I mean and you're right I didn't know anything coming in. So for me literally not having friends in the industry, peers of any sort, nobody around me locally, I rely heavily on podcast. You know podcast people speak freely, it's a casual environment, people want to help other people, like minded individuals and I benefited tremendously from podcasting just from learning. And of course now with hands on training, being … working in an environment in the tech space you're learning things every day. So one, learn by doing. Two, reach out for the resources like podcasting. And then the third thing I would say too that is when you reach a point when you could come up for air I would encourage to try to go to different networking events and meet other individuals and just get their perspective outside of your own that they might share that maybe you wouldn't hear at podcasts. It might be more frank or direct or they might have encountered a situation that they can actually help you … give you advice for a scenario where as a podcast it's more educational and you're listening but you can't just jump in and ask the questions so to speak. So those are the three areas that I would focus on. Mark: Okay, cool. I'm going to change gears completely here and spend our last 10 minutes or so. I want to talk about the growth with your company. And in my experience, because I watched a lot of companies grow, you know people that I'm just friends with and we talk about the challenges. But then also people that I have been advising as well. And I tend to find that there is this … there are certain choke points with companies where they have troubles turning certain corners. You know when you're first starting up a company oftentimes that's when your revenues start hitting 250 300,000 and then there's another choke point once you get to about seven figures and trying to get up to the higher seven figure range so on and so forth. What's been your experience? You came on at a critical point with this company when you guys weren't really sure about the future and then you've been able to grow it since. What has been your experience with some of these choke points within the company's growth, the company's culture and I guess I should probably ask instead of assuming I mean have you guys experienced that? Dustin: Absolutely. You know it's funny because… and this is a great topic. We should spend some time on this. As an entrepreneur or as a small business owner on the startup of a small company and I kind of am speaking more in the vein of like bootstrapping because we've been self-funded from the beginning. We've never taken any rounds of funding so I don't have experience to speak on there. But as far as doing it yourself one thing I can say is focusing on … or I usually think that hiring people right is going to solve your problems. And it does … that comes into play later but it comes in very strategically later but what I figured out was that … like for example our biggest our advantages when we were smaller became our biggest challenges as we try to turn corners. And I'll elaborate a little bit on that and so for example in our industry we were bootstrapped, we're a small team, we're still a small team. We're competing side by side with companies that are Goliath's in the industry that have either been acquired or have raised funds and are billion dollar companies. And we're competing with these guys directly and we're a very small team. So we're probably 15 people in our office and then additional people in terms of remote resources outside of that. But what I'm getting at is that that worked into our advantage when we were small. So when you think about it we were able to think about it and have a conversation today and then we could start building it tomorrow. And we could … we were very efficient and we push and we work hard so we could roll things out at tremendous speed. And that kind of led some of the innovation that we now have that's really industry leading now at this point because we were small and we can move fast. We're still small but now that we've grown in size it's … you face new challenges right? And so the challenge for us now is now it's our disadvantage being this small. Because now we need to accelerate growth beyond where we are and our capacity is limited in terms of what our team could do beyond what they're doing now. Because as I mentioned earlier everybody is pushing, everybody is already at capacity. And so even though you feel like conceptually okay well I … we're managing the advertising so to speak, all the PPC and all that stuff. It's been self-managed all the way up until this year. We had to bring on a team to help manage that. We've had to bring on team members to help us in different areas from SEO, content marketing, we've expanded our dev team. So the other things that we're doing now to help turn the corner but what you realize is that you could keep iterating and moving but when your smaller you can solve problems quickly. Because the problems you have are generally something that can be solved quickly. When you grow, the challenge has become not overnight fixes. So you're going to spend a longer time fixing it and then for your growth, there's a reason why not everybody grows to be giant companies it's because it gets harder, it doesn't get easier. And so what we've realized too is we could see an opportunity and seize it and go take that hill so to speak and then we experience growth. We open up a new channel and we experience growth. Where we are now is we actually have to have a strategy and team to forecast ahead six months or more so we can invest in that today and then experience that growth hopefully six months, 12 months from now. So that's one area that we have certainly run into a wall on and had to figure out how to maneuver around it. Because you get used to thinking that your core strength and your competitive advantage is always your competitive advantage. So it's something like we've got to always be objective and look in the mirror and say oh wait a second is that now [inaudible 00:31:10.2] is this now the one thing that's holding us back? Maybe it's not so great. I need to think that was like what we hang our hat on but now you really got to think how to move forward and you have to remain objective about it. Mark: Why do you think that is? I mean why do you think that as companies grow … and this sounds actually by the way very similar to the same conversation I had with Rob Walling from Drip because they were the same sort of environment. A few dabs working together and they had an idea for something, they rolled it out and coded it out and pushed it out within a day and that was it. They were able to do that and then as they grew the same sort of challenges. Why do you think that is that as you grow it's not as easy to just flip out new solutions? Is it because there's more people involved or is it because the growth and the changes that you need to make are more sophisticated or … I mean what's going on there? Dustin: I think it's competition. Because once you kind of turn corners or try to go to the next level it's a new game. You're playing against different competitors and their strengths and what they do best and why they were in the top positions that you're taking market share away from is because they're doing something really well. And so you have to be able to then compete directly with them and do what they did well and take market share from them. So you have to constantly evolve. It's not just internally what's happening but just in the industry for competition, nothing in business is just standstill. So you're in the gaining realm or losing realm and when you reach new heights or next levels the competition gets more fierce and you have to have even deeper strategies. You have to be thinking future, you have to have more of a focus because we could cover a lot of ground and a lot of places and growth but it might be more short sighted. It might be just low hanging fruit and we're catching that. But at some point, you're going to run out of low hanging fruit. And so once you run out of low hanging fruit it becomes all about strategy and long term strategy because you have to build things that are scalable and you have to compete against these guys in the course of six to 12 months and beyond. So it really takes a different mindset to turn the corners. I mean you can operate in the same manner as the same culture and the same type of people and teammates but the game and the rules become more fierce. Mark: You said something a little bit ago about you used to think that the scale you just hired or something to that effect but then you kind of learned that that wasn't the case. Why is that? I mean obviously you need to hire to scale at some point but— Dustin: I think a lot of people try to scale too fast and I don't … I mean some people can do it and some people are that experience so they can pull it off. For us, if we could have hired earlier then we potentially could have got further faster. We were reluctant to hire rapidly because we knew we were growing but we didn't want to take the growth for granted. Expecting the growth to come so we would make sure that we had the business, captured the business and then when the need was dire we bring somebody in. But honestly, if we would have brought somebody in and forecasted at six months in advance we might have been able to keep the momentum going faster. But looking back in hindsight I do think there was some benefits of not hiring faster because again we focused on product and we focused on our customers. And so the product was constantly improving and essentially when you think about scaling what are you really scaling right? You've got to have a strong foundation to scale or build on top of it. So not hiring people at that time … I mean the last several years and the investments we've made and you know we weren't … in our industry we were known but outside our industry, it's not like we're flying on anybody's radar. And that's because we have our head down and we were just building the product. And now that the product and the machine and so on is really strong in terms of foundation now we're hiring rapidly in a sense. We're really trying to accelerate it and bring on very strategic hires to fill specific niches or voids that we need to fill in terms of areas of expertise. And so it's working for us now in terms of hiring for your right and not to hire to scale but at the same time if we wouldn't have focused so much on the product and building the foundation that is … you know everything innovative and automated that we have it could be the death of us. We could grow too fast and then if the machine doesn't work then you got sizable problems and when you're talking about thousands of users and thousands of people on your platform, it's not just two people calling and saying [inaudible 00:36:02.9] we're talking about your phones ringing by the thousands and people trying to get those needs resolved. Mark: It's fascinating. With culture and when you're growing a company like that and you're bringing on people and hiring quickly after a certain amount of time because you need to be able to support that growth. Have you guys been able to keep that kind of grinder spirit that you seem to exude with every time I talk to you? You know it's that classic entrepreneur hustle. Have you been able to keep that culture with your company? Dustin: We have. So that's a big deal for us too. I mean the people that you worked alongside with and the people that you entrust in helping to make decisions and contribute they kind of have to be in line with your philosophy and with the rest of the team. Otherwise, they're searching between team or there's a conflict of philosophies. And it's a lot easier if there's a culture fit to be able to rally everybody together for the common good and push forward. So in a lot of ways … in our case we certainly want people who are capable but if we had a scale of one to 10 and the most talented person was a ten we would still rather work with eight. Let him come on to the team out work everybody, fit with the culture and then we're not going to have the kind of pitfalls or speed bumps that we may have if we have friction with somebody. So we definitely identify and work better with those types of folks and at the same time, I think that they appreciate that about us as well. Because depending on what environment they came from if they had the same spirit or they're a fit for our culture generally it's a place they like to work and with an environment people that they want to invest their time with. So I think that's been huge for us and up until this point it's work and as we continue to scale and grow it becomes more of a challenge to try to keep everybody in the same culture fit. But it's important to hire slow and make sure you get the right people than to hire fast and then be reverse engineering that and figuring out how to let them go and get somebody else then. It's counterproductive. Mark: Right we've gone a little bit over time but mainly because it has been a fascinating conversation so any last bits that you would want to put in or if anyone wants to reach out to you are they able to do so? Dustin: Yeah, absolutely my e-mail address is ray@incfile.com I'm on LinkedIn, Facebook, my name is Dustin Ray or my handle on Instagram or anywhere else would be drayonline. But if I was going to leave any other nugget of information with folks just from our experience or my experience one thing that people kind of find interesting but I think is very important is that a lot of people in our society try to focus on self-improvement. We all work on self-improvement but I think it kind of gets lost in transition with entrepreneurs because we're constantly … we're builders and we want to improve but society kind of teaches us in a way to work on our weaknesses. If you're already good at something don't worry about that, you've got to worry on what you're not good at and improve in that area. And really just through experience life not just business, I kind of think it's more important to focus on your strengths as for a self-improvement and be self-aware to say this is the area that I'm good at let me build you, fill gaps, and bring on people to help me execute whatever the task at hand is. But I think too many people focus on improving on what they're not good at. Like for example, we ran a graphic design business for a while, okay I was interested in design. I like design. If I stuck there and invested my time into getting better at design and using Photoshop yeah I'm going to improve. I'm going to get better. But at the end of the day, my best is going to be mediocre. So I'm never going to be able to compete with the guy who's a phenomenal designer. So rather than focusing on your weaknesses just be mediocre at them, I think you got to double down on your strengths. Be self-aware and know what you're good at. And I think it kind of encompasses more of a positive mindset when you're focusing with confidence on what you're good at. You know even when you're trying to improve on what you're not good at it's kind of a negative feeling right? It's kind of you know you're not good at it and you're kind of getting down about it because that's human nature but if you … you know the entrepreneur journey is tough so if you focus on your strengths and bring people on to help you where you need I think you could get further faster. Mark: Well, don't tell my kids that because I keep telling them to work on the stuff that they're struggling with in school. But I think when you are applying it where you're applied it you're 100% right. Dustin: Your kids they're learning right so they don't know exactly what they're good at and what they're not so I do the same for my kids. Mark: Right. Dustin: You're teaching them to work through the problems. More problem solving than self-improvement at this point. Mark: Right. Exactly and also if you want to become an all-around good person work on finding those things. But you're right as far as with your business and entrepreneurs and we see this with buyers all the time. Buyers that just kill it are the buyers who come in and they know their strengths. They might be CRO gurus, they might be SEO gurus, they might be really really good at just setting up operations or what have you and they look for the businesses that are deficient in those areas so that they can take them. And those are the guys that come back with two X, three X, five X businesses in a few years because they've taken their strengths and they're not going to bother trying to work on the stuff that they're bad at. They're going to outsource that if they have to, make sure that somebody else is taking care of it and they won't deal with it and it works. Dustin: That is so true. I gave up Mark … I gave up on trying to be smarter. I said well I'm going to self-improve but I'm not going to get any smarter so now I tend to focus more of my time on becoming a better leader than trying to get smarter. And so you can only build a company so big on your own so if you want to get smarter you're only going to get it so big, you're going to have to work with more people and bring in people to grow a sizeable company. So for myself today I try to focus on being a better leader and working with people and empowering them to be the smartest person in the room. Because their areas of expertise, they are always going to be smarter and better than I would be in that space. So I just try to focus on becoming a better leader and I gave up on trying to be smarter. Mark: I love it. That sounds like a great way to end this episode of you on the podcast. Thank you so much for coming on this has been awesome. Dustin: No, I can't thank you enough for inviting me. I hope your audience gets something from it and I'm looking forward to catching up with you soon. Mark: Sounds good. Links and Resources: IncFile Dustin's Instagram Dustin's LinkedIn

The Quiet Light Podcast
Scaling from $100 Million to $1 Billion in Revenue

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 11, 2018 39:17


If you want to know the value of your business and where it comes from, do the work. Take the time to collect the data, then hone in on what is the right fit for your company. Prioritize figuring out what makes your business tick in order to grow a sustainable brand. The bulk of Babak Azad's body of work lies in growing the Beach Body brand from 100 million to over 1 billion in revenue in eight years. Now working as a consultant in marketing for multimillion dollar businesses, Babak and his team focus on customer acquisition, retention, and the power of customer experience. Babak is here today to talk to us about building a lasting brand by helping business find a few channels that work well and hitting those home. Episode Highlights: Babak shares his unique way of looking at customer acquisition in every type of business he touches. Why business metrics are not as difficult as people think if they start with the basics. Start somewhere and then refine over time. The importance of knowing what a good customer is worth in any business. The things business owners should be tracking at a minimum. Look at the levels and the patterns. Get things right for a few to start off before rushing around trying to scale up too quickly. It is crucial to your success as a marketer to seek out and hone in on the best channels for your business. What your strategy should look like once those channels have been targeted effectively. Use service marketplaces such as Fiverr and Upwork to find small ways to find qualified staff to collect crucial data. How Babak helps clients discover the right intersection of branding and direct marketing then infuses that with customer sustainability. Why it is so important to start taking care of the customer. Hear Babak's 4 pillars of brand building. Transcription: Joe: So Mark I know that amongst all the Quiet Light Brokerage, Jason is probably the fittest. But I occasionally do get my butt kicked by someone online with beachbody.com. Most recently a young lady … I can't remember her name but I keep going back to it. I love the program and I love the story behind Beachbody's success. Because as you know I'm an old radio spot ad, radio infomercial, TV infomercial guy and that is where Beachbody started; I believe. And you had them on the podcast is that right? Mark: I did. Yeah, I think pretty much everybody has heard of Beachbody at some point or another. I mean it's a huge brand; huge name. I was able to talk to Babak Azad. He was the Senior Vice President for Media and Acquisitions; really fancy title, big companies … that comes with the big companies are fancy titles but his role at beach body was to figure out their customer acquisition strip. And this is what he does now. He's no longer with Beachbody. He did leave a little while ago. He's now with Round Two Ventures and they help e-commerce companies eight figure or nine figure, primarily e-commerce companies hone in on their customer acquisition strategies. What was great about this discussion is seeing as at scale, seeing what a … somebody who's in charge of a business that when he came into to Beachbody they were doing 100 million dollars in revenue annually. That's a lot of money. Joe: It's a lot. Mark: When he left in just a few years later they were doing over a billion dollars in annual revenue. Joe: Wow. How long was he there for? Mark: I don't know. I would have to take a look to see but it wasn't more than a few years. So he's really responsible for the explosive growth. I mean again a lot of people have heard about Beachbody or remember hearing about them. Way back when I was in college which unfortunately is too long ago now, so I remember hearing about them then. Now I mean everybody knows Beachbody. Everybody knows the brand and that was because of his customer acquisition strategy. We talked a lot about what that was and we talked a lot about problems and mistakes he sees especially in seven figure e-commerce businesses and even eight figure e-commerce businesses as they're trying to grow. I'll leave some of the mystery for the actual episode here but a couple of things that I pulled away from this that I thought were really good; one, he said that if he comes across a company and they have more than four main acquisition channels that he's guaranteeing they're wasting money and that they are completely … not doing what they should. Some people get all worked up and you know they think oh I need to be on Pinterest, I need to be on Instagram, I need to be on Facebook, I need to be here or there and everywhere. And he said that's not how it works. He said find a few channels. He says it should be no more than four. Ideally, it should probably be maybe three or even two to start. And do those well and just milk those for what they're worth. Really hit those homes. That was one thing that I really pulled away and the other thing I pulled away was his emphasis on data collection. And I run into this problem since that I own all the time as I always want the data collection to be perfect. And then I get kind of lost in the weeds, right? You get all the state in front of you. You have your analytics. You have all this stuff coming in and you're like what do I do with this? And his response was what I've heard from so many other successful entrepreneurs, just start doing something with it. You know he said go out and hire a college kid, go out on Upwork and have them put it into Excel and start analyzing the data. He said the data will start bubbling up from that by itself and start giving you insights and then that can direct you into what you should actually be collecting; a fascinating conversation from somebody who's done some pretty big time stuff. Joe: Yeah. It sounds like the data will speak to eventually. And even though when he left it's a billion dollar company I think that the lessons that he's learned along the way are incredibly valuable for those doing six and seven figures in revenue. You know a few weeks ago we had Ryan Daniel Moran on the podcast and he said: “find your customers”. Find your customers and then send them to the least half of resistance to ordering. So it's going to be interesting to see how those two things jive with … back in what he said here in the podcast. Let's get to it. Mark: Absolutely, let's go. Mark: Babak Azad thank you for joining me. Babak: Thanks a lot Mark, glad to be here. Mark: Did I butcher your name? Babak: You did not. You did it well the first time. Thank you. Mark: We literally just rehearsed this. We rehearsed it and then I hit record. I'm like I'm so going to screw this thing up. Cool, I … thank you so much for joining me. I know you and I talked about a year ago for a piece I wrote on entrepreneur.com and I'm super glad to have you on the podcast right now. We have a little bit of a tradition here at Quiet Light where we have our guests introduce themselves because hey you're better at knowing what your background is than I am. So why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself real quick? Babak: Sure. I live here in LA with my wife and two boys. I started out as a math major investment banking business school. I kind of came from that route. I started a magazine here in LA which failed miserably; best 25 grand I ever lost. I needed some humble pie, what I read that point of my life and then spent eight years in Beachbody. So the bulk of my professional experience was there; built analytics and then oversaw media and customer acquisition. So P90X, Insanity, 21 Day Fix, Shakeology, all that. Those efforts are for eight years and we kind of had a nice clean 10X. I already got there at 100 million so there's already substantial scale; really I obviously helped to push that thing to over a billion when I left three years ago right when my second son was born. The simple version of it, I have to start something, the team fell apart really quickly and then I started working on building a consulting business. So that's what I do right now; help generally seven and eight figure businesses, sometimes nine on … heavy on marketing, support around customer acquisition, retention, and analytics and really much more recently heavily infused with customer experience and really how to … I'm leading to writing a book about it too but really just the power of customer experience that's very much consistent with performance marketing approach but also really layering in building a lasting brand. That's really where my focus is today and I love what I'm doing. I have some great clients and yeah … so I'm having a good time with it. Mark: I love that you lead with the fact that you had a magazine startup that failed and then you just kind of glossed over the fact that you were part of the team that grew Beachbody from 100 million to a billion dollars. You know just a small footnote in your career history there. Babak: Yeah it's a … you know I have a … I appreciate all the experiences. You never want to go through those negative ones. I think we all have gone through them and just … I had to say I'm not sure I'm as humble as I need to be at times but [inaudible 00:07:25.5] as I mentioned it was an important thing of learning what it's like. I've been really much more of an analyst at that point. And then yeah I mean Beachbody was awesome. I had a great experience and … but it was time for me to go. You know eight years was a long time there and I grew a lot. I met my wife through one of my best friends there and [inaudible 00:07:41.6] me up for kind of this next chapter that I'm in right now. Mark: Cool we're going to be talking today about customer acquisition and also building a brand and some of the lessons that you pulled away from Beachbody and are now doing at Round Two Ventures is that right you're doing this at Round Two? Babak: Correct. Mark: Okay. I will link to Round Two Ventures and then your personal blog in our show notes and anything else that you want us to link to in the show notes. But … so we're going to talking a little bit about customer acquisition, lifetime value, and this intersection of branding. You have kind of this unique way of looking at this customer acquisition strategy, maybe we could just kind of start with kind of a general look at your philosophy when it comes to customer acquisition in the e-commerce but also in the SaaS world. You know I think metrics, being really metric heavy on customer acquisition and lifetime values, this is really kind of a SaaS world sort of conversation but you take it towards e-commerce and towards every other type of business as well. Babak: Yeah it's funny because I started really with physical products and given that distinction which I mean physical products, we sold DVDs and multi-vitamins at Beachbody. And that's really where a lot of my real marketing and just … I would say professional experience came from. And so this distinction of physical versus info versus SaaS really was nothing I ever really considered until I started frankly getting out of that world and talking to other folks. You know when I was at Beachbody and then started to learn about this but yeah I mean … so first off I was a math major but you know I wrote a piece a bunch of years ago saying business metrics are not college math, [inaudible 00:09:12.7] barely high school math. And I think that's the first thing is … I think I know a lot of people who are intimidated by the metrics or surely daunted by how do you do it or their systems. And you know I'm a firm believer first just to start with something. I think Peter Drucker you know said what you don't measure doesn't get better and so with the opposite is very much the case. That what you do measure, what you report on, what you send in an email or whenever it's your phone because it's fun to mine you just start to pay attention. So there's always a bit of grounding of just the basics in fundamentals. And that's really I think my approach. I'm not a shiny bright object guy. I believe that if you get the basics and fundamentals then much of what you need to do starts to take care of them itself. But really when it comes to customer lifetime … I mean I look at e-com and frankly all of the businesses, you know fundamental is I grew up as a paid media guy in marketing. And I think it's evolving over time but you know from a Beachbody and beyond heavy on TV, heavy on digital, you know that was what I knew. And certainly one of the core 10X. If you're going to run paid is you've got to know what a customer is worth. You know people sometimes ask like what's a good CPA? It's like I don't answer that question because I don't know your business. I don't know what a customer is worth. You know are you … do you have business constraints around needing to be casual positive on day one, on day 30, ideal business goals. There's so many factors that come in so this but really my belief is … and I just don't know any other way is especially when you're running paid media you need to know what a customer is worth because you need to know how much you can afford to pay for them. That sounds really basic and fundamental and hopefully for a lot of folks that is. But you know that's the core of it because ultimately it's how do you know if you're going to spend more or less? How do you know if your numbers whether in Facebook or otherwise are good or not? You have to have some of that measure. So a lot of the core work that I do with folks … and really I'd write about and all that is really if you're going to be running paid you need to understand those basics around customer acquisition. And then again start with whatever you have even if it's all customers that's … you're not dissecting by ad said or by Facebook versus Google. Just start somewhere and then you start to refine this overtime. Mark: All right. I love these conversations because I go into them sometimes not knowing what I'm going to ask and then after the first two or three minutes I've got a list of questions. So let's start with basics, you said start with the basics and fundamentals. What are those? What should somebody be tracking at a minimum? Babak: So let's assume [inaudible 00:11:39.2] whether you're a SaaS business, info product, physical product you know certainly from a from a traffic side the core stuff of spend, click through rates, CPC's, [inaudible 00:11:50.5], cost per click, conversions, cost per acquisition … whatever that means for you; for some folks, that's if your lead gen versus you're loop driving to an order. Those are just conventions and so the philosophical stuff and the strategic stuff applies to both. Certainly, you want funnel metrics, how many people hit your site whether it's landers or blog pages … you know get through the funnel and so whether you have one step or a five step process I would say again start with … if you have GA set up or you have others tools set up, what kind of just basic tracking of how many people are hitting pages, what's your conversion rate, average order value, and then ideally over time … and whether it's someone converts on day zero or beyond, what is the value of those people over time. So I generally try to look in ice sized chunks of day one … day zero, day one to 30, 31 to 60, and then beyond. And depending on your risk profile, your business goals, all those things you may determine how long you want to look out and how much you want to apply towards customer acquisition. Mark: Let's talk about that a little bit here because this is something that I've run across a few times recently. You know looking out over these different strata of periods of time; zero to 28 and then this kind of second up to maybe around 60 days; why are you taking a look at that? And you're taking a look at this in terms of the value that client is going to bring to you right? Babak: Right. Mark: So why break it out into those different groups? Babak: Well first and foremost depending on the business goals and constraints, that can oftentimes going to define how you're going to approach managing. Let's say … I mean I'm going to talk about paid media for a moment, that's going to manage that because if you look at … if you need to be breakeven based on credit terms, cash flow, whatever that is; if you need to be breakeven by day 30 or day 60 then you need to know what that customer is worth. And so based on a margin basis not just certainly on a revenue basis but on a margin basis you need to know how much you're making by day 30, by day 60 cumulative and that's going to help to define what your CPA targets are. And then it's … again for me, there is no right and wrong whether you're managing to a breakeven, to a margin percent, and if you are just revenue driven and you've got venture funding and you need to be driving those are not for me to say. And I never have a perspective of right and wrong … it's those are personal and business decisions but you need to understand that. And then frankly once you have some of these base lines then it's a matter of how do you start to improve those things over time. So if you know what day one, day 30, 31 to 60 then presumably someone in your team whether it's the owner, the single person, or someone on the team is spending time testing to say how do we actually start to drive this and improve that. And again different models you may need to look at 180 days, you may look at a year … I mean I work with folks that have a one year break even because they can afford to do that; some folks breakeven on day one. And so different businesses and different models can allow for that and some it's much more difficult. So you just have to understand the nature of your business and then what kind of things you're trying to constrain with. Mark: Yeah, by the way, some example … so something that I've run into in a business recently where we had a solid lifetime value number, and we were able to calculate it pretty well by taking a look at customers that had … this was a subscription based business, we took a look at customers that have canceled over the last six months and looked at their average lifetime value. And you know the number was something like I don't know $130, $140 but the average ticket value for any single sale was maybe about $30-35. What we found was that there was these whales and there right? These whales in there that were spending $3,000 and it took them years to be able to get to that point. So when you take a look at that lifetime value analysis we say okay that they might be worth $140 or $130 whatever the number was but was in order to do that you need a couple of these whales to wait for three, four years before you can actually get that value back. Babak: Right. Mark: So we had to kind of take a look at that from that kind of strategic way [inaudible 00:15:50.3] okay actually what are we getting from clients on average in month one and then in month two and then a month three and beyond that. We're not going to care too much about the lifetime value because it's going to take too long to recoup that cost. Babak: Right. Yeah and some businesses may not be able to afford to wait that long for those whales to kick in. And really then it means A. you're managing your risk in a certain way. Again, whatever is appropriate and then you're basically operating at a higher margin than maybe you could operate if you could tolerate that and maybe you want to take some of that and spend it into media. But if you can't wait that long and there's just too much risk and it's too small of a percent and too inconsistent then that may just be the way you run it. I think I get in some ways the same question when you're first starting, it's … that's great if you have five years of data and you have a much more sophisticated and robust [inaudible 00:16:37.1] data in your business. But if when you're just starting you probably need to start more conservative right? An owner that has bootstrapped the business knows that you start with what you can afford and then as you learn, as you develop and have this history… the history in the business then you start to understand your customers better; what they're worth and then maybe you can start to manage your media and how you think about that better and surely hopefully concurrently you're optimizing the funnel so your customers are worth more, you're converting better, all these types of things right? But that's just the nature of again where businesses are in there maturity and how long they've been around. Mark: Yeah one of the common objections I hear from people … because we ask people who are selling their business all the time what's the average lifetime value of a client? And one of the biggest objections I get to that is I have no idea because customers are still with me. And you said something at the beginning and that is just start. There's a lot of models out there, just start with something. Do you have a basic model that you like to follow? I know for myself I just like to take a look at okay I might sell if a customer is with us and from the Quiet Light perspective we can say the same thing. Our business is typically one off but we have people who have sold two, three, four businesses. All the same, we don't want to assume that, we're just going to take a look at what … the lifetime value I spend right now with the assumption it could grow. Do you have a recommended model for people that are saying I don't know how to [inaudible 00:17:58.7] for these people that are still with us? Babak: So the fact that a customer is still with you for me is not a reason to not understand what a customer is worth. And so let's say they've been with you for … let's say the businesses have been around for a year and you've got 20%, 50% of the customers have been around that long. Do the average based on how ever long that cohort has been around. And if the other ones are … you know seem like they're directionally going that way then great. And then as you get more information you can start to build your model and add to it. But you know I think part of the thing also to be careful over depending on how long the business has been around is how many people are you looking at? So if you've got 100 customers versus 10,000 you trust more volume, right? And then the other part is just looking at I like to break things down into monthly cohorts. Let's assume it's just purchase, so I'm not lead gen but it's purchase, I like to look at who are all the people who first transacted in January, and then in February, and then in March and look at their relative month one, month two, month three revenues and certainly again margin and then start to see what kinds of patterns start to form and then again. And starting really that at that level and then you just start to refine this thing and as you get more data and … then great then you start to layer in. So worst case you're being conservative because you have customers who are going to stick around a little longer but that's a good thing and that's a good worst case to have as opposed to certainly the opposite where you may be overestimating or you may be overlooking at one group that's worth a ton and everyone else isn't remotely tracking towards that super high value group. Mark: I think a problem that people run into a lot is they've up the perfect be the enemy they good, they want to get that perfect model and if they think they can get it then they don't do it. I know I've fallen victim to that quite a bit as well. I want to [inaudible 00:19:41.4] Babak: Quote I have on my phone that shows up is perfect … done is better than perfect. And it's really easy to get stuck in that analysis paralysis perfection like … and also frankly this idea that everyone else has it better. I think a lot of people think that bigger companies or those using better tools always have better data but is definitely not the case. Like a lot of times the bigger companies they have too many legacy systems so I think oftentimes that comparison can pull people back because they think I'm never going to be able to achieve what someone else is doing or all that big data stuff. I mean just start with what you got and literally it could be Excel with a college kid and then you start building from there. Like literally it can be that that can be very very effective and I've seen it be that way. Mark: Yeah that's a good lead into my next question because you know you started at Beachbody with 100 million in revenue right? So you guys wanted to go ahead and start digesting data, you put a million dollars towards hiring on a new team just to be able to digest data. The entrepreneur who has an e-commerce business doing three million, four million bucks that's a lot more of a challenge for them to bring on that much of a team. Excel, analytics, are there any other programs they may want to look at or systems that you know of that might be a good starting point or would you even recommend going out and hiring a college kid or going onto a place like Upwork to be able to have somebody to crunch numbers? Babak: Yeah I mean so first of all when I joined again it was seven, what you think maybe a hundred million dollar business has in terms of systems and processes I would say first of all the tools today are so so much better. But I looking back, I work with some hundred million dollar businesses now that have dramatically better systems and reporting frankly because the tools are just much easier. So you know it took a year or so for me to get correlatively cleaner data and not even clean. So first of all even back then it wasn't like everything was so dialed in, that's kind of part of my point. And then second again like depending on people whether on Shopify or Magento or whatever your platform, honestly the basic thing is do a data dump. I've hired for multiple clients someone part time on Upwork to basically do some slicing and dicing; basic stuff, get some things in place. And we're not talking … so first of all even if you hire someone full time and let's say that person is 50,000 a year just picking a number, your exposure to that person is not 50,000 because within 90 days you should know whether that person is going to be working out or not. So let's say it's a quarter of that plus maybe a little bit more so oftentimes first people think about if you're going to bring on someone full time that that annualized cost that's really not what it is. You should know I think within 90 days that you're getting what you need and they're on a path. But at the very least there are definitely folks on Upwork and really just looking for someone who's got some similar work; I put people through an Excel test to make sure they can do the basics. It's all made up information and yeah you start with that and I've literally had college kids help out just … who were good at Excel. They don't need to know that much, they just need to know how to slice and dice some information. And maybe it's an MBA, I'm not saying you have to go there but certainly Upwork, Excel, using again basic tools. You do not need certainly anything remotely close to enterprise so you get stuff going. And I will say I do, I run some numbers for some of my clients and it's literally … I did one about a week ago, Excel, Hubspot, Shopify, GA piece it all together and we had a pretty rich view. It took some time obviously but we then had a pretty rich view of what those customers look like. Mark: So with somebody who has a Shopify store or an Amazon store where you can't really track customers as well with Amazon, but let's say Shopify store where you can track your customers, or a SaaS application or anything else where you're tracking those customers would you literally just go out and do a dump of that data of the customers and go back and start to calculate okay this is what … you know graphing it out, these customers are worth this much in those first 30 days and then it starts to look like this when we move out? Babak: Yup that's exactly. I mean … so and that's what we did. Let's say you're looking at 2017 data it's literally [inaudible 00:23:52.4] all the new customers and that's part of the thing is making sure they're new versus repeat. But let's just say you can identify that hopefully relatively easily; who are the new customers who purchased for the first time in January of '17, February of '17, March of '17 and literally track those people. Look at their February orders for January, look at the March orders for both like you know January and February and really that's literally started that way. And you can then start to slice and dice by traffic source, by product, by offer, by ad set. But that's next level, for some folks they just want to get the pure basics. Just start with that average thing and then once you have that and then you start to refine over time. But literally it's a data dump and you know if you can marry it with GA or with your CRM or ESP then great but at the very least start with the overall, start with maybe one line and then you just start to get better from that point. And frankly again that's what I did with Beachbody, that's what I do with my clients. And whether it's me or working with their teams you just start and then you start to refine over time. Mark: All right so let's go to the other side of this conversation. We started to get a good sense for our lifetime value and what a client brings to us in terms of different time frames; the first 30 days, the next … the first 60 days and so on and so forth and we know our cash flow requirements. Again, people listening, you have to keep in mind if you're going to spend $50 on a client and they're not going to pay you $50 until month six you need enough cash flow to be able to get to that payback period. Let's build a strategy, what does the strategy look like then at that point from acquiring the customers and going through different channels? I know obviously with Beachbody you guys did television, you did radio, you did a lot of media which was hard to track. And we see this a lot with … you know online platforms are really good right now at tracking with view through conversions and everything else but there's still some of those mediums out there that aren't great and imperfect. How does that sort of factor into your decisions when it comes to acquisition channels? Babak: Yeah I mean so no matter what channel you're in attribution is the bane of everyone's existence. A very very few people have it down and like oh I know what that means to have it down. You want to get to the point where you feel like a level of comfort and confidence. You know these days again most of the work … I have one client that I work with on TV and it's a very rare exception of how good their attribution model is but let's say that for the most part, most people are doing … I mean it's digital heavy. So for me, I basically focus and work with folks on really only a few channels so Google … which for me is Google and Bing. I mean people always forget about Bing, it's another 5, 10% and my joke is if you don't want that 5, 10% can I have it? And I'm joking but no one ever says yes. But it's using higher ROI's especially when you're talking slightly older demos. But Google and Bing, Facebook and Instagram, your internal e-mail and affiliates, and frankly just … and I said just but if you focus there I've seen plenty of businesses go well into nine figures; focus there. And then certainly you can layer on radio and podcast, TV, direct mail; but honestly Google, Facebook, affiliates, e-mail and internal … you know that's really where I put a lot of time and attention. And I'll say even then attribution is a bit of a mess because Facebook and Google don't talk to each other. So they're each one who takes some credit … you know or using GA last click, what's happening are people opting in through Facebook and then converting through e-mail? But you really just have to start to piece together things, at the end of the day again depending on your business model your PNL and bank account are the true measures of it. And so that sounds like a totally average overall view but yeah that's again I work with folks that have that and then they've got to a certain level of sophistication. So you start with … you know start and piece together what does Google say, what does Facebook say, like if you add up those two do you even have that many orders? You're going to have to be very careful about double counting but you just start to piece together this … the data starts to tell a bit of a story. I would just say one thing you mentioned view through, I am a very very very conservative on view through so the point of it I basically I ignore it; certainly from a GDN side and really even from Facebook. I just think unless you prove it I'd rather start with a [inaudible 00:28:07.2] and it doesn't work. I mean you got to prove it as opposed to just proving it. But I know that you know 28 day click one day view on Facebook is the standard set up. I moved most people to 7 day click not because it's right but mostly because it … we got to account for double counting, AdWords, what's going on in email, things like that. So there's … again there's no right and wrong but that's one of places I've kind of dialed in a little bit is looking at 7 day click. But honestly my biggest … the biggest mistake I oftentimes see with people with channels is they have too many. And so I think if people say oh I heard someone's doing something on Pinterest or YouTube or I got to do this, frankly if I see people who have four channels where it's 25% in each, that says actually something is not being done well enough. And usually, it's people who are really scaled, I kind of have this thing of two offers two channels, most businesses that have scaled substantively they've gone deep and hard in a couple channels which basically means they're left probably some money on the table elsewhere maybe but it means they're focused. And that means they're exploiting where things are working. And so I think that's one of the things, people think I got to be in so many places, I don't … I have not found that to be the case at all. And even though it sounds like you're concentrating your risk it also means you're exploiting an opportunity. And that's really I think oftentimes what you're really trying to do. Mark: How do you know when to give up on the channel if it's not working or would you? Babak: You know it's a good question I think at some point you have to make a call so it's … I don't have a rule around it and I put it that way hard and fast. I think it's … first of all, I like modeling off of other people; not copying but modeling. And so it is … it can be dangerous because you can see all these other people seemingly running a bunch of ads and yours may not be working but you may not know what their goals are and their goals may be different than yours. So I think it's always … you got to be careful about comparison but you know I think at some point you have to take … just like a lot of things you have to take an honest assessment and say do we feel like we've given this a fair shot? How much time and money have we invested? Frankly, what is it pulling because we all have tradeoffs whether you're a six figure business or a nine figure business everyone is resource constrained in their own relative way. So you have to pick and choose your battles and really where you think now. I guess … and sometimes the market maybe telling you something too that it may not be the channel but maybe the way you're executing on it right? Which may be kind of the same thing for you but I think that's one of the things too is really you have to take an honest assessment of what have you done, what have you tried, have you talked to people, have you pulled in whether experts or friends or done some research and you know. I think then it's relative to other things that you have in front of you, where is your time, your capital, your resources is better allocated. Mark: Yeah all right that's awesome. I told you before we started recording this that we were not going to get to the one thing I really wanted to talk to so I'm going to get to it now. And that is something I find fascinating about your approach to direct response marketing because direct response marketing we often think about in terms of the money that goes in we want to make sure that we're getting a positive ROI out of that and we're just measuring that and that alone. And we see it almost as this opposite of brand marketing which is splash it out there splash it out there and splash it out there and it's kind of a long play. But you have this intersection and you do this a lot with Beachbody as well, you have this intersection of brand and also the direct response. If somebody is focusing on those four that you put out, the Facebook, the Google, affiliate, and internal e-mail, what can they do to start building a brand and why is that important? Babak: So I think the first distinction is around something you said and I think a lot of people will latch onto which is brand marketing. And so really what I focus on and try to talk to folks about is building a brand. And so for me the distinction is brand marketing oftentimes is associated with you spend a bunch of money on media marketing whatever that's basically non-trackable and that is trying to build brand awareness but without necessarily tying it to some kind of metric. And I say that as opposed to focusing on building a brand. For me, that really comes down to the customer experience. And so those are totally can be integrated with a performance marketing direct response model. And really that's about how do you start to take care of the customer and treat them frankly like you would want to be treated if you were the customer. So I think it's less about brand marketing initiatives and it's more about this idea of does the word in the Lexicon around building a brand, about building something that's lasting; how often does that come up in the organization? I had breakfast actually with a friend this morning and we're talking about the idea of what's on brand versus off and what that means. But really at the end of the day, it's are you building something that's got some sense of sustainability? And I think oftentimes especially when you're earlier on the idea of shortcuts of doing things that are maybe … whether it's not as clean or not as brand building, I get that everyone's got to make their call all around those things but ultimately if you want to build something that's got some sense of scale and got some sense of sustainability I do believe you have to be focused on building a brand. Because when you do that you start to treat the customer better. You start to invest more in your product. You start to invest more in the kinds of media and frankly, that kind of stuff can be infused in your acquisition efforts. Did I mention that I'm writing a book on customer experience and that really came from how do you start to bring DR and brand together and really things like tapping into a sense of identity in community. That's not just brand marketing that's non-trackable, you can start to build that into your video ads on Facebook, Dollar Beard Club … now The Beard Club and they've done a phenomenal job of there's this sense of identity in association with you're a man with a beard. And so they tap into that and who you are, what that means, and so that is one layer of customer experience and building that brand that is clearly tied to performance marketing but it starts to infuse that. I would say two things like … you know so my four categories is really around the human and emotional stuff; there's product, there's the transactional experience, and then there's content like video. And they're not mutually exclusive [inaudible 00:34:16.0] stretch. But I'll say like with subscription businesses whether online … I mean media, SaaS, or physical box, one of the best places or best examples I see people have make some mistakes is around order notification. So this is not brand marketing, this is are you treating the customer better? Are you letting them know that next order is going to ship, that next feeling is going to happen? And oftentimes I see people say well if I send an email before that billing my churn rate is going to go up and my response is absolutely you're correct but also you know what happens is your customer is actually aware of that billing. They're not annoyed. I mean I think we all faced that thing where whether it's a meal subscription or otherwise, a billing happened and we didn't know about it we're annoyed we got to go cancel. We tell our friends, we post. That kind of stuff actually has an impact on the brand. And honestly one of the best examples I've seen of how to use that notification positively is Dollar Shave Club, they send a notification but they use that as a promotional opportunity to say your order is about the ship do you want to add something to it? And so whether it's their shaving cream or any of their other products they use that … and again 20 or 30% of people are going to open your email if you're lucky. So it's not everyone but you get the brand benefit of notification but then use that as a promotional opportunity and say do you want to add something more. And I would much rather be playing in that kind of world rather than trying to sneak in what you think is a one or two more orders but it's very hard to quantify. But you absolutely are hurting the brand if you're playing a longer game when you're trying to sneak stuff in and not be as clean and upfront. And yes Netflix and Direct TV don't do that but again those are very very different businesses than subscription boxes or something that you start on a risk free trial that frankly doesn't get the kind of use that Direct TV and Netflix would. Mark: Could you repeat those four categories again? Those are great. Babak: So the first one is really I talk about as like the human and emotional aspects. So that's things like identity, community, exclusivity, things that are raw human needs and traits. The second is really product, and there are multiple layers on it but I think it's kind of crazy that I have to focus and emphasize it but the number of people that I see that don't have the attention to detail on product. I've talked to people who's starting they want to private label fine but the better your product [inaudible 00:36:35.0] part it doesn't always win but a better product gives you a better chance at that. Third is the transactional experience, so how do you take people through your funnel, what is it like to get a refund, what it's like to get … I talked to customer service those kinds of things. And the fourth is content, so how do you use video, music, spokesperson, or a character. I mean really each of these things, there are plenty of examples of companies that are using all of them or just one of them to really start to enhance that experience and really start to rile their customers. That's the [inaudible 00:37:05.3] kind of thing but you basically need customers these days to be blown away. It is … you know I like to say it like it's … when people say it's the easiest time to start a business because generally the tools are easier but it's also like that means it's brutally difficult to compete and to differentiate. So you've got to be just a ton better than everyone else. And my experience is that customer experience and these kinds of things is really what you need and again it's infusing this idea of playing the longer game into performance marketing and direct response. These two are not at odds. Mark: Cool. All right you got a book that you're writing right now do you have any idea when that's going to be done? Babak: Best case is Thanksgiving time but I've started … I mean I'm happy to post a couple of links to some of the things I've started to write about whether in LinkedIn or in Twitter to just to kind of go a little bit deeper into these and show some specific examples. But yeah we're still talking a few months out. Mark: Okay I know we've had a couple of other people that are reading books and we always get e-mails after saying “Hey can I get notified when that book is out?” So do us a favor one when you do have that out send me a message and I'll make sure I update everyone that wants to be updated on that. And then where can people learn more about you? Obviously Round Two Ventures, any other place? Babak: Yeah I mean my business is Round Two, it's Round Two Partners. Visit the website. But yeah the same thing and it's like a holding company but my blog is the easiest. It's just my name, it's Babak Azad B-A-B-A-K-A-Z-A-D.com And that's what … I put a lot of content there and then frankly there and LinkedIn. I'm @BabakAzad pretty much on everything other than Gmail of all things but … another Babak Azad stole that from me but … he was earlier but yeah I'm on pretty much every platform. But my blog and LinkedIn are the two easiest platform. Mark: Fantastic, this is great. So thank you so much for coming on, I really do appreciate it. Babak: Thanks a lot Mark I'm glad to be here.   Links and Resources: Round Two Partners Babak's Blog LinkedIn

The Quiet Light Podcast
How to Use Humor to Increase Conversions

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 4, 2018 33:17


Lianna Patch is funny. Not everyone can stand up in front of 150 entrepreneurs and make them laugh, respect her, and want to hire her all at the same time. Yet – that's exactly what she did when I attended the Blue Ribbon Mastermind event in Denver last month (August 2018). When Lianna shares her passion, which is writing copy infused with humor that converts, people make more money. How? Their customers stay on page, get engaged in, and actually read what you write. Oh, and then they buy your product, write reviews and spread the word about your brand. Humor makes people like you. So why not write copy infused with humor? Because you are not funny. Me neither, at least that's what my kids tell me (what do they know…). It is a skill we don't all have, clearly. Episode Highlights: What Lianna does to help clients who come to her with the need for something new. How her techniques to boost add-to-cart conversions as well as purchase conversions. Why it is important to message-match across the board, through the entire purchase and follow-up process. The importance of building the relationship so that if the product is a one-off perhaps that client will be swayed to purchase other items. Lianna shares the biggest mistakes people make when writing online copy. Steps business owners should take to improve copy and what should be first on the list. What makes certain checkouts places that people want to revisit again and again. The importance of grammar and how intentionally not using perfect grammar can work if done the right way. Why Lianna thinks being buttoned up is a thing of e-commerce past. How to grab people's attention with web copy content. Transcription: Mark: Joe you spent a lot of years in the direct response world specifically within the agency world and buying radio ads right? Joe: Yeah. Yes, I did brought a lot of copy. Mark: Brought a lot of copy and this is an area that we're going to talk about today, writing copy. I find for myself when I have to actually write copy it's a completely different mindset from pretty much everything else and it can be difficult to do. Lianna Patch and she is a professional copywriter for specifically conversions right? Joe: Yes Lianna Patch did a presentation at the Blue Ribbon Mastermind in front of 150 entrepreneurs and she writes copy that conversion … calls herself a conversion copywriter which I think is brilliant. I'm sure it's a phrase that lots of people have heard but for some reason, it is brand new to me. Although that's what I did, that's what my contractors did back in my radio days and my online days. But what she did was she infused comedy into her presentation and she infuses comedy into her clients' websites, their emails, their … all of their different campaigns and Mark it works. I'm telling you the presentation was fantastic she gave some examples of what the before and after copy was like and it just made me want to read it. When you go to her website it just makes you want to stay on the website and poke around and look at different things. And throughout the whole podcast, I keep going back to her website and giving examples that I think are just hilarious and make me want to keep reading. And I don't think enough of us e-commerce entrepreneur or SaaS entrepreneurs whatever you want to call yourself infuse the human factor and a little bit of comedy into your content so that people realize you're not just some big corporation that's sending your standard email. It makes a big difference I think. Mark: Absolutely, any time you can get somebody to laugh that's going to loosen them up and also to disarm them a little bit from that and accessible as well. That's fantastic. You need to make sure you send me her website so I can take a look and enjoy some of the copy as well. Joe: Yeah there's some great ideas there you can get right from her website. But this is important stuff, right? Our first line of engagement with our customer is content. There's going to be some visual stuff but there's usually some content as well. So anyone listening that has any online presence or hopes to buy one and do better than the previous owner I would strongly recommend they listen to this entire podcast. Mark: All right, well let's get to it. Joe: Hey folks it's Joe Valley at the Quiet Light Podcast. Thanks for joining us today. Today I have a very special guest, her name is Lianna Patch. Lianna, welcome. Lianna: Thank you so much for having me. Joe: You are apparently funny, you're from Punchline Copy. I saw you … I know you're funny because I saw you at the Blue Ribbon Mastermind. There's no question about being apparently funny. Lianna: Okay. Joe: You said some pretty vulgar sayings in front of a big crowd of entrepreneurs and you could have fallen flat on your face or they all could have laughed out loud. And you did it within like the first 60 seconds and I- Lianna: I did. Joe: We all laughed out loud so thank you. Lianna: I'm so glad. Joe: It made us very comfortable being audacious ourselves so thank you for that. And I've looked at your website and I want you to tell folks about yourself but then I'm going to just like comment on a few things as well. So the for the folks listening instead of me doing that introduction, that fancy thing, why don't you tell us who you are, what you do, and what you're all about? Lianna: Sure. So I'm a conversion copyrighter which basically means I don't just make stuff up I base my copy on customer research and what people need to actually hear. And on top of that, I use humor as a tool to help mostly e-commerce stores and bootstrap software businesses connect better with their customers and retain customers longer. Joe: Conversion copywriter, wow. Lianna: Yeah. Joe: I love that. Did you make that up? Lianna: I did not. Joe: Somebody else coined that phrase? Lianna: I believe we can attribute it to the great Joanna Wiebe. She is a fabulous copywriter. I'm pretty sure she came up with the term conversion copywriting. She's the most well-known one. Joe: Okay. Lianna: And I met her in her first copywriter mastermind. Joe: And we will attribute it to Joanna Wiebe. But conversion copywriter really stands out and tells people exactly what you do. It's pretty quick and pretty direct to the point. Lianna: Yeah. Joe: And you infuse it with humor so I just want for people that are not watching this video on the home page of your website … where is it, it says… oh, I've got to scroll down a little bit, where is it. All right there's something that says something along the lines of … oh my God it's gone I'm on the wrong page. Really. Anyway, it says something along the lines of blank blank blank AF and it's right there in your face funny as AF. And for those that don't have teenagers and don't understand … I'm sorry for those that don't understand what that means ask your teenager because they do. You have a knock knock joke on your website as well and it says “Knock knock who's there and the answer is a shitload of money.” It's all good. It's all funny and it converts. So tell us about some of the experiences you've had with people that have terrible copy and how you fixed it and what kind of impact it has on their end mind revenue which is what folks are really looking for. Lianna: Yeah. My favorite type of client to work with is someone that comes to me and says okay we did the thing where we hired a professional copywriter and we come off like really cool and corporate and solid and we hate it and it's not working and we need to be more personal and funny please help because they already know the value. They already know that humor is going to help them connect better. So one example that I have been talking about a lot lately because it's exciting … and it's an e-commerce brand that sells wedding rings, it's called Manly Bands. And I came in and worked on some of their product descriptions. And they already have a super fun brand. They were already using humor throughout. I like to think of them as like the Dollar Shave Club of wedding rings but their product descriptions were very short. And they were kind of funny but they weren't really converting. So I went in, wrote longer descriptions, which is funny for some people because they think oh short copy is better. People don't like to read, people will read if you give them a reason to. And we made them funny and we made them personable and kind of weird and they boosted conversions almost across the board; both add to cart conversions and purchase conversions. So that was a really great test result to just be able to point to and say “hey look it works”. Joe: That's great it's a … you know I'm old school direct response, I used to sell stuff on radio. We'd write a 60 second spot ad that had to convert with someone actually calling the 800 number. I started in 1997 as I said before but you have to write copy that converts and get an action. So I love the conversion copy and it's measurable. You also talked about not just on the website where people are looking at the product description, not necessarily in the cart things of that nature. But you really if you have a client and can touch every aspect of their branding campaign do you hone in on the and if yes what kind of things do you do? Lianna: I do try to so I work more on the … I work closer to the purchase and post purchase for attention. That's kind of my jam. So I do a lot of emails. And I really feel like emails are one place we can use humor the most because it's the ability to build that one on one connection. You can be so personal, you can be so weird and funny in email and people will … you know even if it's coming from a brand they'll be like I like this. It feels like a real person in my inbox. Of course, it's top of funnel, sometimes you can scare people away with humor if you go about it the wrong way. It just depends on your brand and how willing you are to test those kinds of things. But if I can I'll address all of those touch points because they should be cohesive. There's got to be a message match between the ad, the landing page, the follow up emails, you know the eventual sale or whatever it is that you guide people to. Joe: I think the instinct of an entrepreneur that's building a brand is to give the impression to the end customer. The first impression is to that hey we're a real company, we're doing things in a very professional manner; which kind of may be boring. I just had a business that won on a contract fairly quickly with multiple offers and his customer service emails and responses were “hey thanks for helping the little guy we're here just taking care of my son join us and really … really appreciate it” that kind of thing. Lianna: Yeah. Joe: I think that does resonate. I think using the word feel, it feels like a real person behind the email. Lianna: Yeah. Joe: And really reaches out and helps them quite a bit. So you will touch all aspects of it from … if you can. From the website to … I mean from the email to conversion, would you do follow up emails after the sale as well and work out as well all aspects of it there? Lianna: Yeah. That's actually one of my favorite things to work on. I was just talking to my friend Val Geisler, she's an awesome email strategist about this and we were talking about especially with e-commerce businesses so many people are neglecting the long term post purchase follow up sequence. So someone has bought once and then they just get thrown back into this regular newsletter or sales email cycle. And there's no like follow up and say like hey do you want this product that sort of corresponds to what you bought. You get the review ask emails every now and then or take a survey but there's like two to three emails max after the purchase and then you just get lumped into existing customers. There's no specific long term nurture track to get you back for that second purchase. So that seems like a huge opportunity for most e-commerce stores and for humor because again they've already bought from you once. Now is the time to build the relationship more. Joe: And it's not just spamming them with emails if you're writing good content that's funny and enjoyable and they like reading them. They're probably not going to unsubscribe. Lianna: Right. Joe: Perhaps. Lianna: Right and you can test your sending limits like if you start to see a higher rate of unsubscribes back off; that's not rocket science. Joe: So I did a podcast early in the week with a guy named John Warrilow and he's written several books and he has something called the Value Builder System. And it's all about creating recurring and repeat revenue in your business and I would think that what you're doing is helping build the relationship with the customer so that if they sell a one off product … you said earlier you know hey maybe you might be interested in this too, that follow up email sequence keeps them engaged and maybe perhaps will help them become a repeat customer and buy an additional product along the way. Lianna: Yeah. Joe: [inaudible 00:10:58.9] Lianna: Yes and even if it's something that they might not need to of … I hear this a lot from mattress companies, I've worked with a few mattress companies you know A. they have other product lines. They have bedding and pillows and things like that accessories. But B. even if you move into a different business completely, if you've built those crazy rabid fans they'll follow you to whatever you do next. Joe: So you've mentioned Man Rings was the first one or something like that. Lianna: Manly Bands. Joe: Manly Bands, I love it. Lianna: It's great. Joe: And a mattress company, so I mean very very diverse product categories here. What other kind of physical product companies do you work with? So that people listening can say oh yeah okay she can help. Lianna: Oh yeah, clothing … I like to work with clothing. Honestly, any consumer product I think is really fun. I have to obviously believe that there's a benefit to it. I've had people come to me. Especially in the supplement world, I'm a little skeptical sometimes of actual benefits. So I like to try the product first and say can I get behind this? And if I can then I'll happily write a copy for it not that I can't but I will. Joe: You know I wish we met …. what is it a decade ago now right? I sold my company in 2010 and boy you would had fun with that. I sold a colon cleansing product. Lianna: Oh great. Joe: We started selling colon cleansing on radio back in 2002 and a TV infomercial in 2003. It went 100% online in 2005 and ultimately built a digestive wellness center around it. Lianna: Okay. Joe: But boy you would have had some fun ones. Lianna: Is that like colon cleansing from the outside in or from the inside out? Joe: Well that's from the inside out. Lianna: Okay. Joe: No it wasn't [inaudible 00:12:39.2]. Lianna: That's easier to sell. Yeah, okay. Joe: And it was … you know for those listening I mean you can't … you think what's fun about my product? You can't … you have to be serious about it something like that. We try to be serious about it and I think it was okay. We got lots and lots of testimonials and people would actually love to be … strangest thing ever people, when we produced a TV infomercial we had a producer travel around the country following up people to give testimonials and they'll actually get on camera and talk about their bowel movements and it's just crazy. And you would have had a great deal of fun with it and we could have made more fun of it and made it more enjoyable for all I guess. But I mean you can … from what I've seen [inaudible 00:13:21.0] for your presentation you kind of make every little aspect of it fun so that the entire feeling of the company is joyful and fun. For instance, the 404 redirect that you put up on the screen at Blue Ribbon Mastermind, can you describe that for the people? Lianna: Yeah so that's one of my favorite places where people aren't expecting humor, to just give them a joke or something weird. And this is … what was it called? I think it was eventcenter.uk or something. The site's not there anymore but it's oh no you hit the wrong link this isn't here choose one of our developers to fire. And it's four guys and if you click one of them he puts his head down in his hands and the rest of them looks relieved and then it says oh no he's only been working here for six months. He was just an intern like you're so horrible. And then it redirects you back to the homepage. Joe: Keeps people on the site versus you hit a 404 redirect … oh my god, this guy is terrible and you leave. Lianna: There's so many great ones, NPR has one too that's oh there's nothing here but here's a bunch of other articles about missing things. And there's an article about like lost luggage, Jimmy Hoffa … you know our retirement, things like that. [inaudible 00:14:28.0] for them like. Joe: That's fantastic. What would you say from your experience and the clients that you've worked with, what would you say are some of the biggest mistakes that they make when writing copy? Lianna: One of the biggest mistakes no matter what industry you're in is making the copy all about you. One of the easiest ways to fix that is to go through it and say how many times do we say we or I versus you the reader because they should always know what's in it for them while they're reading. Joe: Ok so back on the focus of the customer, what kind of things have you seen happen when people … if they want to take one, two, or three steps and try to improve their own copy? Is that step number one? What are the things should they do to try to make a big change and what areas should they focus on first? Is it the tagline on their website? Is it the email? Is it something in the cart? What do you focus on first? Lianna: I'd like to focus on whatever is closest to the actual purchase. So that's going to have the biggest effect on revenue if you can improve your checkout, not just copy but UX. If you're using something that's not an out of the box thing like Shopify you might have some serious UX issues in your checkout that you don't know about. What else- Joe: You're infusing humor in the copy in the checkout? Lianna: If I can. Joe: If you can. Lianna: I was just talking about this this morning. It's interesting how things connect. I think it's Shopify doesn't really let you change the form instructions or form auto-fill like the placeholder text in the checkout but that can be hugely persuasive. And it's a great place to run tests because you can just change something like email address to your email address or your favorite email address and that can have a huge impact on conversions. And obviously changing copy on the buy button can have a big impact too. But all of those things come standard or you can't tweak them unless you're a custom coder. And I think even then it's hard to get that stuff developed so I don't know that's been like a pet peeve of mine with certain checkouts. Joe: You want to be able to touch everything and change it and make it better. Lianna: Yeah because there are … I've been through some check outs that are just delightful and it makes you want to keep going even if it's a multiple screen checkout. There's a … do you know Cards Against Humanity? I've mentioned that at the talk. They have actually a fortune cookie company. Joe: Oh they do? Lianna: It's called OK Cookie and the fortunes are horrific. I have one over there that says you will die at an Arby's in Columbus, Ohio. That's the kind of fortune you get from them. But their check out process is just written the same way that all their other copy is which is very informal. Like pop, your email address in here hit this button to whatever and it can be as simple as a verb change to make people think oh a real person touched this. This isn't just a robot that's going to take my money and maybe not send me these cookies that will make me sad. Joe: Again going back to how the end customer feels in the process. Love it. You talked about grammar and that it's not always best practices to have proper grammar. I think … you know I was in the remedial English class in high school. I didn't have Mrs. Henderson I had Mrs. Lane and she was a step down so my grammar is always kind of poor. We were at a friend's house, I've got 14 and 16 year old boys and the neighbor was copied on an email because … it has something to do with the kids, the kids who are here and she asked my son if he'd already sent that. And he said yes, she goes oh there was a grammatical error and blah blah blah. And it's still read very well, it felt good and it was like from a teenage boy. And you can tell it was from a teenage boy. And the intent was good and I never would have corrected it. And she tried to after the fact you intentionally will misspell things and misspeak or misspoke whatever the case might be from what I can hear and what I've seen is that correct? Lianna: Yeah. Joe: Can you talk about that? Lianna: Yes and if it's a weird thing to say because I spent so long as first a copy editor and then a content editor. So I've been like in the nitty gritty line level proofing and the overall structural editing for so long and I was such a stickler for such a long time. And then eventually I had to let go because my heart rate was getting nuts. It just wasn't … that was great for me physically. But I think it's important to do it intentionally so that it doesn't come across as an oversight. So for instance, if you're going to put in a misspelling like I just said gonna, I didn't say going to. Technically you know that's an allusion it's mashing two words together, cutting off the end of a word, that's intentional. It comes across as intentional. Misspelling a word in a subject line can be intentional done the right way. The example that I gave was spelling M-O-R-E more as M-O-A-R because that's kind of internet speak. That's obviously intentional. Even when subject lines do go out with actual unintentional typos they tend to get higher open rates. I just saw one from Wistia they're having an online conference called CouchCon. And there's a subject line with “its” and there should have been an apostrophe in “its” and I marked that unread in my inbox for days because I was like I want to know if they did that on purpose. I don't think they did. Joe: I don't think- Lianna: They got a bunch of replies. Joe: I don't think I would have known if it was proper or not but did I just hear you say that subject lines that have misspellings or grammatical errors actually have a higher open rate? Lianna: Sometimes I mean every … like if you're talking to any conversion copywriter they're going to be like it depends no matter what you ask them. So I have to just give that disclaimer right now; it depends. But I personally have seen it. Lower case subject lines often get a higher open rate because that's the kind of email we receive from our friends and family. We don't bother capitalizing subject lines, especially not title casing each word which I think that's officially dead now in the email marketing world. I haven't seen a ton of emails in my actual inbox so definitely in my spam folder. Joe: You've never inquired on a Quiet Light listing because I know that with my follow up drip campaigns I will capitalize the first letter of each word in the subject line. I need to stop that is what you're saying? Lianna: [inaudible 00:20:21.1] test for you just … yeah start running an alternative version of each of those emails with A. more [inaudible 00:20:26.2] well, if you were to do a true test you would just uncapitalize the rest of the sentence but you can try more conversational subject line. Then I could do a whole thing on subject lines so I like them a lot but yeah making- Joe: So it's the first point of contact- Lianna: Yeah. Joe: And it never occurred to me to chill out a little bit and be more casual even though you know we were … and hopefully anybody listening will take this and apply it to their own business but we are online business brokers. We're selling businesses for a million dollars or whatever the case might be and sometimes we think we've got to be buttoned up and serious. We're working with entrepreneurs. We all work remotely, around the country, around the world in Brian's case and we try to be professional and serious but we can be professional and casual and funny at the same time. Lianna: Yeah. Joe: [inaudible 00:21:09.9] on our subject lines. Lianna: There's a scale I think you don't have to go- Joe: Are you telling me to loosen up? Lianna: A little bit. I mean you … do you have that top button undone? Is that a- Joe: I do. Yeah. Lianna: See we're great, yeah, no tie. Joe: It's hot. Lianna: I don't think [inaudible 00:21:22.6] video so I just look like garbage so you know. Joe: I'm in North Carolina, Lianna is in New Orleans did I say that right? Lianna: No. I'm going to … no. Joe: Say it, give it to me. Go ahead. Lianna: New Orleans born and raised. Joe: You actually have to enunciate it? Lianna: Not New Orleans. New Orleans. Joe: New Orleans not New Orleans. Lianna: [inaudible 00:21:42.3] people say New Orleans. Joe: All right it's New Orleans. Lianna: Never New Orleans unfortunately. Joe: Okay all right. Well, we're both hot and you know figuratively anyway. And that's why I have my top button undone. What other things can people focus on besides of the subject line, some of the stuff in the first point of contact with customers, what other little weird places do you think that they could focus on and try to be a little bit funny or a little more personal that the average person wouldn't look at that you've seen? Lianna: One of my favorite places to look at is copy surrounding a call to action. So any time you're going to ask somebody to do something you should probably be addressing their objections and previewing what's going to come next. And it's really nice to see a human and funny touch around the ask. So I can't member if I mentioned this when you saw me speak but I wrote a call to action to start a free trial for a software product. And normally underneath you would see small text that says no sign up required or credit card required or whatever your information is safe with us that kind of standard objection reducing stuff. We wrote … oh I wrote a copy there that said we do ask for your credit card but it's just because we love online shopping. It's just a little reward for someone reading to feel like okay all right we're good. And obviously, that person has to have a sense of humor because if they take it seriously then they're not going to sign up but who is your target customer is that a person without a sense of humor? No. Joe: Again personalize it, make it feel better. I'm looking at your site now and I must have moved my mouse off the screen and something popped up and it says I'd love to email you and there's three O's in the word love. Lianna: Yes. Joe: Now what is down below there, it says subscribe now and then nah, fam. Lianna: Nah, fam? Joe: What does that mean? Lianna: It's a no thanks, it's another way to say no thanks. So you can just … it's good to know that it's not coming across entirely clear to everyone. Joe: Well. Lianna: It's like you can sign up or no, fam. Joe: But I can tell like a human wrote this which is again exactly what is supposed to happen. And for those again listening and not watching so this … all of you have this exit intent … exit pop ups on websites. This one is personal and funny and I'm actually reading it. Normally I just X out, but now I'm reading it because you spelled the word love wrong, no fam; I don't know what that is. And I believe it's you in the image. Are you drinking coffee out of a box? Is that what's happening there? Lianna: Drinking box wine. Joe: Yeah. So there's a picture of Lianna sitting at her desk, her laptop is open and she's got a box wine up above her head and she's boozing it up. It's very very entertaining and it made me stop and look at it where I go to all of your websites whenever I'm doing work with you and if there's a pop up I generally just quick X as quickly as I can. So very cool just one other- Lianna: Yeah that's a great place the exit intent pop up is so hard to get people's attention and people often think like you know I have only two sentences or I have to cut my offer just $20 off and it has to be no longer than that. But I worked with a client we … this is for my other business SNAP Copy so it's me and my business partner James Turner, we optimized his opt in offer to get people on his list for free planning. He runs a productivity website and the headline that we ended up going with was hey don't leave without your goodie bag. And it was boosted opt-ins by 129% and there was some additional copy and it was a pretty long paragraph of what they were going to get when they signed up. But people read it and signed up a lot more than they did when it said get free planners. Joe: Hey don't leave without your goodie bag and it was an online thing just to get people to sign up and was there like I [inaudible 00:25:19.8] a goodie bag as a swag bag when you go to an event like Blue Ribbon Mastermind. What kind of goodie bag was it? Was it just something you could get electronically? Lianna: Yeah it was a digital goodie bag. It was like free weekly agenda or a free monthly planner. He has a lot of free resources like that. Joe: But he didn't say free gift it said hey don't leave without your goodie bag? Lianna: Yeah. Joe: Simple. You think it's simple but it's- Lianna: Yeah. Joe: People get too buttoned up I think. Lianna: Finding new ways to say also the things that people are already accustomed to because we've seen free gifts so much, we've seen claim my deal a lot. I feel like that's kind of … it's still working because it's very clear but if you can find another way to say something that doesn't obscure the meaning of the copy then it'll get people's attention. And they're like oh I haven't seen that before. Joe: Okay. So pretty simple stuff but not something I think everybody can do. You have a special skill. You're funny, you actually do stand-up comedy as well right? Lianna: I do. Joe: You do. Are you funny? Of course, you are right? Lianna: People … you know I feel like I want to write a bit about that but it might be to hack because there have been better comedians writing bits about that. But someone did that to me the other day she was like so I don't get it you do stand-up but like you're not funny right now. And I was like maybe I'm not inspired. Joe: Ah. Lianna: You're not a good audience, I don't know. Joe: I'm glad I didn't say that. I think what you do is fantastic. You know back to my radio direct response days I would write 60 second ad copy and we would be able to get direct responses; how many people called in when we gave out that phone number after 60 seconds. And so we knew exactly how well the copy worked. You're a conversion copywriter so you found a way to do the same thing and boost conversion when somebody visits a website or open emails and things of that nature. Do you find your clients doing split testing with your copy against with the original copy or things of that nature or did they just say this is really good it's funny let's go ahead and just put that in place and then they see how it works for a week or do they do an actual split test? Lianna: If … so this is like this is where the cobbler has no shoes because I should be making sure that they do that but sometimes my clients are in that stage between small and medium business where they don't really have the team to split test appropriately or like they don't want to learn how to use Google Optimize, Optimizely, or any other split testing tool. So usually it's we see how the control over the original copy was doing then we implement the new copy and it sort of functions as the test and we see what the lift is; the uplift or downlift usually. Usually up. Joe: Usually up, okay. Well, I had an experience many many years ago where we had … when we take the phone calls and someone didn't want to buy the product we would get their name and address and would send them out this simple little trifle brochure. Really simple, black and white or I think there was blue and white and you could tell that it was somebody stuffed the envelope and we hand wrote it and it went out. It was from that person that you talked to on the phone. We had a consultant come in and say oh that's not very professional, we need to step it up, we need to get a multi unfold brochure, colors and charts and graphs and all this stuff and of course we have to print out the addresses and make a professional. And conversion dropped by at least 50% and it was a real eye opener because it was in that personal touch and feel. Lianna: Yeah. Joe: And so I think everything that you said up on the stage at Blue Ribbon Mastermind made me want to have you here because I've seen it firsthand and I know how much a word here and there and a feeling here and there converts. And it's really tough online, it's getting easier and you know hopefully some of your work is being tracked with before or split tested and so your clients know. But I think that all I know is when I go to a site like yours I want to stay on it and I want to look. Lianna: Good. Joe: As opposed to a pop up like I know you got a rubber chicken being cut in half and blood spurting, it's cute and funny so I love it. I think what you do is fantastic. How exactly would people reach out to you? Is it simply punchlinecopy.com? Lianna: Yeah. Joe: Can they get a sort of assessment? How do you work with your clients? Lianna: Yeah so I have different product test services on my site. Sometimes people just need … they want to use me as like an ad hoc email copywriter for instance. They'll come in and like buy one or two emails and they'll say rewrite my abandoned cart email because again it's close to purchase. Or rewrite my welcome email so I get fewer unsubscribes when I add someone to my list. So I have one off emails, I have something called upper cuts which is where I do an audit of your landing page from my heuristic perspective. So I'll take any customer research data that the clients have for these kinds of audits; the more the better. But I'll just look at it and say like this UX is garbage like this photo doesn't open, I can't zoom around the product, the call to action isn't visible enough from far away. And then I'll rewrite the copy line by line. And then I also do custom projects and I've got an intake form there. Yeah, there's a lot of ways to work with me. Joe: Can you be funny in a sponsored ad or a Google ad? Do you work with anybody in those regards? Lianna: I don't do a lot of top of funnel acquisitions. Joe: It's a little tricky. Lianna: I've tried … I mean I've done it. I haven't run ads for my own business in forever. I probably should but I'm the first result for funny copywriter so who needs to? Am I right? Joe: So one other simple clean example is again … and people could just go to your website and go oh that's cool, that's cool, that's cool, and get some ideas. Again punchlinecopy.com but you know folks you probably have a chat now talk to us little thing down in the lower right hand corner of your website so somebody can chat with you. Lianna's has a picture of her. Lianna: It's a bit [inaudible 00:30:59.5]. Joe: A caricature of you and it says you there and it has you looking up over the little pop up bubble as opposed to the standard stuff which is great. Again it's personal and makes it me want to click it just to see if you are there. Lianna: Awesome. I'm not because I'm doing this but I just- Joe: Everybody go to Punchline Copy and click you there and see what happens. Lianna: Or send me an email. Most of the stuff on my site that I think people like the most is just stuff that makes me laugh because I thought it was hilarious to have that little thing pop up in the corner. Joe: I like it. I like it all. Well, I think it would be great if some folks can use your sevices. Lianna: Yeah. Joe: And we have people on that I think can help more than anything else whether that's somebody that is in the process of trying to grow their business and make it more valuable or some of that's going to buy one and tweak it and make more valuable than what they bought it for. And I think copy is so essential because if it converts you are a … again conversion copywriter that just gets them more value for the money that they spent on advertising. Lianna: Yeah. Joe: So it is fantastic, we will put your details in the bottom of the show notes so people can reach out to you and any last minute thoughts on copy that people should think about [inaudible 00:32:18.1] got here? Lianna: I mean I always want to challenge people to just try a joke somewhere. Like take your most boring email in any of your series and go in and add a joke or add an aside, you know add a PS that's kind of weird and see what happens. Joe: Just to see what happens add a PS; I like it. Lianna: Yeah. Joe: Well PS folks thank you for listening to the Quiet Light Podcast, I appreciate it. Lianna, thank you so much for your time. You are awesome. Lianna: Thank you. And so are you. Joe: Well I appreciate that thank you. Links: PunchlineCopy.com Punchline's Facebook Page Lianna on LinkedIn

The Quiet Light Podcast
From Bootstrap Startup to an 8-Figure Exit with Rob Walling

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 14, 2018 35:05


Today, another serial entrepreneur, Rob Walling, joins us to discuss founding and generally running a bootstrap startup. We sat down and talked to Rob about his journey of getting his software startup off the ground, developed, and eventually sold with no outside funding. Rob Walling is not only the co-founder of Drip, which recently sold for eight figures, he also writes a blog and hosts two podcasts for startups. He is most known for starting, running and selling Drip but he has also bought and sold several smaller SaaS applications, including HitTail. Finally, Rob is co-founder of Microconf, a bi-annual conference for software startups. Rob's goal is to continue to acquire new businesses while maintaining the time-clock free lifestyle his years of software startup and acquisition experience have afforded him. Episode Highlights: The story behind Drip and what led Rob into marketing automation. Building and growing a SaaS company. Launching a new software business without a lot of staff or cash. Building the automation that ended up being the key factor that got Drip on the consumer radar. How the company managed to compete against the larger players. The luxury of being a small team and working primarily in person. Why Rob would now choose remote over local. Tips for hiring high quality candidates that fit in with your company's principles. When you know it is time to scale up your startup. Knowing when you have something that people really want. How to recognize when the option to sell comes on the radar. Knowing when you've found the right buyer. The importance of putting all the deal-breakers on the table and sticking to your guns. What small startups learn in the acquisition and transition process and how that changes their teams. The story behind Microconf, Rob's bi-annual global software conference unlike any other. Transcription: Joe: So this morning we were deep into a program called GetDrip and it's what we use for our automated email sequences. And I understand you had the founder of that gentleman … with that software as a service program on the podcast that's all right? Mark: That's right and I think a lot of our listeners are probably familiar with Rob Walling. He writes over at Software by Rob. He is the host over at Start Ups for the Rest of Us Podcast. He's the founder or co-founder I should say of MicroConf the SaaS conference. He is also the founder of HitTail an SEO software and of course Drip – Email Marketing Automation; one of the leading email marketing automation softwares out there which was acquired by Leadpages a few years ago in an eight figure acquisition. So really cool guy, tons of experience in a lot of different areas especially in that start up environment. And Joe you and I like to have these calls with people … these conversations with people where we try and like pull out a certain lesson or something else. Remember the episode with Mike Jackness and the crazy high open rates and returns that he gets on his Facebook marketing. I went into this without any specific agenda. I just want to talk to Rob about his story and kind of the adventure he's been on since he started up Drip and some of the other things as well. But we didn't get into much else because we just kind of talked about his journey with Drip which was fascinating. And one of the things to think about with Drip, they started off in a world where there was really big competitors. You had Infusionsoft, you had Klaviyo that was still big at the time, you had MailChimp which was absolutely a monster, AWeber which had been around forever. And here you have this little start up with no funding just a handful of coders working out of basically a closet as it were. And they ended up blowing up into one of the biggest email marketing automation softwares out there and being acquired for eight figures by Leadpages a few years later. And so we talked a lot about how they do it … how do they go through that, how does he hire people? We covered a lot of territory but it was fascinating. Joe: Well I think you said founder maybe five or six times there so I would think you would have to be fascinating when you're founding that many companies and that successful. So I don't think anybody wants to hear you and I talk about this anymore. Let's just go right to Rob. Mark: Yeah let's get to him. Mark: Rob thanks for coming on. Rob: It's my pleasure thanks for having me. Mark: All right so you've listened at a couple of the episodes of the Quiet Light Podcast you know how we work. Why don't you give people a quick introduction as to who you are? Rob: Yeah so my name is Rob Walling and I'm a serial software entrepreneur probably most known for running … founding and selling Drip which is email marketing or marketing automation software. I've also or run a number of other SaaS apps including HitTail which is an SEO tool. I co-founded MicroConf which is a conference for self-funded startups. And I have a couple of podcasts. One's called Start Ups for the Rest of Us and the idea there is to help people … give people an option in starting software and SaaS companies that's like you don't need to raise funding to do it. And that podcast has been running since 2010 so we have like 400 something episodes. Another one is called ZenFounder it's with my wife who's a psychologist and we talk a lot about just trying to stay sane while running a business. Mark: Well trying to stay sane while running a business that's a pretty hard thing to be able to do. Rob: It is, yeah. Mark: Yeah. That's pretty cool so we have a lot that we could talk about here. I want to talk a little bit about just building and growing a SaaS business. But one thing I want to start off with here is you're kind of like a member of the very old guard when it comes to Internet entrepreneurs. When I started in the online world it was kind of expected that you do everything right? You code, you market, you design, and you do everything top to bottom and it's a lot harder to do that today but you've been [inaudible 00:04:35.0] keeping up with that. So are you still actively doing a lot of the coding? Rob: I am not. I backed away from it. I … you know we'll software professionally for a paycheck from about 2008 and I really enjoyed that time and it basically gave me a leverage and a little bit of savings to be able to start acquiring businesses. I mean that's what a lot of people don't know is I really only started a couple of software companies. I've bought way more than I … products and websites and software SaaS apps than I started so … but around let's say 2011, 2012 it just became … it just was no longer worth it for me to code. My time is more valuable doing all the other stuff … that pulling the big levers to move the business rather than sitting behind a [inaudible 00:15:19.12] even though I love it. I still write code on the weekends though. I hack with PHP scripts; I was scraping Twitter feeds and trying to do sentiment analysis. I was … it's just myself having fun. It's just fun to build things but I don't … I have a push production code in probably five years. Mark: Yeah, I used to code … I started to code out of necessity when I first was an entrepreneur and at first, I had no money so I was like I need to build this … I think I built a very basic pay per click search engine and kind of advertising platform. I did that and pearled all things and then yeah again self-taught myself and since then I've missed doing it but I just don't have the time to jump back in. So the fact that you're doing it on the weekends [inaudible 00:05:58.8] for sure. So let's talk a little bit about building and growing a SaaS company because you've done it a couple times, you've done it successfully, and maybe also I didn't know that you were active in the buying world so let's talk a little bit about that. Let's talk about what you look for when you are buying this SaaS Company and how do you go about some of those code challenges. So let's start with a basic question; ball park number how many businesses do you … would you say that you bought over the last five or six years? Rob: Let's go back a little further because see … once I started Drip which was 2012 so I bought zero in the last six years. But before then from let's say 2005 was my first acquisition and 2011 was my last so over that six year period I probably purchased I would say 25 or 30 different. They're either software products, SaaS, or even … I mean I bought like half a dozen Ad Sense websites back in the day. So I really enjoyed it. I mean the idea of being able to skip product market fit and not have to do all the hard work up front and have a great history has always been attractive to me. Especially if someone … I mean when I was writing softwares I was doing, I was contracted, I was doing 125 an hour or 150 an hour sometimes and I mean my time was super valuable. I was booked 40, 50 hours a week and so I was like wait let me get this straight I couldn't … back then it was Flippa, right? I mean it was before you guys, before FE and other folks, and I would go on Flippa and pay 18 months of net profit and sometimes I got totally hosed on it because Flippa can be a little bit dangerous but the ones that worked were life changing for me. By 2009 I was full time just on products. Sorry, that was a long answer but that's the value I see in acquiring over. I've told my wife like if I do this again … because I don't know if I'm going to do it [inaudible 00:07:44.5] have to but it's just a lot of work, there's no chance I'm doing it from scratch. Zero chance that I will do something from scratch for the rest of my life. I will always acquire from this point on. Mark: And obviously, we are big believers in that. I mean that from product fit and like you said and doing our work is difficult. When you started Drip … when did you start Drip? Rob: We worked on the code in December of 2012 and then we launched in 2013. Mark: Okay, and you were originally just sort of an add-on or a layer on top of existing software programs right? Rob: That's right. Mark: So like AWeber and I think mail Chimp was one of the main vehicles. Rob: Yeah, we were just like a pop up and auto responders but we also fed into mails because we didn't … we couldn't even send broadcast emails at the time. Mark: Wow, all right so then you layered on top of that and did you always have in mind with Drip that it was going to be an automation; the sort of kind of logic sequence. Rob: No, we didn't. And in fact, we resisted it pretty heavily because I didn't want to get into the marketing automation. It's just a big … at least in my eyes at the time it seemed like this big, enterprisey, clunky, old, really hyper competitive space with a bunch of funny competitors; just not a market I want to get into. I tend to like really tight niche markets where you can just own that thing and you don't have to … you're not fighting red water every day with someone else. It's not a feature race all the time. But it became clear about a year into running Drip … a year, year and a half that that was where the whole space was going. And not building that would have just relegated us to being undifferentiated; everybody just had another major product and by building an automation and building it in a way that was more elegant and … or you know at least I think so, more elegant, easier to use than Infusionsoft and Active Campaigns and some of the other competitors it … we became, that's how we got on the radar. I mean we were an unfunded marketing automation platform in essence. We didn't raise any money and we were five people basically in a closet in Fresno, California and we were number 12 on Data Analysis Marketing Automation List. And all the 11 ahead of us had raised … decked a million, some had raised nine figures, I mean it was crazy. Mark: Well, that's one of the things I find fascinating about your story. When I first saw Drip kind of pop up you had these really large players out there that you knew had significant revenues coming in, significant funding, very large programming teams of developers, how did you guys manage to stay agile like that at such a small footprint of a company but still put out incredible code? What were some of the things … I'm asking you to go back here and kind of think back but [inaudible 00:10:28.3] so what was all those things that you did to be able to compete against these larger players? Rob: Yeah, that's a really good question because Derek and I … so Derek is my co-founder with Drip and we are both software people. I've written code since I was a kid and so had he. And so we built the company. It was very much a product focused company you know a lot of [inaudible 00:10:47.7] tech companies launch and they're very marketing focused and the software is kind of a piece of crap. And then you'll see them get legacy over the years and eventually they can't ship features so they ship very very slowly, one or two releases a year. And for a SaaS app that's just not the way you need to do it. So Derek and I from day one built a very strong foundation. It took six months to get Drip into people's hands and it really … we could have done it in three months but it would have been shitty code. And so we focused early on of not having a legacy, we took our time to build a really solid foundation architecturally, and then the first three hires that I made were Derek who was a contractor at the time and then became W2 and then eventually got chairs and was retroactively made him a co-founder and then two other developers. So when we were a team of four which was three developers and me and I did everything else. And that allowed us without the legacy; it allowed us to ship really fast. We were super agile. We used to get hub issues and we just … we were, I mean we would hammer out features. We would hammer out an entire integration in less than a day. Because there was one dude who had built … he built 35 integrations for us. And it was just this relentless focus, there were no meetings, there were no … if there was a question we stood up at a white board. It's a luxury of A. being a small team and B. being in person. And I know if I build a team again it's going to be really remote but we move way faster because we were in person two to three days a week and then we're all at our houses the other two or three. And it was just perfect blend of like speed. I mean our velocity it's funny you call that out because so many people call that out and even [inaudible 00:12:22.5] Leadpages called that out early on and said how are you … you're like five people, how are you shipping this many features? And we were shipping multiple features a week and it was just getting in there. Our architecture was stable and the developers … also we hired really good developers we focused very much on that; Derek and I being two developers. We were super rigorous and super picky about who we hired and so there's a lot goes into it and then you know I'm kind of been rambling but it was really this relentless focus on the product comes first and the product is what is we're going to be really good at. And at the same time and I have some regrets you know of like I think I should have marketed it harder early on. I think I should have hired a marketer that was better than me. I think that you know there were certain things now that I look back that it's like didn't we focus on the product a little too much? But I don't know in the end I think it worked out. Mark: Obviously it worked out. And this is kind of an interesting thing I've seen with software companies. I've read a book by the founder of Zoosk [inaudible 00:13:16.3] and they talked about their ability to push out code and features rapidly. It would be we've come up with that idea in the morning and pushed it out by midafternoon because they were able to do that. What sort of approval process did you guys have in place to be able to ensure that you weren't just getting all sorts of really conflicting features? Rob: We had … well A. both Derek and I knew every feature that was shipping. And we knew that until we hit … I mean even … so I left Drip about three months ago it was acquired by the Leadpages you know I think it's kind of the punch line that some people know about that, and even when we were 10 or 12 engineers Derek and I still knew everything we were shipping and so it's just a product management. To be honest when there's only three or four developers you can keep it all on your head or on a whiteboard you don't even need that much process. Now soon as you tip to four or five then you need some type of can ban you know or something and then when you hit … when we hit seven or eight it was like all right we do need a weekly meeting now; 30 minute weekly meeting. But we had no standing meetings, none of that. I mean it was like you're writing code 100% of the time or you're talking about writing code. So we also had extensive unit test coverage. We had I think three lines of unit testing code of unit test for every line of production code so it allowed … that allowed us the safety of like pretty sure this is going to break anything because one of these tests would have caught it and then we do a sanity check on the server and push it. We … you know knock on wood we have very few over the five-ish, five and a half year run like production bugs that really did some damage. And we get a little things here and there but we only had maybe two that I can remember. It was like a scheduling issue, it's like oh crap we forgot to send emails for an hour like that's a big deal you know and that happened maybe once and there is [inaudible 00:14:58.5] so code quality was high and we focused on that. Mark: So you mostly run your team local to some extent but at some point when you started to grow and before the acquisition with lead pages did you have a remote team? Rob: We did yeah. Yes so there were 10 of us total by the acquisition and there were five of us in Fresno in office. And like I said we came in about two to two and a half days a week to that office and worked from home the other days and that was a great balance of there was enough time to whiteboard, there were enough days, every other day you're going to see some people and ask questions but then you could go home and get a ton of work done right. And then we have five people who are all over the place really [inaudible 00:15:38.5] guy in Mexico and we had a developer in another part of California and somebody in New York and stuff so it was … it worked out. Mark: So given … you said if you start something again here in the future it will probably be remote even though you're not really convinced that's necessarily the better way to go about it; why is that? Why would you choose a remote in the light of the fact that you might think it's not the best way to go? Rob: Yeah, I think the ideal way is that everybody can meet in a room a day or two a week. As I've said that was the best working environment I've ever had. I would go remote because it's just so hard to find the right talent at the right price in any given metro area. It's like you can go to Silicon Valley and yes there's a lot of engineers but damn are they expensive. Or you can come to Minneapolis and they're going to be less expensive but how many ruby developers are actually here and how many are going to leave Target or Best Buy to come work for me? It's going to be tough. If I'm making a nationwide search or even as I tip tend to go three time zones in either direction, three hours in either direction from where I am; so I'll go north to south. [inaudible 00:16:40.6] hire in Canada or Mexico Central South America you're going to just find really people who sometimes live out in the middle of nowhere and if you're able to work with them remotely then they can ship some really good stuff for you. Mark: Yeah hiring people is always a challenge. I don't think I've ever talked to an entrepreneur and business owner and I'll throw myself in that ring as well, hiring people has an absolute pain. Do you have any insights that you want to give us right now? Rob: Oh my gosh. We could do all episode on this. Mark: You really could do all episode on this and so we'll keep it a little bit short because I want to talk a little bit about MicroConf and also more a bit of the history of Drip but this is more for me [inaudible 00:17:19.9]. Rob: Totally, yeah I know some quick tips. One thing that Derek and I did was we hired a lot around personality. We really want … especially when we were small it was like I want to be able to hang around in a room with [inaudible 00:17:36.9] hours a day [inaudible 00:17:38.6] I don't do that or I've worked at don't do that they really do hire based on skills and talent and as a result we passed over some pretty good developers. But we could just tell they were edgy or they were a little to opinionated or let you know they were just things it was like we were super super careful. So we did hire slow and then our hiring process took a long time. We also presented it for what it was. The job postings were written very … almost like a blog post or like it was very conversational, oh it was more like a sales letter it would start my job descriptions and say it was all you language, it was like you're an excellent developer the world is your oyster, you can go work at any company you want but here's why you don't want to work at an agency because that da da da da da, you know you could go here but come work for us, you can be fully remote you can be … and then I present the benefits. It was very much like either magic or writing a sales letter where you present the you language and then you're going to present the problem and then what are the solution like come work for us. So as a result we got really high quality candidates and it was a very … I bet I would say look we do not pay, don't come here if you want to make what you are going to make at a Fortune 500 company. We do not pay these exorbitant developer wages but here's what you get in exchange, you get the freedom to do this, there are no set working hours, you're fully remote we're going to send you a MacBook Pro, we're going to buy you two Dell monitors, we're going to … you know just all the stuff that; some developers don't want that. They just want the maximum paycheck and other developers loved it, there were people who came and said I can't get this kind of flexibility in work. So having … like what is your differentiator? That's what we figured out early on and we put it right from the start in the job description of like you … this is either awesome for you or this sounds terrible. And then the last thing on and I'll stop is one thing that I learned once we went into Leadpages, because our hiring process took a long time. It was 20, 30 hours a week for me at times and once we got to Leadpages there were two in-house recruiters, just full time recruiters who were freaking phenomenal. And I … one thing that I would do if I were to do again is try to find someone like that on an hourly basis and not a contingency recruiter where they charge at 15% of the salary but just find somebody on Upwork or whatever who's 50 bucks, 75 bucks an hour who I can have … I can train to do all these stuff, or they can train me frankly. Because once we get to Leadpages like they had bat it down. I mean they grew 50 people a year for a few years. So they had that process down and they taught me a ton of things that I wished I had outsourced more of that in essence is what I'm saying. I felt like as a founder I had to do all the hiring. But it turns out as long as I did the last mile and I would thumbs up or thumbs down someone it was plenty good and sort of the funnel was filtered so much for me. You know by the time we worked and we paid and so I was like I shouldn't have been doing that type of funnel stuff and hiring process. Mark: Yeah, I can tell you, I just went through the process of hiring somebody on for Quiet Light Brokerage and typically with Quiet Light the people that come on and work with us they approach me about coming on as a broker. But we needed some work on the marketing side and so I put out a job application. It's a full time job and going through and trying to vet these people and you know you want to hire slowly but you've got a bunch of other stuff on your to do list. Outsourcing that and if you're able to do so makes sense. So the tip that you gave as far as writing the job post in terms of you … you're the second business owner that I've talked to recently that has given that tip. I think it's a phenomenal way to go about it instead of just saying we need this, we need that, we … or you know this is what we need given the benefits that you attract that top talent is a good suggestion. Okay, let's talk and go back again to Drip here, when did you realize that this was not just like a little project that you were going to have as like a super niche product and really something that could play with some of the big boys? I mean now you guys would be direct competitors with a Mail Chimp and with an AWeber and those guys have had to play catch up to you frankly in some ways or to what you built. So when was that realization? What made you turn and say okay I'm going to go all in on this for a while? Rob: Yeah, it was a very difficult decision and it was a hard one to make as I said because I've had a lot of lifestyle businesses and I value my lifestyle very highly. And it was a decision of boy am I going to continue to have a lifestyle business or am I going to scale up like a startup? Do I want to go all in on this? And I was talking with Derek about it too but it was really a turning point for me. So we started doing our early access in mid-2013 and we launched to our launch list in November of 2013, and it took us until August of 2014 to hit product market fit. We were just struggling you know just adding and it was when we added automations, the initial automation there wasn't even the work for us that are all visual it was just kind of almost like if this [inaudible 00:22:22.1] stuff. That was game changing because we started growing I don't know 20% month over month. We're already flailing around a bit until June as we start rolling out missions then it was like all right now we're going 10%, now we're going 15%, now we're going 20% and it was like boy this is becoming a fact. You know this is we have built something that people really want and we at that point we weren't ahead of … you know Infusionsoft had a visual builder and Active Campaign did too and I don't know it was Klaviyo I mean there were competitors around. We weren't ahead of them but we had just done a very elegant job. You know it's kind of like we had built a really easy to use platform like on Mail Chimp and we added automation to it in a way that really didn't exist quite in the same way. So that was when it was really towards the latter half year of 2014 it was like man this thing is growing fast and we have to hire lift the staff up like that was the realization. Mark: Was that the point in time when you decided that possibly selling was on your radar? Rob: No selling came on the radar in 2015. And it was we were staffing up and I realized [inaudible 00:23:29.7] Derek and I have a lot of conversations that's like we can't hire fast enough. Like we don't have the money you know. Running Drip was … especially with the staffing and trying to keep up with everyone else it was just an expensive thing. I mean SaaS apps obviously have great margins and we had a great gross margin but our net margin was not very good because I kept hiring. You know it 10 grand of MRR and now I go out and hire another developer every time because I know we have to keep up with all these competitors. So that was when I realized you know we had a need to raise an angel round, like a seat round probably half a million or we may want to think about answering one of these e-mails we're getting to acquire us. So we got maybe five pretty serious inquiries, we got more than that they were just you know whatever. You get weekly funding offers from a junior rep at a VC firm and every couple of months we get an email of like we'd like to acquire you and about five of them were people who companies or funds who actually had the money to do it. And that was when it was coming all right so what we do, do we take chips off the table you know cash out in essence, have a good outcome for us and the employees or do we push more tips and basically raise funding you know to at a valuation? Because we probably would have raised funding similar to the valuation we're going to be acquired at and that puts you in for two three four five more years of doing it. So that was a big decision process for us and frankly, I was burning out a bit. I mean I was struggling to run the company. I didn't delegate or outsource as much as I should have. Next time around I would it a little differently for sure. Mark: So how did you decide Leadpages was going to be the partner that you're going to work with? You had five serious potential acquirers. Rob: Yeah, Leadpages was just the best strategic fit and I knew the CEO Clay Collins. We kind of ran in overlapping circles. He was in like the Internet marketing space and I was in more of the startup space but we overlapped a bit. He had been on my podcast and stuff so it wasn't just like oh we have these five suitors and we're going to pick Leadpages. It was kind of like well let's kind of follow each of these tracks you know and then we had … and it didn't all happen at once right it was over the course of maybe 18 months that like these five conversations happened. And so we just kind of followed each of them to the logical extent and the one that made the most sense and just kept coming back up again and again because deals fall apart like this right? Because someone puts a number on a piece of paper and you're just like yeah that's nowhere close and then it's like all right well then we're out you know. And then two months later you get an email and it's like hey so we want to rekindle the … and that's how these things go right. So it took 13 months from the first email when Clay reached out to when the deal closed. And it was really about six, seven months of hard negotiation during that. Mark: Sure yeah and that walking away right? That's so typical on a lot of these deals especially in a strategic deal, being able to walk away and you know people just set goals and objectives change over that time as well so they can re-evaluate things. What was some of the things that you learned going from a complete startup environment where you're a super agile small team that you're building and that kind of hanging on to this year past sort of growth and then being absorbed by a company that had raised tens of millions of dollars and much different sort of environment; what sort of transition was that? Rob: The transition, it was probably one of the best that I've heard about. They did a really good job of kind of leaving us alone for three to four months because we just … we were all shell shocked. I was … it was so crazy I mean we [inaudible 00:27:00.2] moved here and then go on [inaudible 00:27:02.5] pick off [inaudible 00:27:03.0] people we were and it was just this culture shock for us. So they made it as good as it could have been I think. They didn't screw with the product nobody said [inaudible 00:27:11.5] all our people came on board and joined the team. So I feel like the transition went as good as it could have but it was still hard on me and hard on some of the team members because it … we have been just this tiny little team and then you get kind of absorbed into 170 person company. But I mean to Clay's credit he set it up really well. So I learned a bunch of stuff … the interesting transition, there was a mental transition at a certain point is we've gone from basically being kind of cash strapped to having tens of millions of dollars in the bank as you said from the funding they raised. And I just realized we had to think about things totally differently. Like I needed to stop every week checking our AWS bill and trying to turn servers off and adjust things on the weekends. It's like that was no longer … it was not worth saving $500 a month for all that time. And you have to be cognizant of the money but it's like 500 bucks a month is just a rounding error. They probably spend that on toilet paper in a month and it's like focus on some … if I'm going to spend that mental damage do it on something that grows the bottom line or that improves the product. It was things like that and we … when we can finally pay everybody market rate salaries it was so so cool. We had to hire a lot of junior people and train them up [inaudible 00:28:22.5] up so we … it took us a while for people to really hit the ground running. And once we got here and it's like oh man we can pay market rate. We're able to hire senior engineers for the first time ever and that was another game changer of like the luxury of having someone come in and like come with code three days into their job because the code base is solid and they are super advanced. They've been doing it for seven years instead of six months like some of the folks that … who are great developers now but they were just very junior when we hired them. Mark: You have a lot of other projects besides Drip obviously over the years. You've had Start Ups for the Rest of Us, you've had MicroConf; they were totally cool with you just continuing on with those projects? Rob: Yeah that was the nice part is you know as Clay and I talked through the whole acquisition it was like … I was like Clay here are my deal breakers number one we can't … I'm not going to fire anybody like I do not want to lay people off and we didn't. Number two I do not want to screw our customers like please don't pivot us into some crazy niche or leave the customers behind that we already have, shut the product down you know let's not do damage to that. And [inaudible 00:29:23.3] deal breakers although I have like a price, oh I want it … I said it kind of needs to be for enough money that I never have to work again. Like that was one of my things and so we figured all that out. Oh and that was … the third one I was like look I do MicroConf and he knew that and I do the podcast and I don't spend that much time on them. In all honesty like the podcast is about 30, 40 minutes a week and MicroConf typically was off hours and it might be 20 hours aside from when I would go there [inaudible 00:29:54.0] offer and he said yeah that's good. And I said I do a lot of public speaking too and I said you know I'll be representing Drip and Leadpages at that point so it's actually a … perhaps of benefit to the company so it was good. That would've been a really … I was going say be tough but I just that would've been a deal breaker. I don't think I would have not stunned the podcast or the conferences it's just something I've done forever you know. Mark: Yeah, let's talk about MicroConf for a quick … for people that don't know what is MicroConf? Rob: Yeah MicroConf is a conference that's run twice a year in Las Vegas and then in Europe and it is a conference for self-funded startups, so bootstrap startups. And we're not anti-funding. It doesn't mean that companies that raise funding can't come because certainly a lot of … 80% of what funded and unfunded companies worry about is the same thing. It's hiring and it's marketing and it's building a good product and then there's just 20% percent that we just don't talk much about at MicroConf. And so we get about … we have a Growth Edition which is for businesses that are providing a full time income or more. So it's a lot of six seven and some eight figure businesses but it's definitely smaller. Its SaaS focused but we do get e-commerce people we do get Word Press plugins and info marketers and stuff. And that conference the growth one is about 250 people and it sells out every year. And then we have the Starter Edition which is from idea to full time income and that's at the same time right around the same time in Vegas and then we have of course the Europe edition which is here in a few months in Croatia; it's in October. And I'm excited to go to Croatia and now we started selling tickets for that a couple weeks ago. So we try to get … we wanted to build a conference that we wanted to attend. Like Mike and I who was my co-host with the conference, it was like I go to these conferences and there's multi-tracks and there's the vendor halls and there's all this bullshit. I really just want to come, I want to meet entrepreneurs. I want the attendees to be top notch. I don't want it to be the marketing guy, the C level guy from this oracle or it's like that no that doesn't help me you know. I want the attendees to almost all be entrepreneurs in a similar space. And then we want to keep it small. They tend to be about 120 to 250 attendees. And then we want to get really good speakers that may not … these are not like the big name speaker who comes up and pumps you up and you know there's time and place for that but it's super super tactical and so that's what we've … it's kind of like if you want tactics and some inspiration come to our conference. If you want just pure inspiration and you just want to get pumped up then go see Tony Robbins or go to the World Domination Summit. It's just a very very different thing. So that's my spiel on it. That's MicroConf.com if folks are interested. Mark: Yeah absolutely and I absolutely love those smaller conferences the 100 to 150 attendees, you know 200 attendees but where it's really focused again on the people that you get to know from those conferences. I just find that you do get to know people so much better and the partnerships and relationships that come out of that more than pay for any sort of price that you're going to have to pay. Your location is Croatia, are you kidding? That's incredible. Rob: Ain't that awesome? Yeah, I'm stoked. We did it in Barcelona … we did in Prague for two years, Barcelona for two years, and then we did it in Lisbon, Portugal last year, and this year we're upping the game. It's going to be a little harder to get to but man we're stoked because I've never been to Croatia. We do try to like put it in places that A. people would want to go to but that we want to go to as well. You know it's an excuse to visit a cool country. Mark: Yeah absolutely, all right we're up against a clock here but what does the future hold for you? You left there a few months ago. Rob: Yup. Mark: What are you looking at the doing here in the future? Rob: I don't know yet. I started writing a book about my experience. I've written a couple books about software startups and that kind of stuff. And I started writing another one and then I kind of … I got about 12,000 words in and I was like you know I don't know that I want to do this right now. It was all about my experience with Drip and everything and it was funny I just kind of petered out. So I don't know if I'll come back to that. I don't have a deep desire to do anything bigger than Drip. I think I'm going to take another few months off and I know something will come up and I'm probably going to acquire something is what's going to happen. And but I wanted to do something that like it needs to make money for my personality you know like I just I have to that's how we keep score right? But I kind of want to do something in like … even in the hobby space that I really enjoy. I can't imagine going back and then doing another SaaS app. It's just I've been there I've done that what's new? Like could it be a just a completely different thing that I really enjoy that it also makes some money but maybe it's not some big fancy startup that's acquired. Mark: Well awesome. Well, good luck with all of that and let's make sure that we stay in touch especially being local to each other here. But let's make sure that we stay in touch. Thanks so much for joining me. Rob: Absolutely Thanks for having me on Links and Resources: Rob's Website Startups for the Rest of Us Podcast Zen Founder Podcast Microconf Rob's blog

The Quiet Light Podcast
Learn the Key Financial Metrics that Increase (or plummet) the Value of your Business

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 7, 2018 43:14


Combined, Mark and I have reviewed thousands of profit and loss statements over the years. What we've seen and learned in that time, is that certain key financial metrics can make or break the value of a business. In today's podcast we cover all of these metrics, including one that could cost a seller hundreds of thousands in value, and give a buyer huge instant equity. If you think the financial metrics and details are boring, wake up! You work night and day and risk everything to build your business, and it is more than likely that your business is your most valuable asset. Having deep financial details will bring more you more value, peace of mind, and maybe someday help you create a “lifetime event” sale and an exit that will change your life, and the lives of your descendants for generations to come. Episode Highlights: [:10] How long does it take to do a valuation? [2:35] What are “clean financials”? [4:02] YOY trends tend to be the most important financial factor. [6:12} We always look at a monthly view of the financials. Not just quarterly or annually. [9:15} Revenue by Channel show a deeper view of overall revenue trends (and reveal gold, or roadblocks). [14:40] Any channel that has you “own” the customer brings more value. {15:20] After total revenues, Mark views gross profit margins next, as do many buyers. [17:20] COGs should not include 3rd party fees! [18:41] Gross profit margins below 20% make Mark nervous. [20:10] Joe loves to see advertising expenses by revenue channel (this does not have to be in the P&L). [23:14] When you “get” the metrics right a business value can instantly jump by hundreds of thousands of dollars. [25:31] Trust offsets risk. The lower the risk is the more value your business will bring. [27:03] Don't hide negative trends…if you've recovered. A recovery shows how resilient the business is. [28:23] Drilling down to specific expenses and their trends tell a fuller story of the business condition. [30:19] QLB brokers Advertising, Saas, eCommerce and other business models. [31:01] Certain metrics are key with SaaS and Subscription based businesses. [33:49] Discretionary earnings equals net income, plus add backs. [34:06] Discretionary Earnings as a percent of total revenue “comfort levels” vary depending on the niche. [38:01] Revenue by SKU can show huge built-in growth if some were launched in the trailing 12 months. [39:55] Joe & Mark get into the weeds. Go there with them and learn how to increase the value of your business by hundreds of thousands of dollars, or buy one and get instant equity. Transcription: Mark: All right Joe you probably know this from your experience here at Quiet Light Brokerage but how long does it take you … when you're talking to a client for the first time or somebody who's requesting a value of the business, how long on average do you think it really takes you to be able to get an estimate of the size of the business and the value of their business? Joe: Yeah there's really no short answer to that. I feel like you want me to tell you five minutes but the answer is it's at least an initial call you get a ballpark range. And then you got to look at the financials and look at the trends, know your trends and look at the details of the financials. It's so much of that answer and the time frame around it depends upon how good their documentation is and how much they know about their own books. Mark: Sure and just you know I want you to answer whatever you want to answer. I'm not going to feed you answers; answer the truth. Yeah, well I think that's true. We've been looking at businesses for a while. We've looked at a lot of businesses in the roles that we have. And so I thought it would be good for us to have a discussion today to talk about some of the things that we look at in a business's financials to really be able to determine its value pretty quickly. What are some of the things that you with your expert eye from all the deals that you've done, what do you look at when you look at a company's financials? Now I know every buyer out there listening to this you probably have the reports that you look at. We have the advantage of working with lots of different buyers. We see the different approaches that different buyers have made. And I know that over the last 10 years I've expanded and changed what I look at and probably look at more things and things maybe that wouldn't concern me as much directly but I'm looking at to try and anticipate what buyers would want to see. Joe: So what is … what's the number one thing you look at first? You're always looking at this one thing what is it? Mark: By the way, if anyone is wondering no we don't have a guest so you have to live with Joe and I for the rest of this episode. But we'll try to make it entertaining. Okay, so what do I look at first and foremost? I have gotten very addicted to looking at trends. Trends to me to it's one of the most important thing with somebody's financials … outside of whether or not they're clean of course right? They've got to be clean if I'm going to … if we're going to be able to make any real valuation. Joe: Can we define clean? What do you mean by that? Mark: That's a good question actually. Joe: Somebody in the audience was just asking it they just [inaudible 00:03:03.7] through to my head. Mark: You're anticipating what people are going to be asking weeks from now; I love it. What are clean financials? So clean would be separated from other businesses. And that doesn't mean that you have to have completely separate tax IDs. That's ideal … you know separate tax IDs and separate books. I would love it if that's what you had but at least within QuickBooks or Xero or whatever you're using, some way of identifying this is for this business. This expense goes for this business and that expense goes for another business if you have multiple businesses running. Also actually having that tracked clearly and so that you're not just taking estimates on things and finally not mixing in a lot of personal expenses into it. In the episode that I recorded with Brian we talked about some of the warning signs. We saw in financials … and that episode is aired by now so go back and take a listen to that, but one of the warning signs that we often see are round numbers. Joe: Oh yeah. Mark: Round numbers are … yeah, these are not clean financials; these are estimates. Joe: Unless it's payroll but if you've got expenses of advertising of $1500 a month or your phone bills … you know $2300 a month yeah the round numbers are always challenging. But clean financials are so important because it allows us to look at things from an analytical eye and from the buyer's eye. And you yourself you say you look at trends, which trend specifically do you hone in on? Mark: Well the number one trend I like to look at would be year over year trends. So there's … when we're looking at trends just as in general for a business there's two main approaches that people take. One would be a month over month so are we doing better this month than we did the month before and was that month better than the month before that and how does that look. And maybe you spread that out and do like a quarter over quarter analysis. I like to take a look at businesses more from the year over year analysis. So if I'm taking a look at July of 2018 I want to compare that against July of 2017. Or if I'm going to do it on it like a quarterly basis I might take a look at quarter two of this year and compare it to quarter two of the year before and of the year before that. And the reason that I do this is I think people have seasonal businesses without knowing that they have a seasonal business. Obviously like Halloween … you know I've sold a number of Halloween sites in the past, that's an obvious seasonal business, Christmas obviously a seasonal business. Gardening and supply store a little less obvious but when you think about yeah it's a seasonal business. I think those aren't too far off stretches. But when you take a look at a company like Quiet Light Brokerage we also have seasons. We have our busy seasons, we have our a little bit less busy seasons. Summer, it tends to slow down a little bit. It's not appreciable. It's not like one of those things where you can look at and say it's going to be absolutely dead. And I wouldn't call us having a seasonal business but in the books, it does get reflected that way. So I like the year over year financial analysis because it controls all of those variables and also some of the variables for having a few extra days in a month or a few less days in a month. Joe: Yeah I think you've got to specifically look at that month over month analysis because of the seasonality. You know some will say well is there the best time to sell my business and it's really the time that's right for that particular individual. But when you're comparing December of 2018 to December of 2017 that is what is most relevant. It's not necessarily all of 2018 against all of 2017 because if you just look at the annual numbers of '17 versus '18 it's only going to paint a partial picture. We're always looking for monthly trends beyond that. We can … we look at that bigger picture and that's what we can talk about, that big picture in the teaser where people are going to see the listing for the first time. You know 60% year over year growth or whatever the number might be. But you've got to drill down into that month over month. How does December … I guess it's year over year December of '18 looked to December of '17. Because you could have had a great first three quarters and then in the fourth quarter of 2018 it could have fallen off a cliff. It still may look like 60% growth year over year but the most recent quarter could be down dramatically. And that dramatically reduces the value of the business because of the risk going forward. Mark: And the other thing that I found and I wrote a blog post on this a several years ago, we'll link to it in the show notes and if you and I were professional podcasters I would have done like actual show prop and been able to have this example at my fingertips. But I did this blog post years ago on how to perform a year over year financial analysis. And then I put together some dummy data and this actually kind of randomly happened when I put it together. Where at from a month over month standpoint the business looked like it was growing and growing at a good clip. But when you took a look at it at a year over year financial analysis what you're able to see is that the growth was slowing dramatically on the business. And that was extremely valuable in that and again it's a pretend scenario to be able to see the actual trend. What is … where is the direction of this business going? The other thing that I want to point out about this and I don't want to spend [inaudible 00:08:10.9] of time on this specific topic of year over year financial analysis but I think the one thing that we need to kind of pull back on with online businesses is we tend to really take a microscopic view of the financials. We'll often take a look at just the past couple of months and consider that to be a trend. Starting to broaden out our timeframes I think is a good thing to do especially from a buying stand point and understanding what is the context of the earnings of this business. When I started Quiet Light Brokerage in 2006, 2007 well most companies were just a few years old. Now we're seeing businesses that are 20, 25 years old on the long end and so we have more history to work with. And I just think year over year is a better solution for that. So that's my number one thing that I look for. Joe: I agree and I'm going to drill down beyond that and the next thing that I would look at but you know not being professional podcasters shows that we're human which is exactly what we are. Okay, that's too much ego there, sorry folks. What I do when you talk about a particular blog and we're not prepared for it, all you're going to do is Google Quiet Light Brokerage and year over year analysis and boom there it is. So for the record, you've done a great job on the last decade. Beyond the year over year comparison, month over month comparison what I drill down into next is revenue by channel. Because a buyer is going to look at it and see what's happening in the most recent three months compared to the same three months last year or year to date things of that nature. And so that shows the trends of the business and which way it's going. Beyond that what I like to drill down to and this goes to documentation is revenue by channel. So is it … let's say it's in a physical products business am I getting 60% of my revenue from Amazon, 25% B2B, and 15% from a new Shopify store. And then beyond that what are the trends within those channels? For instance, I had a listing awhile back where it was it was 100% Amazon and they like most started out on Amazon.com and then expanded to Germany, UK, Canada, Japan, Italy, and those countries took off and were really growing at the same time the US started to trend down. So they put all of their efforts into the new countries and stopped putting efforts into the country that was generating the most revenue. Overall if you look at month over month numbers as a whole we were still up, year over year we were still up, but there was a concerning trend within all of it and that was that the biggest revenue generator was dropping and then it was being replaced with other channels. So overall I guess if you just look at the broad picture it was okay but when you … you want to drill down into those things to get a really clearer picture of it. And that goes for Shopify channels [inaudible 00:11:11.5] or Shopify whatever it might be and then the B2B side too. These are if you're selling physical products. Same goes for content sites or SaaS sites, whatever they might be; advertising sites or SaaS sites. If you've got different methods of advertising and revenues whether it's straight up sales from your website or affiliate revenue you want to break that out in your financials so that you can see them. So you can see what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong but also so that your broker, advisor, exit planner, and your buyer can see it as well. Because you have some great things in there … you know if you started a Shopify store nine months ago and it's already at 15% of your total revenue it's only nine months out of the trailing 12 so you've got built in growth there and that is a really exciting thing for buyers. Mark: Yeah I dealt with a client recently where we were having a little bit of trouble moving his business because it was not on a decline. And he had a lot of revenue but there was a couple of problems with the business where it was sick in a few ways. And what I found is out of our buyers … and we had lots of inquiries on this business because we put it up at a pretty low multiple, most buyers backed out right away when they saw the trends they just kind of backed out and said “No I'm not really all that interested in this business. I don't want to turn around but I have you.” And the buyers that we've grown to know over the years that they're really successful at what they're doing they took a little bit more time and the first thing that they started to do is exactly what you're talking about. They started to take those financials and some of those summation numbers that we see in financials and they started to break them apart. They started to really dig into those numbers and see okay what makes up this revenue. And when we started to break these apart what can we find in here; what's sick and what's healthy? And is what's healthy sustainable and is what's sick is that fixable or is it something that we can just get rid of? And so they started looking at that on a per channel basis but they also started looking at it on a per SKU basis as well in running an analysis. And one of the things that we found with this is that you could actually lighten up the workload of this business and actually increase profitability significantly by removing a large number of the SKUs because they were not all that profitable. But again the front is still the multi-channel analysis that you're talking about. But I think this general principle of when you're looking at revenue especially with an e-commerce business that can have multiple channels of revenue don't just take the summation number, start to break it apart. And from the sell side, if you're selling don't be afraid of reporting those numbers either. There's opportunity in those numbers that you can show potential buyers and I think a little dose of humility for all of this goes a long way. Sometimes somebody is going to come and take a look at your business and be able to have an observation that maybe we've been missing for a while. And from a selling standpoint that's your opportunity if a buyer comes in and notices something that you missed. And so give them that data, give them that opportunity to make that sort of observation. And I think that's a good thing for people to look for. Is there any channel in your opinion that you like better than others or that you look at and you would weight as more valuable than others? Joe: Oh yeah I mean any channel you own the customer. If it's just your own website where you are owning the customer completely and you can remarket to them and upsell them and reach out to them socially via email, whatever method you can. But absolutely owning the customer brings more value than … you know in Amazon platform for instance. Amazon is growing like crazy so don't discount it if you're selling physical products. You have to be there in my opinion. You're missing out on a tremendous amount of revenue if you're not there. But owning the customer is the most important thing in terms of overall value. One of the things I want to jump to Mark is … it's on our list here to talk about in terms of the year over year analysis and drilling down and getting below that total revenue line to either gross profit as a percentage of total revenue or discretionary earnings as a percentage to total revenue. Which one do you look at first? Mark: I look at gross profit first if it's an e-commerce business and just because it's a simpler number to digest. Now there's only really one thing that's getting thrown into that gross profit number you've got your revenue, you've got your landed cost of goods sold and that's pretty much it that's going into the gross profit number. So it's an easier thing to really understand and really at the core of an e-commerce business is that you know what is the cost of your product, and what are people willing to pay for it right now, and how is that trending. And I think with e-commerce businesses specifically because price competition is a real thing with e-commerce businesses and most niches you have to really pay attention to how is the profitability of this industry holding up over time. Is it becoming more competitive? Is the competition happening on a price front? Or are suppliers becoming more aggressive in their pricing as well? So that's one of the first things that I look at when I start to really dig into those financials. I want to see how is that gross profit margin holding up over time, is it getting more expensive to do this business or is it holding up? Joe: You know it's funny I think I agree with you that what you should have in your expenses above the gross profit line are your cost of goods sold, your landed cost of goods sold. But I often see them in from bookkeepers and they include in some cases fees associated with third party platforms. I don't know if there's a right way or a wrong way but you got to dissect to that a little bit when doing the analysis. Is there a particular percentage of profit that you look at and you're like no, your cost of goods sold are just simply too high, the margins are too tight, this is going to be really hard one to sell. Do you ever run across any of those? Mark: I do and I'll get to that in just a second I'm going to chide all the book keepers out there that are including fees in there as cost of goods sold. The technical definition for a cost of goods sold has to be … be involved in the actual production and sourcing of the product itself; the transactional cost. So if you're keeping your books that way it's a minor issue and a crawling issue that I won't fight too hard but it's supposed to go on the regular operational expenses instead. Joe: I fell asleep in accounting class. I just focus on what I focus on. I told you this story before. We work with Scott of Catching Clouds, Matt of CapForge, Fully Accountable is a recent one that's come across my desk and all three seem to do a really solid job. And having a great bookkeeper brings a windfall of cash when you go to list your business for sale. Mark: Absolutely and one of those guys might disagree with me and then we can whip out our pocket protectors and have a pen fight over that. Joe: All right yeah … let's keep the people awake. We don't want to talk about that. Mark: All right, move on. So percentages absolutely, you want to see a healthy gross profit percentage. I talked to one buyer and I won't say her name because I don't know if she wants me saying this but she told me that she wouldn't look at a business that had less than 50% gross profit margins. I wouldn't go that far. In my opinion, when I'm looking at the business from a broker standpoint I start to get nervous when gross profit margins dip below 20% is when I get nervous, 25% and lower I'm a little uncomfortable with that but you know I think that's doable. I think the average that I'd see would be right around 35%; 30-35% would be the average. Obviously the higher you can have it the better. There are certain industries, electronics being one of them that tend to just have really low gross profit margins and you know the problem with that and just thinking about it I have basic basis if you're … say you have a 10% gross margin which for a lot of electronics that's where you're at, you're looking at having a million dollars in revenue to be able to generate $100,000 in just gross profit. That's a lot of money that you have to generate in order to get some gross profit. So my rule is about 20%. Joe: It doesn't count your advertising; it doesn't count your payroll or anything like that so. Mark: Or your transactional fees [inaudible 00:19:26.7] marketplace. Joe: Exactly as it should be down below that gross profit line. So that's going down that P&L you know you've got total revenue you've got gross profit and then you've got all these expenses in there. One of the things that I always look pretty closely at if I have the detail up above is the advertising channel. Do you ever get to see advertising expenses by channel in a P&L? Mark: By channel … I'm trying to think if I've seen it. With Amazon, you'll see it. Sometimes you'll see Amazon advertising expenses broken out separate from- Joe: Wouldn't it be amazing to see it there? Just for those bookkeepers out there and those people that are doing it themselves. Mark: Oh my gosh. Joe: If you've got revenue by channel up above the total revenue line why not have advertising by channel down below? It … you can do it in QuickBooks and Xero you just got to have a subset of it. In the exported P&L it may say just total advertising but you can show that separately. And the reason I love to look at that is because it can show too heavy of a weight in one particular channel again in the advertising dollars. This is airing in August of 2018, as many people listening know there was an algorithm update in Facebook in April. And a lot of people got hurt by that and if they were overspending on Facebook advertising and they might have found themselves too heavily weighted on one channel and that advertising didn't work as well anymore and their revenues might have dropped. Or they had to pick up the ball somewhere else and it took a while. So it goes to that detail. The more detail we can see the more we'll understand those trends and a buyer can make a more informed decision. If somebody's stroking a check for 100,000, 500,000, a million whatever the number is, they worked hard for that money, they saved it, they're smart, they're intelligent, they're going to get through those numbers eventually and it's better to do it upfront in advance so that once you're under a lot of intent you get all the way through the closing. So I'm always trying to drill down into those details. I would love advertising by channel. I don't always get it but it's a question that I'm always asking and is that spending by channel going up or down. I think if you can again diversify by channel and if it's Facebook, if it's Instagram, if it's AdWords, if it's inside your sponsored account or whatever it might be, if you're selling SaaS products, affiliate whatever you might be doing; having that level of detail is truly ideal and I'm always looking for it if I can get it. I can often get it out of just a P&L but generally, there's enough detail in the back end for the client … the person owning the business to be able to share that. Mark: Yeah I've used an analogy some time … and by the way, real quick just kind of a public service announcement here if anybody is listening to this in your car it's late at night you've been driving for a while put this on pause go put on like a really exciting song for a little bit and then come back and finish it. Joe: Come on. Mark: No just … all right so I- Joe: This is huge. This is all huge that just- Mark: It should be exciting. Joe: You and I do this all the time and it's exciting for a client when we go through these numbers and we find something and all of a sudden they realize that if we do this right their business … they don't have to generate any more revenue but their business when properly presented is worth a quarter of a million dollars more. So that's pretty exciting you don't have to generate more revenue. Mark: Well absolutely. So I'm actually going to bring this to Botany of all things. I think its Botany or probably not but the study of trees and tree rings … you're looking at me like I'm crazy. Joe: I am. Well, you are. Okay. Mark: Yeah well I am a little bit crazy but one of the cool things that I learned years ago about the tree rings, you know when you slice a tree and you can see all the rings and stuff like that. Scientists are able to tell all sorts of information from those rings. They're able to tell if there is a fire a certain time in that area, or if it was a drought year or if it was heavy rains that year, and the average temperature as well. You can find all sorts of information like and the reason I bring this up … there is a point here besides me just talking about the fun things I learned on the side outside of work, is that financially I'd look at financials in sort of the same way. It's the record of the business and its quantified what's happening to your business in other ways. Facebook's algorithm change is an actual change in your customer acquisition strategy and it shows up on those books. There's very little that happens in your business that's not going to show up somewhere in your financial records. And so when you keep detailed financial records what you're doing is you're keeping a story of your business in a quantified way. And for buyers who are trying to evaluate a business, you know buyers look at this from all sorts of different ways; especially experienced buyers. They're going to look at your business from an ROI standpoint. They want to understand can I make money from this? But they're also going to look at it from the story of the business and try and get in the head you as a business owner and what it's been like to run it for the past number of X years. And so your point about keeping more beautiful records and breaking advertising down into channels AdWords or Facebook, we've messed around with Pinterest for a while if you've done some Quora advertising or have you. That's part of the story of your business that you can tell when you really start to break down financials historically. Joe: Yeah and I think it's important to understand that all of those details are important to be able to share. Somebody listening that's planning on selling their business they may want to say I don't want to share those negative trends, I don't want to talk about that fire that I had back in June of 2017. It's going to come out so you might as well get those details out there and ready and available for your buyers because trust … when you lay it all out there it builds trust. And trust is important because it offsets risk a little bit. And again when you offset that risk a buyer is willing to pay more for your business. And it's all important … it goes into your social media accounts too you know. I've had … and I'm going to tangent but … and I won't name names but I had clients that are selling their business and I pop into their social media account and their profile picture is them on the beach topless with a beer on their hand and chugging whatever. Those are men topless by the way. And I'm like it's great but just put a shirt on for a little while, just change your profile picture because we're trying to build trust and respect in who you are. Buyers want to buy from client sellers that they like and that they trust more than anything else. So that's why you want to share all those rings of the tree and tell the full story because they'll look at the mistakes that you've made and the expertise that they have that you don't and go opportunity. I have capital to not run out of inventory and you did, I'm smarter than you are, or I have more money than you are. That's really really critical stuff to have. Anyway- Mark: With the negative trends in the past by the way I just want to say one quick thing. It's not a bad thing if you have a negative trend in the past. In fact, I like it when I see a business that has had a decline and recovered. I can go to a buyer and say look how resilient this business is. Joe: Exactly. Mark: They ran out of product for two months and they're still chugging along great; it didn't kill them. Joe: That's right. I actually had a situation where a client had a patent infringement claim filed against them. And not just against that particular client but against everybody that was selling a similar product. And it turns out that everyone else stopped selling that product period. My client hired an attorney, fought the infringement, won, and ended up being one of the only sellers of that particular product anymore and that just … the revenues shot up, gained more market share. And it's an ugly thing … a patent infringement; you don't want to talk about that right? No, you absolutely do because odds of it happening again incredibly low and in this situation, it turned out to be very positive as well. So I say expose all the rings of the tree in your analogy in botany. Let us know if botany is not … I think it is the right phrase but- Mark: I think it's like the big family. I think there is probably a more narrow specialty. Somebody- Joe: We are sitting in front of computers; you want to drill down a little further? We've talked about advertising by channel what would you look at next in a let's say a financial presentation or a profit and loss statement? Mark: Well you know I'm going to start getting into these specific expenses and I want to take a look at what the individual average … or what not advertising, the individual expenses are to see are any trending higher. Basically, is this business getting more difficult to run, is it getting more expensive to run? And the other thing that you can see from just kind of an expense profile would be attempts at growth. You often see expenses ramp up when people expect growth so you can get the sense for where the business is arcing from taking a look at individual expenses. So I would look at staffing costs, they really ramped up. Are you seeing a lot of professional legal fees ramp up? That will be something that you wanted to begin to and try and get a little bit of explanation into. But really trying to get in … again some of those individual expenses and see spikes and anomalies. You know things that kind of stand out because those again are going to be the big stories that you want to get into later on. So we move a little bit away from trend analysis when we start looking at that … when we start getting into just kind of that anomaly analysis of a financial statement to see what questions do we need to be asking on this particular business. Joe: Yeah and it's not just anomalies where there's spikes in revenue but sometimes expenses disappear. And when they disappear for the last two or three months of the trailing 12 and now they want to sell their business they're just … either they made a mistake or just forgot to put it in. But they're just cutting costs to increase their discretionary earnings. So we always … we drill down into all of that, every buyer will and we do it for them, ask those questions and get it exposed so that it's a good investment for a buyer and the selling achieves their goals as well. Mark: Something I want to ask you about Joe, you know we get talked a lot … Quiet Light, in general, is pegged a lot as kind of like the e-commerce broker like that's what we do but we actually sell a lot of SaaS businesses. Joe: And content or advertising business. If you look at the revenue on close transactions here to date it's an awful lot of SaaS an awful lot of content in there as well. Mark: Right and I explain to people it's actually not a majority of e-commerce it's a plurality for us as we're less than 50% of our deals are e-commerce it's more around 40, 45% percent. I want to get into subscription based revenue and how do you look at that when you're evaluating business. What are you … you've done a number of SaaS businesses or a certain number of SaaS businesses, how do you evaluate subscription based revenue? Joe: Yeah anytime someone's looking at the subscription based businesses to buy you know the eye that I look at it with is what does it cost to acquire that customer and what is the lifetime value of that customer? Could they have different terminologies for it churn rate and so on and so forth … you know how [inaudible 00:30:20.7]  if you get 100 new customers how many are churning every month, meaning how many go away? You want to keep that very low. Well I was looking at that churn rate but the simple way to look at it is … from a buyer's perspective is if you've … you know I just closed a transaction it was a software as a service business, it's been around for 14 years and it was created originally as a solution to a developer's problem. The developer created it and then it just sort of grew organically. And 14 years later he had a very successful business but he didn't have any data. He was only spending about literally like $300 a month on advertising. I'm like okay well what is the cost to acquire that customer with your advertising and then how long does that customer stick around? What is their lifetime value? So that a buyer wants to look at it and go okay it costs you $100 to acquire a customer but the lifetime value of that customer is $400. My margins are really strong that means okay I can spend more money on advertising dollars and I can double the revenue of this company. They're always looking at that aspect of it from a subscription based business. And that could be physical products or software as a service. That churn rate is really really important, lifetime value, and repeat customer. Once you've gained a customer and if you've got the ability to offer them additional products and upsells that's something that I'm always looking for if you've got that model where you can add to it. The percentage of repeat customers that monthly recurring revenue; always looking at those numbers. I mean just saying that there's a monthly recurring revenue of $60,000 right away you just do the math on that that's $360,000 of revenue that you're not putting advertising dollars to because it's already recurring and there's a fixed margin there. That stuff is really exciting and if you're an owner of software as a service business or a subscription based model box business you've got to have those numbers because that's what buyers are going to look for. They're going to want to know how much does it cost because I'm bringing a whole lot of working capital I'm going to blow this thing up and they want to know the cost to acquire that customer and lifetime value; two most important things in my opinion. Mark: [inaudible 00:08:10.9] things? Joe: We got a couple more. Mark: We have a couple more? Joe: Yeah drill down to the bottom discretionary earnings we know … hopefully, everybody knows discretionary earnings is your net income plus your add backs. Net income of the bottom of a profit and loss [inaudible 00:32:44.9] statement add back to the personal expenses you run through the business that are your own benefits and one-time expenses. So you get net income plus add backs equals seller's discretionary earnings. Where do you feel most comfortable, where do you see buyers feel most comfortable in terms of that discretionary earnings as a percentage of your total revenue? Mark: Boy that's a great question and I think it depends a little bit on the business itself. So SaaS companies tend to have higher SDE to revenue percentages. Content sites can have … depending on how they're set up can also have a higher percentage. E-commerce tends to have a little bit lower percentages relative to revenue. So I'm not sure if I've looked at this in terms of percentages as far as SDE to a percentage … I would assume since you asked the question that you have. Joe: I have and you know 10% percent you could have at least I think. I can tell you what I don't want and I've turned away businesses I just simply won't list them because they're not going to sell are those that have 1 or 2%. You know look I'm not talking they're doing three million in discretionary earnings off of 30 million in revenue. That's a sellable business no question about it. But when you're doing 1 or 2% of your total margins you're spending a lot of money on advertising dollars, you're carrying a lot of working capital and inventory, you make a mistake a half a percent one way or the other and your profit drops dramatically. And any time I've looked at those, anytime we've listed things that have a smaller percentage margin there in discretionary earnings buyers get really nervous and they look at it from that point of view. So you've really got to do that math and not go oh yeah it's 200,000 in discretionary earnings. You've got to go okay it's 200,000 and what percentage is that of my total revenue, and how do I improve that? And then you drill down into those expenses. Dave Bryant who's part of the e-commerce podcast … EcomCrew Michael Jackness, he was our client and a year before we sold his business he did that. He looked at that bottom line sellers discretionary earning as a percentage of the total revenue and then drilled down into certain SKUs and looked at the profit margin of those and either renegotiated the ones that were not profitable enough or got rid of a few and added about 40,000 of discretionary earnings to his business and about $120,000 to the list price of the business. So I … you want to get at I'd say shoot for 10%, 5% gets a little you know depending upon the business and how large total revenues are but it's always a case by case basis. [inaudible 00:35:18.2]  get down to that 2, 3% range I get really really nervous as do buyers. Mark: I do think that part of it is revenue dependent. I've found with businesses that have kind of eye popping revenue numbers that even if the discretionary earnings is a very small percentage as you point out … if the business is doing 30 million dollars in revenue per year and it has really low percentage of discretionary earnings it's still a sellable business because you got 30 million dollars of revenue per year to be able to play with. It's when you get in those territories of say you have $500,000 of revenue and your discretionary earnings is just 10% of that so it's $50,000 that's not a lot of room for error before you're at negative territory and you don't have a lot of extra room in capital to be able to really pull into the growth of that business. So I think that's a good thing to be able to look at. I think a lot of it depends on the size of the business. Joe: Yeah I completely agree. Look we didn't start … we didn't time this podcast, we have no idea how long we've been chatting for but I want to touch on one more thing that is really important I think for buyers to look at in terms of opportunity and for sellers to track in terms of again opportunity to get more value for your business. Buyers in terms of if they're not detailing it and you can figure that out you'll see built in growth and that is revenue by SKU. And that is whether it's a physical products business or a subscription business; again, box or software as a service. Because sometimes software as a service they offer different packages and what not. If you've launched a SKU, a new product in the last 12 months and I've seen this before and let's say you've got a dozen SKUs and six of them are only … they're under nine months old and staggered within there, you've got built in growth. And so what I like to drill down to if I can get it is revenue by SKU for the trailing 12 months. Because if a SKU was launched six months ago but it's already up to 18% of the total revenue that's huge because you've got six more months and it's growing. It's absolute built in growth and it brings more value for a buyer. You can push the value of the business a little bit higher and if you can share that detail with the buyers they're going to get it. They're going to look at it and go yes I get it I understand it. Classic example of that is Kent Renner. We had him on here on the podcast early on back in December right? 300% year over year growth and he only owned the business for six months. The business had a total of 16 SKUs when he bought it. Nine of them had been launched within the trailing 12 months and represented about 40% of the total revenues. So it's absolute built in growth and Kent's took that business and it was doing a million in revenue when he bought it to three million in total revenue inside of it … a total of 12 months. And that was because that revenue by SKU detail that Evan the seller was able to provide and sort of built in past to growth for it for Kent to take over. Mark: Yes so I'm going to make a point here in this but beginning way to into the weeds on this topic here but I'm going to just venture in there anyways and just as an advanced tactic for buyers to look at I think what you're saying there is absolute gold. And again I've seen some of our top buyers do just that. They really get into the SKUs and these are particular get it. So let's get into a situational analysis here and say you have an e-commerce business that recently launched some SKUs within the past year or two years and … now I'm saying this because I have this case with a client, they're keeping their books on a cash basis. From a buying opportunity, in my opinion, this is like absolute gold because their costs relative to the revenue is going to be very very high. They're building up inventory in a product that is growing in sales but it isn't really there yet and so you have super depressed or understated gross profit which is going to pop very soon. This is like one of those signals that you're like buy. Like if you know what you're looking at buy this thing because it's going to pop in the next year and you're going to see that massive growth. You get maybe too much of the weeds there. Joe: Yeah getting into cash versus accrual accounting with cost of goods sold way into the weeds but I'm telling you right now as a buying opportunity if you're looking at other brokerage firms … which hopefully you're looking at everybody. Any experienced broker is going to take a listing and go yeah okay there's the discretionary we'll do a few add backs and here's the multiple on that discretionary earnings. An experienced broker is going to take that same profit and loss statement, a physical products business and make sure that the cost of goods sold is presented on accrual basis. That discretionary earnings number … most often with the business, it's growing rapidly where you're taking excess working capital and putting it back in the inventory that discretionary earnings is going to pop. And I've seen a quarter of a million dollar increase in the value of the business because of it. Let's see if I can do some simple math. Imagine you have in the trailing twelve months a cost of goods sold of a million dollars on a cash basis. It's a big number but I'm trying to do round numbers. And let's say that on a cash basis you're over inflated by 5%. If you flipped it to accrual instead of having 35% cost of goods sold your real cost of goods sold is only 30% but because your cash your 5% higher. 5% times that million dollars that you've got there on the books is $50,000. If your business is worth three times that's $150,000 added onto the list price of the business. Or if you're a buyer and it's not presented that way it's $150,000 of instant equity when you're buying that business. Mark: Right so for those of you listening you know need to fact check out some of the not … botany is the right field of science and also if Joe's math is correct on that because I don't know if it is. But we'll go with it and the point is there. I think the general rule of thumb that we follow here is a growing business that's kept on a cash basis is going to understate their discretionary earnings and their gross profit generally speaking. And a business in decline that is on cash basis generally overstates their discretionary earnings if they're not putting money back in the inventory at that point. So those are the basic rules of thumb. Keep in your mind there's exceptions; there are always. I think this is been a long podcast right now. We have not been timing it. We're probably around the 45 minute mark. Joe: Hopefully you guys are still awake. If there's any questions that came up during the podcast shoot us an email inquiries@quietlightbrokerage, mark@quietlightbrokerage, joe@quietlightbrokerage, anybody's first name for the most part @quietlightbrokerage.com. Mark: That's right and this format of an episode … normally, of course, we'd like to bring on guests and the friends of Quiet Light Brokerage onto the show and we have more of those coming up here in the near future. We've got some pretty good guests coming up. But we wanted to start spring cleaning some of these episodes where it's just Joe and I talking or maybe we'll talk with somebody else within the company not to really give a background on them but to give insights or some of the ways that we attack some of the issues that come up when buying or selling an online business. Give us feedback on this, please. We'd love to hear it. You can send an email like Joe said to mark@quietlightbrokerage or joe@quietlightbrokerage or if you don't want us to know and you just want to complain about us send it over to jason@quietlightbrokerage.com and he's god at keeping secrets so you can complain to him. Joe: Sounds good. Thanks, Mark I appreciate your time.   Links: Learn the Value of your Business www.quietlightbrokerage.com inquiries@quietlightbrokerage.com joe@quietlightbrokerage.com mark@quietlightbrokerage.com

The Quiet Light Podcast
What Harvard is Teaching MBAs About Acquisition Entrepreneurship

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 17, 2018 38:49


For decades, Harvard's MBA program has been primarily focused on the traditional model of entrepreneurship. In the past 6 years an elective course on the acquisition of established businesses has been attracting as many as 30% of the program's candidates. We had the pleasure of sitting down with Royce Yudkoff, who teaches the course “Entrepreneurship For Acquisition” at Harvard Business School's MBA program. Here at Quiet Light we've also had the honor of collaborating on the course for the past 5 years. Today, we delve into the details of how Harvard is sending experienced professionals out into the business acquisition marketplace with hands-on experience that is invaluable to their success. The trend toward real-life marketplace experience as a replacement for textbooks has taken hold in Harvard's MBA program. These case-study and field guide learning modules are teaching candidates the key ways to enter and be successful in the acquisition arena. The course Royce teaches alongside Professor Richard Ruback is focused on how to screen potential acquisition targets, do the financing, negotiate the typical deal terms, and do due diligence when buying a small business. Episode Highlights: Harvard MBAs are on average 28-35 years old so all they come into the program with professional experience. The course works with real life companies and case studies so students learn about how companies succeed in buying existing businesses. The course follows the entire arc of buying a small business from the search, to the financing, through due diligence, and up to the transition of ownership. The participants are learning how weaving good business practices from the very start of the process leads to better chances of ROI and growth. Royce explains how the candidates are taught the best financial practices for buying for a business, whether through traditional bank or private equity investment. The course follows students through the program and beyond by performing surveys and gathering statistics on success rates for those who go on to acquire companies. Royce shares the single most common contributor to the success and non-success in the search and acquisition process and what he advises all buyers to look for in a potentially successful business. Transcription: Mark: Joe did you know that a dream of mine that has gone unfulfilled in my life was to attend the Harvard Business School? Joe: I didn't know that knowing that your nickname was slacker in college I would think that'd be the last dream you could ever have. Mark: Well, we technically changed my name my last year mainly because I had a t-shirt that said slacker on it. And it made a terrible first impression when you walked in the class the first day the professor sees that. You get targeted pretty quickly. Joe: You know we did a tour of Stanford last summer because I have teenage boys. We happen to be there, my kids probably won't get in; I understand 3% do. And when I graduated from college, I went to Northeastern University in Boston, when I was done I was done. I never wanted to go back to college. Touring a campus like Stanford or I imagine Harvard just at any age would make you want to go back. Mark: Yeah it's a fantastic school. I love their MBA Program there because they do things a little bit different. It's not textbook based, it's case study based. So a Harvard MBA student, when they attend that school first of all the school pretty much requires that you have real world experience. Not 100% but it's really hard to get in if you don't have any real world experience. They want people who have been out there in the field doing stuff. And the entire class structure itself is also based around case studies. So you end up with a group of people that you do these case studies with and you study real life, real business scenarios and go about how … figure out how to address those real world scenarios. It's a way of trying to replicate some of the things that they're going to actually experience when they leave Harvard Business School. So yeah a few years after I graduated college and had a job and I thought well it would be a lot of fun to attend that. I really liked the idea of it but life got in the way. Bad grades got in the way and it never was something that I actually was able to pursue. I went so far as taking a GMAT but I never actually applied. But I bring this up because for as you know for the past five years we've been working with Harvard at Quiet Light Brokerage. They have done what a lot of people that listen to this podcast know, they have really started to turn their focus towards entrepreneurship acquisition or acquisitions and entrepreneurship and the combination. And they have a whole course that they teach on it; how to build … sorry how to buy a small business and lead an entrepreneurial life through acquisitions. And for those five years, we've actually been working with them, they approached us to see if we could support their class with some supportive materials and me being the closet Harvard fan boy that I am was like absolutely that sounds really cool. Joe: Excellent, excellent. Well, I'm excited to listen to this podcast. I know that they did some studies that show the people that go through this course and the success rate that they have. And it's really more about buying versus building which is a little follow up from almost with the podcast with Walker that you had so I'm excited hear it. Mark: Yeah absolutely so there are some statistics in here, people ask us this all the time you know what percentage of buyers are successful. Well, Harvard is actually tracking that. They're taking a look at the kids who go through the courses … and I shouldn't say kids these guys are 30 years old with tons of experience. But they're looking at people who go through the courses doing acquisition and they're tracking to see how they're successful. Also in this episode, we talk about what they're teaching on the course, what they're guiding their students as far as how large of acquisitions they should be making, how to do the financing on these large acquisitions. So it's really a chock full of a lot of information that's been taught at the highest levels at one of the leading institutions in the world. Joe: And all of it hopefully and an awful lot of it can be applied to the businesses that we're listing. Because I'm going to just throw some numbers out there for those that haven't been to the website recently, we've got listings of really all shapes and sizes. But we've got a couple up there in that I think minus under LOI just under nine million dollars. Brian's got one at twice that amount. And then, of course, anything from a couple hundred thousand dollars up to that 80 million dollar range. So these larger listings that take more funding from Venture Cap money or from a larger SBA loan are really becoming more prevalent. So I think everything that these guys talk about and the book that they published as well can be very helpful to the audience here today. Mark: Absolutely let's get on to it. Mark: All right Royce, how are you? Royce: I'm great it's a pleasure to be with you today Mark. Thank you for organizing this. Mark: Oh my pleasure. I'm so glad to be able to actually finally talk to you and see you in person as well. We've been working together I guess sort of indirectly now for what four or five years? Royce: Exactly and you've been a big help to our course in Harvard Business School so we're very appreciative. I should start with a big thank you. Mark: Well it was always my dream when I was in college and then shortly after college to get my MBA at Harvard. I started looking at the GMAT and I took PEP courses for that and then life happened. And I never got around to actually doing it. I actually talked to a Harvard recruiter at one point, sat down with them and was going through that but then it never did happen. So the fact that I actually get to participate in you guys program is kind of like a dream of mine come true that I get to actually work with you guys at least indirectly if not directly as well now. All right so the Harvard Program, how long have you guys had this Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition Program? Royce: That program is now in its 6th year Mark, and for decades Harvard has had a large program teaching people about traditional entrepreneurship; what I refer to as rubbing two sticks together and make fire, meeting … going into startups. But about half a dozen years ago we started teaching about the idea of buying an established profitable company usually from a retiring founder and the idea has really created a lot of excitement at Harvard. About 30% of all of our MBA students take these courses to try if this is a potential career and learn about it; which makes us probably the largest elective course on campus. Mark: Wow, that's fantastic. Now you do this and one other professor Richard … is it Ruback? Royce: Yes Richard Ruback. So Rick and I created a course and we co-teach it and it's really become our … the center of our professional activity. Including following our students closely who go down this path. We stay very connected to them after they graduate from the program. Mark: Yeah I know that's great. So I want to make just one point about Harvard's MBA Program and again I know this because I looked at potentially participating in this program but you guys are a little bit different than other MBA programs in the way that you set up your courses right? That it's a lot of this case study sort of approach to everything is that right? Royce: I think the two differences in our programs from what most people think of as MBA is this first exactly what you said which is we do not lecture, we do not have textbooks. The whole two year program is set up around cases which are sort of short nonfiction business stories. And the discussion the faculty elicits about the decisions they require to be made. And the second difference is our students typically come to us at about age 28 and graduate at age 30. So they have six or seven years of mid-level, junior level, executive experience before coming into the classroom. So they're not kids; they're young professionals by the time they leave. Those are the two distinctions I highlight about HBS. Mark: Yeah and one of the things I love about that … so one of the knocks against university especially among the entrepreneurial community is that a lot of entrepreneurs see university degrees and MBA degrees as being almost wasted money right? Because a lot of them have become successful. But what I love about you guys program is the fact that you do require that experience is not textbook learning, its actual looking case studies. Delving in deep into these actual cases and amplifying a real world experience in the classroom setting. Royce: Yeah you're exactly right. That's the purpose of the case studies. In addition, the faculty is routinely engaged in a commercial world too and thus expecting to bring that into the classroom. And we also utilize experts like yourself Mark, and bring in work done by experts or even experts as guests into the classroom. So we try to stay very engaged with the practical commercial world. Mark: That's great. That's absolutely great. I absolutely love that. Now you guys have also … you and Rick have also put together a book. And for those watching at YouTube at … this is the book here, HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business. And you put this out two years ago is that right? Royce: Yes we'd put it out two years ago and it's been very satisfying. Our goal was to produce a very practical handbook that walks people through each step in buying a smaller firm and to try and reach beyond campus to the thousands of people who are thinking about it or wanting to do it and give them something that's just immensely practical and we've been very gratified. I think almost everyone who goes down this path ends up reading this book and we get lots of comments that it's been helpful. Mark: That's a really good book. I mean I've thumbed through it before and you know I've learned a lot in this industry by doing and that has its learning curve. Frankly, a book like this to start out would have been really really useful in shortening that learning curve. So it was a really good book and I assume that you can get this on the HBR website correct? Royce: The HBR website and even more conveniently on Amazon, so it's just an easy thing to buy and a kind of quick easy read as well. Mark: It is a quick easy read. There's large margins in there as well so that people can take notes alongside it; which is super super helpful. So all of you out there that are readers and soak up as much information add this one to your list; for sure it's definitely one to add. You're getting some good information here. All right so let's do this, let's get into some of the material that you guys actually teach in the Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition Course. What is the format and what is the structure or maybe what is the syllabus that you would look at for a typical is it on a semester basis or is it a full year? Royce: Yes it's a full year course and we start with an overview of the small firms market. Sort of what are some of the management issues in running a small firm, how do you buy small firms. And we let people sort of figure out whether this is of interest to them generally. And then the course gets really really practical. We kind of follow each step in a small firm acquisition beginning with how do you source opportunities, how do you evaluate them, how do you do due diligence, how do you finance them, and how do you negotiate the legal documents and then we move them to sort of a transition because almost always after a firm is sold the seller stays on for a while at least part time teaching the new owner the ropes. And that is somewhere between three months and 12 months part time for the seller but it's a key part of making these purchases successful. So that's how we [inaudible 00:11:59.1] we like to say we're following the arc of the small firm acquisition. Mark: Now the arc is something that our listeners are probably very familiar with. It's something that we have laid out on our site as well. I want to ask a broader question with the popularity of your course. When people think about Harvard Business School I think a lot of them think about graduates going into large financial firms you know working in Boston, working in New York, and really kind of working with a Fortune 500's out there. Do you see a lot of your students now pursuing this more entrepreneurial path? Royce: Yes I do and it's a great comment you made because I do think Harvard is viewed that way. And one of the reasons this program is important is it's highlighting the fact that the business school makes a difference in ways that help ordinary Americans. In other words we send our well trained, smart, energetic graduates into cities all across the country and they create jobs for regular people that make their lives better. I'll give you a quick example, one of our students … and this is very representative is a woman named Jennifer Rouse. She spent about five or six years as an engineer at a couple of leading manufacturing companies in the Midwest. Came to HBS to be trained as a general manager. Fell in love with the idea of running her own company. Instead of getting a job out of HBS she searched and bought a revenue cycle management company in the Pacific Northwest that essentially handles the billing for municipal ambulance services to insurance companies; very specialized complicated set of procedures. And she's grown the business from about 40 employees to 70 employees over the three years she's owned it. So it's been an enormously gratifying experience for her and profitable one. It allowed an entrepreneur who wanted to retire to get his just reward and take cash out of the company. But it's also created a lot of good paying jobs in that mid-sized city. So kind of all the way around it's exactly what our business school ought to be doing, we think. And that's what we're trying to do in this program. Mark: You know one thing I think that people don't understand about our industry and when I talk to them for the first time, they often ask “Who buys an online business?” And one thing I've found is the synergy that exists between the bootstrappers and the startups, these guys that are really really good at the hustle and they can create something amazing out of practically nothing. And then they grow up to a certain size where it now needs management and now needs … it kind of enters into that phase two and a lot of these entrepreneurs don't want to do that because they don't want to be managers. They don't want to do that additional growth step of now managing lots of people. Royce: Yeah and I think that's exactly right. These businesses reach transition point where once they needed someone who is not only energetic and smart but knew service they were providing incredibly well and 15 or 20 years later it's more about a trained manager who's got a certain managerial skills. I'll also add to your comment that there's a life cycle to entrepreneurship. You know the 60 year old entrepreneur who's made a lot of money in their smaller firm quite likely might not want to work as hard as they did when they're 30 years old. And that's a very sensible decision that the business may have a lot more potential in it in the hands of a 30 or 35 year old who's willing to put in those 60 and 70 hour weeks. And that's another transition that makes sense for everybody. Mark: Sure. I remember one client that I worked with. He had … he was selling … well just say durable goods, I won't go into exactly what he was selling, but he was sourcing all the inventory putting it in to a secondary garage and fulfilling all the orders on his own. I mean he was working 45 hours a week and have really maxed out and I asked him I said “Why are you selling them?” because business is growing, it's growing rapidly. Why not hire on some people and kind of expand to an actual warehouse. And his answer was probably the simplest most logical answer I've ever heard it was because I don't want to. Yeah, I don't want to manage people. I like doing this on my own but that's the obvious next step. Royce: Yes. Yeah, exactly and it's a very human thing and the right answer is to put the business in the hands of someone who's going maximize it. I think conversely from the perspective of a young entrepreneur through acquisition, I see this opportunity as so much lower risk than starting a company from scratch. Because you're buying an established proven profitable business with a business model that really works and an owner who will sort of do an orderly transition with you. So it's a way to express entrepreneurial desire without taking the enormous risks of a startup or having to have some idea. Mark: Right you're absolutely … and I think this is something we talked about in a recent podcast and that is the difference between buying versus building a business and how you can get that leg up and get that initial startup so much faster. There's much less friction in working with something that's already established like that. So let's do this, let's follow the arc of the deal that you had talked about a little bit earlier and let's give the listeners here and the few viewers just a little flavor as to what this arc looks like. And maybe some of the things that you guys teach in the course as well. Let's start with this how do you source your deals? This is a problem for so many buyers out there. I've talked to some buyers that are looking for a year and a half, two years for a good business. And the good ones frankly I know from experience when we put something out that's good we're going to get a lot of intent on that within four or five days and so it can be really tough. So what do you guys teach as far as sourcing deals and some of the tips that you would offer there? Royce: You're exactly right. You know sourcing is immensely difficult in a small firm space. First of all, there are two paths people go down. One, which we certainly recommend is dealing with the intermediary professionals in the small firm space. As you know there are hundreds and hundreds of these across North America. And you're required to just do an enormous amount of outreach because unlike say with real estate where there are multiple listing services, confidentiality is extremely important to these owners of smaller firms. And so you only get to see these firms by establishing relationships with reputable intermediaries. So it's a great deal of work to establish that kind of dialogue. And then on top of that, once you have done that, the majority of businesses that are for sale are not high quality businesses. They're average at best and a few of them are really good businesses. So it's an enormous outreach and sourcing process that frankly takes from the time someone starts sourcing to the time they close the average time is about 18 months to find a good quality business negotiate diligence it and close that. So … and that's 18 months of full time work. Probably the question I get asked most often by aspiring entrepreneurs through acquisition is “Is this something I can do part time?” because it would be so great to do it part time right? You could keep a full time job, earn income, and you imagine you might be able to do it next on weekends like rebuilding an old car or refinishing a basement. But the truth is I've never seen anyone do this part time. It is for everyone who goes down this road it is a demanding full time job to source, evaluate, diligence, negotiate and it takes an average of 18 months. So it's hard. Mark: What are some ways in your opinion that people can speed that up if they're really anxious to get going? Like their working a corporate job right now and they want to get out of that corporate job. Do you have any tips on how they can speed that up? Royce: Yes we see that a lot of people that have worked in a corporate job they just find it unsatisfying and they want the professional independence that comes with this kind of entrepreneurship. You know it's hard to make this go faster. I've seen people close quickly because we've seen scores and scores of people do this, I've seen people buy businesses in as little as five or six months. But I have to say my conclusion after years of doing this is that those are just flukes; that in the same way that the person struggles on for two years is a fluke. That you get some outliers but it's just really hard to make the process go faster. And one reason for that is out of those 18 months probably the last four months are spent in that deal you'll close on. You know doing that signing the LOI, diligence, financing, closing. So really you're talking about a little over a year of searching before you finally get to that deal that makes. I wish I could hurry up this process. But it's one of the reasons that I suppose this space hasn't been beat up or overcrowded is that someone has to really want this. Mark: Sure and I think that's really good advice. You're right there's some luck of the draw right? There's just some pure luck on the draw. I talked to one person years ago I was … when we first tried to do the podcast and it didn't really work, but I talked to one buyer who said that he was ready for that sort of 18 month time period and within two months something just spread across his desk and it was perfect. But he didn't have a financing lined up for it and so he had to let it go. But it was that luck of the draw. It came to him perfectly; right away if he was ready he would have been able to move on it. That actually leads well to my next question which is financing. What are you guys advising your students and what are you seeing them actually do in terms of financing some of these deals? Royce: Yeah so the typical acquisition is financed with about two thirds debt and one third equity. And let me deal with each of those. On the debt side in the small firms marketplace, it is almost universal for the sellers to take back some amount of seller paper usually 20 to 25% of the purchase price is taken back in what's on average at four, five year subordinated note. There are few exceptions to this but it's a very large percentage of the transactions. And about 45% on average of the transaction is funded by a senior bank loan. And this comes in two flavors; one, is just a regular way, a commercial bank loan will typically finance a little under half of the deal and it will be repaid over five to seven years usually from a local or regional bank. The first candidate being a bank the company has an existing relationship with. The second path is the Small Business Administration has a terrific program called the 7(a) Program. I'm sure you're familiar with this. It's administered through banks. Most of the banks that lend commercial loans also will do a 7(a) guaranteed loan. It is a wonderful loan product because they will lend against businesses that have no tangible assets; service businesses that just have cash flow. They lend up to 80% of the business. They lend over 10 years. There are no covenants. It's a very very attractive loan with a single exception that you are required to sign a personal guarantee on it. So it's something for very thoughtful consideration by the entrepreneur. But those are the two sources of debt. And as I said with the salary debt they cover the two thirds of the purchase price. One third is usually raised from friends and family. And most common is that these prospective entrepreneurs will go around and raise money in $100,000 here or $200,000 here from anywhere from six to 15 individuals and they will cut a deal to divide the prospective profits between their investor group and themselves. Because this typical small business that we see … when we talk about a small business we're talking about a company with one to two million dollars of EBITDA that might sell for five times EBITDA or 10 million dollars of which three million dollars might be equity. And so it's not that difficult to raise that amount of equity by passing the hat. Mark: I think one thing that a lot of our buyers that come into us feel is that they can't reach that level of a transaction right? They can't reach that 10 million dollar acquisition and so they start out a lot with these $200,000 or $300,000 businesses and then they find that they've effectively buying that job. So it seems like you guys are really pushing a lot of your students to think a little bit bigger than that and do … in buying a business as well. Royce: Yeah I think that's exactly right. You know I think they are … when you get to a very small business and you are the entrepreneur you're showing up every day to process out that day's work and that's that $200,000 EBIDTA business. You know when the business gets to be a million dollars you usually have some department heads who report up to you and you're coming in thinking about the week's objectives or maybe the month's objectives. And then when you get up to a business with say two million dollars in EBIDTA, you're really managing a little further it than that. So the jobs are very different along the way and so with that we tend to point our potential entrepreneurs towards the larger end of that spectrum. But entrepreneurship can surely be expressed anywhere along the spectrum. Mark: Yeah, I think a big phrase that we hear all the time in our space is work on your business rather than in your business. And it's a transition point for a lot of people. But it seems like you guys are really pushing people to start with a business that you would work on because some of that infrastructure is going to exist already. Royce: Yes I think that's right. That is our goal. We recognize that people have different resources including experience in managing and opportunity to access capital. Mark: Right. Do you have any tips for people that might be considering reaching out to friends and family? How do you get over some of the discomfort maybe with asking friends or family for investments? Royce: Yeah I get that question a lot so I do have some recommendations. I think the first recommendation is just a psychological one which is when you go to someone to ask them for an investment you really have to make yourself feel that you're not asking for a favor. It's not like you're asking for personal loan, your presenting an opportunity to that person. And it's one you believe in so sincerely that you're going to dedicate the next five or seven or eight years of your life to it. So it's very important to really be in that psychological headspace. My second recommendation is to actually start with the people who know you best. Because they're going to be really inclined if they respect you and like you to line up behind you and then it's going to make it easier to go to people who know you less well. My third recommendation is the time to approach people for investing is when you start your search; it's not when you find your company. Because what you want to do is collect a group of people who might be interested in investing and update them across the year or year and a half that you're searching. Because when you do this, it allows them to get to know you better. It shows them that you have lots of energy, it shows them your street smarts, you talk to them of that deals you looked at but ended up rejecting which gives them a sense of your high quality standards. So when you finally approach them with a deal in hand they've been expecting this and now you're making one sale, not two. You've sort of sold them on the idea that you're a hardworking and street smart entrepreneur who is being highly selective and now you're simply selling them on the merits of the business. So for that reason, it's tremendously important to approach them early and get them to follow you. It's also a much more comfortable discussion than showing up with a deal in hand because you're able to say look if you're sincerely interested in this I'll make the investment and inform you about my journey and you'll have plenty of time to decide. It takes a lot of pressure out of that discussion. When you approach the types of people I see are entrepreneurs approaching … and here you should think about people who are partners in law firms, entrepreneurs have their own small businesses, these people don't have … while they are wealthy people by normal standards they don't have the resources to invest in private equity funds. They can't just throw up a check for two million dollars or five million dollars that private equity fund would expect. So when you come to them with the opportunity to participate they would essentially as a private equity investment; it's very additive to them. It's not an opportunity they see every day to make the kind of returns you can make buying a private business. Mark: Yeah and I think … tons of really good information in there. You're right as far as that relationship is concerned when you're asking somebody for money, building that relationship over time makes that discussion a little bit easier and also gives you the flexibility. That example I brought up of the guy who started his search and didn't have his funding lined up in advance, he actually gave me that exact same point. He said had I been having these conversations with friends and family in advance I would have been able to do this deal very very quickly. But it was just way too much for him to try and call in together an investment group within a few weeks. These things don't happen in a week, they happen over months and even a year. Royce: Absolutely and as you know from your own professional experience in those last eight weeks before closing the entrepreneur is sort of fighting on multiple directions. He's dealing with a lender, he's dealing with lawyers on a purchase agreement, he's finishing his due diligence, he's dealing with investors; you just don't have time to sort of raise investment capital from scratch. Mark: That's great. All right let's talk a little bit about the transition stuff and then we're going to be rounding out as far as our time here is concerned. Now there's some stuff obviously that happens in between, we've talked about ways to search for a company and source those deals. It can take about 18 months on average depending on a little bit of the luck of the draw, talked a little bit about the finances and some of the vehicles there. So let's assume now that you find that business, you find a good opportunity, you've gone through negotiation. And I know there's a lot that we could talk about just through the negotiation stage but I want to talk a little bit about the transition period and plan. How important do you think it is to keep previous employees, previous key people, previous owners on staff and what other elements do you think are really really kind of you should almost always take these steps in a transition? Royce: The advice I give entrepreneurs through acquisition is twofold. First, the first and most important advice I give them is in your first six months don't make any important changes. You'll have lots and lots of decisions to make but if an important change is one that is expensive or hard to reverse hold off on that. Because you will be a different person at the end of six months than you are on the day you walk into that company. And if it's the kind of enduring profitable business we hope people will buy, it certainly can wait on these decisions. I also find that transition periods can be relatively short. Three to six months is usually all you need in a transition period with some occasional access to the seller after that. By the way, this is another reason why having a seller subordinated loan is important because you want the seller to be financially on side with you after the purchase. That that seller is going to introduce you to his or her important clients. They're going to make an endorsement of you as the person they're entrusting the business to. They're going to answer a lot of process and historical questions that in a small company aren't written down in any textbook. But for most of these businesses that transition can take place well over three to six months. And after all, you want to buy a business that is not so centered on the selling entrepreneur that transferring it isn't easy. In other words, if that transfer is really really really hard that might not be a business that you want to buy. So I think that's a consideration you want to have before you step in and commit to the business. But a three to six months transition I've seen works pretty well. By the way, it might be helpful as long as we're sort of at this point in the arc of buying a small business if I shared a little data we collected over the years of that success in this path. Mark: That was my next question, so perfect timing. Royce: Okay. Mark: Yes let's go there. Royce: Well we've had the chance to survey a fairly large number of entrepreneurs through acquisition and what we've found over that six years that we've been doing this is of the people who embark on a full time search to buy a company about 70 to 80% of them end up acquiring a company and closing on it and about 20 to 25% try it, give up, and go back and get jobs that are pretty much like the jobs that they had before they embarked on this path. Of course, they've spent a year or to a year and a half doing this and that hasn't been a profitable use of time except in terms of experience but they go back and get a job that tends to look like what they had three quarters of them end up closing on a company. And then we turn to the question of is this successful? It's harder to get that data because these are all private companies but over the years Rick and I have had the benefit of actually getting some very active investors in these type of small firms to share with us their financial history of all their investments. And we've collected about 60 different transactions made by a handful of professional investors and what we found is that approximately 80% of those are profitable and about 20% are unprofitable; which is a really high rate of investment success. I mean if you think of that investing in the stock market and do you get four out of five investments profitable, I mean that would be a tremendous bar of success to have. And of the investments that are made both winners and losers the average rate of return to the investors has been about 22% annually; which is also a very high return consistent with what you would expect in private equity investments. Very importantly these results don't tell any specific individual what their results are going to be. I mean you could find a company or not to find a company, you could be successful or not successful. But I think it suggests that the area is a reasonably fruitful area to try and achieve success in. That's what I take away from the data. Mark: That's really good and I get these questions all the time so I actually now have something to go back to people with. This is great. I am curious on the 20% that are not successful; do you guys have any data as to what's leaned to do at not being profitable? Royce: Yeah. Well, of course, there's always a huge element of chance as you and I have talked about earlier in this. But yes I think that there is a single most common contributor to success and non-success in the search. And that is when an entrepreneur through acquisition start searching on their very first day looking at their very first prospective deal they quite rightly set their standards unbelievably high. In other words, nothing would get them to buy the first company they see because they want to learn what's available in the market. And as they see more and more companies they gradually bring down their standards into what normal market is for a small company. In other words, they start to say okay I'm going to raise the price I offer into the range that companies transact that. I'm not going to require that this company be absolutely perfect. It's okay that it has some flaws like every company. And their quality standard gradually moves to market. How quickly they were able to learn what a small company really looks like determines how successful they're going to be. Some people never get there. Some people it takes a year to get there. Some people can do it in 60 to 90 days and they have a much better chance of buying a company in the time period. By the way Mark just as in the side the same thing is going on with sellers as I'm sure you'd recognize that person who owned a business for 30 years enters the market with a price expectation. It is well above market and as they get feedback from the market they're gradually bringing their expectations down to market or they're leaving the market. What you're looking for is the collision between those two forces entering the zone at the same time but that speed of learning is the difference between being highly likely to succeed entrepreneur through acquisition and not. Mark: A lot of the work that we do at Quiet Light Brokerage with sellers is that sphere of expectations in trying to bring them to that place. Or more importantly I guess advising them to only enter into the marketplace when their expectations have moved because it's got to happen, right? Royce: Exactly. And it's a delicate conversation as I'm sure you've experienced many times. Mark: It is you know we try to be very just blunt with people. My personal background is before I started Quiet Light Brokerage I got really good advice from an intermediary who told me to wait but then when I actually went to market with them they actually blew my expectations up higher and when I got those first offers and it's how people at the marketplace is brutally honest. You know I might be nice the marketplace isn't, they'd just be honest and blunt. And when I got those first few offers it was like a punch in the gut. Like wow okay I'm not even in the same neighborhood of what you guys are talking about. I want to leave with this question, if you were to be talking to a potential buyer and you were to give them one or two just solid pieces of advice and that's all you had time to be able give them because that's also all the time we have left, what would you tell them? Royce: I would tell them to look for an established, slow growing, slow changing company because for a first time entrepreneur having an enduringly profitable business is the most important thing. It will allow them to make the kind of mistakes a first time CEO makes and still be successful. Sometimes people are enamored by fast growth but fast growth means change, competition, new customers. So something that's established and slowing growing and proven is what they want to look for. And it's okay that it is in a quote boring type business, you'll find plenty of excitement as being a CEO. That would be my number one piece of advice to a potential buyer. Mark: Well I wish I had talked to you before I did my first acquisition. I think that would have been helpful. Royce: Yeah. Mark: Royce, thank you so much for coming on here. Again I've been completely enamored working with Harvard Business School over the past several years. I hope that we can continue to work with you guys and someday maybe if it works out for your guys you'd be able to come out there as well and I'll meet you guys in person so thank you so much. Royce: Thank you and we're very grateful for your participation. Links and Resources: Harvard MBA Program Entrepreneurship through Acquisition Course Royce's Book

The Quiet Light Podcast
Building an Amazon Affiliate Business from the Ground up – with Chris Guthrie

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 3, 2018 41:31


Chris got fired from his last job, thankfully! He was speaking with co-workers about his affiliate revenues he was making on the side and his boss found out and fired him! Fast forward almost 10 years and Chris is the host of the UpFuel Podcast and an expert in the Amazon Affiliate space. He is the owner of several businesses in the Amazon space, including affiliate, SaaS and physical product businesses. His opinions and recommendations are not theories…they are from real life experiences. Chris is humble…you'll get that in the Podcast. He didn't sell or pitch anything. He just shared his experiences being an Amazon Affiliate entrepreneur. One thing he said over and over when it came to being successful within the Amazon Affiliate space is to “differentiate” your site. Make sure that whatever product line you choose to pursue, that you differentiate your site from others…there needs to be a strong reason why the end user would review products on your site versus the competition. Episode Highlights: Chris has been self-employed for just under 10 years. His Amazon Affiliate income replaced his “job” income…before he was fired. He owns wordpress plugins, saas, affiliate and physical product businesses. Each niche has its strengths. Choose a niche that is of interest if you are starting out. If you are building a portfolio of Amazon Affiliate sites, then a system and process takes precedence over passion. Price point matters GREATLY within the affiliate space. Develop a product review site, not an information site to help buyers make decisions. Content is still critical, and Chris outsources much of it these days. Amazon's cookie length is 24 hours, allowing you to make money off products you are not reviewing. A long term approach is the key to long term success. Building links can accelerate ranking, but is no replacement for good quality content. When buying…beware of PBNs! Transcription: Mark: Joe how are you? Joe: I'm doing fantastic Mr. Daoust, how about you? Mark: Good. I'd understand you talked to a friend of Quiet Light and a friend of Brad one of our brokers here, Chris Guthrie. Joe: Yeah Chris is from UpFuel.com and AmaSuite and I mentioned those upfront because we didn't talk about it at all during the podcast. He's an entrepreneur, have been self-employed for about 10 years, went off on his own after he got fired. He was actually talking to his coworkers and bragging about how much money he was making doing affiliate marketing and his boss found out and fired him; probably the best thing that ever happened to him because he'd been doing very well ever since. And the subject of the podcast is really specifically focused on the Amazon Affiliate Space. Meaning you build the site doing product reviews on say vacuum cleaners and people look at those reviews click on one that they like and it takes them to Amazon, somebody buys it on Amazon and you get paid. And it's really Chris's … one of his areas of expertise and I mentioned Up Fuel which is his podcast and his blog that he talks about this on so I would recommend people tune in. But also AmaSuite which is a software service that he's built that helps people sort of narrow the path in terms of what they want to find, what products, how to … what niche, what category and he didn't talk about it at all. He didn't pitch. He didn't promote so I'm doing a little bit for him because what I was trying to get was a clear path for people that want to either build one from scratch or buy one and grow it or things of that nature. And I think that he was hesitant to talk about his own product because he's such a nice guy. He really … listen Mark I'm going to, don't let this go to your head but he reminded me of you a little bit which is he just wants to have conversations and help people. And when he helps people it comes back around. And it was a great great great show and I think it'll help a lot of people in terms of the Amazon Affiliate Space. Mark: He reminded you of me huh? Joe: Yeah just the better looking, a lot better looking. Mark: The poor fellow. Joe: All right well let's get to it … I mean if you … it's got to be good so let's get to it then. Mark: All right here we go. Joe: Hey folks it's Joe Valley from Quiet Light Brokerage and today I've got Chris Guthrie on the line with me. Hey Chris how are you doing? Chris: I'm doing well thank you for having me. Joe: Chris you're like a … you're a little bit of famous in my world you know. You are. You're like a star. I know you from your podcast and we've run in the same circles for years but didn't get a chance to meet each other until last October right? It's Rhodium Event Weekend out in Vegas. It turns out you're very good friends with one of our brokers here, Brad Wayland. You guys are in the same neck of the woods I think right? Chris: Yeah well actually he's an up and a little bit south to Seattle; he's over several states but- Joe: Okay so in the internet world I guess you're in the same neck of the woods because you're- Chris: That's right. Joe: You should like candies; you guys don't even if grocery's on. Chris: Yeah. Joe: But you talk to each other often? Chris: Definitely, yup. Joe: Well he speaks very highly of you. And I … as I said pre intro here we don't do fancy intros. I don't have your bio in front of me. I know about you. I know what you do a little bit. But I think folks want to hear it directly from you. So why don't you give us a little bit of background on how you got started in the internet space and what you do for a living these days. Chris: Definitely. Yeah so probably the reason why I try and put myself out in the first place is just because it leads to conversations and other different types of opportunities. That's kind of some eyesight a long time ago when I was digging into this online space that I wanted to blog about it and talk about it because it would lead to relationships and friendships that I count people out and they count me out. And that's sort of why when you said the famous thing I think … I don't really think that but it's more just that's kind of why I went with that direction. But yeah I pretty much just have been doing various online businesses now for about 8 ½ years full time. On the Amazon Affiliate Side of things that's actually how I was able to first leave my day job. I was just fired but I left ahead that job and was able to just keep doing online stuff because my Amazon Affiliate income had replaced my day job income. And so I just basically got to work the next day working on building more sites and growing the main primary site I had at the time. But yes so other than Amazon Affiliate thing I also run WordPress plugins, a SaaS company, physical product company, and other different types of Amazon Affiliate or well regular affiliate websites as well. So a bunch of different things along the way but yeah I've been here right for quite a while. Joe: So what's your favorite in terms of running the business? Do you like the physical product space which takes working capital and things of that nature or the Amazon Affiliate Space? Chris: It's tough to say because each one has its benefit. With the affiliate side of things, you don't have any … you don't have to deal with any capital it's just other than your initial capital to invest in the content creation and building a site out. There isn't going to be as many costs associated with that especially once you get up in ranks and start making money. And then there is … in many cases there's less ongoing expenses. But on the physical product side you're constantly putting in more cash and then a lot of cases it's just a matter of trying to lay the damage to yourself for as long as possible so you can continue to grow that business. I mean everyone has a different goal in terms of what they want to do with any business type but in the physical profit side you've got to do … you've got to re-invest so much more. So I can't really answer I guess one way or the other I think it really comes down to what people are most interested in. For me, I like both and so that's kind of why I still kind of have my feet in both areas; both on the physical product side and if the affiliate side and then also selling software and things like that. Joe: Got you. Well as we talked a little bit before we started recording, I've sold a number of affiliate spaces, businesses where they're selling Amazon Affiliate products and making money through Amazon Affiliates. And it's becoming more and more prevalent in some of the event groups like Rhodium Weekend, a lot of folks getting very interested in that. I've always been in the physical products space, I had a couple of content sites and my physical products site was actually write good quality content and Google will reward me was my methodology. And it happened but I sold physical products. But the affiliate space is fascinating for me and I think more and more people are wanting to learn more about it. So that's obviously why we're chatting today and want to really get your expertise on how do you get started in this space? How do you focus on growth? Can you ramp it up? Can you do pay per click? Do you do social media? Do you do the tricks and tactics that they do with physical products on Amazon, or what's the approach? And then maybe keep in mind that we have both buyers and sellers that listen to the podcast. So tell me from a starting point how do you begin in the Amazon Affiliate Space? Do you just simply research a product, pick one, and go with it? Do something you love? What would you recommend to those listening? Chris: Yeah definitely. So for the way I like to do things is I like to look into … it's more of a just general niche research. And that's of course … you said that where there's a lot of baggage because there's a whole different bunch of different ways you can do this. You can use various tools to help with the research process. You can just go out to Google based on things you're interested in and do research in that way. On the Amazon Affiliate side, that's what I'd spent more of my time doing was focusing more on areas that I was most interested in personally. So I had a site that was focused on like smaller computers and that was something that I was interested in personally. So that's kind of how I decided. I was looking at the various niches online and what people were ranking for and how they're making money. And it just seemed like a lot of the content they are creating wasn't really … in many cases at least for the niche that I was in before I sold that site, they weren't even actually reviewing the products that they're talking about. They are just basically writing articles and using CNET [inaudible 00:08:34.7] large conglomerates, larger websites to come up with the information they could write about. So what I did and so I was … you know contacted these companies and got them to send me products for free and I sent it back and do things like that. So with any site that I do whether it's Amazon Affiliate or anything else it's … for me, it's mainly about finding a way to differentiate. So looking at any niche is just okay what can I do to be better or to better serve the audience than the existing niches that are out there? So I usually- Joe: Okay. I would think it would matter that it's something you're interested in because with an Amazon Affiliate Space you're reviewing the products. You're writing content about it. You're sharing your voice and your opinion. It seems like it'll be important that is something that you like. Chris: Yeah definitely I mean that's … for me that was the approach. I mean I think that if the goal and this isn't something that I've done personally but if the goal is to really systemize and launch dozens of sites or something like that then you would need to just … you could really do just things your interested in because you can't potentially run out of those. But you'd be looking at different types of criteria just like what's the average sign price of a product, that's one of the things that you focus on as well is if you're focusing on a niche where the price is much higher then you can make more money in Amazon's Affiliate program because of the way they have the structure; their affiliate payouts. But that's something to consider as well is just the price of the items that are going to be sold. Joe: Okay so focus a little bit on something that you like but also look at the math behind it in terms of the Amazon Affiliate Payouts and the different categories that they have and the price points. Because you're going to get a paid … you get paid a percentage of the close transaction I assume; is that right? Can you touch on that a little bit, how you make money as an affiliate? Start from scratch and assume that people are tired of physical products or tired of SaaS products and they want to maybe buy one of these. How do you make money doing it? Go right into that a little bit. Chris: Yes, so the way that it's done pretty much is just focusing on … actually to see and try to pull up the actual charts that I have memorized it off the side of my head but each category will have different types of payouts. And pretty much the way you can … I would say and try and pull it really quick but I have it in front of me … yeah, so the way that I would that is find- Joe: So somebody reviews a product and let's say they're reviewing vacuum cleaners. And someone sells vacuum cleaners on Amazon; obviously, they do. And I'm talking about the reviews on those physical products and someone clicks on the link and goes to buy it on Amazon, I get paid a percentage of that but I never have to own the physical product that's the upside of this right? I get a percentage of the sale but never have to purchase the inventory, correct? Chris: Exactly yup and in pretty much the … and I was trying to find the category here, so every category is different and they'll show you which … what the fees are like I'd give you one example, so if it's outdoor tools for instance that's 5.5% as a percentage that you'll get. And the great thing too is any time that you send someone to Amazon you'll get a commission on any product that they buy while they're on Amazon. So even if you're referring people to vacuum cleaners then you can get sales on other types of these accessories as well within a 24 hour window. That's the cookie blank for Amazon. Joe: Excellent. So I know that with physical products you can get to the top fairly fast. There's different processes and categories and not just on Amazon but if you're selling a physical product all that you need to do is pay some PPC ads for instance with Google Ad Words. It's not a winning formula oddly … obviously all the time but with affiliate how are you getting traction? How are you getting up to page one of the search engines and is it a short term game or is it a long term game? Chris: Yes, definitely more of a long term game. With any website that I'm trying to build out and rank it's more of kind of like we say you're creating content or someone is creating content for you. Looking at what's ranking there and listing okay what can I do that's better than that? And then having someone or doing it yourself. Creating out that content and creating something better. Things that you can do to accelerate the process of trying to rank would be building links and doing things like that. For me most of the time it's more of an emphasis on the content creation side aspect but like in the case of the examples I was referring to before that I sold, I would do things like trying to … because mine was in the tactical category, I try to do things like breaking news within that niche. And I would contact larger sites to say hey this product is available on Amazon now. And like in gadget and other types of sites like that, I had a link back to my site because of doing that. So it's like another way to try and help with getting more link authority from external sites that would help with the content that I was creating for that site. But that's kind of the process that … and I would never do anything like pay advertising for affiliate sites. It's … and I'm not sure if any of Amazon affiliate person out there that's doing that. For me I just … it never [inaudible 00:13:30.0] just because I know that the margins you're getting from the sales of the products you're referring rather. Joe: Yeah. Chris: There's not really enough money actually if I'd like to drive then paid traffic to try and convert that paid traffic. Joe: Right. Chris: Years and years ago people would do just racked paid advertising straight to Amazon's website and you could do that before they banned it but that was like years and years ago. Joe: Got you. Well, they get smarter every year and fix the problems and make it tougher. And the people that are doing it right, I think survive in the long run and knows that cheating to get to the top end up getting kicked to the curb hopefully anyway. Chris: Yeah. Joe: So with an Amazon affiliate site, some people have the impression that if you've got a physical product site that you're constantly managing customer service, constantly managing inventory and that it's a grind, you get to constantly churn out new skews to stay on top of the competition and then, of course, grow beyond Amazon.com to the different countries. It sounds like and some people get the impression that it sounds like, seems like Amazon Affiliate would be build it and let it grow slowly and it's a lot less work. But from what you just said which is breaking news and staying on top of things you're putting in the same kind of effort on a daily basis I would assume with an affiliate business as you are with that physical products business or is that not the case? Chris: It's not necessarily the case. I think it really depends on the niche that you're in because you know it like before we hit recording you mentioned another mutual friend that does Amazon Affiliate things as well. Joe: Yuan Fitzner let's just say his name out loud. So Fitzner it's you and he's a great guy. For anybody who doesn't know him, find him through Rhodium Weekend; he's fantastic. Chris: Yeah so he's probably a good person at all as well but he doesn't do any link building, right? He focuses more on just creating the content and that's similar to the strategy that I do as well. But in the case of the niche that I was in specifically before I sold that site doing that as a strategy was … I knew there was a benefit there. Because I think one time Engadget linked to the site and they didn't change the affiliate link. I think it was like several thousand dollar affiliate fees that they … but in that case, it was more just like here is something that fits- Joe: You didn't point that mistake to the under laying and good backing. Chris: None of it, it's just like tip line and you just say hey here's this product that's out now and people are probably excited about it and it's available on Amazon now. And yes that was a nice little bonus but … so now it was more of like niche specific. I definitely think that … I'm probably more often than not actually. You're building out affiliate sites because I had other sites as well. I have other sites that it's not like that. Where we're not trying to break news or do things like that. It's just more niche specific. Even people in the technical space they don't want to do that approach and they don't have to. I mean that's just kind of the style that we chose for that site. Joe: Okay so good quality content, SEO friendly over the long run and theoretically you'll get rewarded. Is that the basic simplified dumbed down approach? Chris: Yeah I mean it does simplify it but that's really kind of the core. And I think I really emphasize just the differentiation aspect. Like any site that I build it's always like okay I don't really want to enter this area unless I'm willing to do something multiple times better than what's already there. So that's the approach I take for really building any site. Joe: What are some of the mistakes that you've made then in terms of doing these affiliate sites? I mean what did you learn the hard way? Chris: Yeah. So of the some of the mistakes I made was … at least for me personally, I do better having fewer sites and just focusing on doing really well with those sites as opposed to having many sites. Like another [inaudible 00:17:09.7] can find that was Spencer he … years and years ago he used to do like hundreds of niche websites and make money from Google AdSense. For me I never … she was interested in doing that type of approach and systemizing in that way. But for me at least it was just a matter of trying to focus on two small niches and so I can … I think I had one that was on HDMI cable reviews. Which was a fail because that was … HDMI cables are inexpensive and then it's also it's just kind of a small niche and … well, not necessarily a small niche but it was kind of a … it was hard to do well with that one then than some of the other niches I went after. Joe: That could seem like it would change a whole lot over the years either. Chris: Yeah I mean it was … well, that's the change in standards in terms like new for kay, signals and things like that. But yeah it was just like if you can go with higher price items that's helpful right? With the part that I was doing is computers and so it'd be you know … or small laptops rather that would be more of a payout each time. Joe: Okay, I had an example given to me maybe at December, January you know someone that was passionate about … I think it was salt water fishing and writing a blog about salt water fishing and within that doing the affiliate links on the different tackle and lures that you can get with salt water fishing. Would that be an approach that someone could take? You know if I have a passion like that whether it's salt water fishing or basket weaving if you will, to build a site based upon that passion and then just go with that approach? And then the follow up question is all right great how do I learn about SEO as you have over the years? What resources do you have? Because it seems again really simplified to say just build a site that you really are passionate about, find great products, review them, and off you go. But you're still got to build an SEO from this site and write good content that that the … your Google is gonna love, right? Chris: Yeah so going back to the example, I think if you're building out just a site that you're passionate about and then trying to then add Amazon Affiliate as like a monetization … kind of like an add-on, I think it's harder to make Amazon a larger portion of the revenue for that site. If the goal isn't from the start like hey we're going to build out like a more of a review type site as opposed to here's something that we're interested at about just general information and then here is while reading this article happened to may be interested in this specific lure or whatever the example is you gave. Joe: Salt water fishing. Chris: Yeah, so that just from what I've been looking at sites in the past it just seems like that's more challenging. What usually ends up happening in those types of cases, the website owner usually ends up making a larger portion of their money just from banner ads or other types of ad platforms like that and then Amazon is more of a supplemental as opposed to the sites that I build. It'd be more … really focused around the review side of things. And so it'll just be like people that are coming to this content are interested in reviews about this product and so then that traffic is more likely to buy something than people that are just interested in general information come to my site and then they may or may not be in a buying state. Joe: So a clear differentiate is a content site that's just giving information about products in general versus a review site when you're comparing a variety of different products. And when you choose one of those products it's going to Amazon and you get a percentage of that revenue. That'd be, right? Chris: Yeah and I don't think it's a bad thing to do … really your example where you're building out because it's great to generate revenue from ads and just have a lot of traffic as well just from various articles you're writing and all about salt water fishing and then also be able to make money from Amazon with the Affiliate Program. It's just there's two different ways that you might see sites if you're on the buying or building or selling side of things. Joe: Well on those three sides which do you like … do you think, let's just talk about two; building or buying. We had Walker Deibel on the show a couple of weeks ago talking about build versus buy or buy versus build. It's actually in a book. He's coming on the Quiet Light team as an advisor in July. Do you personally in terms of specifically the affiliate space, Amazon Affiliate Space do you think it's better to build or to buy? Chris: Well I've done all of them. Build, buy, sell, every aspect on the Amazon Affiliate Side. I prefer now at least … I've been doing this for a lot longer to … or that depends right? Because it depends on for me at least where my capital might be tied up; either I just recently bought something or I'm doing other investments that are outside the online space and I want it just free of capital. And so I'm not actively looking to buy something or I'm just trying to focus on okay now that I've got that other thing going on but I can try and focus on scaling up all my things and as well. I prefer, if I had to pick one I'd say I prefer building and then being able to sell after that because for me at least I'd like to be able to invest less of my own personal cash. I know you mentioned [inaudible 00:22:18.3] before, [inaudible 00:22:19.4], a lot of the buyers there they don't have access to capital that I don't have access to through … you know people have consider with more money that they can then use as investing partners. And so I suppose if I … given the opportunity I had more capital then I would probably be doing more buying. So I guess it's tough to say. If you don't have cash and you want to just get started then building would make the most sense and maybe you can sell once you get to a certain point. That gives you some capital to either reinvest and build more sites or maybe build or buy other things. But if you have access to capital from … for any reason then buying would be great because you're able to just start with something existing. Joe: How long has it been for you from that build to sell? Do you typically hold something for 12, 24, 36 months? What have you seen? What do you try to set as a goal for yourself when you're building something? I think okay I'm going to build this to eventually sell it if that's your goal, how long do you like to hold it for? Or does it just depend? Chris: Well, a lot of the times it's more just a … it really does depend. Because half the time I do this site … well most of the time actually when I do these sites it's more a matter of I'm building something up, I like the cash flow and that's kind of the main goals is just building our monthly cash flow from various websites, businesses, etcetera. So that's kind of more of what I'm after is just getting more cash flow and then rather than just trying to pull out my capital right away and just to sell. So for me, it's all about the cash flow and I am not always interested in exactly trying to sell. Joe: How many how many balls do you have in the inner; Amazon affiliate wise, how many sites are you juggling now? Chris: If I were to add up all the different sites it'd probably be … I had to look- Joe: You know it's more than a dozen or so when you have to look. Chris: Well, no it's more I was trying to get a specific number. I'll say it's less than a dozen but I also include in that other affiliate sites that just make money from other CPA type offers opposed to Amazon. Joe: Got you. Chris: Because kind of once … for me, Amazon was a starting point. That was kind of how I got into the whole space was building out this Amazon Affiliate Site, I was doing it on the side outside of my working hours in a completely unrelated job and just trying to find a way to earn enough money to do this full time. And then once I started making enough money from Amazon it opened up all these different opportunities to try and do other things as well. And that's one is going to software, creating tools for Amazon Affiliate Sellers or well affiliates rather and doing things like that. Joe: How long has it been since you were thankfully fired from the last day job you had? Chris: Yeah, I was looking it up. Actually, I have it on my calendar October 13th is the day and it was … it will be nine years this year, later this year rather. And then I'll be 10 years the next year but that will be sort of, that'll be what 2000 … I'm trying to think now what the year it is, 2018 so it's 2009 I believe. Joe: 2009. Chris: Yeah. Joe: It's a long time to be self-employed; it's impressive that you pulled that off. Chris: Yeah. And now for me at least it's more of a matter of just further building out multiple different income streams and revenue streams from a variety of different businesses. There's … well, that's a whole other discussion right whether you should focus on just one thing or kind of spread it out. For me, it was more like build something out that starts making cash. And it's like well I don't know if I can really sell this for enough to make it worth selling. It's not going to change my life in any meaningful way so I'll keep it and have someone help me out to run it. Well, that's kind of the approach I'm working with. Joe: So if someone is listening to this and they were in your shoes, you know where you were 10 years ago and they had a day job and they want to do what you've done which is building Amazon Affiliate Sites and make some income on the side what should they expect? Should they … if they pick a category they like, they do a review site, they sign up, they get involved should they … would your expectations that they're going to hit 1 out of 10 on sites that they do, 2 out of 10, 5 out of 10. What would you give them in terms of a ratio so that they can understand and of course these are all ballpark numbers and what kind of money can they really make? I mean we're talking about on the small side a few thousand bucks a month and the people that are big and really experienced at this you know what kind of money are they making? Chris: Yeah you know that's a tough … it's tough I think with the ballpark it's a challenge to give an answer to that because the experiences that people have may lend themselves to be able to be successful more easily. Joe: All right, well look everybody listens to me all right. And they're like Joe you're an idiot but I like you and you know would … I have people tell me like they feel like we're old friends from this nude podcast. But you know me through Brad, we chatted, if I was to do this … let's be specific. You could say … be honest say, Joe, you're going to do 1 out of 10. Just face it, Joe, you're not going to do well. I mean you're the expert what would you guess if people are going to do this with some these in experience on a thing that they love and they're smart and they're going to do research online, they're gonna go to your podcast, they're going to go read everything about Chris Guthrie and figure how you do it. What are they going to do, 1 out of 10, 1 out of 5, what do you think? Chris: Ah if they're learning from me it's going to be 100% right. Joe: You're a humble guy every time okay. Chris: Yeah and though I'd say probably it's … with a lot of things, you get into it and sometimes they'll hit and they'll do well. So for me, the best site that I have was doing over 10k a month. Joe: Okay. Chris: Worst site would be like $300 a month. And that's where I'll be some of the weaker ones and then some are them between where I have a few thousand or so. Hit rate would be more like maybe 25-50% with sites that would be doing pretty well. But it … yeah, it's just really tough to answer that question for me. Joe: You improved that hit rate I would assume with the research that you do upfront. Is that right? I mean just like a physical products business on the web, on Amazon or Shopify whatever it is if you do your research up front; what are the competition price points, how are you going to sell it, things of that nature- Chris: Yeah. Joe: And you're doing the same thing with Amazon Affiliate; you need to pick a product with a great margin, something that you can write about, something that has been up searches online. What tools do you use to help … even if you have a passion for something whether it's worth it on … whether it's worth creating an Amazon Affiliate Business? So are there certain tools that you use to help that hit rate go up? Chris: So well tools for like the research side of things? Joe: Yeah to help ensure that the path that you're going down is going to be as successful as possible. Chris: Yes, I use a lot of SEMrush actually. So I use that tool quite a bit because I just like to pull up a site, see what stuff is ranking well, where they're getting their traffic from and- Joe: Do you have the paid subscription for that or do you just use the free version? Chris: So I fluctuate off and on. So from the process of building or going back to yeah I'd more than all do the paid subscription, and then if it's okay we've got enough stuff on our plate let's just focus on what we have and not create anything new then it's like well I don't really need to pay extra subscription right now. So I fluctuate in and out. Ahrefs is another tool I use as well although that was another one that I just was okay I got a good sense of where our competitors are in their links, where they're getting traffic, and okay I cancel out as well. So it's like- Joe: I always get that one wrong, it's A-H-refs is that right? We did a giveaway when we launched the podcast on an account on a subscription for that but it was Mark's area of expertise. Can you spell it out for me? Chris: Yeah, it's A-H-R-E-F-S.com and I'm not even sure how you're supposed to pronounce that either. Joe: Okay. Chris: So I mean I met someone that works for the company at that conference as well. I didn't bring that up but yeah- Joe: Mumble what they said that'll generally work. If you actually … the way my 16 year old does, he just speaks confidently and I believe him when he's comp … no idea what he's talking about but he speaks confidently. I think that's the trick. Chris: Yeah. Joe: All right so Ahrefs- Chris: Yup. Joe: You went through it and that one is more of what links the sites have right? Is that what you're looking at? Chris: Yeah, so it'd be more like looking at both viewers and the lengths for me. I was merely just trying to see where my key rankings were and so I was kind of more just tracking how it is we're doing. For SEMrush that's why I would use just the tool for research. And the thing is that here's what … the thing with tools and especially the two tools I just mentioned they've been around for years and years and years so they have so many different things that I probably didn't even know. Like I probably didn't even need one or the other it's just like when you get comfortable using one tool for one thing you'd use it for just that one thing. And then you might use this tool for the other thing. But that's kind of what the approach I would do. Joe: Okay. So do that research upfront and what you're looking for is traffic, competition, links, things of that nature before you go down the path to increase success rate, any other recommendations that you'd give somebody just starting off? Chris: Just the main thing I would say is well … I mean if you're looking at what … just looking at larger sites that are doing well. Seeing … I try to reverse engineer a lot. So when you're looking at starting from now that you're doing your research process and seeing what sites are getting in the traffic beyond just like figuring out why are they getting this traffic. Is it because they have a bunch of links pointing at them? Is it because their content is much much better? That's … I guess I keep coming back to this like but it's always for me differentiation. What is it that they're doing that's really doing that is working really well for them and then how can I do better than that? And so in the process of doing that research and looking at that then you're going to see okay it looks like they're using AdThrive or something for their ad platform and then they're using Amazon's Affiliate Program and maybe they're using LinkShare so you link to Walmart and things like that. Joe: From a buyer's side if somebody came to you and said “Hey look I'm looking at buying this site can you give me your opinion on it?” What things should buyers look for that maybe somebody in the Amazon Affiliate Space has done this sort of cheat and it's not going to last, is there anything that stands out that people should be aware of or look for? Chris: It's not because … you want to look at where they … if they are building links you want look at where they're doing it because there's you know PBNs or things like that are definitely more gray area. Joe: If I were … go ahead and say what PBN stands for, please. Chris: Yeah, Private Blog Networks, that's where people build out like huge networks of blogs and then they use links on those blogs and point them at the site. And then those blogs are getting traffic or links part of them as well. So that looks like you're getting links from higher quality sites when in fact they're just sites people would construct pretty much solely for the purpose of pointing links at properties they own or properties their clients own. And I can't remember exactly how long ago it was but Google cracked down and quite a bit. From what I've seen people kind of just got it underground and so it's kind of the [inaudible 00:33:26.3] a lot but … so looking at that is helpful in terms of how a buyer can protect themselves from that. Usually, you're able to use some of these third party tools to help check that out. There's also things where if you're signing an agreement that's saying I haven't used a PBN and then you find out that they are because maybe you're ranking stopped or go down because they've stopped in turning to run that PBN and point the links at you then that's something that you could have legal recourse to go after them. But that might be something out of buying side that included- Joe: Yeah, that's what you definitely don't want to have to do is to go after them after the fact. Chris: Yeah. Joe: Because you're chasing them for money that you gave them which is never a good position to be in. Chris: Yeah. Joe: But certainly doing the research to see where those … where the traffic's coming from and see if there is a PBN and trying to avoid it as much as possible. I think a lot of the times Chris getting to know the person, trusting a broker that's involved if there is one involved, really getting to know the seller in a positive manner. I always recommend whether it's a $35,000 site and it could apply to 3,500 as well, or a 3.5 million dollar site, if you're buying it, it's your money, you worked hard for it, get on a plane, spend an extra thousand dollars stay in a Holiday Inn whatever and meet the person face to face. Do a Zoom or Skype conference call so you can see them and talk to them but meet them face to face before you close the transaction. You can go under LOI in advance but I just don't think there's a better substitute for a handshake, having a lunch or dinner or beer and getting a better feel for them. Of course, you've got to do that due diligence and that research and hire experts like yourself or [inaudible 00:35:14.5] whoever might do the research if you don't have it to protect your money. It's something you worked hard for and I can tell you right now that when you make an investment and you blow it, it's really really hard to pull the trigger again. I know a lot of people that have done that. I know more people that have been incredibly successful and then unsuccessful. But those that thought they knew everything and thought that everybody was kind and trustworthy like they were and they pulled the trigger and something changed in the world, there was a shift with an algorithm update or whatnot and things just fall apart. They can fall apart very quickly. So lots of research meet somebody face to face, use the tools that you're talking about, the Ahrefs and SEMrush, check for PBN things of that nature. You know most people are good but it's the few bad ones that you just want to avoid in my opinion, in my experience. As far as up the top line revenue you think you know if somebody that can do this maybe they're making $10,000 a month that they do really well, how many hours a week are we talking about that is going to take to operate a business of this nature? Chris: It's definitely if … so for I guess it depends. For me, I'll give … I can really only speak to my own experiences. So for that site that like my bigger site that I had before I sold it, it was probably 15 hours a week or so and then the rest of my time was on other projects. So it wasn't like a full time thing because I was doing it outside my day job in the first place and then I only added a little bit more time because then I thought okay well I've got this new time. I don't want to have all my eggs in one basket because now I have no job and just one primary site and then other sites that are also helpful but wouldn't be enough for me to cover my bills and for … at the time I was like okay I just want to make sure I could … I don't have to go back and get a job. Joe: [inaudible 00:37:01.3] Chris: And so that's kind of the approach that I took and it worked for that site. It really depends on me and a lot of times too with Amazon Affiliate Sites especially, you're able to hire out for a lot of aspects of the process of building; either building, maintaining, any aspect to that because it's just content creation and there are a lot of writers that you can find. They can cover that part. And so if you're not doing it yourself and you're finding ways to get yourself out of that process then it can be much further reduced. Now I try and just … for me it was I try to only come up with ideas and then work with people that can help implement a lot of these or to … it's more just about trying to really limit the amount of time I spend on actually like creating content for instance. I might like to write about something on a blog personally but if I can have someone else do it then it wouldn't make sense for you to do that. Joe: Yeah, content creation can take an awful lot of time. Chris, we're running out of time. Can you share any last minute thoughts or recommendations for those that are listening that are either building, buying, or selling Amazon Affiliate Sites; any last minute advice that you would give them? Chris: Yeah, I would just say that … well, actually I'd say if anyone is curious or has other questions feel free to … I would like to say feel free to email me. Joe: You know without a doubt I want to … let's talk about how they reach you. We'll put it in the show notes as well but you know throw out whatever email address, phone number, blog sites, anything you want to share right now I'd be happy to do that. But we'll also put it in the show notes so everybody can find it in writing and get a link there too. Chris: Yeah so to answer your question I'd say decide on what you want to do right? If you're trying to … and everyone probably has a different expertise or where they're at with their life, what they want to do. If you're limited by a capital and you have a lot of money to invest then it may make sense to just simply build something so you can build it up and then come to your brokers like you guys of course and then sell it and that can give you cash that would … you could then use to reinvest and do those things. And that might be something you would do while you're still at your day job. If you're already on a site where you have access to more money then buying something would make sense. And being able to then take where you're at and growing it from there. I'd really just say that decide which focus you want to go with. Make sure you find ways to differentiate. I mean I kind of bring out that this whole time but for me, everything that I've done with any business is always been for me differentiation and finding ways to do much better than the competition. Joe: That seems to be the good … best key word here is just be different. You don't want to be like everybody else; differentiate yourself. Still do all the things right, still build something that people want to come to and trust but differentiate yourself in whatever way that you can. Excellent. Chris, how do people reach you? How do they find you? Share any information you can now so that they can get in touch with you and talk about this. Chris: Yeah, so best place would probably just be UpFuel.com which is my site. We didn't talk about it much but I sell the WordPress plugin that helps people with Amazon Affiliate things as well and that's EasyAzon.com. Joe: EasyAzon.com? Chris: Yeah so if it's … if you're running WordPress and you know a lot of people do of course then that's a software you can use to help with creating links and earning more money from those links as well. Joe: Excellent. I will make sure that link is in the show notes as well. So UpFuel.com, EasyAzon.com anywhere else that you are in the world? Chris: Twitter @chrisguthrie and yeah so that's probably the main ones but I'm happy to … if any … if you're on the buying side and you're just looking for second opinion, I try and I've just done well with trying to provide value and people with no expectation, no return and then things work out so- Joe: I agree. Just help people have good conversations and it comes back around. All right man listen I appreciate it Chris thanks so much for your time. Hopefully, folks that are either building buying or selling Amazon affiliate sites will get some good resources here. Thanks for your time today I appreciate it. Chris: Thanks.   Links: Upfuel.com: An up to date article with respect to the Amazon affiliate niche. Easyazon.com: The plugin that a lot of WordPress users install as well (they have over 10,000 installs). AMASuite.com: Discover products and how to differentiate and source them inexpensively.

The Quiet Light Podcast
Learn How To Boost ROI by 1500% (with FB Sync), and Get a 30% Open Rate (with email)

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 20, 2018 37:22


For those of you that don't already know Mike Jackness, he runs an ecommerce business approaching 10m a year in revenue, and is the co-host of the EcomCrew Podcast. On the Podcast Mike shares his direct experience with listeners to help them grow their ecommerce businesses. If you've tuned in to our Podcast regularly, you've heard Mark and I talk about how multiple revenue streams increase the overall value of your business (by de-risking it). So…if you want a more valuable business why not expand it to include email? But email marketing is dead right? All junk mail and spam. If that's true why does Mike get an open rate of 30% on his emails…and generate over 52% of his revenue for ColorIt from email? Because it works…and he does it in a “helpful”, customer friendly way. On today's Quiet Light Podcast Mike shares his process with email marketing using Klaviyo, and talks about how their Facebook synchronization feature enhances his customer reach and overall return on investment. The Facebook ads produce a whopping 1500% return on investment! You can learn about Klaviyo through their online training feature, and listen in to the EcomCrew Podcast and pick up additional tips and strategies. Mike and Dave also offer specific training such as importing from China, Launching on Amazon and finding your product niche. Episode Highlights: Using Klaviyo email marketing software to produce over 50% of revenues Add on the Facebook Synchronization piece and boost your ROI (1500% in Mike's case) Email marketing should be “helpful”. Treat the customers the way you want to be treated. The “trifecta” as a marketer includes an email address, a facebook messenger list and have the customer pixel'd. Google, Yahoo, AOL etc. look for a high open rate. Remove customers who don't open emails after 13 weeks. There are no “secret 10 step plans” that work for every model. Know your business variables and apply them to increase your success. EcomCrew Podcast has produced over 150 Podcasts. And yes..the best episode is #88. Knowing the value of your business and planning for an exit – is the smart thing to do. Transcription: Mark: Oh welcome back from Italy. Joe: Thanks man, it's good to be back. Mark: Ah is it really? Joe: Yeah that's a good question, I don't know. Mark: Well welcome back all the same. I'm sure everybody's glad to hear you instead of me for a change. Joe: I'm a little tanner and a little fuzzy. I haven't shaved in a couple weeks. Mark: Yeah. Joe: Haven't trimmed it a couple of weeks I should say. Mark: Haven't trimmed … are you missing the espresso and the- Joe: Oh man café, ginseng, the views of the ocean. We were at the coast for most of the times as you now we're in Rome as well but up in the north and coast of Italy is absolutely gorgeous. Mark: Hey I got a business idea for you. I think you and I need to start a podcast about traveling to Italy and of course, you would have to go onsite for that. Joe: I think it's a great idea. Let's do it. Mark: All right you guys we're going to shut down Quiet Light Brokerage and move on to a new business, new venture; a podcast about Italy but stay tuned for that. But in the meantime, we do actually have something related to Quiet Light Brokerage and that is … and to buying and selling online businesses; you talked to a mutual friend of ours, somebody who's been a friend of Quiet Light Brokerage for a while Michael Jackness. Joe: Mr. Mike Jackness from EcomCrew. Mike and I go back to him at e-commerce shield presentation he did on email marketing and a Klaviyo on what he does within his ColorIt Company, the adult coloring book company. And you would think email marketing is dead but this guy generates 52% of his revenue from email marketing. Has like a 30% open rate and just nails it, hammers it down and produces a ton of revenue that way and does Facebook synchronization. He talks about it all, on his Facebook synchronization that's part of Klaviyo, don't want to get too technical but he gets a 1500% return on investment. You and I have talked about this all the time, diversification of revenue streams does what to a business other than add more revenue; it's more valuable, right? Mark: It absolutely reduces the risk, increases stability, yeah. Joe: That's right. So we talked about that. We talked about the ability to expand beyond your typical just one source of revenue e-commerce business whether it be your Shopify store or your Amazon FBA site using tools like Klaviyo and Facebook Messenger, things of that nature. And then we talked a little bit about EcomCrew what they do there. EcomCrew is yes a podcast Mike and Dave have been doing it for almost three years now and they just simply help people. They've got a … my favorite subject is the under the hood section where they actually talk to an e-commerce owner about the problems within their business and try to help them right there right on the podcast sharing a lot of detailed information for people to help themselves. Mark: That is pretty cool. He has a ton of knowledge absolutely. The podcast they have is fantastic. I think the topic itself is really fantastic especially as people are trying to build up more integrated marketing systems. You know this idea of having their email coincide with a live Facebook audience and the marketing that you're doing there. Really really kind of advanced stuff but really good stuff and those numbers are staggering; 1500% ROI on Facebook. Joe: Yeah, huge. Mark: Incredible. Joe: Huge and he started small. He started testing little things just like everyone else. It's not like he had all this knowledge, he figured it out along the way. And just to put some numbers behind Mike and his expertise he's hoping that 2018 will be the year when his business overall hits the 10 million dollar revenue mark. So he's not a small player, he's doing a great job. Somebody that is now traveling around the world doing presentations and speaking on E-commerce Group Podcast subject and on email marketing and e-commerce in general, so definitely somebody worth listening to. Mark: You know one thing I do want to say before we jump into the episode, when people are listening to these numbers and hearing things like 1500% ROI, 10 million dollars breaking this year, I think it can be really intimidating for some people that are maybe at the beginning stages to hear this and to see all the opportunity and see so many advanced stuff these people are doing. We did an episode with Dan from Science of Skill who pulled about two million dollars of revenue from an email list of about 11 or 12,000 people. We've talked to Bjork Ostrom from Food Blogger Pro who is completely dominating that world. And I think the one thing just to keep in mind if you're hearing these episodes and seeing what some of these people are doing don't be overwhelmed by it and understand something that you alluded to Joe; he's done this over time. Focus on this continual improvement every day, small little group improvements and you can work yourself up. These guys didn't jump up to this in one month they did this over time. Joe: Yeah and on the podcast EcomCrew, he'll talk to and work with people that are doing 50,000 dollars a year in revenue and that's what they do under the hood and they help that. He'll also do it for folks that are doing half a million in revenue or five million in revenue but you know at all stages there's different tools and resources that can be used to help people grow their business. And bottom line is Mike's just a really nice guy. He's an expert in the arena. He's sharing the information. He's not afraid of competition. He says if I share information about my business and competition comes up and bites me in the heels it's because I didn't do a good enough job in promoting my own products. Mark: That's awesome. All right let's get to it. Joe: Hey folks it's Joe from Quiet Light Brokerage and today I've got Mike Jackness on the line with me. Hey Mike how's it going? Mike: Good man, it's good to be here. It's good to see you, I wish it was in person but it's … at least we're actually … we're in the same room. Joe: I agree. Good to see you as well and I know you've been traveling the world, good to be back in San Diego I hear right? Mike: It is man, like I can live anywhere in the world I want. At least we could at the time when we moved here I was like we had a virtual business but it's we're kind of anchored down here now but I want to be here and I feel sad whenever I had to go somewhere because it's San Diego, it's a pretty awesome spot. Joe: Well you got good problems. You're kind of a big shot now; you're travelling the world [crosstalk 00:06:51.0] all over the place. For those folks listening that don't know you why don't you, as you know we don't do formal introductions here at Quiet Light. Why don't you share a little bit of background on yourself? So what your history is, what you're doing now so that they understand who we're talking to today. Mike: Yeah no problem it's always [inaudible 00:07:07.3] to talk about yourself but I'll give it a shot. I've been doing this online marketing stuff for … this dates me for about 15 years. I actually quit my job back in 2004 and I've been doing this stuff ever since. Like some I retired in between a couple businesses that we were doing for a couple years and RVed around the country and got bored of being retired so we got sucked back into the business again and it was an e-commerce this time and we started doing that a few years ago. It's been almost five years now and are on the road to build an eight figure business this year. We'll get to crack eight figures this year or next year and along the way we've been documenting all that on EcomCrew. So it's been a much different environment than what I was doing before which was affiliate marketing where everybody was really guarded; you never talked about anything you did because everyone was kind of a competitor and going after the same traffic. But in e-commerce, it's like this multi-trillion dollar industry and you're never going to be the one selling all the things in your niche. And one of the things that we do is coloring for adults and I always say like I'm never going to select all the gel pens in the world. So talking about what we do and being open about it I think has been cool and yeah it might create some competitors but if they can catch me I feel like it's my fault. It's kind of been my philosophy plus I'm just more secure about everything I do now that I'm a little bit older. And I look at the things that come out of it positively, which is getting to meet people like you which would never happen if it wasn't for EcomCrew and speaking and all these things. So and for the most part like 99% of what we do; helping other people doesn't adversely affect us and for the one [inaudible 00:08:41.9] that does you know so be it whatever. Joe: Well you just touched on it what you do believe and I'm … for people listening EcomCrew is just that. It's what we do at Quiet Light, it's helping other people. Help them first then things come back to you. And I've seen you do presentations on the adult coloring books and the email marketing behind it. I've listened to the EcomCrew podcast; I worked with Dave as you know as well. So I want to talk about both but let's just answer the simple question first about email marketing; you know I'm an old school direct marketer, I've been self-employed since 1997 believe it or not. Mike: Nice. Joe: It was radio direct marketing back then and then the next evolution at that point was email right? As old isn't email marketing dead, are you making any money with it? Mike: Yeah and it's a trick question right, or it's a blue question, it's a softball question. You know when I first got into doing email marketing for e-commerce I felt the same way and I had drug my feet forever and it's probably one of my bigger regrets in this business for a couple reasons. Number one, I think its human nature to approach stuff in life and in business the way that you think about it yourself. So for me, I flipping hate email. It's my biggest nemesis. I cannot get to Inbox 0 no matter how hard I try. It … I'm unsubscribing for more things than I'm subscribing to just to try to get email under control and I just viscerally have this negative hatred in reaction towards email. So you know I didn't want to get into emailing people because I … you know how I am I like to treat others like I like to be treated. So for me, that was the conflict more than anything. It's like I'm going to start emailing people and I wouldn't want to even receive these emails myself. So that was the basis for the whole thing to start with so I was slow at doing it. But listening to other people talk and going to other you know a lot of these conferences and you still hear email as a prevalent thing and it's important; you should be doing email etcetera etcetera. So eventually I started dipping my toes into it and what I realize now many years later first of all email is 52% of our revenue. I was just looking before doing this podcast; it's 52% of our revenue for ColorIt. So it's a massive amount of our business. But our open rates- Joe: That's 52% of nearly an eight figure business. Mike: So just to … yeah [inaudible 00:11:07.1] that's just on ColorIt.com so we also sell on Amazon and Amazon is two thirds of our business so … but it's two thirds of a million dollar business because ColorIt.com does about a million dollars a year. And as a business overall ColorIt is bigger than that because you add in the Amazon component. But yeah what we do on ColorIt.com like when it's our own website and we control all of our own destiny; email marketing is a mass sort of part of that and it has a massive halo effect that you can't directly determine. But it has a massive halo effect on our Amazon business as well. Because people are reading these emails and they eventually go buy on Amazon. We have a lot of data on this but you can't … it's not empirical, you can't tell definitively like exactly what's going on there. But I mean totally you can look at the numbers and say okay by doing these things over here that it's affecting the stuff over here. So it definitely makes a big difference. Joe: Yeah for sure and then we're going to talk about open rates there in the email before I interrupt. Mike: Yeah. So our open rates are close to 30% so they hover somewhere 28 to 32% depending on what stage we are on scrubbing or list. So one of the things that we work really hard on is email deliverability; making sure things end up in the primary inbox, not in spam; that we are providing value to people so they want to open our emails. So that's been a really big angle for us so we kind of use the 80-20 rule here where at least 80% of our emails are helpful and they're not hitchy in any way of what we're trying to sell you something. And it's really more like 90-10. The vast majority of what we send out is helpful tips and tricks or things you want to know. So for instance in the coloring space; how to blend your shade with colored pencils, how to blend with markers or something like that, how to sharpen your pencils. Here's a time lapse video of how to draw this particular drawing and here's a free copy of it. Here's some stuff from our community other people submitted you might want to like it out as well. We're doing a giveaway this month or fan of the month contest. All these types of things that add value and every now and then once every six weeks or so or eight weeks we're releasing a new product and that will be a part of the sequence. Or maybe there's a Mother's Day sale or the month it's going to be come up soon it'd be a 4th of July sale. But very few of our emails are in that realm and most of them are in here are some helpful tips and tricks. So let's apply that to something besides coloring let's like it like tactical.com, your emails will be 10 things to bring on your next hiking adventure, how to prepare for an emergency, things to put in your bug out bag, what to do when the lights go out; whatever the types of things that we're doing in tactical world. Things that are like truly helpful for people especially I mean right now we're getting into hurricane season so we're going to be releasing a lot of content about that. And you know the fact of the matter is that most people just aren't prepared. Like a hurricane comes or an earthquake, a tornado comes whatever and you have no food and water or a flashlight that are is or all dead whatever it might be. It's actually quite helpful to people to bring us the forefront of their mind even if you just think about it for a second you can actually help save someone's life in this case. So these are the types of things we'll provide and every now in that cycle he check out on your products this might help you as well. So the vast majority we do is trying to train people to want to open our emails, to kind of like … you know and humans are very habit forming creatures. It only takes a few times of doing something to make it a habit. So we try to make this a habit for them and that's our approach. Joe: Yeah it seems to have worked with your open rate which is pretty phenomenal. Let's back up a step, what email software are you using; what do you prefer? Mike: So we're using Klaviyo for almost everything at least in the e-commerce space. You know Klaviyo is just heads and tails above everything else when it comes to e-commerce. It has a direct integration with Shopify, you can build segments within Klaviyo, people that have done particular things and then generate emails based off of that. And probably the feature that it has that's most valuable is the ability to then take those segments and synchronize those segments with a Facebook audience and then you can … it can currently run Facebook Ads to that group of people which is highly effective. And the thing that really got me going with this was actually a really funny story because I had just got done presenting at E-commerce Fuel; I think you might have actually been there. I was talking about email marketing and I was like- Joe: That was Savannah? Mike: Yeah. I think it was in Savannah. And I was like gloating about email marketing and all these cool things that we're doing and at the time that I was really … all I really focused on was mostly email marketing. And what I had said there was at the time our open rates where between 20 and 25% which is still double industry average and we've since improved that. But I was really proud of that fact and someone came up to me after the show. A good friend of mine, Kevin Stucco and he was like well what about the 75% of people that aren't opening your email? And I was just like … it was an instant like aha moment. It kind of knocked me down a peg because I was like all … kind of like in that gloating mindset but it was actually a really good point. Even … you know I was looking at it from one perspective of we're double or more than double the industry average on open rates on email. But what he made me think about was what about all these people that aren't opening email. And one of the things that Klaviyo at the same time was coming out with was that synchronization feature. So we started getting really heavy into Facebook Ads. And what you can do is if for instance there's like someone … let's say your average order frequency is 80 days so what we do as a win back sequence at 90 days we offer them a coupon; the comeback as an email. Well, why not run an ad to them, a Facebook Ad at the same time and Klaviyo makes that really easy. So yeah there's going to be basically three things that can happen; either they're going to open your email, they're going to see your Facebook Ad, or they'll do both. Some people going to see both of your email and your Facebook Ad. But either way, throwing the Facebook stuff into it is a much more effective approach. So it's been really successful for us and now we have these Facebook Ads that run 100 or 1500 to 2000% return on Ad Spend. Joe: Wow. Mike: But the most effective ads that we run are- Joe: It's incredible. Mike: Yeah. Because if you think about it I mean it's a super small audience, we're putting a really small budget together and these are like highly primed people. These are someone that's already bought from us. They kind of maybe forgot about us, you send and ad to them 10% off of course they're much more likely to convert than someone that's called traffic. It's way … this is what people forget about in e-commerce; it's way easier to sell someone something the second time than the first time. But the problem is that we all get our high off of getting new customers so that's what we always focus on is those angles. But what really brings the profitability to e-commerce is nurturing the existing customer. Joe: Lifetime value of a customer. Mike: Yeah. Joe: Repeat customer acquisition all that good stuff. So Klaviyo is the software of choice. Your emails separate yourself out from the mass emails that we get just by being as helpful as possible. So you don't wind up in the unsubscribe section and then combine and sync with Facebook which is great to go back out to those folks. On the emails themselves, how many are you sending on a day or week or things of that nature, and do you have any concerns about people opting out and do you make it easy enough for them to unsubscribe? Mike: Yeah. So we were sending millions of emails a month now literally; the number is actually crazy. We were just looking at our Klaviyo account the other day and it shows you the number of emails you've sent out. And in this particular account we're looking at it was actually just yesterday and it was 200,000 emails we had sent out and we were just like four days into the billing cycle. And I was like uh-oh like oh excuse me something might be wrong with … I think they were sending like … maybe people are getting two emails of the same thing or something. We kind of dug into it for a few minutes and realized just like the actual frequency, the number of emails we're sending is like in the millions a month now and it's actually accurate. And that's what we want to be happening it's just that we didn't quite have our … even have our heads around it. Joe: At the millions a month, how many is one individual getting? Mike: It really depends. It depends on how they came in to our system and what part of the sequences that they're in. There are some situations where someone might get an email from us literally every single day. So if they are coming in to one of this new lead magnet flows that we have which is basically I call this this the trifecta; this might be like a little bit of a version of what we're talking about today because we're talking about email but just as a real quick side note the trifecta to me as a marketer is getting them on a Facebook Messenger list, getting them Pixeled so I can also have their Pixel data, and getting their email address. So to me like- Joe: What's the Pixel part? Mike: So the Pixel part is just it when someone visits your website that's a piece of code that you have on your website that the Facebook Pixel or the Google Pixel and by having this script on your website you now know that someone has visited you and you know that they visit a particular pages or that they took particular actions. You don't know individually who they are like I don't know that Joe Valley visited my website today but I … you are in a bucket that I can say like I want to know all the people that did X, Y, and Z and you'll be in the bucket and I can then advertise to you in a particular way by being in that bucket. So what we do for Facebook campaigns or most of our campaigns is this whole … again the provide value first angle. So we'll offer people something for free whether it's free downloadable content, free drawings, a lead magnet whatever might be or offer them a free plus shipping off or maybe … so we start with these really compelling low friction offers and then send them to a Facebook Messenger flow. Which is basically are you definitely interested in this; yes or no. If they say yes we give them a link to a page and when they get to that page they're now Pixeled. So we have them on our Facebook Messenger list I can market to them that way. I have them Pixeled so I can remarket to them that way. And then that landing page will have a spot to give us their email address and I can market to them that way. And when they come through one of these flows for free downloads let's say we don't just give them all the free downloads in one day. We give them an email every single day for 30 to 45 days. It's actually a very long sequence where … so it's a 20 free download program or promotion I would say. And so we're giving them a download every other day and in between that we're giving them some other value. So and we tell them we're going to send you 20 free downloads, you're going to get one every other day. We don't tell them they are going to get another email every other day in between but they still open those as well. Joe: Yeah. Mike: And those other emails are still value, it's the how to blend or shade kind of emails or things like that, here are some stuff from our community and in it dispersed within there is here's a coupon for the book that you were just downloading these drawings from and things like that. So in that circumstance, their getting emailed incredibly frequently but the baseline minimum that people are getting email from our company is six times a month. That's the absolute minimum, someone, what would get. Joe: And that's fine. I've seen people … I've seen your presentation and I've heard people say man that's a lot of emails but if they don't want then they opt out. Mike: Yeah so- Joe: And your open rates- Mike: Exactly let me let me hit on that just real quick because it's a really important point. Again treating people like I'd like to be treated; I don't … if I don't want the email like I want to be able to number one at least [inaudible 00:22:39.8] easily unsubscribe so we make that easy for people. And I want them to be able to easily unsubscribe. What people … the shady email marketers don't get is you're actually hurting yourself more by trying to jam it down their throat because you want the open rates to be high. And Google and Hotmail and Yahoo all the different email platforms look at your stats of your open rates just like Google is looking at click to rates in inorganic search. And if your open rates are high, way higher than average; they're gonna say though this is content that people probably want we're going to put this in the main inbox. If you dip below a certain point you'll end up in the in the promotions tab, if you dip below even a certain point from that you'll end up in spam. And there's like no way to get yourself out of there. So we want to keep our open rates as high as possible probably for our own best interest right? So it's- Joe: Yeah. Mike: We make it easy to unsubscribe and if you don't open one of our emails for 13 weeks we unsubscribe you for yourself. So we figure after 13 weeks you know which is going to be probably something that range of 20 emails that we've sent out if you haven't opened one of those emails in that longer a time period you're probably just done with us and we'll just stop emailing you. And in that way … that's one of the reasons why our open rates continue to be as high as they are and we keep on adding our net gain every month is way higher than our unsubscribes or people we're removing. We've got something like 60,000 active emails on ColorIt where you know some people might look at that list and they would say it's 200,000 or something because we're not constantly scrubbing it. Our emails are active; these are 60,000 people that are actively open … we have 60,000 people that have opened at least one of our emails in the last quarter which is a much better stat in my mind than looking at the total number of people we've ever signed up. Joe: I totally agree. We're constantly asking that question in our client interviews and trying to drill down into the relative usefulness of those total emails. Yeah for those that are listening can you touch on, I mean it's probably overwhelming for both buyers and sellers that are listening in terms of if they've never done email marketing if they don't know how to do any Facebook marketing. I want to ask a question; let me first touch on the fact that for those that are not doing these now, for those that are getting revenue from one channel your business is going to be 20 to 30% less valuable than one from multiple channels and you also … and that's because of the risk. You're at a greater risk of a catastrophe if you're 100% Amazon business or 100% email marketing business, or 100% Facebook. You want to spread out and do all of them and have more sort of legs on the stool to balance out the business. Buyers will love that. They'll pay more for it. Mike: Yeah. Joe: And figure how to do it so what kind of training would you recommend for anybody looking to learn Klaviyo, anybody learning Facebook marketing? Mike: I mean we obviously do ourselves some I mean that's a kind of a loaded question but- Joe: It's funny, wasn't actually for people listening it wasn't a loaded question because I didn't know that. I know that you're doing … I know I've listened to EcomCrew you know I know Dave well, I know you well know and I love your Under the Hood sessions and I didn't really hear that you're actually doing the training sessions on Klaviyo and email marketing so let's … on Facebook so let's move to that. Let's talk- Mike: So we have a new thing called the EcomCrew Premium and what we were doing is like releasing a course every couple of months and charging 500 to 1,000 dollars per course depending on what the course was on. We did one on importing from China. Then we did another one on how to launch products on Amazon the white hat way without doing any black hat tactics. And as we kept on releasing courses we were getting emails of people just like this is getting expensive. It's like our core fans are like they're just buying everything we do, it was getting expensive and I also felt like starting to feel like a kind of a used car salesman in some respect because you're just constantly trying to sell them something different every couple of months. So we just said you know what like … because you know how Dave and I are like and we just we're not like that so- Joe: [inaudible 00:26:36.0] Mike: Well, thank you. Thank you very much. Joe: [inaudible 00:26:38.4] Mike: Okay well that makes more sense though he is Canadian so like by default he's just like already 40% nicer. Joe: It's it. Mike: Yes so we came up with this subscription model which is you just pay once a month, then you get access to everything that we've already done; everything that we're going to do in the future. And it includes webinars twice a month and the training we're about to release depending on this podcast will be released. The next one we're doing is on Facebook Messenger and we actually have a webinar later today as recording this on that topic as well. So we give those webinars to our EcomCrew Premium members as well. So we're constantly talking about this stuff and whatever's going on more current. The Klaviyo we don't actually have a course on yet I mean that was something that I learned on my own. I'm not really sure if there's one out there. We are going to be doing one on that but as a part of our subscription model, you also get access to us to ask questions so you can just email questions if you're having a hard time with Klaviyo as if for instance we would just help you with that as well. It's any type of e-commerce stuff we would help with. But Klaviyo is simple and it's complicated at the same time. Like I can understand why it would be overwhelming. I'm kind of a tech guy so I naturally kind of gravitate towards the stuff and figure it out. When I realize when it's complicated is when we hire a new employee and I had to explain to them how to do it and I see their eyes kind of glaze over. It's like I'm trying to explain the difference between a segment and a list or a flow and a campaign or how to synchronize something to Facebook and they're just like … you've been kind of giving that look and I … and then I understand that some things come harder to certain people. It'd be the same look I would give somebody if you asked me to do rock climbing or something. I'd be like yeah that's not going to happen. I'm not going to be able to do that. So yeah I don't know besides just Klaviyo's own website for that like what the best way to go about that is. Joe: So yeah you sell a very visual product you know with ColorIt and the tactical gear stuff you know common sense makes sense, between your connections with the EcomCrew and the Under the Hood Segments what's the strangest … I don't want to say, I don't want to call somebody's product or service strange but the thing that you would think would not necessarily work via email marketing that or Facebook that they get a shot and actually made a difference in their business. Mike: Yeah I mean let me start by saying give you like a whole another kind of answer to this real quick. What I always say when I when I speak at events or do these podcasts, whenever wherever I'm talking about and this comes up, one of the things that drives me crazy I mean you're in the same industry I'm in there is a lot of people out there that are like follow my secret 10 step plan, do these exact things and sprinkle this special dust in your business and you'll be a millionaire overnight. Those ads are on our Facebook feed like nonstop. We also go to events where some of these people speak and it drives me nuts. So I'm always cautious and tell people look like you have to use … you know your business better than anyone else and there's like all these variables that kind of go into it. You have a different margin than I might have or maybe there's a Facebook audience site that directly matches up with what you're doing. Maybe you have the ability to get user generated content really easily or you can make a lead magnet or a free plus shipping offer. If you have a lot of repeat business opportunity maybe you don't like I mean … so I try to talk about all these different types of businesses that we've been involved in and how we've approached it. And the thing that's cool about us now is we have four brands. We're doing things in coloring and hot and cold therapy we have a baby brand and we have a tactical brand. I'm gonna start talking a lot more about like our different approach for each brand but what your … the question you're asking is and I think that the answer to it really is that every business is unique. You have to follow maybe a basic outline of what people … like I'm doing with email marketing, here is like the different approaches we've taken with our different niches but you know it's hard to just say like do these exact 10 things. I mean there's a couple of things you want to do by default with email. You want to definitely have like an abandoned card sequence; that applies to everybody. You want to have a win back campaign; that applies to everybody. But what doesn't apply to everybody is 20 free downloadable coloring pages. That doesn't make sense for anybody else except for us. Joe: Right. Mike: Or like here's how to prepare for an emergency that probably doesn't apply to most businesses. You have to think out of the box and more importantly than anything is try a bunch of different concepts and don't be afraid to fail. This is where I think people get hung up like the human nature which I'm different in this regard for whatever reason. I'm wired differently. I just don't care about embarrassing myself or doing something that doesn't work. So you know I'll try 10 or 20 different things until I find the one that resonates and gives some traction where you know somebody else might try something once or twice and just give up. You have to keep on trying different concepts until you find the one that really seems to resonate and then with something in the world of Facebook when you find the thing that resonates or in email marketing it really seems to work. You'll get stats that are completely different than what you've done to that point. I mean 10 times better, 20 times better and you'll kind of hit that thing that kind of … that really works and I'm hoping that kind of answers the question. I mean I'm always reluctant to talk about other people's business specifically that we've run into at EcomCrew because I'm always pretty protective of the things that they're doing. Joe: Yeah. Mike: I never want to break anyone's confidence but I think that that is probably the best approach. And one last thing that I'll mention is when we got started in e-commerce with treadmill.com and I always talk about this. So it's like that's the most different thing that we've done compared to the other things that we're doing now. The approach there would be way different than selling something like a coloring book because you're only going to sell someone one treadmill. You've got no chance at a second sale. In fact, you just hope that they don't return it because it turns out to be like the most expensive clothes rack they ever bought right? Joe: Exactly. That's right. Mike: So I mean you have to take a different approach with that. And it's a much longer term sale cycle that you're not going to spontaneously sell somebody a 2,000 dollar treadmill. This is sort of like well long thought out, multi-year struggle with weight or whatever it might be that drives them to buying this treadmill, much different way to approach it so you've got to take a different approach there than selling somebody a sort of coloring pens or something. Because like yeah you can put an ad up, they're 30 bucks. Someone won't think twice about buying that and it can be a very spontaneous purchase versus the other way around. So you got the like … it's kind of like what you do, I mean people … like it's a very long sell cycle when you are trying to get someone to sell their business or purchase a business. That doesn't spontaneously just happen. So you're having to take a different approach with your email and your marketing than someone else that's actually selling widgets that are something that people just want to buy like that so- Joe: And it's interesting; it's the exact same approach you take in email marketing which is help as many people as you can. Be [inaudible 00:33:45.2] as you can and it generally is it's the right way to do it number one. But it generally works. You build relationships with either customers or clients like you sell from whatnot that they come around and work well. Mike: [inaudible 00:33:57.3] that works pretty well in life too by the way. Joe: That is [inaudible 00:34:00.6] life lessons from Mike Jackness. Mike: Yeah. Joe: We're running short on time but I want to talk about just EcomCrew briefly. I want people to now how to listen in because if you're in the e-commerce world you got to listen to Mike and Dave on EcomCrew because all they do is help people. Talk about that for just a minute; when did you start it, how do they download, listen to it, that kind of thing. Mike: We started it I guess it's been three years ago, three or four years ago. It's kind of hard to … I lose track of time. And we're out at Episode 150 something on the podcast as of recording this. My favorite episode we ever did was Episode 88 though, which was the Joe Valley EcomCrew podcast so- Joe: [inaudible 00:34:37.6] we talked today. Mike: I did. I just I was just looking on this great. But it's been a weekly podcast and we've now gone to twice a week. So twice a week we are talking about e-commerce stuff because between Dave and I we have plenty of things to talk about. We might even go to three times a week I just don't know if I have the time to do it. But as you're growing a business with the speed that we are there's plenty of talk about and I love talking about it because it produces a lot of cool stuff. I mean like I said it helps me meet people like you know but it also … it's really embarrassing to have to get on a podcast and start like you were … because I talk about my goals and the things that we're like looking to do. When you have to get on the podcast and say like I didn't get this done it's like there's nothing better than peer review and peer pressure. So I keep on pushing it till I get stuff done. So it's been very helpful for me as well. So yeah there's the podcast component so on iTunes E-C-O-M-C-R-E-W but we also have a blog which Dave does almost all of that content, EcomCrew.com all of that stuff is free. We even have actually a free … three free courses under the My Ecom Career Area none of that requires giving us a penny. It's just kind of us giving back. And you know I hope our long term strategy just like you is if we help people in they get an affinity towards the things that we're telling them and teaching that eventually they would want to become a premium member. But even if they don't like you were pretty financially secure and happy with what we're doing and all the other stuff is free. So definitely come check us out. Joe: It's awesome. Thanks Mike. I appreciate it. Anybody listening I would highly highly recommend you go to EcomCrew and check it out, download, listen to the podcast; definitely Episode number 88. Mike: Best episode ever. Joe: Ever. Mike: It actually was one of our best or highly rated episodes. And people are always interested in buying and selling their business. I mean it's something you should always be thinking about it's just I think people often wait too long to be thinking about these things and- Joe: Nine times out of 10. Mike: Yeah. Joe: Planning in advance should be probably number five. Mark doesn't like it but plan in advance you're going to understand the valuations and you do things like we talked about today which is [inaudible 00:36:41.1] email marketing and you'll [inaudible 00:36:43.6] business and get high value profit so [inaudible 00:36:46.6]. I appreciate your time today Mike I know you're a busy guy. Mike: No problem, thanks. Links: Ecomcrew.com EcomCrew Premium Episode 88 Klaviyo.com Klaviyo Facebook Snyc

The Quiet Light Podcast
How to Uncover SEO Opportunities in an Acquisition

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 6, 2018 37:11


I had a buyer recently tell me: “I don't trust SEO traffic. You can't change it. I only trust paid acquisition channels.” Times certainly have changed since just a few years ago. A lot of buyers look at natural SEO traffic as untrustworthy ever since the major index updates of Panda, penguin, and hummingbird. Others see SEO as a much more difficult (and possibly more expensive) avenue towards traffic. And some buyers think that the relevance of SEO will be discounted with new voice-enabled searches and paid advertising pushing natural search rankings down Google's SERPs. In this conversation with Corey Northcutt, we discuss the future of SEO, whether there is a good opportunity for buyers to exploit SEO opportunities, and what he would look out for on the SEO front before buying any online business. Episode Highlights Can we trust SEO long-term? Where is it going, and can you build a business on SEO traffic? What key SEO factors should you look at before buying an online business Google's primary goal, and why it is good for business owners Why SEO traffic will always beat paid traffic Why the major Google updates (Panda, Penguin, etc) were a good thing (and still are a good thing) Will paid ads continue to push organic rankings out of SERPs? Are voice-based search devices going to destroy SEO? Click through rates for top rankings in organic listings vs. paid listings Transcription Joe: Hey Mark, how are you doing today? Mark: Doing great. Joe: I understand you recorded a podcast with Corey Northcutt and it was all about SEO. Mark: That's right so Corey and I know each other through Young Entrepreneurs Council which is a great collection of entrepreneurs, some of the best resources that you can find online for anybody that is an entrepreneur out there and is looking for good networking opportunities. You do have to meet certain thresholds in order to join and Corey obviously hits those. I've used his services for another business of mine and was really really impressed with what he had to offer. Brad who works with us is actually the one who first recommended him to me. This guy has been working in the online world and SEO capacity forever. I mean he's a dinosaur in the SEO world, knows a ton about SEO. And one of the questions I posed for him and I really wanted to drill down on this podcast was whether or not there is value at all in SEO anymore from a buy in standpoint; in other words can it be trusted? I had a buyer tell me just a few weeks ago we were talking on the phone about one of the businesses I was representing and he wanted to know where our customers are coming from on the websites and I said well he's got good rankings and then he also does paid. And he came back and he told me and said I don't really care about the organic rankings because I can't control that at all. In fact all I care about is a paid acquisition channel. I think we hear that more and more from people that they trust that paid acquisition channel more than the organic channel. But I think it's almost an overreaction and there's a lot of opportunity being lost because everyone focuses just on the paid and just use the organic just has a sort of bonus to everything else. The couple of the topics that we addressed in this podcast is whether or not the future of SEO is going to be strong. You know we have more and more devices being added for voice-based search. We have the paid creep that's been happening on organic rankings where organic listings are being pushed down the page. And so this is really kind of a step back to look at your online business and say should I be focusing on SEO, what's the opportunity here with SEO as well. Joe: Okay so I'm not going to say whether I think you know you should be focused on it or not. What I can say is that a business with multiple traffics of multiple channels of revenue is worth a lot more money and from my experience a long time ago SEO was a long term game. I survived the Penguin updates, Panda update … actually I sold before the Penguin Update but it didn't matter because I didn't know anything about link building anyway. All I did was good quality content over a long period of time and I was rewarded. It's a lot more complicated than that I think. So I'm really excited to see what Corey has to say. Let's go ahead listen. Mark: Well one second, I'm going to give away a bit of a teaser on this and that is something that you said; I think what you said is perfect because it is the sense that a lot- Joe: Did you say that what I said was perfect just now? Mark: Dude, don't let it get to your head. Yeah it was actually perfect because a lot of people think that SEO is more complex. They think it's complicated. They think that it's a nut that's very difficult to crack. And a lot of us, especially those who have been around through the panda, penguin, hummingbird, you know all these sort of updates; animal updates that happened look at a SEO and like my goodness you can't trust this. Look what happened back then it got completely destroyed. One of the big takeaways from this and Corey gets into this is that SEO now is more predictable than it's ever been. Google's gotten better at what they're doing so they don't need to shake things up as much anymore. Now is a little bit harder to rank; sure because Google has done a better job of putting good information in front of people. But rankings are more stable now than they've ever been before. And so you need big takeaway is that while it's somewhat complex there's a huge opportunity because people like you and I have kind of looked at SEO as that thing as a bonus out there. Joe: From a buyer's point of view what you just said might be very valuable. You know it takes … it's harder to rank now and so if we're listening to business and there's good organic rankings, that in itself could have more value to a buyer. Because most everybody else just cheats to get to the top and you can't actually do that anymore but if you're at the top on page one that's really strong strong value. And I think hopefully in the long run for any business will add more diverse revenue channels which brings its a valuable. Mark: All right can we listen to Corey now? Joe: Absolutely, let's go. Mark: All right Corey, thank you for joining me on this quick episode here on SEO. Corey: Absolutely, thanks for having me. Mark: So yeah I know you've listened to a couple of the episodes before so you know that we like to have our guests introduce themselves. So why don't we provide everyone listening here with a background on yourself. Corey: Yeah I'd love to. So I've been doing SEO for going on 17 years. I've been … I guess running business of different shapes and forms for about as long. I came from web hosting and doing different IT brands and now I run an SEO agency called Northcutt. Mark: That's awesome. Yeah and I've actually … just full disclosure I have user services in the past but with a lot of the guests that we have here on the Quiet Light Podcast, the people that we've use in one cast in another their services so we trust the services, we trust you as far as your … the quality work that you do. And I also know Brad who works with Quiet Light Brokerage; he has used your services quite a bit in the past as well which is how I was referred to you. It was actually through Brad. So that that's pretty cool. Now you have a past in we posting as well is that right? Corey: That's true. Yeah I started at a provider called Ubiquity that was eventually acquired by LeaseWeb but not before I actually exited the company and sold it back to my business partners. Mark: That's pretty cool, so my background is actually web hosting as well. My first job out of college was with a company called Alabanza Corporation and they were the first ones to create the people know like web hosting manager or cPanel. They were the first ones to actually come out with a cPanel and cPanel's a competition to Alabanza. And I remember when we developed that the CEO talking about competition told me he's like I'm not worried about competition, it take … took us years to be able to create our I think he called it the account management [inaudible 00:07:01.2] stupid like that. And of course the temple was already out there so it didn't take them years to replicate what we were doing and it done quite well; so cautionary tale there. But the first business I sold under Quiet Light Brokerage was a web hosting company, so very familiar with the space. So you sold that, how many businesses have you bought and sold over the years? Corey: So I like to call myself a three time founder in all my bios. It's tough to say though because I have partners and in that I've had a lot of failed ventures too. A lot of projects that I've spun up or that maybe sold for cheap so it's been all over the map. I did web hosting. We spun off a data center services brand from that. We had Ventrilo provider called DarkStar Communications which was the largest provider of Ventrilo for quite a while. Most people I think don't even know what that is anymore. Mark: Yeah I've never heard of it. Corey: It was a big bank for a while. And it wasn't even my world but it was kids play World of Warcraft, they would need voice chat for that and it sounds insane today we've got Zoom and Skype and all these tools that are free but they would pay for it. So you'd have 50 or 100 people on one voice server and you needed tools to manage it. So a lot of different businesses; I kind of created a framework for how I like to build and market them but all in completely different spaces. Mark: You know I like to segment Internet entrepreneurs as to those that were started before the panda, penguin days and those that have come into it after because the world is so much different. You know people like you and I that have been in the online world for I'm going on 20 years here since I've built my first website. And you know back then and actually back when I started Quiet Light Brokerage, when I decided to start Quiet Light Brokerage what did I do? I went out and I built a website from scratch and then I custom coded an affiliate program in there and that was kind of how I launched everything was me going out coding, designing, launching, doing the SEO; everything top to bottom. And today I mean if you want to start a new site you can still do that but boy it's so much different today you don't … you really wouldn't want to take that approach as much. It's gotten a lot more complex. Corey: It's true. Mark: Yeah. And you seem to come from that sort of past entrepreneur pay and this is a good idea let me see if I can just build this out real quick. Corey: Yeah and yet it's changed so much. Yeah and I have … on one hand I love how quickly you can spend things up like you've got Shopify, you see people with stores in 10 minutes; it's completely insane. On the other hand I feel like a lot of people don't go as deep with their businesses now. You've got projects I can start a company and it might make 500 dollars a month and that's fine and it … I'll do 10 of those this week. The mindset has changed. Mark: Yeah I know definitely it's changed quite a bit. So I wanted to have you on to talk about SEO and I'll tell you kind of the question that spurred this on for me and I think it would be a good start for our discussion here. I was talking to a buyer the other day about one of my clients and he's Amazon and Magento mixed so he's got his own websites but you know a good portion of his business comes through Amazon. But we're looking at the websites because they're doing really well. Amazon is struggling but the websites are good; really really well. And we're looking at the host and this buyer was asking where does the client … where did the clients come from, are they coming from organic rankings or they're coming from paid service or good mature search campaign out there. So I told him well it's a mix you know there's really good SEO on the site, there's room to improve that as well but they also have a paid campaign that they will get. And this buyer almost seemed to dismiss the SEO side and said well I can't control the SEO world at all, I'm interested in the paid acquisition. And I see this more and more and I think this is kind of the people waking up from the hangover of the panda, penguin which is almost quick as far of be coming up on seven years or something like that; is that right? Seven years is that pretty close? Corey: Well- Mark: [crosstalk 00:11:06.9] try to also work. It's been a while since this happened and I think people have really adjusted their mindset to not trusting SEO at all. So my question to you and to ask in behalf of everyone that out there looking to buy an online business, can you trust SEO and can you build or grow a business on the back of SEO and have it be sustainable? Corey: Oh my God Yes. So there is one question that has been around since I feel like SEO began which is where this is going, it … can I trust it long term, and I think Google's actually been very transparent about what they want to accomplish. As much as we've had different updates like Panda, and Penguin, Hummingbird, chip things up to there's been quite a few but Google's always been forthcoming. And I feel like most of the media out there sensationalizes what's happening and it does a disservice to business owners. Because … and what does Google really care about? They want to reward an experience that is naturally relevant, popular, and enjoyable; that's it. And they've been working towards this goal for all of this time and I don't think it goes away. There is never going to be a point to where a better experience is paid advertising for what they deliver. If they ever reach that point I think all bets are off. I think somebody disrupts them; being or somebody else overtakes them. There's no way people want that. It is a better experience when it's not simply rented. So that doesn't go away it's just they keep it iterating towards getting better at what they set out to do. Like we talk about that pre-panda, pre-penguin world, I think it did a lot of good. I look back at how I did SEO back then and you know it was a little gray. It was hard to … like that was the conversation we were having with people. It's like I think we should be as white hat as possible. At that time I feel like that that was a source of a lot of that grand fish can spam. At the time he was not getting very much respect from professional SEO's and he was saying no, completely white hat, don't mess with anything, no schemes, no link real pyramid tetrahedron. Yeah like I'm sure you've seen all the different diagrams and wacky ideas that people were coming up with back then and that panda made him correct that just overnight everything shifted and it was like well yeah they finally got better and they really are rewarding people that aren't going against Google like do you want to work with them. Mark: Let me play devil's advocate a little bit here and argue against SEO. Now this is not my personal position. I actually agree with you. I think there's a ton of opportunity in SEO and I actually think the world is a … the SEO world is a lot more stable today than it was back in the pre updates of pre-panda, penguin, hummingbird updates mainly because the results are better and Google is still having a better experience and before it was very easy to came, the search engines. You were doing grey hat, I was doing grey hat, everybody was doing grey hat back then. But anyways let me play devil's advocate. Two changes that people look at and they see it as encroaching on the organic SEO. One would be the number of paid listings that show up above the fold on Google and where organic rankings start to be pushed down. And two voice enabled search. Let's start with the first one here the placement of organic rankings. I have another business that I own and I absolutely absolutely hate bidding on my brand keyword. Because it's my brand keyword, I show up number one, I show up number two, I show up number three, but if I don't bid on it I I've got four other people bidding on my brand and they're above me. So from that standpoint has SEO become less valuable for business owners or is that a trend that you think is going to continue where paid listings push out the organic rankings? Corey: I don't and in fact I … you know I saw the same trends. And by the way if somebody just for the benefit of listeners, if somebody is pushing you out that way on your branded searches if they mention you by name you can file a trademark request with Google and get them shut down. It … they're still able to use your brand name as a keyword but it can water down their messaging if somebody is getting too aggressive with that. So I don't see it going too much further and yeah that was a big story each time Google has experimented with expanding the ad block but there's data on quick relates that's out there. Rand Fishkin actually threw his new startup SparkToro all those Jumpshot's analysis on this and it's incredible how many people still click on organic overpaid. The overwhelming majority still click on organic across the board even in the most extreme like biased examples I've seen. I actually just sent out our quarterly here a few weeks ago that looked at this AAReps had their own click through rate data of tons of searches that they've scraped and in their example they said the maximum went up to 46% with click on ads. Up to is the operative word there I think that's the most extreme example. It's 46% where you know it's a branded, your brand is number one; obviously, that's what they wanted. We're going to click that sure but the Jumpshot data said 3% was their average. So somewhere between 3% and 46% are clicking on paid ads. It's still the minority and I don't see that ever changing. Mark: 3% to 46% is pretty broad. Corey: It is pretty broad. The average is three. Mark: Okay. Corey: But yeah. Mark: That's amazing. Yeah and in the example I have we have a lot of brand confusion in our space and my main competitor has been very very good at causing brand confusion. So it's a personal annoyance for me right now, my personal mission to get them out of that number one spot even though I'm losing money on it. Corey: Not this. Mark: Yeah. So that's interesting. I would have tend to agree that there's only so much real estate that they're going to give to the ad spot, to those ad blocks because it's … they have been focused from day one on that user experience. So they want users especially brand searches to be able to find the brand that they're looking for. What about voice enabled search? I know for myself and if I want to find out some quick data or whatever I've got a Google Pixel Phone I just give a little squeeze and Google's system comes up and I just ask it the question and more and more it's becoming intelligent in giving the response. More and more it's taking those responses of course from other websites and so they aren't getting any of the traffic to that. This wouldn't be so much a concern for e-commerce sites but for content sites I mean is this something to be looking out for and maybe something that's going to encroach on their opportunities in the future? Corey: Yeah there is definitely demographics that are going to be hit by this. You and I talked about famous quotations here a week ago in how that is an industry that got hit pretty hard by Panda. I think the nuance is any short simple information is going to have a hard time. Like just the example from last month, Google actually started returning no results searches and people asked for the time of day. And there was a website that was timeanddate.com it ranked number one for all of these and I'm sure they were raking in a lot of AdSense doing it, not probably great ads for those people but still it was working for them in the moment. So there are really nuanced types of businesses that I think buyers should probably be a little wary of. If it doesn't give deep information it can't be [inaudible 00:19:11.5] by a simple answer from Google. But if it does go deeper I think it goes outside the scope of what Google can accomplish with voice search because it's going to be complex. There's going to be value in multiple results then so that's [inaudible 00:19:26.1]. Mark: Okay well you know I think that's a fair answer. I think when you ask Google a question, if it's a quick answer like time and date that makes sense. But if you're asking how to replace a sprinkler head, Google might give you a short response but you're not looking for a three step process for that. You're probably looking for pictures or video or more in depth you know of your in-depth guide. And so getting that response is actually a good thing, getting that being that featured response at Google will probably be a good thing because more people are going to click through to your page right? Corey: Yup and there's also still value being lost right now from what they call no click searches. Where maybe you appear within the knowledge card, like the top of the results; people see your brand, they see that it's from you; they don't click through and see your analytics. But at some point who cares, if they still saw your brand you still helped them, and they still see then you may have accomplished what you set out to you anyway. It's just not going to be attributed as well. Mark: Right; of course. I get it the top of funnels sort of just brand awareness and awareness to your brand, what's better to vouch for you than Google right? Corey: Right. Mark: If Google's going to feature you on their search result page that's a pretty good thing and if people don't know what I'm talking about here do you have an example that you know off the top your head where a knowledge card will show up. Corey: Recipes are a big one now. I don't know any exactly at the top of my head but- Mark: Well didn't … wasn't there that one for a while which was why are fire engines red; do you remember seeing that? Corey: I think that so, it sounds familiar. Mark: Yeah if people haven't looked at this, do a search for why are fire engines red and take a look at what the response is. They may have updated it since I last did it but it was just somebody had the game of the knowledge card and it was kind of a crazy response. Corey: Yeah, but it's still not that hard to do. Mark: So I … okay so if I already had, you can't leave with that not go into it. Corey: Well we know what their data sources are so yeah you can … what Google is not good at is understanding what you're telling it, and that's what they're working on back checking right? Being able to actually understand is this good and not are these words here and phrase didn't maybe kind of mean something. And that's what I think they'll improve that maybe next. I think it'll take a while because they're still behind what a lot of the articles give them credit for now if you like but we do know which way they're going. There's an analogy. I love Aj Kohn as an SEO blogger; his company is called The Blind Five Year Old because that's how he perceives Google still. Kind of hyperactively bouncing out of your sight not really knowing what it's doing but they are still moving in a direction that makes sense. And with the knowledge cards there's different sources of data where I mean you can literally just put it in and hope that Google crawls it. So you can update Wikidata at wikidata.org put in some bunk information and sure they might index it. They might see that it's not that hard to fool it. Mark: That's funny. All right well I got some pressing question to get to here. Even though this is fascinating and would be fun to explore all the idiosyncrasies of the world of Google but let's talk about, let's put ourselves in a position of a buyer looking to acquire a business and I want to have more opportunities for SEO and how to uncover some of those and where some of the mistakes are. But before we do that let's talk about due diligence side of things. So he's looking to buy a business, it receives a good amount of traffic from natural organic rankings. What are some of the things that people should be looking out for when doing due diligence? For example private blog networks, are these still something to look out for or are there other things that you may want to caution people on inspecting before they do an acquisition? Corey: Right so without a doubt I would never buy any website without looking at its backlink portfolio. There are basically two arms of SEO right, you've got what happens on the website and off of it. I'm not so concerned about what's happening on the website. I know just based on my background I can probably make it a lot better. But I know that it's not a danger zone, the links are. So first are they trending upwards that's a good sign; bad links tend to get moderated. It makes sense, if somebody spams a whole bunch of forums or blogs they use a piece of software, it's going to get turned away and their Google patents that talk about this as a signal. Like if somebody blasts 100,000 links and all of a sudden they disappear I immediately know something's wrong. And even if something's not wrong if they had a good reason for that to happen, I still haven't really seen one, but if they did it … that pattern looks really bad. So that's the first thing, okay I guess I start to dig into it and I start to look for schemes like you mentioned; are there link wheels, are there … you mentioned that you and I are pre-Panda people a little bit here. I've … I know the schemes because I've used the schemes. I've tried the schemes and I know what all of them look like. There's any of maybe a dozen which might go beyond our time right now but- Mark: So with some of these schemes how would somebody identify these? Obviously link patterns so seeing declining back wings would be an example of things being moderated away from low quality sites or even high quality sites where it's been spammed to a public place. But for like a Link Wheel or a PBN, are there tools that you would recommend somebody use for this or is it really just something where you need to hire somebody like you to be able to help identify these schemes? Corey: Sure. Well I won't go so far as to say someone has to hire me but I do have a lot of skepticism in the tools only because we see them throw a lot of false positives. They do good things too but I've got a team that's used every backlink auto link tool I think at this point and they're flawed certainly. Especially when you pair them with the activity of disavowing links which is usually the natural next step. When you find bad links people tend to use the disavow form in Google Search Console and that's irreversible so it's really really dangerous. We've very frequently been approached by people that ran an automated link audit, got a lot of terrible advice, disavowed a lot of good links, their rankings went away, and they need help and all we can say is well now you've just got to rebuild like you shouldn't have done this. That was a bad idea. So I think it's just about recognizing the schemes and the most overarching witness test in my mind is does this double as good marketing. Sometimes it's just a completely automated site like you see a lot of these like statistics websites, and he ways websites, those big automated plays. I would usually say if a site links to every site on the internet which you can usually see, like is it linking to every domain alphabetically; you see that a lot on the backlink tools. I don't worry about those. I don't think you should disavow those because that's not a scheme. That's not a pattern that you want out and will and that's a flaw in every auditing tool I've used. So I wouldn't worry about those. I also wouldn't worry about anything that is editorially relevant. Like is it editorial, a guest post, a press release, a mention of any kind really that happened from a human but if it didn't and you can usually tell by this kind of thumbing through the side a little bit that usually means that your link is appearing besides other schemes. And if a link is really easy to get that by definition kind of makes it a bad link which is counterintuitive right? You've got all these SEO services that are offering fast easy links for everybody. That's flawed because if it's really for anybody that means that you're link appears besides porn sites you know fill affiliates like all sorts of really kind of sketchy looking stuff. It shouldn't be easy for everybody and that's really the way to tell it I think. Mark: So something that we see with Quiet Light Brokerage in our backlink profile is we'll get a piece published informs or entrepreneur or in [inaudible 00:27:36.5 a good piece and obviously we love those backlinks. But then sure enough there is these really low quality sites that will take that article that blog post and they'll republish it and you know it's just a complete spammy site. You can tell that there's never a human that has touched that site other than initially [inaudible 00:27:55.7]. Are those backlinks, if somebody is doing a backlink analysis on the site and they see some good high quality backlinks but then they see a whole bunch of copycats stuff is that anything to worry about in your opinion? Corey: It depends a little bit on the site. If they're purely just scraping forbes, I'd say well today link back because if they do it reminds me a little bit of press indication which is perfectly natural and it's a signal that I think any grown up brand is going to have. Like you've got basically every publicly traded companies running out regular press releases so if I put on my … like if I'm Google Ad that actually looks okay. But if it's a really low quality site you might see them also doing other shady stuff so you might have to look at their backlink portfolio and kind of pick apart what they're doing. Mark: Okay fair enough that is good advice. And if anybody is listening to this and you're completely lost as far as what Corey is talking about here I'm sure you could reach out to him and get a little bit more insight into some of these things. The world of SEO is kind of this big old rabbit hole, you can understand on a very basic level or you can get into [inaudible 00:29:02.3] sort of the more nuanced stuff. In which case you're talking about link wheels and different types of shapes as far as linking patterns which I've thrown most of that out the window years ago when I started seeing a lot of the updates come through. So and I want to talk about that you know we talked a lot about backlinks and backlink profiles, it's been my perception and please correct me you are the expert in this not me, it's my perception that backlinks haven't been so much devalued as might have been surpassed or might have … might be having other ranking indicators kind of come up alongside backlinks as being important. And one of the ones I've seen has been topic coverage, topical coverage on a page. So an example of that would be we have a blog post on I want the Seller's Discretionary Earnings well we also want to cover not only what a Seller's Discretionary Earnings but what does it mean for an Accrual Basis versus Cash Basis Accounting and you know what is Net Income, what is Gross Revenue because these are related topics to the one thing so having all that content now is a good signal to Google. In my correct or incorrect or off based when I say that the backlinks while still important are playing alongside some of these other newer ranking factors? Corey: Yeah I mean you'd be correct in saying On Page matters more and in more nuanced ways. It's tough to weigh like do links matter less because links are infinite really. On page is still finite so I think in that math equation links can never matter less because you can always do more with links. You can't always do more with your site so that makes that equation interesting. But yeah since the Hilltop Algorithm which I believe was written by Krishna Bharat, he published a paper that it's actually really old but it was pre-Panda by a lot and it broke down I think what they've been building upon for a really long time which for the first time defined what they call topical experts. And if you really dig into the paper it appears to be talking about domains as experts and they played but there's a little bit you know you had authorship of Google+ I think was one sort of riff on that idea of trying to figure out who really knows about a topic. And around that time SEO's like crazy with the concept of relevance. People are saying well you only want links from relevant sites. I think that's bunk because well do I not want to link from CNN they don't … they're not an SEO website, obviously I do, obviously that's still a good link. But there's more value if I get somebody from within my space on average. So it's just one more metric, it's a little bump I feel like in their favor if they're relevant or if you're relevant. They're looking at the themes throughout your site definitely. So to your point yeah that exact same idea, the more you cover a topic the more I think your ratio of expertise is strengthened there. And for the same reason Mike & Mitch E-commerce Shop should absolutely be able to outrank Amazon. They're generic, they don't have that focus and we see that a lot. Mark: That seems to be a recurring theme of this podcast here; how to be Amazon at their own game. And I've talked to so many e-commerce business owners who get frustrated by … when they put their own listings up on Amazon and all of a sudden Amazon's outranking their niche store. But I think your point of if you have good topical coverage on your site, if you're doing … if you're making sure the on page is right you should be able to outrank Amazon because it is a specialized site. And that actually said was a really nice link into the final section I want to cover and that is opportunities for pretty much any buyer when you're looking to acquire an online business opportunities in SEO. I see huge opportunities with most of the stuff I look at and working on the on page SEO, what are a few areas in your opinion that people should look at when they're looking to grow the SEO presence of either an e-commerce shop or a SAS business or a content business but really kind of looking at that a SEO portion, what are a few areas that are common pieces of low hanging fruit that you see? Corey: Sure. Well since Panda there are a lot more diamonds in the rough I feel like that just have broken on page SEO and the poster case study going all the way back was Danny Webb right? Everyone was talking about Danny Web which was one of the biggest tech forms, they lost easily all their rankings when Panda first hit and they managed to recover by removing what people later called thin content. Which were just pages that might have fifty words on the page, it was all the different individual profiles that people had, there were millions of them. Most of them were a bad search engine experience. So when I see a site that has a lot of pages that don't offer value to Google but don't carry the no index tag, the media tag, and the source code [inaudible 00:33:56.5] but code in the source that says keep us out of Google's index. I know well hey I can do that and overnight strengthen the stuff I want to keep and cut out the stuff that's just never going to be of any value and that's going to help a lot. I also look for sites that don't have a keyword strategy, sites that for whatever reason have never had any links but still enjoyed some organic success. There's a lot of ways to play this. In total there's I think a couple hundred ranking factors. I basically just look for a couple that have been 100% neglected because I feel like that's where people leave the most money on the table basically where I can see a quick one. Mark: Yeah, I think again coming back to round out this discussion, I think since the updates and after the updates everybody was scared of organic traffic and understandably so. I mean it was very difficult for a lot of people because they owned a business overnight an update happened and the rankings are gone, revenue is gone. A lot of businesses were built on this kind of shaky SEO and Google's done a good job of cleaning that up. But people now see the benefit of relying on paid acquisitions. As a result though I think there's a huge opportunity for buyers to take a look at pretty much any property that is not on Amazon. So any web-based property content sites etcetera etcetera and be able to really grow that business through good SEO practices. As you said looking at keyword strategies are, is there any keyword strategy there, or do they have good topical coverage, are they doing the basics to be able to rank well, and because no one is really doing that or very few people are really doing that on page SEO anymore it's kind of amazing how quickly it's fallen out of favor. Yeah so let me ask you if anybody wants to talk to you what's the best way to reach you? Corey: Sure. Well they can pop on our website which is just northcutt.com drop me an email it's just corey@northcutt.comor follow me on Twitter corey_northcutt to be my first name, any of those work. Mark: All right good. We'll all link to those in the podcast page the show notes so everyone can take a look at that. And you know again we don't get kickbacks from guests or anything like that but we do refer people that we've used in the past successfully and the services of yours is definitely a service that I've gotten good value out of. I know you did some work for me, I think it was back in October your group did some work for me and those pages are doing quite well now so thank you for that. I never gave you an update on that; they're doing pretty well. Corey: Yeah, sure. Mark: Yeah so thanks so much for coming on. I think this is an interesting topic and maybe one that we need to explore again in the future. Corey: Oh I'd like that. Mark: All right, thanks Corey. Corey: Thanks Mark.

The Quiet Light Podcast
How to Set Up VAT When Expanding to Europe

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 30, 2018 36:17


Alex Lyon from Avask Tax Advisors works with over 2,000 eCommerce and FBA clients. Her role is to help them understand, register for, manage and comply with VAT registrations and payments. Did you know that when selling online in Europe the taxes (VAT) are included in the purchase price? Did you know if you don't increase your list price your margins shrink by the VAT amount? Did you know that if you have a UK company there is a minimum total revenue threshold amount you can reach before you have to collect VAT? Did you know the biggest mistake made by US companies is not registering for VAT, but that you can sell on Amazon prior to having the registration number? If you answered “no” to at least one of the above questions…and plan to expand to Europe, hearing Alex's explanation of the VAT process could be critical to your expansion success.   Episode Highlights: The biggest mistake Alex sees is not registering for VAT, and it is costly! You can sell before being registered, but it'll cost you if you don't increase your prices to account for VAT. You do not have to set up a foreign corporation to sell in Europe, regardless of your overseas location: i.e. US, Singapore, etc. You only collect in countries you are shipping from (there is a caveat). Amazon does not show VAT charges separately in your seller account. The PanEU program makes sense for some, most only register in the UK and Germany. If you don't pay VAT…your Amazon account will be suspended and/or closed (eventually). “Import VAT” is charged on the inventory shipped into the country and paid immediately. “Sales VAT” is charged on the retail price of your goods, and paid quarterly. The UK and Germany are the two largest markets for selling online in the EU. The UK is the easiest to expand to from the US because of language and the challenges of shipping to Germany. Wiring VAT payments can take 4-5 days and a currency account in Europe shortens the wire times. Using an intermediary bank, or currency account, can save 1-3% in exchange rate fees. With Avask, the costs to register for VAT in the UK is about $200 USD, and then about $1200 USD per year. Caveat to costs: “Distance Selling Thresholds”, if met, require more than $1200 per year because VAT is required in countries you do not store inventory in. Transcription: Mark: Good morning Joe. How are you? Joe: I'm good Mark. How are you? Mark: I'm hanging in there. I'm enjoying the weather lately and getting outdoors a little bit not working as hard but we're still recording podcasts. And you recorded one on an interesting topic and something that I think more and more people are having to face that have Amazon businesses and that's some of the tax implications going overseas. Joe: Yes. Actually, anybody who has a physical products business that wants to sell in Europe and it's on value added taxes, oh my God not exciting at all. But did you know real quickly that you know obviously here in the States you buy something and then the tax is added? When you buy something online, or in Europe, UK, Germany, France, Italy, etcetera the price is built into…I'm sorry the taxes are built into the price. So if it's 120$ the item might be 100 but the taxes are 20. And a lot of buyers that ex…by sellers that expand overseas don't quite understand that concept initially and they could immediately start losing margin by not increasing the prices for the value added taxes. A great conversation it was with Alex Lyon from AVASK Tax Advisors they have over 2,000 FBA clients and e-commerce clients throughout the world that sell and need value added tax compliance so really informative stuff. And anybody that's considering expanding overseas should absolutely listen to this because it's not that complicated once you listen to what she says. Mark: What are the consequences if somebody is not taking care of the value added tax? Do you know by any chance? Joe: Yeah absolutely. So they're very-very compliant over there. It's not gray like it is here in the States, its black and white. So the problem is that if you sell in let's say the UK and you're not registered, you're going to be determined. Amazon has to share the information with I think it's the HMRC. They have to by law; they share the details of everybody that sells on Amazon. So the HMRC has access to your sales information and therefore can force you to pay the value added taxes that you should have collected. If you didn't collect it you're going to pay for that out of your pocket simple as that. So you've got two choices: pay for it out of your pocket and lose that 15 to 20% margin and probably make no money at all or walk away and be banned from selling in in Europe on Amazon. Mark: That's significant. I think moving across the ocean to selling in different countries is a huge opportunity for anyone. Buying an e-commerce business that wants to ship overseas that you need to start taking advantage of that opportunity but you also have to go through some of the understanding of what sort of regulations are in play. I think this you know isn't…this is not exactly an exciting topic but you know and I think it's a really important topic for anyone to listen to, to possibly unlock an opportunity that your competitors are not taking advantage of. Joe: Yeah and before we say let's jump into it let me just say this that I've seen explosive growth with people moving and expanding their products to the EEO, explosive growth in particular France. I mean the UK and Germany. And the cost associated with it using someone like AVASK and they're not the only ones who do it, it's not all that expensive. You're looking at maybe 1500 $ to get the ball rolling and get it done right. And you can you can start selling immediately as long as you're registering and then you pay from the date you started selling. It's really not that complicated. There's a lot to it but it's really-really important that if you're going to sell overseas which I think everybody should if they have real growth plans that they listen to the whole podcast. Mark: All right with that I will say let's jump into it. Joe: Hey folks it's Joe from Quiet Light Brokerage and today I've got to Alex Lyon from AVASK Tax Advisors with me. She's an expert on VAT which I believe is value added tax. Something a lot of folks trying to expand their e-commerce businesses over to the UK and beyond really need some help on. So Alex welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast. Alex: Thank you. Thank you, Joe. Hi everyone. Yeah as Joe has mentioned my name is Alex. I am Indirect Tax Client Manager of AVASK. So I've been working here for three years now just helping e-commerce sellers expand over into Europe. So we've got over 2,000 Amazon sellers that we work with. UK companies also companies based all over the world as well. So yeah that's been us. Joe: That's fantastic. Are they all FBA clients (Fulfilled By Amazon) or do they you know sell off FBA as well (off Amazon) with their own e-commerce businesses? Alex: It varies so a high majority of people are FBA sellers just because it's a lot easier to hand everything over to Amazon and kind of let them do fulfillment. But there are quite a large number of Amazon Sellers as well such as shipment from your own country which obviously makes a lot of things easier in terms of the VAT because you don't have to actually declare the sales in Europe because you're not fulfilling from his countries. So yeah it's kind of a majority FBA but we do have MFM sellers as well. Joe: Okay, good. Good. Good. So let's talk about the basics, get things straight here for our listeners because a lot of people here in the states are expanding their Amazon.com accounts beyond Amazon into the European countries and seeing explosive growth. But the big mystery is how to set up the VAT's and how to find an agency like yours to handle it most of the costs associated with it are. So you can start am I getting it right is it Value Added Tax and tell us how it works? Alex: Correct. Yes, it's value added tax. It's the same principle across the European countries but they have different rights and different filing frequencies. The easiest way to explain it would be that it's similar to the sales tax you have in the US. But the main difference would be the way which you include it within the price of your product. So this is kind of the biggest hurdle where people fall over on where they don't actually include the VAT amount within the price of the product which means that you're not actually collecting the VAT from your customer but you still have to pay it to the revenue. So you're essentially paying it out from your pocket if you don't include it. So in the US for someone like myself when I come over I don't realize it works like this when I go to the checkout in sell sites because I didn't know and I'm kind of how…where is this amount coming from. Whereas in the UK you don't know that it's already there in the price of the product so yes its essentially the same as the sales tax but it's more hidden. Joe: So Amazon is collecting that 20% for units built into the purchase price of the product. So if it's 100 $ if the VAT is 20% for instance, 20% is something set aside to pay your VAT…your taxes? Alex: Yes. Joe: Okay. Alex: So you need to list in on Amazon for the straight 120. Amazon won't do that for you. Joe: Okay and do a lot of people make that mistake where they just list their business without bumping it for the value added tax? Alex: Yeah there's a large number of that do. Without getting kind of proper advice on how VAT actually works. So it is…see it's hard enough to in taxes in your own country let alone I'm kind of working out how to do it in a foreign country. So yeah that's a big hurdle where quite a lot of people fall over on. Joe: Okay. So you're located in the UK. AVASK is located in the UK. But I think I saw offices around in different parts of the world, is that right? Alex: Yes that's right. So we've got an office in London and I'm on based on in Winchester which is about an hour south of London. And then we've also got offices in Shenzhen and LA. We try to come over to the US as much as possible as well just because oversea it's kind of US sellers that we've [inaudible 00:08:19.0] work with. So yeah we try and get over to the events as much as possible as well and get that travelling. Joe: So the vast majority of clients as you said are US based clients and they start selling and Amazon.com and then expanded to the European countries? Alex: Yeah, definitely. Amazon is oversea, it's huge in America and it's just kind of been taking off here in Europe as well. So it's a massive market in Europe and I think if you're product is successful and you've been able to make it successive there in the US then there's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't also be able to do in Europe. Joe: Okay. So let's say I own an Amazon.com account, I want to reach out to you what…and I want to sell in the European countries, step one two three can you walk us through that? Alex: Yup sure. So step one is to work out where you're going to be shipping your products from. So most people go with the UK or Germany just because they're the biggest markets, UK is obviously a lot easier because you don't have to translate any of your products. So whichever country you decide you're going to fulfill from you then have to get a VAT number in that country and also an EORI number for all of your shipments. So those two numbers you have to have those before you make a shipment. If you make a shipment without those numbers you're going to get charged import VAT and then you won't necessarily be able to reclaim that back whereas you would if you have the numbers. So that's very important. In terms of the registration process, engaging a UK agent is really helpful because you've got someone who can communicate with tax authorities on your behalf. And that also means that we know exactly what documents are needed for each of the registration. We'll process all of that for you. Once the application has been submitted and you're waiting for the numbers to come through at that point you should start getting your listings up. Working out some shipping quotes and kind of working out all the details on actually how you're going to get your product there and what the listings are going to look like. Joe: Okay. And I just had a conversation with someone that is buying an Amazon business and they were confused about when the VAT was going to be applied. Is it to the amount of products being shipped into the country or is it the amount that's sold? Alex: It's both. So if you're doing FBA you're making a box shipment to an Amazon warehouse. That box shipment you're going to have to declare at customs. So any shipment that's out into a warehouse is going to have import VAT at UK customs charged on it that's assuming of course that your shipment has come from outside of Europe, so most people ship from China or from the US. So import VAT is going to be charged on the cost of your goods. When you put together a commercial invoice of that shipment, that's the amount of the import fees then we charge on also with freight charges and things. Joe: And then what time do they pay that import VAT, when it arrives? Alex: Yeah correct so usually depending on what shipping company you'll go for usually they'll pay it for you and invoice it back to you. But they still have to do your kind of clearance number to create a shipment. Joe: And then do they have to…then they collect that VAT when it sells and they keep it or is it a different…are we talking about two different things? The import VAT versus the VAT that's charged to the customer on the Amazon account is that two different things or it's the same? Alex: It's the same tax but it's computed in different ways. So import VAT is non-cost whereas VAT on your sales is on the retail price of your goods. And they're also kind of declared differently so with the VAT when you [inaudible 00:11:35.18] you pay that in your VAT within each quarter. You don't pay that immediately when you make the sale. Whereas the import VAT, you pay it immediately at customs. And the way that those kind of…they tie in together although they're separately you…it's within your VAT return. So you do your VAT filing every quarter. So every three months you declare the amount of sales you made and then obviously you're declaring the VAT that's due on your sales and then any import VAT that you pay you can get that refunded and it's used as a credit within your VAT return. Joe: And how easy is it within the Amazon seller account to see that money that you've collected and have it match up against what you're going to owe? Or is it not as black and white as I think it would be or is it really relatively easy? Alex: It's gotten a lot better, to be honest. And so Amazon have got a specific VAT report that you can now download so you can see the breakdown. But in terms of the actual…when your customer purchases an item they won't be able to see the breakdown of VAT and the amount that's going to the amount that's going to the revenue. Another kind of stumbling block where a few Amazon sellers fall over where they don't get the kind of proper…do the proper research before is that's that although Amazon take their fees from the money you receive in terms of your sales, the VAT is [inaudible 00:12:49.6] on the total sales price. You can't deduct Amazon fees and then the amount that you actually receive from Amazon is what you pay VAT on it's the total amount that you're costumer is paying you pay VAT on. Joe: Why is there any calculation at all that the seller does? Doesn't Amazon calculate it for you it seems like they would since they know the exact sales? Alex: Yes so, unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. You have to include it. You have to price your product you have to do your pricing matrix. If you're expecting to move due your pricing and then Amazon add the VAT on it…that's not going to happen. You have to make sure you're including them. Joe: Well then I was thinking in terms of Amazon that in your pricing you would say this is my price and then this is my VAT amount it's not done that way you just simply mark it up to 120$ if it's a 100$ item. Alex: Yeah, exactly. Mark out straight away. And you can tell Amazon with the VAT calculation service you can let them know if you've got any kind of reduce rated or zero rated items which will reflect on the actual sales report. But it's not going to affect what your actual retail price is on Amazon and what it's listed as. Joe: Okay. Let's talk about volume. Here in the States, there's a lot of question about when should I start collecting sales taxes and [inaudible 00:13:58.6] and all these different [inaudible 00:13:59.8] unfortunately not black and white yet. It's still very-very gray. I had a situation where I listed a business for sale and asked about collecting VAT and he said well I'm not…I haven't hit that threshold yet in the UK. And I think it was a UK corporation as well, can you talk about thresholds and when and if you have to collect. In different [inaudible 00:14:21.4] what if you're a UK corporation or a Hong Kong Corporation if you're someone at the LOC or corporation here in the States? Alex: Okay, so if you have a company that's incorporated anywhere apart from the UK then you have to register for VAT immediately so that's sale number one whether it's going to have 1$, 10$, or 100$ it's straight away so no threshold whatsoever, you have to be registered. If however, you have a UK company there's a threshold of 85,000 Pounds and that's in terms of a turnover over a 12 month loaning period. So if you hit that within three months you have to be registered if you hit that in 11 months you have to be registered but that's just for a UK company. So if you've got an overseas entity you have to register straight to it there's no threshold. Joe: As far as buyers go, when you and I talked about this and have conversations with buyers when they buy an Amazon account that has a European component to it there's always questions about TMI not going to be collecting during a certain period of time, how do we sign up, how do we get that registered, what kind of danger I'm going to be in. I think you said the other day in a call separately in preparation for this that you can start pricing your products right away while you register and you're not going to…you're not going to lose any grounds or sales while you're registering and then paying VAT down the road a bit. Can you talk about that again a little bit so that…and talk about it from a buyer for perspective. If say someone is buying an Amazon account and taking it over and would reach out to you to register how do they ensure that they're collecting from day one of ownership and that they're not going to…not get themselves in a little bit of trouble? Alex: Well, first of all, I want to make sure, well check whether the Amazon account has already previously been charging VAT. So what we've discussed in terms of the pricing, obviously if you're taking over an Amazon account you're buying that account. And if they haven't been including VAT in the prices, you obviously then need to…the first kind of goal is to straight away go ahead and increase everything by that 20%. Joe: Let me just jump in here for a sec. So that's a consideration when someone…this is for the buyers that are listening, correct me here Alex if I'm wrong but when someone's buying an account and the owner has UK corporation, if they're below that annual threshold of 85,000 Pounds in revenue they're not charging VAT. But if I buy it and I'm not a UK corporation I immediately have to increase the prices in order to collect VAT or leave it alone and I'm going to lose 20% of my sales to the VAT. Is that correct? Alex: That's correct. Yes, so you because you're an overseas company you have to charge VAT on your sales even though they haven't been charged previously. Joe: Okay really critical for buyers to understand that when it's a UK corporation. Okay sorry to interrupt please continue. Alex: Okay so once you have then kind of taken over the company you can actually back date a registration. So say I'm talking over…I'm buying an Amazon account under my US company from a UK company we'll stick to that example. From the 1st of May you know going through the whole process it's taken a couple weeks to actually get everything set up. When if it got to the 1st of June and you still hadn't registered you can then back date that to the 1st of May. So as soon as you know that you're going to be buying the Amazon Seller Central, I would make sure that you're charging VAT to your customers because although you may not be registered you can backdate the registration. And it means that you have to pay VAT in all sales you make previous even though at that actual moment in time you weren't registered but you're back dating registration. Joe: Okay just to summarize. Don't change a thing in terms of prices assuming it's a…let's go with back to the it's a non UK entity so that they're a US entity buying a US entity but they have a UK account to it. If they're charging 120$ now and they're collecting VAT you don't have to change prices at all. Alex: Correct. Joe: You're going to register with a firm like yours and then when it's time to pay for the first time you're already collecting those and you'll go back dating and calculate what's due. Alex: Yes, exactly. Yeah. Joe: And how often do you pay? I think you said was it quarterly? Alex: Yes quarterly so every three months yeah. Joe: And is it the same every three months? Is it the beginning of the 15th of the next quarter is when you have to pay the taxes or is it depends upon when you register? Alex: So you got one month and seven days to actually do the filing and make the payment. As you can fall into different stagger groups in VAT quarters so it's not necessarily you are January to March you can be February to April or March to May. So there's three kind of different groups of VAT filings you could fall into. Your VAT advisor should obviously let you know and would be contacting you when everything's due. In terms of the frequency yeah it is quarterly. Joe: Listen, Alex, as you can see I'm an old guy, got some gray hair here. I fell asleep in accounting class in college. I honest to God I did fell asleep, the next class came in and I think I've told the story again so I won't go to much detail. I don't like this stuff. I don't like this level of detail because of what I do for a living it's absolutely critical as an entrepreneur and know how important it is. Do I have to really…if I'm the guy that's buying an FBA business and it's got European components to it, how much do I have to really know or can I just rely on you guys to do the work for me? Alex: You can definitely rely on us to kind of advice you and let you know. But it is…I do think it's good to know kind of the basics of what you're doing. In terms of Amazon, you've got two different programs so European Fulfillment Network or Pan-European Program. Pan-European Program is great you get to move your stock around to seven different countries [inaudible 00:20:03.1] you're stock is close that your costumers time are positive reasons to do that. But if you just kind of turn that on on your Amazon Seller Central and you'd haven't done any prior research, you won't know that you then actually have to get [inaudible 00:20:17.6] registered in seven countries. You have to do filings maybe month in more than half of these countries. So everything that you do in terms of where your stock is located, where your sales are going will have an impact on your VAT registration, your VAT applications within Europe. So yes it's good you should have [inaudible 00:20:36.6] in there. We'd let you know but don't be completely ignorant to what you're doing and where your stock is going. Joe: Hey it sounds like you just touched on being able to shift from seven different countries in a penny you…there's a lot of potential savings in terms of the shipping costs and fulfillment costs that you're closer to the customer. But you talked earlier I think that if you've got your inventory in the UK or Germany in the two biggest centers that you register for VAT in those countries what if your inventory is spread around seven different countries so you're closer to the customers do you then have to register in all of those countries? Alex: You do. Yeah, as soon as your stock is in that country and you can sell in from there you have to be VAT registered in that country. So VAT is basically payable to the country and is being done close at supply. So if your stock is in a Czech Republic warehouse the place of supply VAT sale when it's going from the Czech Republic to the customer in Italy is going to be in Czech Republic. So being VAT registered in the UK is completely useless. Joe: Okay. Alex: So yeah- Joe: Very much like nexus here in the States if there's 15 Amazon centers theory is that if you have 15 different locations of inventory you have nexus in those states and that's where you collect sales taxes. Not as formal as where you are. Tell us about the biggest hurdles and biggest mistakes that you've seen people make…well that you have in been bringing people to the European countries and selling an FBA. What things are really obvious? What mistakes are really common that people can avoid? Alex: So first one is to not get registered at all. So with that threshold, quite a few people get confused that the 85,000 threshold is applicable to them; sounds really appealing and really lovely so they just don't register full stop. And then when you do get registered you just do it from today's date because [inaudible 00:22:27.3] realize but now I know that I'm going to do it from today. There's a huge amount of compliant checks going on with the revenue in the UK. They are hurdling through every single Amazon account and doing tax investigations. You know we've had to help clients where we're going all the way back to 2012 when the legislation came in that they have to register. So that's kind of six years of taxes you're going to have to go back and pay and if you don't your Amazon can get shut down. So the first kind of hurdle is actually getting registered. It's kind of what you'd think is the most simplest part just to do the application. Joe: Six years of VAT taxes you've had people in that situation? Alex: Yeah. Joe: I would think that in some situations people will just throw their hands up in the air, close the account, and walk away, and not pay the taxes. Alex: Yeah. Joe: Is that something where if you're a US resident where you're going to be found and have to pay those taxes in some way shape or form? Alex: Well you spent a nice six years building up your Amazon account. You've got all of your reviews you know you've built up that kind of brand in the UK so to kind of just throw your hands up and walk away is a big thing to do in the first place. Because even if you opened up a new Amazon account you're not going to have all of those reviews and obviously the name of you as a director of that company when you do a VAT application in the UK you have to state that information and you have to kind of give all of those details of yourself anyway and yeah so you'll have- Joe: So if you're going to walk away there walk in away forever. Alex: Yeah. Joe: Unless they cheat and get around the system somewhere. Alex: Exactly and unfortunately like in the US…so as not like in the US there's now amnesty in the UK so if you think that you're going to be negotiating and kind of say that oh I'll make sure to pay everything going forward so I'll pay a percentage you wouldn't get that and you also have to pay mass penalty as well so it do not kind of sound all that great if you haven't done the right thing to start with. Joe: Okay. So I've talked to a lot of Amazon sellers. I've seen their financials. Some people tell me you know I've done the analysis Joe and it's just not worth the effort for me to sell in Germany and Italy in France and in the UK. It's just not worth it. And I think they're completely and utterly wrong because I've seen the explosive growth. You've got 2,000 FBA clients. What country are you seeing people get the most bang for their buck? What's growing rapidly over there and what country should they pay attention to the most? Alex: UK and Germany definitely. They're just the two biggest markets. France is…does follow very closely but yeah 100% they're the biggest. Joe: Okay. And the easiest of those two might be the UK because you don't have to do translation? Alex: Yeah, exactly. And I'm shipping direct into the UK is a lot easier than it is shipping to Germany. Joe: Okay. Okay. There are a lot of concerns about money laundering. I've heard people talk about this and how complicated it is and on the German side and German FBA accounts. Am I just hearing people with sort of the chicken little mentality that the sky is falling and being really paranoid or is there something to that? Alex: I think sales in Germany in terms of my money laundering and everything is all going through Amazon. So amazon are collecting the funds and sending it to you. You don't need for some representation in Germany so payments go directly to the tax authorities whereas in France you've got to pay to your French advisor and then it goes to the tax authorities so yeah I'm not sure of what grounds. Joe: Do you even know who Chicken Little is or what that theory…okay, I see you just- Alex: No sorry. Joe: Okay. It's a cartoon character here in the States disguised- Alex: Okay [crosstalk 00:25:55.9] Joe: I used that terminology when there's so many people online talking about all the horrible things that can happen when you're own an Amazon seller account as opposed to the reality of how many great things are happening and it's changing people's lives. Alex: I think that's like when you go to a restaurant or you go anywhere, you're more likely to leave a bad review if you've had a bad experience whereas if you've had agood review you probably leave any review at all. I do notice that happen. Joe: A hundred percent, you're absolutely right. One of the things that I see often and I know you guys are AVASK tax advisor so I want to talk about that advisory part and the tax part. But one of the things that I see happen is that sometimes when sellers expand overseas they just take the easy route and they'd let Amazon handle making deposits directly to their US bank account. Whereas other people that take a little bit of time, do some research, still use World's First Bank or somebody else to be that intermediary and the money will go there at a lower exchange rate saving them tens in…tens of thousands of dollars annually. Do you find that to be the case, do you would advise folks to do that and if so what world banks do you suggest they use or look at or is that a service that you provide as well? Alex: Yeah, definitely. So if you kind of first of all from a VAT paying perspective there's…most people have to pay via wire transfer. And if you're getting kind of close to the payment deadline it can take for to five working days for that payment to clear with HMRC. They then if any payment is received late they will give you a surcharge with subtentiative liability and that can go up to 15 cents. So if you've got a currency account located here in Europe the time that it takes for the funds to actually clear and consider the payment to be made is a lot quicker. So that is a big benefit of getting a bank account over here even just a currency account. Joe: Can you define what a currency account is and how it differentiates from a bank account, please? Alex: So it has kind of all the benefits of a bank account and they're very similar but I don't think I mean don't 100% take my word for this. Obviously, it's better to speak to a currency account provider. But you can't hold large amounts of funds in that account. It's kind of like an intermediary way. You're basically doing a transfer and a transfer to your local account. You can't also do things like direct debits and buy out checks and things like that. Joe: Okay. And as I understand it just for people listening that currency account I think Amazon, for instance, may charge you if you are a…may charge you 4% currency exchange. Whereas the currency account you may only be charged 2%. And so you might be…and these are ballpark numbers so you're saving 2% on whatever amount of money is flowing through that. And if it's a million dollars, you do the math on that. If it's 10,000 $ you do the math on that. So I see a lot of people do that as well. That's what a currency account is right? Alex: Yeah. And especially with kind of making payments in Europe in terms of VAT you're going to be transferring your money from Amazon to the US and then back so the UK again so you're kind of transferring it a couple of times and to make that payment. So if you want to incorporate a UK company [inaudible 00:29:08.3] you could have get an actual high street UK bank account which is obviously a benefit of that UK company. You could just kind of grow the funds and leave it in a high street bank account in UK. Joe: Well, let's talk about that for a minute. Maybe I should have asked this at the very beginning and listeners I apologize because this is a question I get offset. You know I'm expanding to the UK, I'm expanding to Germany do I have to set up a UK business with a UK address or German company? Do I have to set those up or can I simply be a US based company selling products overseas? Can you explain, you've got 2,000 clients what are they doing? What do you recommend? Alex: You do not have to incorporate a UK company. It's the majority of people use their overseas company just because it is a lot easier and has less administration in terms of the accounts that you are drawing up each year. It's all just falling onto one company. You've got your CPA in the US. He's doing everything for you. You don't have to hire a CPA equivalent in the UK so ask accountants to do your [inaudible 00:30:03.9] paying your kind of all those tax due filings. In terms of what's actually best is really hard for me to say because it is on a case by case basis. It's you know do you want to build a brand, do you want a UK bank account, do you want to take advantage of the VAT threshold, there's so many factors. It's not one, it's one size fits all, unfortunately. Joe: Okay but the simple answer is for anybody listening if you're US based with a US bank account a US corporation, you do not have to set up a European company a UK company or in Germany that's misinformation. You don't have to do that. You can register for VAT and start collecting and paying and still have your one CPA here in the US. Is that correct? Alex: Yes. Joe: Good. Of your 2,000 plus or minus clients, what are their sizes? I mean you have you got people that are doing you know a million, two million dollars a month in revenue and those that are just doing five or 10,000 $ a month? How does it range and how does it flash out [inaudible 00:31:01.5] so we just know more about you guys. Alex: Yeah, exactly that range I don't [inaudible 00:31:05.4] information but- Joe: Maybe I should have said a half a million a month. Alex: Yeah there's a huge range there is. And that's for the UK companies and also overseas companies. You know we've got a lot of Chinese clients as well. We've got kind of a whole Chinese department [inaudible 00:31:20.6]. So yeah the range is massive. We can help you whatever size. Joe: Okay. Let's say that I'm doing a quarter of a million dollars a month here in the States and I decide I want to expand overseas and I'm going to start with UK and Germany. Aside from my inventory costs and getting the product there, what are my costs for someone like you in setting up VAT and getting registered and compliant and all that stuff? Alex: Well it depends which country you're going for. If it's just one if it's selling- Joe: Say I'm gonna start with two. I'm going to start with the UK, actually I'm just gonna go with one. Let's go with UK. Alex: Okay 150 Pound registration one up fee and then 870 Pounds a year annual compliance and that doesn't depend on turnover. So whatever your turnover is it's the same. Joe: That's pretty cheap, if I'm doing a quarter million a month, 150 Euros a couple of hundred bucks tops and then maybe a thousand US dollars a year simple as that. Who calculates what my VAT is owed each month? Is it me and my CPA or is that part of your 870 5,000- Alex: Yeah we do that. We calculate everything. And you can give us limited access to your seller central we'll go in and download all the reports directly. You don't have to be a part of that process. Your sole responsibility is to make the payment. Joe: Can I just have you make the payment for me if you have access to funds or you just tell me what to pay and I pay it? Alex: No we don't do that. We will tell you what to pay and then you have to make the payment yeah. Joe: This is…okay I'm a little [inaudible 00:32:47.2] I haven't talked to anybody about pricing but to me, this is so incredibly fair and reasonable. Are you guys…is this the standard fees? I mean this is normal cost or you're really expensive or really cheap? What's the situation? Alex: I think that's about average. We pride ourselves over the service that we give kind of in comparison to the actual fees to other providers and things. We don't get too hung up on what the actual charges are in terms of that. What I would say though, I don't want to be [inaudible 00:33:16.2] in terms of that 870. Because if your turnover was in the millions you will be breaching distance selling thresholds to all of the European countries. Joe: You'll be what? Say that again. Alex: Breaching distance selling thresholds, we haven't spoken about that so- Joe: Distance selling threshold. Alex: We'll go into that really quickly. So if you've got all of your stock in a UK company…country sorry company the UK country, UK warehouse and is going to customers in Germany. So UK from a warehouse going to a customer in Germany, if their sales go over a certain threshold to Germany you then have to register to VAT in Germany even though you're not fulfilling from that country. Joe: Okay. Alex: Makes sense? Joe: Yeah, all right. This is the part where Joe doesn't love this level of detail but thank you for that. Alex: It's just that I don't want to be misleading in terms of 870 Pounds you know whatever your turnover is because that's all UK fee. If your turnover is massive you will have an obligation to register in other countries as well. Joe: And if the turnover is massive to probably going to be shipping from those countries to save that fulfillment cost anyway. Alex: Yeah, yeah. Joe: And that's something that they would do the math on and you guys may help them with. Alex: Yeah. Joe: Okay we're running out of time. We're about 30 minutes in which is actually a bit long but this is a fascinating subject, a critical one, and I'm sure some people just they fell asleep because it's also not their favorite which is a shame. Because the number one thing people can do to make their business more valuable is get the books right. Get the details like this absolutely correct. It's going to help with the transition of the business as well as well as the value. Alex thank you so much. Any last thoughts that you can share with people listening? Whether they're buying and selling in terms of what they should do and how they should do it other than just do it and do it right. Alex: I honestly I would just say to speak to someone you know we do free consultations [inaudible 00:35:07.0] if you just give us a call then we can just run through everything with you. There's you know all though we've covered a lot in half an hour it's a lot of information, there are still some things that haven't been mentioned so yeah I would just speak so when I mention we've got all the information for before you completely just jump start in. Joe: Okay. Well, we'll make sure that all of your contact information is in the show notes. Alex: All right. Joe: But for those listening that can't see them there it's AVASK tax advisors that's A-V-A-S-K tax advisors and they do free consultations. I think it's really important as a buyer or seller if you're planning on selling over in the UK. Alex thanks so much for your time today I really appreciate it. Alex: Okay thanks. Thanks, everyone. Links: Alexandra Lyon Indirect Tax Client Manager Skype: alex.avask Email: alex@avaskgroup.com T: +1.213.330.4904; +1.213.256.0537 https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandragrant4/ https://www.avaskaccounting.co.uk/   James Shayler International VAT Technical Officer Skype: james.shayler16 Email: james@avasktax.com T: +1.213.330.4904; +1.213.256.053

The Quiet Light Podcast
How To Calculate The Value Of Your Online Business

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 23, 2018 42:34


Your online business is likely your MOST VALUABLE ASSET. And calculating its value is critical to setting goals and knowing your net worth. “But I never plan to sell” is something we hear often…and as entrepreneurs most of us @ QLB have said the same thing. Yet each of us has built, bought and sold our own online business…even the ones we never planned to sell. When I sold my web-based business in 2010 I was a novice. With what I know today if I could go back in time I would have planned my exit and likely sold my business for 2-3x more than I did. Instead…I waited until I was emotionally tired of the business, and sold it when the numbers were half what the once were. Not smart. Don't be like me…listen to this Podcast and implement our suggestions. You risk everything building and running your business, and you should get maximum value if/when you exit. The first step in getting max value is understanding the valuation process and being able to calculate your Seller's Discretionary Earning (SDE). Mark and I joke about falling asleep in this podcast due to some of the content…we're joking…and the material here is incredibly valuable. Episode Highlights: Learn the basic web based business valuation formula. Get to know what parts of a business swing the value range up or down. Net Income, plus Add Backs = Seller's Discretionary Earnings (SDE). What's an Add Back? Learn what are acceptable and unacceptable add backs. How add backs boost the value of your business. Using accrual accounting vs. cash for COGS…critical to understand for both buyers and sellers. Learn the typical multiple (value) ranges for an online business. Why a larger business fetches a higher multiple than a smaller ones. Inventory is SOLD SEPARATELY. If you own a physical products business, while listening to this Podcast your inventory levels will change. Including it in the list price artificially inflates the multiple of the business and results in an unstable list price. Transcription: Mark: Hey Joe how are you? Joe: I'm good Mark. How are you doing today? Mark: I'm good. Today we have an unusual guest at least for our podcast. Joe: That's what my wife calls me unusual. Mark: Well that's because you are the guest right? And in Quiet Light Podcast fashion, I'm going to have you introduce yourself to all of our listeners who have no idea who you are. Actually, they know you probably better than you may know yourself at this point because they've listened to you so much but I want to provide just a quick introduction for yourself. Joe: Wow this is how our guest feels. Now I'm on the spot. I hadn't thought that you were going to do that to me. But who am I? Self-employed since 1997, I'm kind of an old guy. Can you see that? A gray hair. 52 years old. Built box sold own online businesses, sold my last e-commerce business for a company called Quiet Light Brokerage. Jason here was my broker; you were the first guy I talked to. I loved the process in transactions so much. I reached out to you and six months later I said you know I'd love to be a broker and you said yeah let me talk to Jason. Jason thankfully said yeah talk to this guy. I came on in early 2012. You and I are now partners now. You're the majority and I'm just a small guy in the process but since then closed what approaching 30 million in total transactions might get 50 by the end of this year depending upon what happens, been around the block a little bit; lots and lots and lots of transactions of all shapes and sizes. Mark: And I think it's safe to say that you have built a name for yourself in the industry quite a bit. People know you. And I think for the first time in the history of the company we had a client you are working with and your plate was getting a little bit full so you thought about trying to hand him off to me and he said “No, I don't want to work with the founder of the company. I'd rather work with you, Joe.” And that's never happened. I'm totally happy about that though not that I don't want to be working with a client but it just goes to show the reputation that you built in the industry. Joe: Or how your represent…reputation is now destroyed. I'm not sure. Mark: Probably, now the word has gotten out. Well, he's not actually as good as we thought compared to Joe or Jason or these other guys. Well, we did a podcast episode a while ago with Chuck Mullins and we're going to be doing more of these words “Meet the Broker”. We also did one with Jason. So those you can find back in the podcast history but we obviously don't want to just talk about you and your background as fascinating as I'm sure that might be. You've got lots of years of wisdom to share with everybody. But we want to actually talk about a specific topic and I…and today we're going to talk about specifically how to calculate the value of your web based business or any web based business and what is the process that goes on behind the scenes to calculate that value. I know you gave a presentation recently, I think back in January out in California on this and it turned into a lot of questions about the actual valuation process. Like just the formula itself and how do we arrive at a certain number. So for those listening, we are going to talk you through this. But for those that are watching we will have something up on the screen a presentation that you can follow along. If you're listening in your car and you want to come back later you can find this on our YouTube Quiet Light Academy or on our podcast page at Quiet Light Brokerage. So tell us a little bit about the presentation Joe and how you kind of spent so much time just on the first half of this presentation. Joe: Yeah the presentation is really supposed to be about you know the pillars of growth. There's generally four of them and I put planning in there as a fifth. It was supposed to be about the pillars of maximum value but in order to get to that, I had to talk about how to calculate your seller's discretionary earnings in the value of your business and then it got into add backs. I really was going to do about a five minute presentation on that, about a 40 minute presentation on the rest, and then 30 minutes at Q and A. It turned into about 45 minutes of Q and A alone on calculating the value, in particular, the add backs. What was acceptable, what was not, and then the multiples and ranges depending on the net. So today in this first episode I want to touch on how to calculate the value of your business and then we'll get to the four pillars of value after that. So simply put Mark it's an easy formula. There should be no confusion about it. If you're looking at the screen there trailing 12 months seller's discretionary earnings times the multiple equals the list price of your business, simple; right? 300,000 in discretionary earnings times three you got a list price of a business of 900,000 in the key plus the landed cost of good saleable inventory on hand at the time of closing that. All of that language is really critical. Now I've been a guest on podcasts as well as you on other people's podcasts and we've talked about this formula at the beginning of the podcast and then literally 15 minutes in the host will say “So how do you calculate the value of your company again because it's simple but really-really confusing.” So I want to go through it. So we know this formula it's up to the screen again for listeners it's your seller's discretionary earnings for your trailing 12 months times A multiple equals the list price plus the inventory if you've got a physical products business. But the problem here is calculating the seller's discretionary earnings. We'll get to how to figure out what your multiple is but the most important thing is how to calculate seller's discretionary earnings. So it's up there on the screen now. It's simple if you use accounting software which is kind of important. Right, Mark? Mark: Very very very much important, yes. Joe: One of the four pillars. It's net income plus add backs equals your seller's discretionary earnings. So if you run a profit loss in Quick Books or Xero it's going to give you a net income number on the bottom. But every entrepreneur, for the most part, sometimes partnerships have better books…cleaner books. But most entrepreneurs, if you take a small salary, if you have a car that you ride after the business, you have your mobile phone as run through the business, all these things are personal in nature and then there's some one-time expenses as well. Those are considered add backs. So if you run a business and your net income is zero, that doesn't mean your business is worth zero. You could take a hundred thousand dollar salary and that's an add back as it's a personal benefit. Makes sense? Mark: Makes sense. But I'm going to back up just a minute here. Joe: Okay. Mark: Go back to the previous slide. Joe: Yup. Mark: Now where we're talking about the formula that we're using to calculate value. In that formula again, just to drill it into people's heads, it is the trailing 12 months seller's discretionary earnings which is close to a bit in most cases but not always. So we take that we times it by a multiple and that's where we come up with the asking price or the estimated value of a business. But let me ask you or to give an objection that we hear a lot from sellers when they see this. Isn't this too simple, what about all the other aspects of their business? What about the unique relationship that they have with the supplier or the upward mobility or upward scalability of the business and the trajectory of it? Isn't this just looking at the income only and not paying attention to all those other things? Joe: Yes and no. Right? And that's the answer is that we come up with a value range it's not a firm number, it's a value range and your business may swing in that range depending upon some of those things. If you've got a five year old business and you've got 30% year over year growth versus an 18-month old business, one is more valuable than the other. If you've got a patent on a particular skew that you have that prevents other people from competing with you that brings more value. If you have diversified revenue streams, you know Shopify, or your physical…your website, Amazon…different Amazon countries, Jet, Walmart, Daily Deal sites that's diversified revenue. Diversify…diversification means less risk. Less risk means higher in that multiple range. So all of those things come into play but as I say often we can't take an email list of 10,000 and say each email address is worth five dollars and do that math and add that to the value of the business. What it does simply is boost the value range of the business itself. Mark: Right. Joe: I think another way to understand this as well is that although our formula has two main parts the trailing twelve months seller's discretionary earnings in one part and in multiple being the other part, that doesn't mean that is…we're looking at two things. As we're going to go into both sides of this the multiple and the trailing twelve months are summations of bigger calculations. So when we could get to the SDE, when we're calculating that seller's discretionary earnings, we're going to go over that in this podcast episode, there's a lot involved in calculating seller's discretionary earnings just as there's a lot that goes into understanding what makes its multiples. These things kind of summarize the business and all of those intangibles as well. And I think a lot of people that do know this formula they focus a lot on the multiple. But I love the fact that what we're going to do here is we're going to unpack this seller's discretionary earnings number and see what goes into building that. Because this is actually an area where there is a lot of opportunity for optimization [inaudible 00:12:44.4]. And once you understand this aspect of it and you plan in advance sale of your business you're never to sell but someday you may wake up and want to move on, you understand the value you're going to have a much more valuable business down the road. And you know I think we were at a presentation together where someone got up and said adds are the most valuable asset that you own as your business and if you don't take care of it and you don't understand it's value you not really maximizing it; so really important. You know the key point here is Mark the trailing 12 months. It's not the trailing three, trailing six times two or anything like that; the trailing 12 always takes into account the seasonality of the business and we do every…a year over year comparison when working on that multiple valuation as well. Mark: Yeah and just one last [inaudible 00:13:32.3] on this, this is one formula that is used. It's used in this industry for online businesses which is why we use it. It is not the only way to estimate the value of a business but what I would tell anybody out there that wants to look at different valuation approaches they all essentially do the same thing. Some do it more complex than others and at the end of the day, these are predictive formulas right? I'm trying to predict what's base trying to pay. So anyways on with the next line, I took us back a little bit but I did want to get in to that a little bit. So add backs- Joe: Keep doing it I do this every day and it's simple language to me now but it is not simple, it's pretty complex. Mark: Right okay so let's get into the seller's discretionary earnings if I'm going to Quick Books because everybody I know that's listening is using Quick Books or Xero or a professional accounting software right? Everybody's using that I'm sure nobody's using Excel. Where can I go in Quick Books to calculate or see what my seller's discretionary earnings are? Joe: You can't. Mark: That is not in Quick Books? Joe: No. Mark: What is that, what is seller's discretionary earnings? Joe: It's your net income what you get out of Quick Books or Xero plus the add backs. That's what you call seller's discretionary earnings. So the big question is what's an add back? And this is why it took 45 minutes in the Q and A session that I did. So when you get to add backs and I'll go to the next slide here this is a lot of information but really an add back is something that is a personal benefit to the owner of the company or a one-time expense. Now there are always exceptions to the rule and you always want to use math and logic. But an example is owner payroll, if someone takes a payroll of 128,000 dollars to maximize their social security, that's an owner benefit and if your business is doing net income of 500,000 dollars, you add back 128 to that so now your discretionary earnings should be 628. Simple round numbers if you're doing 50 in net income and you take salary of 50 you're discretionary earnings becomes 100,000. And so if your multiple is 3X on the net income it's only 50, on discretionary earnings it's 300,000 big difference. Mark: Right. So why are we adding back these expenses? Because basically what you're doing is you're going through, you're taking a look at a company's income statement or profit and loss statement and that's something that you can generate in Quick Books or Xero or any professional accounting software. And you're going through those expenses and you're looking at some and you're saying okay we're going to add…and right now this is acting as a subtracting number to the revenue and that's how it would get to net income. But you're saying we're going to actually add that expense back so effectively take it out. Why are we taking out these expenses? Joe: They're personal in nature and they're personal benefit but you need to in your terminology taking it out you have to go with full disclosure to the buyers. They want to see every cent and so you don't go into the Quick Books accounting, you delete these personal expenses. You leave them there yet you run the report you export it to Excel and then below that net income you create an add back schedule and you go up to…okay this one's personal mail and entertainment travel or what you did a website redesign you spent 10,000 dollars three months ago. That's a one-time expense, for the most part, we could add that back. And you had an employee that did outside sales and she tried, she was only around for three months it was a 15,000 dollars expense she produced zero outside sales commissions is that an add back? We could talk about in some cases it is. But there's a lot of that today goes deep deep deep in the conversations with the owner of the business in order to get to the most important number which is a seller's discretionary earnings. Mark: All right very good. So when we're doing these add backs what we're doing is we're taking out these expenses because we want to present it to buyers and show them what the business operates from a standard starting point. So we call these discretionary expenses and we call them discretionary expenses because their expenses that the owner is spending at their discretion could be circular about it. So how do you go about or I'm going to hand back over to you, what's the next step for going through and explaining and understanding these add backs? Joe: Let's just give some example, some things that people brought up and I just pop something up on the screen you know question. Can I go to the gym every day? You go to the gym pretty often right? You try to get out and you might run it after your business is that a personal benefit you tell me? Mark: Yeah. Joe: Absolutely. So if you spend 50 dollars a month for the gym that's an add back, it's 300 dollars a year. That's a thousand dollars added to the value of your business if your multiple is over three times. Your car, your meals, and your entertainment; a big one that you and I and the entire team talked about recently was as an entrepreneur you may travel to different events. You may go to the Prosper Show that we were out in March. You may go to arket a conference. You may go to Seller Con, whatever the case might be. Can you write those things off as an add back? And we collectively said yes. Because it's a personal choice of the owner, in most cases you can learn those things online but you're going for the camaraderie and it's helping with your business in some ways but it's not a required expense that carries forward to the new owner. And that's the most important thing; it's not an expense that carries forward to a new owner. Mark: Let's talk about that trade show example because I think that's a really good example where we can get in and show how understanding what gets added back and what doesn't get added back and be somewhat nuance. So let's take two different scenarios and start with…well we'll start with Rhodium we talked about them a bit and we like the guys in Rhodium quite a bit, it's a good community. I would go to that event just for the camaraderie and the networking alone without necessarily have any business…there's always a business interest with what we do but my main reason would be to go there for the camaraderie. Looking at Quiet Light Brokerage would that be considered an add back yes or no? Probably because we're not necessarily selling our services at that point but if we display a pub con, if we get a booth display there, we're making out to contacts would you consider that an add back? Joe: Well let me tell you, let me correct you if you will on Rhodium. When we go to Rhodium and we are sponsoring the event, so it's an expense to us, we stay in hotels, we have meals, we have entertainment, and we produce revenue from it because we build relationships with those people who then come to us to list the business for sale; and that produces revenue. So when you've got an expense that produces revenue it's not an add back; simple as that. But an example of someone going to Rhodium…a real example, someone went to Rhodium recently and her husband decided to go as well, didn't go to the events but was there and then they stayed an extra week and called that their honeymoon. Went on a helicopter ride that…all sorts of different things and it was a complete business expense and write off. Absolutely a write off, she can't tie a revenue to that expense. So it's an add back. There's always math and logic with these, sometimes the buyers are not going to see it the same exact way that the seller or the broker will see it but we don't push them. It's got to be crystal clear because and full disclosure because once you're under [inaudible 00:21:01.9] we don't want any surprises. An example that is not an add back that someone brought up they said well I'm using an ad agency to do all my Facebook advertising and I pay them 15% and I spend [inaudible 00:21:14.4] a thousand dollars a month. That's 150 dollars a month expense. I'd like to add that back because my logic is if the new owner has those…that experience that doesn't need that ad agency then they're not going to have the expense so it doesn't carry forward right? Well, no it's an expense that that ad agency spends money, it produces revenue, you can't…it's a big leap of math and logic. We don't know if that particular buyer has that experience or not. If they do, good for them it's a savings on their part but we can't add it back assuming everybody has that experience. Makes sense? Mark: Yeah absolutely. I think there's a common sense factor here and that is what we want to do is we want to look at the expenses that have been used for the normal operations of the business, so expenses that's been used for normal operations they stay. The elements that are outside of normal operations of the business those are the ones that are typically going to be added back, so personal benefits, those one-time expenses that'll be outside of normal operations because it's…it is part of normal operations but it's such a rare occurrence. We want to show buyers what's their expected ROI from this business if they were to acquire it. And so you can't…you have to have a common starting around and that's where you end up getting into the add backs and taking out those discretionary expenses. Joe: Yeah. Let's talk about one more sort of not black and white example just to talk about what you said which is common sense. So I listed a business last fall and the owner of the business really literally worked five hours a week. He had a full time person doing inventory planning things of that nature customer service…doing inventory planning and design and then he had someone that he had do customer service. That someone that he had do customer service was his brother and he paid him 30 dollars an hour for customer service work. The customer service work involved canned responses and canned responses and email canned responses in a pop up chat. He was grossly overpaid doing that kind of work, 30 dollars an hour. My advice at the time and you laughed at me and called me a Scrooge at one point [inaudible 00:23:24.5] was fire your brother. Okay, you're paying him way too much. I think the total amount that he might have been paying him was roughly 30,000 dollars a year. When in reality he was paying him too much money was paying him for hours that he didn't really work. So he should have fired his brother, hired somebody with half the cost, it made up the difference of 15,000. Let six months pass and he would have…his business when it was listed at 3 ½, so it would have 3 ½ times 15,000 dollars which would have been added to list price. He wasn't willing to be a Scrooge because that was just before the holidays. He didn't fire his brother. So we went with math and logic and we presented an adjustment in the add backs accounting for his brother going away. Mark: Okay. Joe: It wasn't ideal, it was a little gray but the math and the logic made sense and it worked. We had multiple offers under LOI closed with no issues with that add back mostly because it was right there in black and white and detail that talked about prior to the LOI. Mark: Right. So it does work the other way as well too. I've actually had the opposite scenario where somebody had a bunch of friends and family helping out in their business and they were grossly underpaid because they were doing favors. And he was like the Uncle Vido or someone like that was doing the books for almost no money whatsoever. And in that case would go the other direction and we would actually inject a cost into that P and L that will basically say hey they're here in a sweet heart rate that's not going to continue we need to see what this role is important but necessary and here's a pretty reasonable market rate for math and logic once again. Joe: Yeah, it's math and logic in there as well. Okay, I have a look at our time here Mark and where we are but a really really important thing for physical product owners is in the valuation of the business is the thing that put me to sleep in college. Literally, I fell asleep in the classroom and the new students came in and I was asleep in a classroom. It's accounting. Okay if you're driving pop a couple of no doze for this part but it is so vastly critical and this is critical for buyers and sellers. For buyers listen to this closely because if you find a broker that lists something that is growing like crazy, physical products business and they don't do accrual accounting or flipped it to accrual, you're getting that business at a discount because it should be accrual. When it's accrual the business is…it's the right way to do it first of all but the discretionary earnings is higher and the business is more valuable. Mark: Hold on accrual? What are you talking about here…we're just doing something excel at this point. So what is accrual and why is it so important? Joe: You're selling a widget, so let's say you're selling a widget for 10 dollars and your landed cost of goods sold on that widget is two dollars, 20% landed at your 3PL at your Amazon FDA. That's a cost of goods sold of 20% that…that's accrual so that when you sell that widget in the month of June that cost for that widget is applied to that month of June, so it's 20%. So your cost of goods sold…landed cost of goods sold shouldn't be roughly the same every month, month in and month out when it's accrual. If it's cash you're going to see that 20% go to 60%, 102% down to zero back up again to be all over and what it's going to look like on the bottom line discretionary earnings is that your earnings are all over the place; up and down, up and down and it's uncomfortable for buyers. The way that they look at these things and the way that we train them to look at these things is discretionary earnings and then have some working capital for inventory. When you purchase inventory moving up to 4th quarter, if you are cash basis and you're wrapping up inventory and normally you've got 50,000 dollars' worth of inventory but all of a sudden your stroking checks and you've got cash out of the 150,000 dollars that depresses your net income and your discretionary earnings and the value of your business if it's presented on a cash basis accounting. Does that make a little bit of more sense and not put you to sleep? Mark: Yeah, that does make more sense and what I would…the way I've explained it to some people as well is that when you move to accrual basis accounting it's kind of like going from a two dimensional picture to a three dimensional picture because it looks at your business and where its value is in all places. So instead of just taking cash out when as you said your 4th quarter you're stroking checks because you've got to stock up that inventory you're expecting a busy Christmas season so you're writing all sorts of checks out. Instead of saying okay I've just lost that much value of business, no you haven't lost much value you're just taking cash and converted it over to inventory. So accrual says hey you still have value in your business because you have all those inventory, you just exchanged cash for inventory. And then when you sell that product now you recognize the expense of that individual item. Joe: That's the key when you sell that product that's when you recognize the expense. And a good bookkeeper can set it up for you. And trust me if you spend a little bit of money a couple hundred, 300, 400 dollars a month on a good book keeper you will make that back multiple times over in the sale of your business because buyers will have more confidence. Brokers will be able to do a better valuation with less complexities and you won't pull your hair out during the valuation process. And I've seen people do that it's really-really hard to go back and do it. We do it more often than not we do it right Mark? We have to go back and flip it from cash to accrual then and I want to show you how to do that. So right now up on the screen, I've got a sample profit and loss station, a sample statement. Net income you can see there we're going to call it 425,000 dollars. Again, we've got an add back schedule below it for those listening here is some of the add backs; we've got interest expense that they had a loan, legal and professional fees for a patent for example or a trademark those are one-time expenses, meals, and entertainment, office expenses you work from home but you've got your kids' school supplies that you [inaudible 00:29:33.0] your business, your own payroll and I've got vehicle expenses here. So we take that 425,000 in net income plus the add backs on 120 and we're not at 545,000 in change in terms of discretionary earnings. So again you just say a three time multiple we added 360,000 in value to this business just for the add backs. But when you look at this gray line in the cost of goods sold the cost of goods sold as a percentage of total income goes as high as 97% and as low as 5%. It's all over the place. In the next screen, I'm going to flip it down so we know that that's cash because it's all over the place so here we flipped it from cash to accrual. Mark: So this is the same company? Joe: The same company this is the same exact P and L but within the Excel spreadsheet there was exported from Quick Books or Xero or in some cases produced, we've flipped the cash to accrual on the total cost of goods sold line only. We don't change those numbers in the cost of goods sold expenses the only thing that's changed is that total cost of goods sold line. You see sometimes those total doesn't add up to the individual things it's because we flipped it to accrual and we work with a formula on that. So there's more than one way to do almost anything but we work with the seller on calculating new accrual and we'll go into that in a minute but the key difference is when you look at this we went from cash to we were at 425,000 in net income right? Now we've flipped to accrual you look at that net income line that's jumped from 425 to 485,000 so we've added 60,000 dollars in discretionary earnings just by flipping it to accrual. Let me repeat that for those that are almost asleep because we're talking about accounting. By not producing any more revenue, by not hustling any harder, by not renegotiating cost of goods, by not doing anything other than good accounting we've increased the net income from 425 to 485. By you know proper accounting. Mark: [inaudible 00:31:45.6] the question is this dishonest in any way? Joe: No. It's the absolute right way to do it. It's standard acceptable accounting principles. The other way is the ready fire aim approach that unfortunately most of us take, me included because I didn't know any about Quick Books or accounting, I fell asleep in class, I never had a bookkeeper. This is actually the right way to do it. Mark: All right so that [inaudible 00:32:09.8] both cash and accrual are acceptable ways of filing your taxes and doing books. That gap does recognize both, however, accrual for a product space business is going to be more accurate and more thorough and so what you're saying is that the cash basis actually undervalues the business when you record your books in cash basis. Joe: If the business is growing rapidly absolutely because they're taking almost every expendable dollar that they have and putting it back in inventory. So an example is you know you and I talk about this valuation a lot, I had a client that went to every other brokerage firm. They really needed to sell their business because they had a house under contract contingent upon sale of their business. It was for an income they lived in New Zealand they had an Amazon US Business. They had to sell the business [inaudible 00:32:58.7] tough situation to be and a foolish situation to be in. They went to…got different valuations and every broker is trying to push that multiple high to help them achieve their goals. Too high for that 18-month old business, [inaudible 00:33:13.4] we did the proper accounting flipped, we did it in accrual. I was able to push that multiples down and other brokers like 3 ½ it was never going to happen. We were able to push it down to about 2.7 yet the value of their business was a couple hundred thousand dollars higher. So we had a higher value and a lower multiple more attractive to the seller more attractive to buyer. We had a buyer that was really good at accounting, really good entrepreneur, fully understood it, bought it, went through to do diligence, really happy. Both buyer and seller happy. So there's just huge value. Mark: This is actually really good I guess pro tip for people buying as well. If you come across an opportunity that's now with Quiet Light because we are going to almost always be pushing our clients simply in order to accrual in pretty much every circumstance for an e-commerce business. But if you come across an opportunity as a buyer and you see cash based books for an e-commerce business, take a look at the trend of the business. If that business is growing as you point out Joe the net…then the cash basis accounting is going to undervalue the business. On the other hand, though if that business is shrinking and they are not adding new inventory, they are going to have inflated or apparently inflated margins because they've stopped by an inventory, they've stopped recording expenses and you could actually end up over paying for a business if it's on the decline. So that cash basis accounting just for a product based business it's unreliable because of the fact that it doesn't take into account when the expense of the item when it's sold and so you really have to pay attention to the other aspects of the business such as this trend. Joe: Absolutely and you know cash basis accounting is okay for SaaS business and things that don't have accounts receivable…things of that nature. But for a physical products business accrual is the way to go. Buyers will be aware if it's cash especially as Mark said if it's declining buyers get excited. And it's growing unlike crazy as cash basis you buy it hold it for a year or two and then you do accrual based accounting and your value is instantly higher. So in this example again to move things along we've added 60,000 in discretionary earnings if by example we were at a three time multiple that's 120,000 dollars…I'm sorry 180,000 dollars added to the value of the business by not selling a single widget more. Really [inaudible 00:35:34.3] so how do you calculate accrual? It's really complicated, to be honest with you and you've got to have a good history and records to do it. Again, start with a good goalkeeper but the formula is simple beginning inventory plus purchases minus ending inventory that equals your cost of goods sold. And this should all be landed and this is ideally on a monthly basis. Now you can do it, right? If you haven't done it yet you can't do it. So what you got to do is go back in history and figure out what your cost of goods sold are with different formulations and calculations and it's different for each client that I work with. Absolutely doable I get two listings in the last two months where we had to do that and couldn't do this. I'll be honest with you most of the times we can't get to this. It's ideal if we can but more often than not we have to go with another method which is take all of those purchases take all of the shipping cost average out the shipping cost times the number of units that your shipping…it's complicated and I can't tell you exactly how it is because every situation is different. But that's the formula. The end result again when you put to accrual is a higher value. Again going back quick review before we put too many people to sleep with this your most valuable asset is more than likely your business. You should know what the value is within a certain range 10% I hope and then the question is okay I know how to calculate seller's discretionary earnings, the final thing is what kind of multiple range do I put on it? And what I've got here up on the screen is for physical products businesses and I'll talk about content businesses and SaaS businesses and so on so forth as well. So a larger business is more valuable and in what ways Mark? Mark: Large businesses are more valuable. And at today's podcast episode that actually launched today was on that very topic is buying big better than buying small, I'll go back and [inaudible 00:37:27.9] that one fun episode. Larger businesses are more valuable because they are more stable. You have more resources available to hire out work or to reinvest in the business. So generally speaking businesses that have higher earnings and higher revenues end up getting a multiple boost just because they are more stable and have more room for or investing in and changing the format of the business. Joe: Right and the other thing is odds are we've been around a little bit longer too or they have multiple streams of revenue balanced less…essentially they are less risky therefore they're worth more. So in the examples, I've got up on the screen and we'll talk about [inaudible 00:38:10.6] for listeners. If you have seller's discretionary earnings on a physical products business of less than 700,000 you're going to be in the 2 and I'm going to do a broad range 2 ½ to 3 ½ multiple range. So if your business is 100,000 dollars in discretionary earnings, the value big range 250 to 350 plus the landed cost of good saleable inventory on hand at the time of closing. Again as Mark said at the beginning we take all of those other factors, how many streams of revenue do you have. do you have any patents, how do you launch new products, do you have a big social media following that proves that your margins are done without discounts or advertising. All of those things come into play and could push a multiple higher or push it lower even below this 2 ½ times in the even when we do that client interview we do the valuation process, let's say that you have a patent infringement issue and it's still something that's scary and hanging out there. That might push the value down a little bit. Or if you're trends are going down that's definitely going to push the value down a little bit. So again, less than 700 in discretionary earnings 2 ½ to 3 times plus the landed cost of good saleable inventory on hand at the time of closing. When you get that bigger more valuable business with discretionary earnings that are north of 700 and again these are great numbers by the way again nothing here is in black and white but the value is going to be higher. Because it's more established, less risk that somebody is going to pay more because their money safer. That value range is going to jump instead of 2 ½ to 3 ½ you're going to go from 3 ½ to 4 ½ sometimes possibly higher. Mark: And if anyone is listening to this a few years down the road and have dug back in the Quiet Light Podcast archives and are now listening up. Multiples do change over the years as well. So this is where the market is at today and always check with us to see where multiples are if you're listening to this at a different time. Joe: Got it. SAS businesses. SAS businesses is in the last 12 months good ones that are trending well that have a reasonable [inaudible 00:40:14.7] and have a good handle on the metrics, I'm going to talk about that in the next episode, you're in the four to five time range. Content sites again and much of the same dollar ranges here. Content sites probably 2 ½ to 3 ½ times unless you're much larger. I've got one with multiple offers that's between four and five times because of the size of it and because of the growth. It's discretionary earnings are well north of a million dollars. Affiliate sites, same thing. The real separator here is I think the SaaS business because it's generally B2B recruiting revenue and the value is a generally higher at least felt…buyers feel as though they're worth more. Buyers are usually right no matter what Mark and I and the seller thinks. Buyers [inaudible 00:41:03.1]. Mark: And we're going to be doing another episode of talking about multiples and how do you determine the multiple of your business because that's a pretty complex valuation as well. Where there's literally dozens of factors I know I wrote a guide…I think it's on the website right now called The Ultimate Guide to Website Value. I wrote it three years ago. I think maybe four people have read the whole thing because it's long. It was around 30,000 words of all the different things that can really impact the value of a website. I should probably go back and update that because I'm sure there's some things in there that needed to be updated now, a few years later. But there are a lot of things that can influence that multiple up or down. Joe: Let's leave the listeners with this Mark and it's something that we talked about a little bit. If you look at your own values and your own assets, anybody that's listening and you own a business, think about the different things that you own: your bank account, your retirement portfolio, your house, your car. Do you know what the values of those are plus or minus 10%? You probably do but do you know the value of your business plus or minus 10%? You probably don't. Hopefully, this podcast will help a great deal. But even with all the information we've shared you really can't figure it out until you do a proper add back schedule and do all those details. I've had calls, we've had lengthy calls with buyers, we've gone through it all and if I…yeah on my values about 850 and then we get to P and L it turns out their value is at 1.2, really important to get the details down. Get a handle on it even if you don't plan to sell the business either ever or six or 12 or 18 months down the road. Mark: Very good well if you made it to the end of the episode here congratulations and we really appreciate you while listening in. I'd be interested in hearing feedback what do you think about episodes like this where it's Joe and I or maybe we'd bring Jason on or Chuck on again and we delve deep into some of the things that we do on a day to day basis. Are these helpful for you? Do you like them? Did I put you to sleep? Do they…are they things that you would want us to do more of? Let me know send me an email mark@quietlightbrokerage.com if you absolutely hate it then email Joe at joe@quietlightbrokerage.com. So anything left to…anything more to say here? Joe: No, that's it. It's a lot of information it's a bit overwhelming and just digest it. We'll have a link to this presentation in the show notes so people can download it. You'll get a little summary video of it as well that we can share [inaudible 00:43:32.2] can go through their own process. And then one more thing I guess yes I do have something. I have a client recently that I've been talking to for 18 months and you know I said: “What's the one takeaway after all we've gone through?” And she said “More than anything else if I could convey and share something with people that are trying to understand the value of the business and might sell it is don't be afraid to talk to a broker, get a valuation, figure out those things that you need to fix so that 12, 18 months down the road, the business is more valuable and you're prepared.” That's the key thing. Mark: Absolutely we do have resources on the site, articles that break down how to do a seller's discretionary earnings calculation. We'll link to those in the podcast show notes. So if you want to get deeper and couldn't follow along everything in this episode there are some articles that you can refer to which will be easy to follow as well. so thanks for listening and we will be talking again in a week. Links: PDF Version – How to Calculate the Value of Your Business

The Quiet Light Podcast
24 Due Diligence Tools Reviewed

The Quiet Light Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 17, 2018 52:18


Today we are talking to Chuck Mullins all about due diligence. An internet business veteran who is now a part of the Quiet Light team, Chuck purchased his first internet business while still in college and was more successful at 18 than some of the most seasoned entrepreneurs. For both the buyer and the seller, the due diligence process is one of the most difficult parts of buying and selling an online business. Fortunately, there are a lot of tools that can be used to simplify the process. In this episode, Mark and Chuck look at over 20 different due diligence tools and explain how you can use them in our due diligence processes. Episode Highlights: Chuck guides us through a group of tools that can be fundamental to any well thought out due diligence plan. Any buyer knows that this is the most important thing you can do to make sure that no stone is left unturned when preparing to make that purchase and hit the ground running. Try using a due diligence consultant service. We don't advise leaving it all up to them but they can take some of the work out of your hands. Never just research the business but remember to also research who is selling the business. Google trends is very powerful. Google Trends lets you read the trends that any given business may have experienced. Be sure to be aware if your acquisition is “trendy” or “evergreen.” SEM tools can provide insight into the business potential and the size of any risks. Website crawling tools are used to determine customer and market trends. Social media tools are an additional way to gain insight into connections for that business and also the business owner's niche interactions in their niche. Lessons from Due Diligence: For first time buyers the best advice Chuck offers is that you don't know what you don't know. Due diligence gives you the answers. Know what a tool is good at, put it in your due diligence toolbox, and use it correctly. Surround yourself with the types of people who can help you. Be careful to use your lawyer for law and your accountant for money. Always remember that you as the buyer ultimately make the business decision. Don't be afraid to ask questions! Keep good records of what you have looked at. Work off a checklist and be meticulous about it. A seller is as interested in you in the success of their business. Transcription Mark: Hey Joe, how are you? Joe: Doing good Mark, how about yourself? Mark: I'm doing well, I'd talk to somebody that we both know well and that's one of our own Chuck Mullins. Joe: Mr. Chuck Mullins, good man he is. Mark: He is, yeah. He joins us on the interview on the video part push on the interview wearing his Quit Light shirt which he had embroidered. The only person at Quiet Light that has one. Although, He didn't tell me that he made one for you. And I haven't seen you in it yet. Joe: He did I almost put it on today. It's just, it's a little big so I [inaudible 0:01:16] it. I need to put on some layer, run it through a two cycles of the dryer. Mark: It would have been so appropriate because, you know, he's wearing his shirt in this interview and you've been wearing your shirt in, and he's getting, make one for me though of course. Joe: He should. You're the founder of Quiet Light Brokerage. Mark: Absolutely. Joe: You should have like a logo on the back of your office chair that says Quiet Light Brokerage, what's wrong with you? Mark: I thought about it but. Most of my office is really a mess. If you seeing this on video and we'll talk about this one a bit. My office is usually a mess. It's all about angles, right? My angles a little bit of center today because I don't want to show you the rest of my office. So, yeah. But this actual episode is going to be great for a video. If you're listening in your car, if you're listening on the podcast, you'll still get a lot of value out of it. But I'd recommend at some point checking out the Youtube channel. We are separating our channels, so we will have a new channel, just for the podcast episodes. And this episode will, going to kick that off. So make sure you'll go there and you subscribe. And the reason that is a good one to watch on the Youtube channel is because we're reviewing due diligence tools in this episode. We actually go over 27 different due diligence tools. We bring them up on the screen and you can see, we kind of browse around and fumbling around on somebody's sites. As we talk about how you can use this in your due diligence process. Any buyer out there who is looking to acquire a business in the next few years or so, you know due diligence is probably the most important part of that process for you making sure that you're checking under every rock and every hidden area to see is there anything wrong with this business that I need to be aware of. Well Chuck and I go over 27 tools that he has used personally in his past of buying businesses. So we bring real interest in episode from that stand point. He brings a lot of experience in buying and selling businesses for.. Do you know how long he has been doing it? I can't remember off hand. Joe: In 1997 I think. He was self-employed in college, making more in one month the most people make in a year when he was in college. Mark: Right right and then, He and I have been presenting at Pubcon for 7 years. We go over this video a little bit but we've been presenting for 7 years at Pubcon together and people always come to see Chuck and then hopefully I can pick up a couple of the scraps to come off the table when presents. So it's a great presentation on a how to go about buying online businesses. Joe: And just a point out of the obvious remaining, not so obvious. Technically we represent the sellers in what we do. Well we can't help them and help them while unless we also help as many buyers as possible. So it's, many people would think that what you're about to present with Chuck is in contrast to what we do. But we're always about full disclosure, always making sure that buyers are making good investments and so that both they and the sellers are happy to closing table and it's successful transaction down the road as well. Mark: Yeah, absolutely! Again, we going to do represent the sellers, but if our seller's getting sued, 3 or 4 months later that is a pretty bad job on our part. So it's important that both buyer and seller walk away from a deal, happy and when you know that deal. So that's the goal. We get a transaction wins. And part of that process is due diligence. I say, I hate like throw a due diligence. When I first started Quiet Light and I got like, you know, a monster due diligence, I would kind of [inaudible 0:04:31] and be like, Oh man, this is going to be a pain. Now when I see a well thought out due diligence, it's makes me happy because I know that, that buyer is going to be really happy and that deal is gone go through. Because where they're going to really inspect that business thoroughly. Joe: Yeah, well thought, that was important. Not just a massive list but a well thought, that was specific to the business that's being purchased. I've seen blank at due diligence less come through where somebody clearly copied and paste it. But I'm excited about this episode Chucks a really, really smart guy and successful entrepreneur and I think a lot of people would learn some good stuff here. Mark: That's good, very good. Let's get to it. Mark: Hey Chuck, how are you? Chuck: Doing great. How are you Mark? Mark: I'm good. Thanks for joining me on the call. I see you have your nice Quiet Light shirt on. You're the only one at Quiet Light that has that shirt. Chuck: That's because I took the initiative to have it made. Mark: Right. We'll get them for everybody else eventually. Chuck: Actually, I think I bought Joe one. But he didn't want it. Mark: Oh really, I got to start getting on him so he wears it from the Podcast. Chuck: Yeah Mark: Yeah, anyway for this Podcast, if you guys are listening to this in your car, this would be one of the once that I would recommend over going to Youtube and we've set up a new channel on Youtube just for the interviews. We're going to put all our interviews on that channel. I'd recommend looking at that because we're going to review a bunch of due diligence tools. A little bit of background between Chuck and myself. Chuck and I have been presenting at Pubcon. What? 7 years I think? Chuck: Yeah, I think so. Mark: Yeah, a very long time. Chuck invited me to speak within that Pubcon a while ago. We've been doing it ever since we've had all the people join us occasionally, to talk about buying and selling websites. But he and I have been talking about that night. Typically we talk on the sell side and Chuck was talking on the buy side. And the result was that more people are interested in what Chuck had to say than I was ever had to say. So I figured, it would be good to have you on here. Both, so I think we can get to know you a bit better. I'd also review some of the due diligence that you've use in the past in buying online businesses. So let's just do a quick introduction for you as far as your background. What's your background in buying and selling online businesses? Chuck: So, I started my first website back in 1996. Through the few years, made a bunch of money in college just a kind of doing really well. And made more money than you know, than I was living on. So I start looking at doing various investments. So, start looking at real estate, franchises, I was looking at car washes, and a storage facilities, and a Laundromats. And nothing ever, just kind of, really worked for me or really peaked my interest enough. You know like, I dabbled in real estate. But everything just kept kind drawing me back to the internet business. So then, you know, I made a few websites that were successful. But I started thinking about you know, what if I could acquire somebody's company and then just build upon that and stand on somebody else's shoulders, instead of trying to prove out a model myself. You know, use a model that has been proven by somebody else. And then just take all the knowledge I had, and expertise, and grow that. So I start doing really well, and at a certain point I just fell alive, you know presenting at a conference, and kind of just, giving back, and then that's when I reached out to you and I think my initial presentation I gave was with Jason, Quiet Light, we did it at affiliate summit. I don't even know, 8 or 9 years ago.   Mark: Yeah, I remember that. I was in the audience for that presentation and then, that was January. I remember specifically because it was really cold at that conference in Las Vegas. The fountains were frozen when we got out of the hotel. I was kind of surprised about that. So it's cool! So yeah, you've been doing this presentation for a long time and I know whenever we do the presentation, when we get to the slide on due diligence, whereas all the phones in the rooms go up to take pictures, because people are really interested to know what's our tools they can use to do due diligence. So we're going to review some of these tools here, as well as talk about some of the principles, buyers might want to apply when you're doing your due diligence. As always, we'll just throw out the blanket; cover your tails sort of a disclaimer here. Due diligence is ultimately a buyer's responsibility. Make sure that you're doing it, make sure that you are bringing in professionals. What we're going to do is were going to give some advices to things that we've seen work, but by all means, this is not complete when you're talking about due diligence. Wherein you need to apply a complete process to the business that you are looking at. So I'm going to share my screen here and open this up, and I'm just going to share the full screen, and hopefully on my [inaudible 0:08:56] of so that people don't get those. But can you see that chart does that come up for you? Chuck: Yeah. Mark: Alright. Good, good. So here we go, where going to just get started right away with this list of tools and I'll be browsing to the website as you talk about the individual ones. The first one that we're going to talk about is Centurica and they're full service due diligence firm. They are the only one of that sort that we have on this list. So why don't you talk a little bit about Centurica, what they do and why they made this list. Chuck: Sure, So Chris Yates is the owner of Centurica, they've been around for quite a while and Chris runs a buying and selling website conference called and Rhodium. Rhodium Weekend I think is kind of, the official name. I ran into Chris way back when I started to look at buying and selling businesses. he was the first person.. I'm always looking for knowledge where I look into learn more. So doing some searches and came across his conference and went to it. Kind of on a whim, because there was no information about the conference because that was the first one that they've had. So it was like, trying to figure out and I thought well, for the money, maybe I'll pick up something and if not, it's not a total lost because you know, I'm just come and go to Vegas to hang out. You know Chris is really a smart guy and I ended up I think I was probably the first one we, to get into his master mind group. So I'm going to master mind group with Chris and a bunch of other entrepreneurs and he does this great due diligence product were he just kind of takes it over from you. Will do like a full blown due diligence review on a business that you're going to acquire and I would never say that you should handle fully the [inaudible 0:10:33] somebody else do the due diligence. But you should allow, if you're going to hire somebody, do it in parallel with them. So that way you're just getting, you know, a second, third set of eyes on a due diligence and on the business that you're looking to acquire. So they offer various levels and, so it looks like they've got something from 59 dollars right there and all the way up to, I think a 5,000 dollar package. That's kind of like a suit to nuts version. Mark: Yeah and just look at the website; they have a whole team of people here that are associated with them. A lot of these people, you and I know, we know them through Rhodium Weekend and through that master mind group as well. These are some really smart guys, good guys, to be able to just get on the phone with and get their feedback. In fact, I'm seeing n a few guys here, Mike Nunez, he has been on a Podcast with us before and a super smart guy. Well, these guys are [inaudible 0:11:24] really good contact as well. These are people that you can arrange calls with and bounce my ideas of. The amount of money, 5,000 dollars, some people might [inaudible 0:11:35] sort of price tag, but what do you think? Do you think that's worth spending that much money on due diligence support? Chuck: Yeah I mean, with Quiet Light, we're generally not dealing with the lower end deals, right? We're generally dealing with mid to high six figures, mid to low seven figure deals, so you know, five grand and that's their highest package, right? They got stuff that's cheaper, but how could you go wrong, you know, spending.. If you're on a million dollar deal, what's five grand, is what? Half a percent? I think it's probably money well spent. Mark: Yeah, absolutely I agree. The only assets that you put an end, this is, that whenever you are hiring somebody on the outside to potentially look for problems, understand that, what they're going to do is they're going to find problems because that's what you're hiring them to do, and they should do that. So this is not a criticism or some trick or by any means or attorney that's looking up for liability issues. But as the buyer, understand that you need to take that information, process it, through a business decision that you're making. Any sort of due diligence tool? I knew the ones that we offer here, that's the way that you should be going about using that information, that fits into the larger scheme. Alright, let's move on, Centurica is a good service. If anyone wants an introduction pres, it's either Chuck or I can provide an introduction pres as well. The next two are related obviously, Google.com and Google Trends, everybody knows what Google is, I'm sure most know what Google Trends are. How would you use each of these sites in a due diligence process? Chuck: Sure! So with Google, right? I mean, it's just a matter of Googling things either about the business, about the person, if you're buying the business, Google the terms around the business, and look for red flags, right? Look for if they've got one star review, average one star review, maybe that tells you something about the business. You know, look for complaints, things that are negative about the business, right? It's kind of one of those, you'll catch all due diligence place where you just, kind of sorting through all of the information that you can find on a given business and/or a person. Never just research the business, always research the person who is selling the business as well because, you could find out a lot of stuff and make sure that you're avoiding, potentially avoid some of the pitfalls, if somebody has done some sketchy stuff in the past, and find that out. Mark: Yeah, absolutely. You can learn a lot about their background as well, and all you have to do is search for all of the places that I have written for, come up, but years ago, I was involved in a lawsuit in those couple of pages. And so, anyone that was doing research on me, I would often get those sort of questions, “What happened then?” everything was fine. I didn't mind the questions, but people that were being smart and doing due diligence would ask about that. Chuck: And don't just look at the first page of Google. Look at the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, right? Because anybody can hire a reputation management company that will push some of those negative reviews, you know, to the 2nd or 3rd page. But they'll be there generally, still, just maybe a little lower. Mark: Right, Now if anyone wonders and are looking at the screen, I did not play hockey. Even though I'm from Minnesota I'm not a hockey player. There's a couple of them, that's out there that have gotten their name out there. Google trends, what search term I put in there? Chuck: Yeah so type in Paleo Recipe, or Paleo Diet I mean, because Paleo is a little different. So, if you look at the screen. Mark: You changed the date range? Chuck: Yes I changed the date range. That's, in January, you see that giant spike. Because that's when everybody is getting into a diet mode. Check that out even further. Mark: So we're looking right now. Let's set 2004 to present. So we'll do the entire history in Google Trends. There we go. Chuck: Sure, so you know, if you're looking to buying a business, and you're seeing.. Well use Google Trends to figure out what the trends are. Here you'll see is like a giant up peak that just kind of went up, and then all of a sudden it just kind of, trail off, and you're going to find things like this. Then you'll also notice that there is like ups and downs, like inter year, so that would be like the seasonally of the business, right? So just because you see, like this one giant peak, which correlates with January, and then you know, throughout the rest of the year it drops until December where December is at it's low, around Christmas time then it spikes immediately back up. So you're going to look for not only seasonality but you can look for long term trends. And when you're looking at businesses, think about whether the business is a trendy business first, it's an evergreen business. So, diet in general is a trendy business. If you look almost any diet, you'll see that there's a, it goes up, up , up, up and all of a sudden it tails off, right? There's something made it go up, usually it got unpopular, and then it'll trend off. I personally, one of the businesses that I bought was a Paleo website, and I managed to buy it exactly at the peak market, and then.. Mark: Right about there right? Right around January of 2013, early 2013. Chuck: Yup, definitely it's like, it was going up, up, and up, I'm like, great! Then it went down, down, down, and it was less great. So, luckily, we were able to so a little bit of magic and kind of keep the revenue going by trying to grow the business but it's another story. Mark: Something else that you can do with this, so as many people know, I own CatholicSingles, and the turn chart out for CatholicSingles doesn't look that great, when you look at it. Something I've learned from this chart from a few other places is, if you think that you're buying a website that gets lots of natural search traffic, be careful to make sure that it's not branded search traffic. So what's happening here is, the previous owner was losing out to a competitor who was beating him in a brand search, and so, the site still gets lots of natural search traffic to a keyword that still has a lot of relevance. But he lost a lot of brand relevance as well. So you can, if it's a large enough property you can often pick up on brands trends and what are not, you're going to have to compete on that [inaudible 0:17:34] as well. You can type in competing services and see what their trend is overtime as well. And you can actually compare the two together. So you can see how competition is playing along with. Maybe what you're looking at acquiring. Chuck: And then if you scroll down, you can do it by region as well. So what are the countries that has something popular. So maybe it was a US based company, and you see “Hey look! It's doing well in Canada and South America” or I guess none of that case was in South America, but Australia, and I think it was Mexico maybe. So maybe you expand into some of those other countries. Mark: Right, right. Exactly. Yeah Google Trends has some good date out there, I recommend again putting in your, whatever, competitors you know of, and comparing the traffic and the trends for the competitors and get the sense for, how those are working together. Chuck: And one additional point would be, Google trends is the search volume of a specific keyword, so it's not some magic formula, it's how many people are searching for something. So sometimes, people search, the way they search for things changes overtime, so you just want to, kind of remember that. That just because, you know. People might have been searching for, I don't know, Blue Widgets but now they're calling it, instead of Blue Widgets, they're calling it Blue Fuzzies, right? So it doesn't always mean that the actual market is declining at it. Sometimes it can just be a change in the way people are searching. Mark: Yeah, I think an example, that would be internet marketing has pushed toward in digital marketing. And so you see, the phrase you use to refer to something, is slightly different overtime. So, that's a good point. Now let's move off this chart because it's sort of depressing. State business websites, this is one that I haven't really seeing people a whole lot of, but it's a really good idea to use state business websites. Chuck: Yeah, I mean it's just the basic of going to whatever state the company is in, doing a search for the business, finding out who the owners are, and if there's any kind of red flags that maybe appear on that, just some basic due diligence there. Mark: Yeah, that one's not coming up here, but when you do the search, what will happen is, you'll see the records with the state, whether or not if filed in good standing, any other possible red flags that would come up. It's really just checking their box, making sure that everything is on the up and up with that business search. Maybe we can get back to this, if that comes up again. BuiltWith is a really cool tool and it shows all the technologies that a website was built with, right? Chuck: Yeap! Absolutey! So if you want to look at, like the technologies that go.. Is your internet out? Mark: No, I just typed it in wrong. Chuck: I guess your internet wouldn't be out, considering we're.. Mark: Right, right. So we could take a look to see what Quiet Light Brokerage is built on. And you can see that we have Googled conversion tracking, you can you see the whole technology stack and all the services that are used. When this might be useful as if you're looking at the P&L and you don't see a subscriptions but you would see here Drip. And you know that Drip is a subscription based service maybe that's not their P&L. That would be something to catch and maybe ask them about to find out what's going on there. Maybe they just start using [inaudible 0:20:47]the website. Chuck: Absolutely! And you know, one of the things you want to do as part of getting ready to acquire a site is make sure that you have the people and place to take over any kind of service that you need in advance. Right, so, if you have no idea how to use Drip and you're taking it in purchase in your company, maybe you need to has somebody in place who does know how to use it or request a standard operating procedure so that you can learn how to use it. So I would definitely have a list of like all of the kind of aspects of the business that you're not proficient at. And make sure that you have people in place that can help you with that [inaudible 0:21:26] running when you do take over the business. Mark: You know something that, speaking of Drips, I talked to Rob who sold Drip to Leadpages a few years ago, and he talked to me about how Leadpages was completely ready and able to switch over to a new website surely after they closed. They were making plans and building out technology as they were going through due diligence so that they can hit the ground, running right away. Something that might you want to do as you're going through a website's technology stack is take a look at what services are you using. If you are going to the Quiet Light website you'll notice that we have Hotjar, for example. Now I haven't tracked anything with Hotjar on the website in a while. We use it for surveys once in a while, but this would be a service for, maybe those report that you want to ask for during due diligence. Maybe some heat mapping that would just be useful information for you to be able to see and as you're making plans. Or OptinMonster, asked, have you run these campaigns before? What was the conversion rate like on these campaigns? And you can start getting really prepared as you're doing your due diligence to make that transition. Of course some sellers may not be eager to share some of that information with you, so go about that with some level of sensitivity understanding that they might be ready to open up all the books to you, but knowing what's there can help you request different reports. And Chuck you said something before in one of your presentations, probably multiple presentations and that was ask questions. Ask lots and lots of questions. Chuck: Yup, absolutely. I always say ask, ask, ask, and even ask questions you know the answers to. I feel like that's like some kind of weird tactic that people do. But they ask questions regardless of whether you know the answer because you almost want to get a seller to lie to you, because then you know how trust worthy they are right? If somebody's going to lie to you about something, it's a red flag. So, I've seen a lot of people that will ask the same questions in multiple ways. You don't want to be annoying right? Like, don't ask stupid questions but definitely ask. I shouldn't say, you don't want to ask stupid question because almost no question's stupid right? But we all understand there are all stupid questions that you shouldn't ask, that's just, are irrelevant. But don't feel like, if it's relevant to you then it's not a stupid question. So, ask everything. Because the time to ask is before you buy it. Right? You don't want to have a bunch of questions after you've inked the check. So, ask early and then ask often. Mark: Then the other thing too is you can get more callers on a particular answer. I know when I talk to some sellers and ask them why are you selling? They'll give me an answer one day and had talked to them another day and they give me s slightly different answer. And it's not that they're lying. The reasons are complex. There's more than one reason going on there and you gain caller, you gain more information about what's really going on behind the sale. By asking the same question, and looking at, in different formats, I know when you started to do video interviews or recording interviews of some of our clients and part of the reason for that is because people talk about questions differently then they might write them out. So this could ask a lot of those questions. Chuck: Yeah, absolutely! Archive.org. Mark: This is a great one. So if you're doing some due dilligence there's a whole industry people who just buy expired domains, stir a new content on it and then run with the site. Some of the amazing firm like [inaudible 0:24:38]some of them are buying like big sites, or what used to be a big site and for whatever reason, site's no longer so, this will give you an idea like in 2008. What was the site look like? Was it a brokerage site or not back then, you know. It's not always a bad thing but if it was something spamy back then, It might still have some problems moving forward. So it's also good just to see if you had some ideas of you wanted to try this or try that. And getting an idea for some of the things they've tried in their past or looking at previous screenshots of what the site was like one, two, three, four years ago? Mark: Yeah, I think one of the big challenges that you always have as a buyer and.. Sellers as well have this issue, right. Sellers know their business intimately because they've lived with it for so many years. As a buyer, you're coming in and trying to compress knowledge that they've gain over the course of sometimes 20 years now. And to a decision that you have to make within or week or two. Going back in the scene, what the history of the site was, just kind of, again it adds color, it adds more information into what does this person done in the past for the business. Like you said maybe we can see some things that they tried and you can ask them about that, if you're looking at the Quiet Light site, yeah, you might see that we sold some domains in the past. And if there's someone looking to buy us they could ask a question on that, you know, why don't you sell domains anymore? And we could go into that whole discussion. Chuck: Something else to look for is to look for gaps in the years so you know, you can put something on your website, right? And your like, your a [inaudible 0:26:14]telling a way back machine not to cross your site anymore. So if there's like a three year gap, why is that gap? Most legitimate sites aren't blocking the way back machine. From calling their site, so you know, that might raise a red flag and might be something you want to dive in on a little deeper. Mark: Awesome, alright let's move on at Trademarkia.com. Chuck: Yeah, you know it's a, if you're, if they told you to have a trade mark, search for it, figure it out. If they have told you they don't have a trade mark, search for it. See if somebody else has a trade mark right? Make sure that they're not infringing on somebody else's.. What's the word I'm looking for.. Somebody else's IP. You don't want to buy a business if they're infringing on other people's stuff. Mark: Yeah, and this can also be a very useful in search results if you're advertising on Google and you have competitors that are stepping all over that brand search. If you get that trade mark and you have the ability to get a trade mark you can keep all of those guys off, and brand is usually a very cheap way. But if you have competitors branding against it, that's [inaudible 0:27:16] your IP, so, searching for that trade mark is a useful thing to do. Alright, moving to the next set of tools and these tools here seem to be more of, search competitive intelligence and taking look at a site's search profile and I should just say probably maybe SEM. All [inaudible 0:27:33] right? Because this still include adwords as well? Chuck: Yeap, yeap! So organic and paid, my likes spy for a lot. It's a.. You can look at people's history of what kind of ad campaigns they did. As so, if somebody says “Oh we've only ever run one ads set and haven't done much testing” and then you look back at, and shows you. Well actually they ran a hundred different variations of this ad. Cross, you know 5 years and blah blah. So you will able to see a.. Verify some of the information they said. You can also check and it will show you, like literally shows you, what paid ads they ran. And like detects in them. So if you think, “Oh I wonder if they try this”, so you're going to look back and see what sorts of ads they've run. It's kind of interesting, you can also use this right here, like you see their competitor. So that'll show you overlap, so if you know some of, some competitors, you'll be able to see like what keywords they have overlapping using this venn diagrams. It's some really cool stuff and then you can look for opportunity, for words that they're going after, that your knots. They also have they a tool in here somewhere that will allow you to look at specific keywords over time and then it puts it over a timeline and has the Google updates. So you can see like, ok they had this key word was, you know, rank number 1111, and then drops off to like number 7, and [inaudible 0:28:57] Google get an update right when this happen so you can potentially know why they dropped off, it's because, well, Google did this update. So seeing what people are using like a private blog now, where to get a bunch of links and it's like doing really, really well then everything drops off a cliff. Because of Google did an update and it affect it, or, the reverse is true where they went from having nothing to all off a sudden number 1 rankings, just like overnight. And you can see, okay, well nobody just all send this from zero to number 1 ranking for 20 different keyword terms so then you know, Well, they must have done something to have that spike and then you can dive into what they're using like, blog that works for paid links or whatever. Mark: Yeah, any sort of quick changes in these results are going to be something to watch out for. So that's over all a good tool. And a lot of these tools out here, Moz, Open Site Explorer, Semrush, Magestic, AAtraps, I personaly like AAtraps. These are all really good tools, using in combination. It's going to give you a sense for how the data all adds up. Understand that when you're looking at data, in any of these tools, they have to use third parties to estimate what this is, for example, they're estimating for Quiet Light Brokerage, where estimated adwords budget is 3,000 bucks. Actually not too far off from that, but it's not accurate. Just understand that these are useful for trends, these are useful for getting another point of data, nothing's going to replace first hand tracking, it should be Google and Linux, or whatever tool people are using to analyze something. But you can use all these external tools in combination as well to try complete picture of what a website's doing and how it's ranking. Chuck: It's a bit [inaudible 0:30:45] That was I think only Google adwords, so if not taking your account, pay traffic, whether it's Facebook or other things. Right? Mark: Yep, yep! Absolutely that's right! Let's move on to a.. You like Spy for the best from all of these? Chuck: They are all kind of different. So there's like different reasons to use different ones, right? Some are for keyword research, some have like keyword difficulty tools, so part of due diligence isn't just looking at what the site has done, but where you can go with it. So I like to use a couple of them to do keyword research. See where their gaps are, you know, opportunity for me to grow the business. They're all kind of hit, different things to different things well. So I don't have one favorite. I do like SpyFu, I like Moz in the past, [inaudible 0:31:31], Majestic. And then on that list, we kind of didn't point it which I'm guessing maybe you thought I put in a wrong spot, but the alexa.com won. I haven't actually used this yet, but it's apparently a new tool that they rolled out. It's a competitor to all these other ones, Moz and Majestic. So they're doing a paid tool just like all these other guys. So, I haven't really dove into it yet, but it'll be interesting to maybe see how their data looks. Mark: Yeah, I actually just saw this the other day. And was intrigued by it. I haven't dug into this at all. But you would imagine that Alexa's by Amazon. You would imagine that they have some pretty good access to tools to be able estimate this information, with some level of accuracy. Chuck: And you know they've been around, since when, like early 2000 or earlier. So they've been crawling off these sites. So who knows what kind of information they've stored. I see [inaudible 0:32:34] has really good info going pretty far back. Mark: yeah, I know you're right on that. I think actually Alexa may have been the first competitive intelligence tool. That try to rank websites. Maybe there was somebody else before that. But they were the first one's who really gain attraction. Or that for a long time, everybody I knew had their Alexa bar. Up in their browser and you can see what, aside Alexa ranking was along with its paid rank. Right every marketer back in early 2010 and those two things, up in their tool bars. Chuck: It's fine, so I went to the site yet the other day, just checking it out and looking for their little site ranking. I could find it anywhere, so I'm not sure if they still have it or not. Mark: Yeah, I don't know. I try to look that up recently as well and I wasn't able to find it. I was behind actually this pay wall which is how I came across [inaudible 0:33:24] they are now offering this. Chuck: Yeah, yeah. It didn't, for a long time, like, right Google paid rank and the Alexa ranking have been dead like nobody uses those as a real stat anymore . But I just wanted to check it out. Mark: Yeah, yeah I know it's always interesting stuff. Alright let's move on to page 2 here. We're going to get into 3 tools here. [inaudible 0:33:46], deepcrawl.com and Copyscape. What do these tools do? Chuck: Yeah, The first two are pretty similar to each other. And what they do is you can plug in a domain name that it will crawl the entire site and it will look for all kinds of things. Like errors or not errors. Right, so it can show you just by crawling to the site. It will crawl every single link on the site from every single page. So it shows you like if there's dead links so if there are stuff that's going for like 404 pages, no errors, 500 errors, it will show you the redirects. So what I've used it for in the past is the one finding those dead pages or the 404 errors and then also finding the redirects and sometimes you'll see like stuff gets layered, where it will be redirected to this page, which layer's was then redirected to this page, which layer's then redirected to this page. And ultimately, what should you be doing is just going back and linking from the first page to the last page. And not using all of these bounces because with each bounce you have the a, potentially you're losing some of that authority has being passed through. Mark: Yeah, and there are the futuristic will do an on-site SEO analysis for even, one that I've used in the past that all definitely throw a, [inaudible 0:35:01] to be Orange Fox, Jacob Hagberg, has done some reports from Quiet Light Brokerage. and a lot of these tools do is, what these services work, will do, they just to analyze in a condensed manner. Because they look for opportunities and they also look for potential issue. Like you're saying, if there's tons of redirects in there, that's a problem, you are losing out an authority on those pages. 10 pages , 404, broken images. Images without all tags, accessibility issues. These are all things that you want to be looking for. Not necessarily as like major red flags but you know, a buyer beware, but also as opportunities that if you start to fix and clean these things up, there's going to be a natural lift in rankings on its long tale keywords that maybe you're on page 10 to 20 right now for, maybe that will bump you up to the first 10 results . So wait for you to just grow some opportunity. When you're looking at these 3 tools Chuck.. Chuck: The first two are very similar, right? Screaming Frog, is one that you have on your own computer, and then it use your internet connection to then crawl the site. DeepCrawl, they are running it from their servers, the Screaming Frog is relatively cheap. I forget the amount but it's hundred to 200 bucks a year. The DeepCrawl one is fairly pricey so, I would always recommend this Screaming Frog but the other one is a good service as well. Just cost a bit more. It's a 150 pounds a year. Mark: Right. They do have a free version? I've used the free version to be honest it's worth just upgrading to a paid version. Free version will give you just a flavor of what they can do. But if you really want to dig deep and really figure things out. Yeah, again, here's a 500 URL limit, most websites are going to blow through that 500 URLs because you have all their images, you have everything else connected with an individual page, so you'll go through that 500 pretty quickly. Copyscape is a bit different from these two though. Chuck: Yeah, it's different. I threw it, kind of witness just because it's one of those things, where again, you're looking for problems, so you type in your domain and It'll give you list of you know, places that content made and stolen from. So kind of, similar, but different. Mark: Right. This can be useful to see if you have people that are maybe trying' just scrape your pages entirely or if the page you're looking at for some reason is built on a shakey ground. This was something that was used a lot more probably, I don't know, 5, just 7 years ago. I know Copyscape has a really big issue on a really big useful tool for duplicate content issues. A lot of that is going away now. But I would imagine you would find copies of content that somebody's publishing their blog contents, say, on Medium or LinkedIn. I imagine this would probably pick up on that. Chuck: Yeah. I believe so. And you know when we talk about the duplicate content issue, where talking about like, right for organic search but there's also the duplicate content issue where, “Hey everything on this website was stolen from somewhere else and you're going to get sued because you stole our base content.”, Right so, I would be checking to make sure that people aren't stealing other people's content. You know, so I think that's a good part of due diligence. Mark: Yeah, absolutely! Alright Public WWW. This is a tool I have not heard of. Chuck: Yeah, that's a great tool. It kind of isn't a vain, of like, a Google right? But what's cool about it is instead of like.. If I want to search for something on Google. Google looks at what is this plate on the page meaning. If I search for Chuck it's looking for.. If somebody would look at a web page and see the word Chuck on it, then it might come up, right? But with this website, it's actually looking at the source code. So if somebody had a comment that was Chuck, it would potentially come up there. So, anywhere from the word Chuck, right? It's more for if you want to look a analytics code, or if you want to find somebody's affiliate ID. So if somebody's says, “Hey, I'm just running AdSense on this site, and I don't have it anywhere else.”, So we could took.. Put in the AdSense number, and it will show you all the sites that are using that same AdSense ID on their website, right? So you can look for, maybe they're doing some competing stuff, maybe they just, you know, they're driving more income through the AdSense, but having a multiple sites vs the one. And it's not complete, right? There's, it's only as much as they crawl so they're only going to have as much data of the websites they crawl. But you can definitely find some stuff. You can also use a little tip here, would be.. Let's say you have an affiliate product your promoting, right? And you're making some money off of that, and say, you found a new product you want to promote and it makes 10 times the amount of money for each one you sell and you know that like, “Oh! This product, if I switch it to this one, I'm going to make 10X.” Or you could look for everybody who is promoting this old product, and then you're going to try to acquire those sites, and switch them to the new affiliate product and 10X the revenue. A lot of different things you can do with that. Mark: I've heard some of people ask about that, specifically with affiliate sites. You know, “How do I know that this is all coming from the site that I'm buying.”, and so that would be one tool that you could use. The other thing I could see this being useful for is if you have a tool for it. This would be a pretty rare case, but if you're buying a business as a tool, that's using on outside websites. WordPress plugins site, WordPress themes site, or any other tool like that, you could start to get some ideas as for the installation volume. Using the tool like this. Alright, SpyOnWeb.com. Chuck: So similar right it's a looking for people's AdSense IDs and things like that. It's not as complete, with the other one you could search for a lot more different types of things. But still a useful tool. Mark: Right, it gives you some machine information as for our tools also sharing this IP address, DNS server. So again, not [inaudible 0:40:53] information here, but just acquiring [inaudible 0:40:56] this. We have our [inaudible 0:40:58]. So If you want to find out what the [inaudible 0:41:02] rank is, just go to SpyOnWeb and you could also see the page rank which is saying Quiet Light Brokerage just a like a question mark for page ranks. So that would be an information. That would have scared me about a 6 or 7 years ago. Alright, DomainIQ. Chuck: Yup, so DomainIQ and the other two that were listed. This are for finding out information about a domain name. So when was it registered, how many times has the DNS changed, has the ownership changed recently, what other domains are on the same server, or same IP block or same IP address, so if you know, if you're buying something from somebody, and they say it's the only site they have and then you look start looking up and down the IP range or looking on the server or the same IP and you see there's other domain names that are the same thing and are not disclosing it you, you know, that's potentially going to be an issue. You can look up who is the owner, so if it's like similar registration name or similar email address used to register the domain, it will show you all of the domains they own. That are using that registration information. These are all for the most part paid services. So if you want to get, like the good data, you got to pay for it. But they do give you a basic level of information for free. Mark: Right. I don't think anybody has to use all these tools. You pick 1 or 2 out of each of these categories that you want to use. The only one that I would recommend maybe use in multiples one would be in this search intelligence the SpyFu, Moz, and SEMrush. I think it might be worthwhile having upwards of three maybe four depending on how lights would turns out those services. Because like you said they all do slightly different things. Chuck: It's a matter of like what they've indexed right? So they each have their own crawlers, and none of them are going to crawl exactly the same subset of the internet. So, it's just, you're going to find different things while using different ones. Mark: Right, and they all have different levels of accuracy you could see here DomainIQ is [inaudible 0:43:04] to be higher than the last one. And also, few other bits of information that I would say are incorrect but again you use these points of data… Chuck: That was 5,000 dollars? The appraisal value? Mark: That was [inaudible 0:43:17] it's less than 500 dollars. And we have more than 24 backlinks, but again, all these tools are to be used in combination with each other to put together a large picture. Obviously a tool like Google Analytics or [inaudible 0:43:31] you'll going to want to use that first. And then, these tools are been used to fill in the gaps. Chuck: And also like know what a tool is good at, so like last one, you're not going to use that tool for the appraised value right? Like, that's nonsense. But if you scroll up, scroll up a little bit. If you click on, click on the ownership record in the blue, the blue button is there. Let's see if we'll.. Mark: We got gears turning here.. There we go Chuck: Okay so just search who the owner is, when is the last time you updated, when it expires, the age of it, right. So you've owned it for just about almost 11 years, you're using Cloudflare, here's the “who is” info…. Mark: It's kind of a bad corporation name, I got to update that. Chuck: Well there you go. And go back one more time on it, I'll click on one more thing… Mark: All these tools take too long to load up. Let's move on, because this one's getting a little bit longer. Let's get it on to a Bannedcheck.com. Chuck: Yeah, so this one is a, and it's not 100% right. But you can type in AdSense account and I'll tell you if the AdSense account has been banned. Again, not 100%, but if it's says it's banned, that's probably a good indication. I'm sorry not the AdSense account number but the actual domain name. Right so, if somebody says, “Oh! I switched monetization methods, because I didn't like AdSense and I was making a bunch more money with this.” Well, maybe that's not the case, maybe it's that they got banned. So, this is a good one. They can tell you whether they've been, not a 100% right. But if it's says that they've been band, then they've probably have been, right? Mark: Good news with this, I'm making money with Quiet Light Brokerage because it came back and it says that it's not banned for Google AdSense. Chuck: I wonder how that helps with our value of the 500 dollars. Mark: Hopefully, this is a little bit, so all you buyers that are looking to buy a business, we're going to require that you click on an Adsense ad. Because I think that's completely [inaudible 0:45:16] with our terms of service. Mark: socialmention.com. Chuck: Yeah, so just you know, you type in various things here and it will just tell you where it's being mention as far as social goes. So just a good tool for doing some basic due diligence. Mark: Yeah, let's repeat, useful to do, using combination with a Google trends to be able to see. Google Trends is measuring the data on Google itself. Looking at how the different social media networks are also processing the data. It's going to have a different look than just what Google has. On that note, I would say BuzzSumo, which is not on your list. It's another tool that I would recommend adding and it's a page where they do the free option but you can take a look to see what content has done really well on a particular domain name. As well as what content in that specific niche also does well. So you can really got a sense for how popular [inaudible 0:46:15] and what's getting shared and what's not. Well for then Google but also within the social media. It seems fantastic. Chuck: This one definitely should've been on my list then I'm not sure why it wasn't but I actually like this one a lot better. Mark: Will add this to the list. For people who want to download it. Last one it would be just going direct to the source of Facebook LinkedIn, Twitter, etc., etc. Almost every websites these days has presence on all the social media networks, visit their pages I assume that's kind of a lesson there. Chuck: Yeah and again, with like a LinkedIn, right? Looking at the person's profile looking how many connections they have. Are they in a niche where they should have 500 LinkedIn connections and they've only got 3, Maybe that tells you something, right? Why are they connected with all of these hackers or whatever, right? It's just a matter of again, researching the people and not just the business. So I think it's a good tool for researching people. Mark: Awesome, right. So that's a lot of tools that we just went over. Let's talk just a some couple of lessons, and we're running pretty long on this Podcast. So, we'll talk just a couple lessons about due diligence. I'm going to turn off the screen sharing here and talk about couple lessons about due diligence. What would you say for somebody who's going about due diligence the first time? What couple of lessons would you, or principles, should they really use in their due diligence efforts. Chuck: So I think one of the biggest things, is first in for most you don't know what you don't know. right, so having people to help advice you on what to search for and what to look for can be critical. So don't just think you know everything! Because none of us know everything especially when it comes to different tricks and tactics people can employ to inflate the numbers in what they're doing. What else, do you have any idea you would suggest? Mark: I would, and so on that note, obviously bringing people like an attorney, bringing an accountant, as I said before that be careful when you do so because they are being brought in with their specific purpose in mind, that are being brought in to look for liabilities, for being brought in to look for problems, and you are the business owner trying to make a business decision. Your accountant that's trying to make an account decision. Your lawyers try to make in legal decision. And so, you have to take their advice and put it into a broader framework business . It's a good business choice for you. You use their bits of data as [inaudible 0:48:41]data. And create a whole picture with that. The other thing that you said, where you cover this one's ask, ask, ask. Don't be afraid to ask for questions and then the third thing that I would recommend is keep good records of what you have looked at. And I'm working through the due diligence for the client, if a buyer comes back and ask for the same documents that they may have already received earlier on. Extremely annoying for a seller who doesn't understand why they even needed it in the first place. And a lot of sellers get skeptical buyers. They think this person isn't really serious about it. they're just looking fishing for information and if you end up passing the same documents 3 or 4 times, even twice. It start to grow those seeds of doubt and to bigger than just seeds and it cause a lot of problems really later on. So be organized in your due diligence just as you want your seller to be organized. Even your documentation. So that you'd know what you have and work off a check list, where be the last thing that I would ask. But don't be afraid to add to that check list as you go through. Chuck: Sure and something else I would add, kind of similar, not a little different, is with the seller. They're interested in knowing that you're going to do well with their business and whether they realize it or not, the questions you ask them are important to them. Almost always. So if you're not asking good questions, they're going to think that you're not serious or that you're not going to do well with the business and we often see that buyers, or sellers won't always sell to the person who offers the most money often times they're selling to the person they think who's going to do best with their business or somebody that they like. I see it time and time again. Recently I had a nice 7 figure deal, I was working with and every time I get off a call, you know, I do a wrap up call with the seller, “Okay, what do you think? and he went like, “Well that person didn't ask any good questions like, I don't want to sell my business to them.”, So make sure that you're doing some due diligence upfront, you're looking into these things and you have good questions that you're asking that are relevant to the business. Mark: Yeah, absolutely! Do not research ahead of time, not wasting your seller's time on the conference call is important. A lot of good sellers, when they go to sell a business, within that first week, they're going to do half of dozen to a dozen conference calls and it's exhausting to do. So if they get into a call and somebody asks, ask them question that was covered right up front. There's a good place to ask questions that have never been answered, and there's obviously you haven't done your homework, sort of questions. So do have basic homework ahead of time so that people know about, that you've put in that upfront research. One thing I'll add at that fellows, is if there's something that you're not familiar with, ask them about it and don't be afraid about that. And at the end of the day, as a buyer you want to protect your money, but make sure you're not making a bad investment so, don't be afraid to ask those questions. If you ever have questions about, “Can I discuss this or what do you think?” Use the broker. We're here to advice with the buyer and the seller through that process, we want to see a good deal done for our client. Chuck: Absolutely! Mark: Alright, this has been really long, but I think, good information so, Chuck thanks so much for coming on and maybe down the road, we'll do another one of these. Chuck: Sounds good. I appreciate it! Mark: Cool, thanks! Chuck: Alright, thanks everybody! Links and Resources: Centurica offers a full blown due diligence services. Google Google Trends Builtwith Archive Trademarkia.com SEM tools: Spyfu moz majestic alexa semrush Website crawling tools: screamingfrog deepcrawl orangefox copyscape Publicwww is a source code search engine Spyonweb for looking for peoples adsense tools. DomainIQ provide information for domain pages Bannedcheck.com Social media: Linkedin Buzzsumo fantastic sm network tool.

The Nonprofit Exchange: Leadership Tools & Strategies
Making The Most of 2018 for Nonprofits

The Nonprofit Exchange: Leadership Tools & Strategies

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 14, 2018 59:40


  Mark S A Smith is the author of 13 popular books and sales guides and has authored more than 400 magazine articles. He is a genuine Guerrilla Marketing guru, co-authoring three books with Jay Conrad Levinson, and is a certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach.   A renaissance man with many talents, Mark is passionate about leadership, team building, teamwork, sales, and marketing. For over twenty years Mark has served as a strategic advisor to corporate leaders and executives all over the world who must develop the best way to bring in the right strategies for successful growth and sustainability.   What makes him different is he brings a holistic view of the business instead of solely focusing on one aspect and ignoring the impact of decisions on the rest of the organization   How to Get the Most Out of 2018 Tapping into the top five trends to grow your nonprofit: Omnichannel – allow members to consume you anywhere and every way How the growing economy creates monetary opportunities The impact of higher unemployment on your volunteer force and how to pivot to get all you need New leadership demands: what's changing and how to stay out front Turning unrest into peace: how to divorce your organization from the media's promotion of outrage Interview Transcript   Hugh Ballou: Greetings, it's Hugh Ballou and Russell Dennis on this version of The Nonprofit Exchange. A dear friend who I see too rarely, we have been talking virtually but now we are together. I said, Why don't we talk about some things that are on your radar?” Mark S. A. Smith, welcome to The Nonprofit Exchange. Mark S. A. Smith: Such a delight to be here. Thank you, Hugh. Hello, Russell. Hello, friends on Facebook. Welcome. We have a lot of interesting things to talk about because 2018 is going to be an astounding year. You might be listening to this in 2020 or 2024. But you know something? What we are talking about today will probably still be issues even in the next five to ten years. Or opportunities, as the case may be. Hugh: We record messages that are timeless. But you're right. We are turning the page into 2018 as we are recording this. If you are a regular listener, you know you can go to thenonprofitexchange.org and see the video versions of these. But you can go to iTunes and download the audio there. Mark, you are in a series of really powerful interviews we have done over three years. We are starting our fourth year of these great interviews. What we endeavor to do more often than not is find people that have business expertise. Let's install that particular business expertise into the charity. It might be a church, a synagogue, a membership organization, or a community foundation, but it's some sort of philanthropic work that we're doing. Before we get into the subject matter, which I'm going to hold off in giving people a title, tell people a little bit about Mark Smith and why you are able to talk about this topic today. Mark: I help people sell complex, expensive, high-consideration things as fast as humanly possible. I am an electrical engineer; therefore, I am a systems thinker. I have recovered. I don't sell or do engineering very much, but I do help people sell complex things. That is where you have multiple people involved in making the decision. Each person has a different view of what creates value and what we need to do. Sounds an awful lot like this nation, doesn't it? Hugh: Yeah. Mark: How do you round up consensus? How do you have people go the same way? Just like when you're working with nonprofits, herding cats is what we have to do. It's the same thing when you have to sell expensive technology. What I'm doing here is applying all the things I have learned about selling very expensive things to the world of nonprofits. It's absolutely identical. I, too, do work with a nonprofit. I am on a board here in Las Vegas where I live. I've been involved in nonprofits throughout my life. I understand, and I am delighted to share with you my business acumen. What I like to tell people is a nonprofit is not a business plan; it's a tax status. Hugh: That's not a philosophy, no. You're very active on social media, especially Twitter. You put out little short memes with a few words on it. I gotta tell you, they are very thought-provoking. They help me focus on what's important. Mark: I am honored that that happens. Thank you. Hugh: There has been this coincidence of you tweeting on the things we are actually talking about. Sometimes simultaneously. I find that to be fascinating. Mark: The issues are the same. Whether it's nonprofits or the for-profit world, the issues we face are frankly identical. Hugh: I laugh when business leaders say, “That might work in the church.” Mark: Or the other side is that the religious leaders say, “That might work in business, but it won't work in the church.” Hugh: If it's true anywhere, it's true everywhere. Mark: We're humans working with humans. Hugh: I think we've stalled long enough in telling people what the topic is. What is the topic? Russell wants to know. Mark: All right, Russell. You're ready? Today's topic is how to get the most out of this year, which happens to be 2018. We are going to talk about five trends that are going on that you need to know about as the leader of your nonprofit to stay ahead of the game, to grow, and to prosper heading forward. Some of the things we are going to talk about are technology, and some of the things we are going to talk about are psychology. Hugh: Say that last sentence again. That caught me off guard. Mark: Don't you know I do that to you? And you do the same to me when you're speaking. Some of the things we are going to talk about are technology, understanding the technology that nonprofits have to be embracing and keeping track of and staying up with. Some of it happens to be psychology, what is happening in the general zeitgeist of the world and how they impact nonprofits. Whether you think they do or not, they do. Your constituents, your members, your flock all are impacted by what they see in the news and what they experience with retail and what happens in the business world. They carry those attitudes and insights into your organization, whether you want them to or not. We have to manage that. We have to deal with it. We have to capitalize whenever possible or perhaps even neutralize it in some cases. That is what I mean by psychology. Hugh: Absolutely. I think we're guilty in any discipline. I know in the church, I have had people say to somebody, “You're so heavily minded you're no earthly good.” We all live in the reality of today. I can say that I served the church for 40 years and probably got to that space myself. I put in very carefully numbered bullet points. I noticed that I numbered them wrong. Our first one is, Omnichannel. Speak about that. Tell us what that means. Mark: Listener, have you ever had the situation where you were multi-tasking, perhaps watching television and checking your telephone for messages or tweets, or maybe even reading the news story you are watching on TV simultaneously to see what if you were seeing on TV made sense to other news channels? That's omnichannels, my friend. The reality is we are multi-screening. You are getting information from multiple locations at all times in all ways. What this means to nonprofits is you have to be able to bring your message, bring your service to your constituents in every way that they consume information. Just by a show of hands, who here has for your organization—I see ten fingers there, well, eight fingers and two thumbs. Sometimes I am just all thumbs. Do you have an app? Do you have the opportunity of having your constituents consume your services, your podcasts, your sermons via a dedicated app that would alert them when something new becomes available? Are you using the technology to your benefit? Now if you're doing that, fantastic. Just stay with it. You have to understand we live in an omnichannel world. We are consuming many things in many different ways. Mobile apps, partner locations, maybe figuring out other locations for people to access your services. Where do your constituents go that you can have a kiosk or a corner or something like that where people can plug in, enjoy, take advantage of, be reminded of, contribute to, consume whatever it is you are bringing to the marketplace? Since I don't know what your nonprofit is, we are spraying and hoping you will catch a couple of ideas here. The concept here is you need to be everywhere that your people are every time you possibly can be. The reality is if you are a church, people are carrying around a sermon in a box in their mobile device. Chunk things up into five-minute pieces to give them a chance to remind, refresh, and renew. If you are supplying educational elements, keep pushing out opportunities for people to learn and to refresh. If you're supplying the opportunity for people to volunteer, if they are standing in line or waiting at a traffic light and they can pull out their mobile device and contribute something in some sort of thought-provoking way, let them do so. That is what we mean by omnichannel. Take advantage of that any way you possibly can. Hugh: You said something about five-minute segments. Remind, refresh, and renew. Talk more about that. Mark: What I am finding is short segments of content that provoke people. Just like when you read something from me on Twitter, you're telling me that I am inspiring you, I am provoking some thoughts, I am causing you to think about new things, maybe connect some new dots. The bulk of those tweets are 140 characters. There are some that run a little bit longer thanks to Twitter's new length limits, but it's a very short little boom. It's a little thought bomb that goes off in your brain. As a nonprofit, most of us are in business to inspire, to have people live a better life, to improve their condition, to stay on target, to stay on task, to stay on the straight and narrow. That requires constant reminders. Another thing to keep in mind is if you are a church or an organization where people come to see you once a week or once a month, it's not enough. They are bombarded by all these other messages and all these other counter-messages that they may not wish to consume. Our job is to remind them there is another way of thinking. There is another opportunity. There is better potential for them that they have already volunteered to be a part of. If we can chunk our messages from a text standpoint, an audio standpoint, or a short video standpoint to refresh, renew, and remind themselves there is a reason why those of us who have a spiritual practice, it's a daily practice if not hourly. Hugh: Yes. Oh yes. That is so important. I think the biggest flaw I see in organizations is when people say, “They should know better because we told them that,” but they told them that in 1903, and you have repeated it since then. Mark: Here's the problem, friends. You may have told them that, but the other side has told them their viewpoint a thousand times since the last time you said it. Hugh: Omnichannel. When I first saw that, I thought it was a piece of software. Mark: It's a concept. Hugh: Russell is taking good notes. Do you want to weigh in on this omnichannel touchpoint? Mark, what you're doing is top of mind marketing, isn't it? Mark: Yes. Let's just keep reminding them what they have asked us to remind them of. Hugh: Russell? He's been very polite. Mark: He's been quiet. He's been smiling. He is giving me thumbs up. He is also muted. Russell Dennis: Not anymore. We can quickly fix that. Greetings and salutations, Mark. Good to see you again. It's been a while. I was just typing that when you're out there in multiple places, where your people are, and that's the important thing to figure out is where your people are and getting out there and getting in front of them. We are in a short attention span society. If you're not out there online, you're left behind. It's not a fad. It's not a trend. It's here to stay. Hugh: I think it's also in person. Where do your people hang out? I am hearing omnichannel as virtual as well as live. Mark: Absolutely. Physical, too. It has to do with digital signage for example. Digital signage is omnichannel. Most of us have digital signage in our houses of worship. As I pointed out, as we talked about, where are they? Let's see if we can put a digital sign in the places our people hang out to remind them of the messages they have agreed to consume. Hugh: Great. We are sitting at the top of 2018. Our market has been growing. There are over 100 companies that announced employee dividends and financial expansion of programs since the tax bill passed at the end of 2017. There are all kinds of energy and economy. Talk about how that benefits the nonprofit sector. Mark: We are sitting at the highest consumer satisfaction index of all time. I think it's for a number of reasons. One is that a lot of people are feeling good about themselves again. A lot of them have hope for the future. A lot of them feel that in spite of the noise we hear on the mainstream news on a regular basis, locally, the communities are doing well. More people have jobs. More people are feeling good about what's possible. Certainly my business has been substantially increased. As you pointed out, yours has, too. A big part of it is that my customers are looking forward to growth and therefore investing in opportunities to grow. As a nonprofit, you can plug into this feeling of goodness and growth, asking for more than you could ask for in the past. Requesting more. Asking people to donate more for perhaps more time, for perhaps a higher level of investment of themselves into the organization. When people are feeling good, they say yes to opportunities because it doesn't feel like it's so heavy. Doesn't feel like it's such a burden. When we feel depressed, it's very hard for people to feel good about themselves. Hugh: What makes people say yes? I still have lots of- Mark: What a great question! I'm so glad you asked it. What makes people say yes is because your request is in alignment with their personal identity. Hugh: Whoa. Whoa. Hey, Russ. What does that trigger with you? Russell: It's everything. Everything revolves around relationships now. People are starting to figure that out. It doesn't matter what business you're in. Now you have to build relationships. In the old days, you could just blurt out at people. There were very few places for them to get a message. They were fed by three big networks messages. Think about Henry Ford when he talked about the Model T. They can have any car they want as long as it's black. Now people have choices. They have different avenues for expression, and they have short attention spans, so you have to resonate with people because they will look for another cause if they feel like they're not being romanced, so to say. You have to keep that connection some type of way, keep thanking them, showing the impact they are making, and staying with it. People change. There are so many different causes that they can get involved with now. It's like anything else to maintain that brand loyalty as it were. You have to connect with your tribe. People want a sense of connection and a sense of accomplishment. Younger people coming into the work force want to do work that matters. Hugh: Mark, I pinged Russell because many times in the interviews, he helps us remember that whether you are creating board members or talking to donors, we have to think about what it is they want, what they are interested in, what they want to achieve. There is a messaging piece that I was honing in on here. How do we form our message so that we do connect with that like-minded person? Mark: Let's get back to the concept of personal identity. People buy things to support their identity or they buy things or engage in things to help them transform their identity into a new place that they desire to be. It's a really important concept because all sales, all marketing, all recruiting, all conversion happens when a person sees their identity as that which you are offering as a nonprofit. That transformation for a lot of people is where we're heading. As people grow, they transform. As young people go from high school to college, they are transforming. As they go from college into the workforce, they are transforming. That personal identity, how you view yourself and how you want to be viewed by—Russell, you said it right on—tribe, we choose our tribe, and the choices that we make determine our tribe. In a model I generated, those tribe decisions are mission-critical. The reason why is because if you make the wrong choices, the people who you might like may just stop calling you back. They may quit inviting you out. They might leave you on your own. That is where that personal identity comes into play. Identity happens way more than people realize. A great example of that is sports. Russell, do you consider yourself a sports fan? Russell: I love it. Mark: Do you have a team? Russell: Believe it or not, I root for the Cleveland Browns. Mark: Why the hell would an intelligent man like you root for such a losing team when a logical person would pick a winning team to root for? Russell: I grew up there. Mark: That's it. Yes! Russell: I haven't lived there in almost 40 years, but home is home. Mark: It's part of your core identity. It is so deeply ingrained in your core identity that I couldn't get you to wear a piece of the opposing team's clothing even if I paid you. That's the power of identity. When you as a nonprofit can tap into that identity, that is where you really get that brand experience where people refuse to go anywhere else. But you have to keep reinforcing that identity. You have to make sure that the identity you're offering continues to shift in the proper direction over time. In a growing economy, people have the opportunity of transforming that identity. That is really where we're going with this #2 point. It gives you a chance to perhaps recruit people, to bring people in that you haven't been able to before because they couldn't afford it, they didn't have the bandwidth or the money. Now they do. Get very clear. A definitive passionate, audience that wants to be recognized or grow their identity can help you as an organization grow. Get really clear. Get really sharp about this. It will have a massive impact for you in 2018. Cool? Hugh: Absolutely. You talked about unemployment. The numbers show the unemployment figures at the end of 2017 were the lowest they've been in forever. But there are still people who are underemployed. They are not unemployed. Mark: In fact, those underemployed people are the ones who are perfect for volunteers. The reason why is as humans, we like to feel we are making a difference. Russell, you pointed that out in your last comments. We really want to feel we are doing good, like we are making a difference. When we are underemployed, we don't have that feeling that we are living up to our potential. People in that environment can be invited to fulfill that in a nonprofit volunteer situation. Whether it's an executive who has moved to a lower position, who needs to give back and still provide that strategic input, that is the perfect person to capture for example. Or perhaps the stay at home mom who went back to work because her kids are out of the house, and as she enters back in, she doesn't go back in at the top level where she started. She comes in at a lower level, and she needs to fill that gap of feeling good about herself until she can be promoted up to that new level. That is the opportunity that you as a nonprofit can fill. Hugh: You spoke earlier about working with a local nonprofit in Las Vegas where you live. Why did you say yes to that? Mark: For two reasons. One is that I have an expertise that the association can use. I can benefit the association in quite a few different ways because of my deep history in business and as a professional. And that association also allows me, it feeds me in that I get to be with other people whose future is my history. And so I get a chance to give back because if I rewind my life back 30 years, I was the person who is being served by the mentor who I get to be today. Hugh: So your input is important to shaping the future of their work. Mark: And they have a desire to have a similar experience that I had. When we are looking for a mentor—this is probably one of the best pieces of advice I've had in my life—look for somebody whose history is your future. They can help you plot the path. While your paths will be slightly different, the fundamentals won't be that far off. Hugh: Russell, did you capture that last comment? Russell: I did not. I was in the process of typing that. I don't type very quickly. This is interesting because what we are talking about, there are three things that a nonprofit needs: time, talent, and treasure. We get obsessed with the money and forget about time and talent. Especially with people who are underemployed, people have different motivations for joining you. When you are clear about what it is you are trying to do and you have inventoried all of your assets, which include time, talent, skills, knowledge, abilities, those are all assets to the nonprofit. When you can leverage that and get other people, it's like money in the bank because you go out, build relationships, get sponsors for media, cash sponsors, you go out and get people to contribute pro bono services, you bring students in, you bring professional firms. There is a number of different ways to approach getting pro bono talent. When you are clear on who you are and what you need, you can offer these folks some time. Maybe they need to build their portfolio. Maybe they are tried and just want to give back. Maybe they are entering the workforce. Maybe they are underemployed and want to have some projects and creations of their own. You can set that table. When you are clear on what it is that people want, then they will come support you and always keep evaluating, putting challenges out there for them to stretch and grow and invest in their learning. They have reasons to stick with you in that case. Mark: Right on. I think if you get the time and talent right, the treasure follows automatically. The reason why is what is money? It is a reward for doing what others want. It's canned labor. That's another way of looking at it. Russell: Canned labor, but meaningful labor. It's not standing at a copy machine all day or making coffee. It's actually creating things. Building your social media strategy, writing policies, it's endless the number of things you can find volunteers to do that they can help support the organization with. Yes, even fundraising. The sky's the limit. It's up to your own creativity and finding out what moves people. If you don't have any money, you probably have time and talent. Mark: They probably know people. There is also ways of converting some of that talent and some of that time into treasure. If you think about it, that's what a business does. It converts time and talent into treasure. As a nonprofit, you can do exactly the same thing. Your tax status permits that to happen. Hugh: Money is also reward for providing value. Russell: Another way to keep score. Mark: That's universally agreed upon. Hugh: Back to where we were talking at the beginning of this interview about installing sound business principles into the charity. I am using charity purposefully here. Sometimes we use the word “nonprofit,” which spins us into this scarcity thinking that we can't generate a profit. But the profit is what pays for the philanthropic work of the organization. Like you said, it's not a business plan. It's not a philosophy. It's a tax classification. It's really tax exempt work. We are getting a lot of useful content today about leveraging what is around us instead of getting stuck in our hole, our silo. You ready to move to the next one? Mark: Let's do it. I think we have beaten that topic up a little bit. I like it. Hugh: #3 is New Leadership Demands. What is changing, and how do we stay out front? I remember years ago people were hiring the motivational speaker. Give me rah, rah. Then people left the room, and it was over. People aren't hiring motivational speakers. They are hiring people with solid, executable content. What has changed in the leadership segment? What are you thinking about? Mark: What I see is the informational speaker and the inspirational speaker versus motivational speaker. Let's talk about that, and then we will go on to the topic of what's changing with leadership. The difference between a motivational speaker and an inspirational speaker is very simple. If we go back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which I see as a fundamental to everything we do, both within the charitable sector as well as the business sector, those two lower levels of Maslow's hierarchy is physical needs and then security. Within those two levels, you can motivate people. It's basically a pain-based motivation. Once we get to that next level, where you have love and self-esteem and move up to self-actualization, that is where inspiration comes into play. If people are in pain, you have to motivate them. If people are out of pain, then you can inspire them. Don't try to be inspirational when people are hungry and tired and scared. That doesn't work. It's just frustrating. They will nod their heads and do what they need to do to get the hell out of your view so they can go get some food or drink or get warm or whatever. We have to help people to the third level of Maslow because we can start to inspire them. With that in mind, from a leadership standpoint, understanding your leadership is 100% contextual on the state of the person and ultimately the team you are working with. That is not a blinding flash of the obvious to most of you, but we have to be reminded of that because a lot of the traditional leadership mantras that we hear are being offered from the top of Maslow's hierarchy. But a lot of the people we are leading are way down the hierarchy, and we have to remember that sometimes it's just giving them a shoulder to cry on and taking them out to lunch or buying them a cup of coffee. Sometimes that's all the leadership they need in that moment. Hugh: Wow. That's a paradigm shift. What are you thinking there, Russ? You're smiling. Russell: The thought came to mind that great leaders always have a pulse on where their people are because no two people are in the same place. Cookie cutter leadership doesn't work. It may have worked back at the turn of the 20th century. Mark: It didn't work then either, Russell. I hate to tell you, pal. It was just misreported. Russell: They pushed it as, “Get in line or go work somewhere else.” That doesn't work. Good leaders build other leaders around them because that is what makes a great leader look good. We have people who can execute or delegate, and she is doing high level functions. Sometimes you have high performance individuals, and it is really hard- When they have been driving the train for a long time, it's really difficult for them to take a step back because they have their vision and it's their baby. They have a hard time taking a step back. This is a way that leaders have to grow in. If people in the work force today aren't getting work that means something. They move on. Do yourself a favor and let other people help you. Mark: I think some of the things we have to take a look at from a change standpoint is that our millennial culture, I raised five millennial children. None of them live at home. I consider myself to be a success. They don't put up with ultimatums. They'll just raise their middle finger and wave you goodbye. The reality is that leadership is now voluntary. It was always voluntary, but it is now absolutely voluntary. People accept leadership voluntarily, and a charitable organization has always been voluntary. We have to become a whole lot more about what it is you are looking for. How can I help you grow? Where do you want to go? What do you need to help you get there? Can we help you get there? It's a lot more of the let's figure out where our tribe needs to go and bring that to them. I think that's a big component of that. We raised our children to question authority. The boomer generation just shakes their head at, “I am a boomer.” Friends, I raise that generation. I raised them to be what I wanted to be when I was their age, which was to have the freedom to ask questions and to push back and to say, “That's really stupid. Why do you make that?” When I was a kid, that earned a slap across the face, so I learned to shut up very quickly. I let my kids ask those questions. They were hard questions. They made me a better man. That also means that military-style, authoritarian leadership will no longer work. It has to be collaborative leadership. But how do we do collaborative leadership? It's simple. You just ask people. You ultimately, as the leader of your organization, get to make the decision. But you also have to have that collaboration of how we arrive at the destination. You are responsible for the destination. Then we collaborate on how we get there. That is what I see as being a major shift. Hugh: That is especially true in nonprofits because we do attract some capable people. We think we have to do it as a leader because we don't want to bother them because they are volunteers and are busy in their real life. Mark: But wait a minute. That's why they showed up. Hugh: You got it. I set that one up good. You are really interfering with what somebody has come to do. That seems like a logical step. That is a huge problem. Bowen leadership systems, Murray Bowen as a psychiatrist created this whole leadership methodology. He talks about that as overfunctioning, and the reciprocity to overfunctioning is underfunctioning. Especially when you have a boomer, me, and you are talking to millennials, like the editor of our magazine, Todd, he says, “Tell me where you want to be, and let me get there.” Nobody likes being told the steps or micromanaged. Millennials like it the least of any particular segment. You raised five millennials, and I don't see any wounds on your body. Mark: I'm a much better man. Before I raised my five millennial kids, I was a jerk. Hugh: Really? Mark: Yeah. I knew everything. I knew exactly how to do it, and I could prove it. If you didn't believe me, I'd write a book about it. Hugh: Wow. Russell: I just sense that pleasure. Here's the thing, Mark. They'll be back. They will bring more with them. Mark: It gets better and better and more disruptive and more delicious. Hugh: There is a story of this conductor, who are known to have healthy egos. This conductor walks into a restaurant with a whole bunch of musicians. One person stood up on one side and said, “All conductors are jerks.” Whoa, it got back like this. On the other side, somebody stood up and said, “I resent that comment.” The conductor looked at him and said, “Hey, are you a conductor, too?” He says, “No, I'm a jerk.” I love it. That is a reframed lawyer joke. Mark: The way I like to talk about conductors is conductors are highly skilled. They can play every instrument in the orchestra. They can. But not well enough to make a living. At the end of the show- Russell: [hard to hear] tickets on the train, either. Hugh: The model you are talking about is the conductor doesn't tell them step by step what they do. The conductor says to the oboe player, the violinist, whatever, “This is the effect I want. This is the result I want.” They guide the process. I wanted to segue into that as a model for what you're talking about. That has been a consistent model over the decades. If we look at that in today's world, leadership as a profound influence and not the micro that you are talking about, do this, do this, do this. It's a nuance of engaging people and empowering people to raise the bar. That is the essence of transformational leadership really: building a culture of high performers that respond to you. So we are looking at what has changed, but also we are looking at- Earlier, you talked about transformation. There is a transformation in ourselves before we can be effective. How does that link with what you're talking about? Mark: Everybody that I know is going through some form of transformation. They are trying to add a new skill. They are trying to let go of an old habit they see as not serving their life any further. They may be going through a spiritual revolution where they are going from less spiritual to more spiritual. It may be that they are looking for a physical transformation, losing weight, adding muscle, adding health. Those transformations always trigger help because if we could do it on our own, we already would have. We need either skills or encouragement or motivation or a tribe to travel with. Let's talk about transformation for just a minute. Let's have some fun with this. I know that we bumped into this idea with me before, Hugh, and let's talk about it. I think we have enough time. It's fairly simple. There is fundamentally a seven-step process in transformation, plus a step zero and a step minus one. Hugh: Ooh, do tell. Mark: The first half is about belief. The second half is about knowledge. The difference between belief and knowledge is a manifestation in the physical world. Step minus one is where they want to go. The transformation they want to enjoy is invisible. They can't even see it. It's not even within their awareness. It's not even possible. They hadn't even thought of it. If you as a charitable organization want to find new people, part of your job is to message the outcome that you deliver so that we can take people who don't even see that as an opportunity into something that is within their awareness. Then step zero, going from invisible to impossible. That is the step zero. “Oh, that's impossible. I could never do that. I don't see how that's possible.” That's step zero. The transformation starts when they go from the impossible to, “Hmm, that could be possible. You have 1,000 people in this community that has made this transformation? Wow. You've helped that many people? It is possible.” Then the next step is to probable. “I could probably do this. I don't have all the answers. I may not know my path yet, but this is probable. I could do this.” Then the third step moves to inevitable. “This is going to happen. Oh yeah. Let's make this happen. Yeah.” Hugh: Minus one is where- Mark: Minus one is invisible. Don't even know it is possible. Hugh: Invisible, okay. Mark: Step zero is impossible. Hugh: Okay. One is possible. Mark: Possible. Hugh: Two is probable. Mark: Two is probable. Hugh: And three is? Mark: Inevitable. Hugh: Inevitable. Mark: This is going to happen! I know how to do this. Whoo-hoo. Help me! Hugh: Russell is scribing these. He is capturing the brilliance. Mark: That is all based on increasing belief because the transformation has not yet become physical. It is still nonphysical. It is thought and that is about it. Now we cross over from the nonphysical to the physical, from the belief to the real. Step four is real. We go from inevitable to real. From real to sustainable. I did it! Okay, let's do it again. I can do this any time I want. That is sustainable. Then we go from sustainable, step five, to step six, which is normal. “I do this all the time. Sure, of course. This is just part of my life.” To step seven, which is historical. “I have always done it this way.” If we are working people through a transformational process—invisible, impossible, possible, probable, inevitable, real, sustainable, normal, historical—if we can run people through that process, we can help them through their transformation. But here is the most important aspect. You can't take somebody from impossible to inevitable in one step. That is the psychology of leadership. We have to help them move from impossible to probable. We have to help them move from probable to inevitable. We have to help them move from inevitable to real. Each one of those is a step, as we are crossing this chasm, let's call it a river, from impossible to historical, going from one side to the other. Every step is a slippery rock that as they reach out with their foot, it may feel like, “I don't know if I can do this.” Our job as leaders is to hold their finger, hold their hand. When I was raising my kids, we would do- Kids were going across the rocks, and I would give them a finger. All they had to do was hang onto my finger. That was enough to give them the confidence to take the step. My kids would grab that finger, and we could move them. You did this, right? Russell, you've done this with your kids? Just give them a little bit. We don't need to hold them in an airman's grip. We just have to give them a finger to hang onto. Russell: If you don't want to carry them, you just give them that finger. It's just enough. Less is more. Mark: That's right. Russell: More, and they step into that power. That's what it's about. Whatever the mind can conceive and make itself believe, it can achieve. That is a process. Mark: You just summarized those seven plus two steps in three words. Hugh: Thank you, Mr. Hill. Mark: Yes indeed. Hugh: That is a profound statement. I was really small, walking with my father, and I would hold a finger. One day, he put a stick there. I kept going because I thought I had his hand. All I had was a stick. When I grew up, I repeated that dirty trick with my kids. Russell: Interesting. That brings a story to mind. I don't know how old I was. I may have been two or three. My mother used to carry me upstairs at night. One night, my mother and sister brought me upstairs, stood me in front of the crib, and said, “Okay. Climb in.” I was baffled. I didn't do anything. So they said, “Okay, well, you will climb in or you will stand there all night.” I don't know how long I stood there. It turns out they were there watching. It wasn't very long. I climbed up in that crib. Oh, okay, I got to do this or it's not going to happen. I never forgot that. I don't remember much that happened before five. As five gets further away, it's harder to remember. But that was something I never forgot. A lot of life is like that. Hugh: That's a great story. That's a big leadership example. The last one of your five topics for the year is Turning Unrest into Peace: How to Divorce Your Organization from the Media's Promotion of Outrage. What ever are you talking about? Mark: I'll be delighted to share with you. With the broad spread availability of Internet and mobile devices, the media got out of the news business. The reason why is the news was available any time I chose to pick up my mobile device and read the news from dozens of news sources. The fundamental TV news made a wholesale pivot from news to opinion and entertainment. You watch any of the mainstream news, and they are not delivering news. They are delivering opinion, not even fact. Opinion. It's the mot hilarious thing. I watch the news now and laugh. I just see it like reality TV. It is completely scripted. Whatever side they are trying to spin, that is what it is. What is truth? I have no idea anymore. The challenge is to get people to watch opinion, you have to generate outreach. You have to go to them and say, “Isn't this awful? Isn't this unfair? This is just horrible. I can't see how we can even stand doing this anymore.” That outrage allows you to sit through the commercials for pharmaceutical products that help you fix the outrage. You laugh because it's true. Russell: Okay. I'm going to give up on MSNBC and Fox Noise because- Mark: It is noise. I can watch Hannity once a week. It's the same story every night. Here's the thing. First of all, you have to realize that the news business is really to do one thing. It's not to inform you. It's to sell advertising. Pure and simple. Their job is to create a community that wants to be outraged a specific way and to promote that outrage so people feel like something is going on. They feel like something is important, but the reality my friends, in the world of charitable organizations, we are offering another way of thinking, another way of feeling. We are offering perhaps a better feeling. I feel way better after going to church than I do after watching the evening news. That circles back to our #1 point today, which is omnichannel. We have to keep providing our message on a regular basis daily, hourly, morning, evening to counter all of the outrage that people are being fed from a commercial stream. Go ahead. Carry on. What do you have in mind there, Hugh? Hugh: Wow. Wow. Where people are getting into an emotional state, not a factual thinking leadership functioning state. We are going into this- Mark: Facts don't matter anymore when it comes to mainstream news. Hugh: We are in a post-truth culture. Mark: We are. It's really interesting. Hugh: When we hear comments like “The media lies,” I watched purposefully for several weeks reports on CNN, CBN, PBS, and FOX. They were all different. Mark: Yes. Hugh: Which one is lying? Or are they all lying? Mark: None of them are lying. They are presenting their vision of what they want you to believe. Facts have nothing to do with anything. They believe It's true. They look you square in the eye through the camera and make you believe they believe it. And they do. Otherwise they couldn't deliver that. Let's circle back to the facts that matter to us and to constituents of our organization. That is what we need to focus on. Hugh: We have eight minutes. We are wrapping up here. That is a perfect segue, thank you. Go ahead. Mark: The whole point is we need to make sure our message and our leadership and our direction and our transformation is absolutely clear. We have to supply at last some rational thinking. When people say, “Did you hear what the news was?” and the answer is, “Do you believe it?” Let's focus on something you can believe. So help pivot people away from buying into something that we keep illustrating over and over again is patently not in alignment with the belief and the worldview that we wish. We have to substitute the worldview that our tribe wishes to see. Personally, I see humanity as growing, expanding, being bigger-hearted than ever before. The people in my environment, the people I bump into, including the folks on the street that ask me for help, are doing better than ever before. My job is to elevate, not to outrage. I think that there are way more people that have that desire than ever before, and perhaps that is why Cartoon Network has a higher rating than CNN. It's because we want to feel good. We don't want to feel bad. As a charitable organization, bringing that good news to people and giving them things they can do to feel better about themselves and to improve humanity and their tribe is probably the ultimate thing we can bring to our constituents. Russell: To piggyback on what you are saying, out of my own experience, I was an advertising salesman for WGAM TV while I was in college. Our most expensive segment was the news slots. That supports that, and that has been the case for quite some time now. That was a few years ago. The other thing is people are looking to raise their level of consciousness. The media likes to exacerbate this idea of taking sides. One thing that happened to me as a result of my experience working with the Native American tribe is I became nonpartisan here. The people who were going to help you may be on other sides of the aisle. I was literally more interested in what was going to benefit my tribe than what fit their politics. What we are talking about really is raising our level of consciousness. Me, for the most part, I am tuned out on those things. I can't watch that stuff. If I do happen to catch glimpses of it, nobody lives out in the middle of nowhere. There are a few people off the grid, but you will be exposed to some of the noise. Does that noise matter? We are trying to raise our level of consciousness, and there are people who need our help. When that is the driving thing, you learn how to play nice with others, but you don't always have to agree on everything, except who is it you want to help and how can you get there. You leave all of the ego and crap on the doorstep and come together to perform missions. I'm glad you haven't said anything that made me so angry I have to go put a nasty tweet out. I have a Twitter account, and I don't want to use it. Mark: Personally, I have a positive posting policy. If I can't say something nice, I write them a letter and burn it. Russell: As long as you don't mail it. That could get you in a lot of trouble. Mark: If you are writing a letter to somebody or emailing, don't ever put their address in there as you write it. Otherwise you might by accident send it. Guilty as charged. Russell: It's good to write letters every once in a while. Us old guys write letters. You can write letters. Younger folks out there, it's a dying art. It's fun. Mark: It's great fun. I wrote myself a letter on New Year's Eve. It's part of our ritual: to write ourselves letters. Just to wrap up this segment, an important component is what is your core principle as a leader? Focus on activities that will provide you and your tribe with those core principles. My core principle is freedom. Everything I do needs to lead me to freedom. Freedom of thought, freedom of action, freedom of life. From that freedom, I can serve people. I can't serve people when I am not free, from a thought standpoint, a physical standpoint, a monetary standpoint. I use that personally as my filter. If I am going to do something, say something, act in some way, the question is: Does this bring me closer to more freedom, or does this take freedom away from me? It could be anything else. It could be oneness. It could be joy. It could be love. It doesn't really matter. All of them boil down to the same situation anyway. Just that word resonates with me. I think ultimately that is what we need to do to bring peace to our tribe. Hugh: Our strategy is Russell and I encourage people to be very clear on their vision while they are doing something. As charities, we have to be very good at defining the impact of our work. What difference will it make? We achieve all of that through setting powerful goals. You have given us a whole lot of ideas for goals. Russell mentioned him before, and he is looking behind you there. Behind you is Henry Ford. Mark: Actually that is Edison. Carry on. Hugh: They lived next door to each other down in Fort Myers. Mark: They did. Hugh: Edison said he never failed; he just found 9,999 things that didn't work before he invented the light bulb. Ford said obstacles are what you see when you take your mind off your goals. They are both dedicated to excellence. They were both in tune with the culture and trends of their day. Mark Smith, I don't know a lot of people with two middle initials. Mark S. A. Smith. You stand out from all those other Mark Smiths. Mark: That is the reason why. That way you can find me on Google. Hugh: They are impostors. Mark: No, they are not impostors. They are just hiding. Hugh: This is really rich in content. Russell, do you have a closing comment you want to leave here? Russell: There we are. I'd like to thank Mark for the thoughts he dropped. You are preaching to the choir. It's about who you are. That's a message that has to ring true. Who are you? Who are you, and that way you can connect with the people that you are aligned with. I love the alignment. Great comments. Notes in the SynerVision Leadership webinar notebook. I have the notes, Hugh. It will also be out there for folks to look at. It's a great day here. Hugh: Super. Mark, thank you for being here and sharing your wisdom with us. Mark: Delightful to be here. Thank you for the invitation to do so. We have plenty more in 2018. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The ALPS In Brief Podcast
Episode 4: Opening a Law Firm? Think About Protecting Your Future.

The ALPS In Brief Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 14, 2017 9:35


Mark talks with seasoned ALPS Business Development Representative, Julie Patterson, about new lawyers hanging their own shingle and the associated challenges. This includes looking at legal malpractice insurance as an investment in protecting all of the work you do from the day you open your doors. Julie and Mark discuss the dangers in going bare and how step rating works. ALPS In Brief, The ALPS Risk Management Podcast, is hosted by ALPS Risk Manager, Mark Bassingthwaighte.   Transcript: MARK: Welcome to another episode of ALPS In Brief, the ALPS Risk Management Podcast. We're recording here at ALPS's home office in the historic Florence Building in downtown Missoula, Montana. I'm Mark Bassingthwaighte, the ALPS Risk Manager, and I have the pleasure of sitting down today with a long-time colleague, Julie Patterson, who has been with ALPS for over 20 years now. Julie, before we get started, can you just give us a brief introduction, background to yourself for our listeners? JULIE: Absolutely, Mark, I'd be happy to. I've been here at ALPS for 20 years, really have enjoyed my time here. It's a great company to work for. I'm originally from California, but moved to Montana to have a different lifestyle in 1990, and have stayed and never left, and am not going to leave, so … MARK: Yeah, that happens to a lot of us, huh? JULIE: It does, yes. MARK: Well, thank you for sitting down with me today. What I wanted to really talk about is looking at the new lawyer situation, and going back many years ago … I'll use me as, perhaps, the example we might talk about a little bit, but … I was one of those guys that when I came out of law school, I hung up a shingle, and boy, can that get a little frightening and crazy. You know, you sit down, you try to get some kind of business plan in place, you look at trying to get some advertising, get your computers, get the office set up, all these kinds of things, and the last thing that you're thinking about, in so many ways, is this whole issue of malpractice. I've just … I don't have many clients yet, you know, and I'm thinking here … But I know that I was not alone or unique in this. When I started thinking about that whole issue, you sit here and say, “You know, I just don't have the income stream yet to be able to afford this, because, you know, I know what medical malpractice premiums look like. Docs are paying, at times, $20,000, $30,000, $50,000, $100,000 a year in premium, and [inaudible 00:02:26], I can't afford that.” Is that how the insurance marketplace in terms of the legal malpractice arena is priced, or … Can you just explain to a new attorney, what am I looking at here? JULIE: I would be happy to, Mark. It's completely separate than medical malpractice, so take that out of the equation, and think about protecting your future. Starting out, you're opening your first practice here, you may not have a ton of money up front, but still, the premium is going to be roughly probably starting out between $1,000 and maybe $1,500. MARK: Okay. That's very different than what docs are paying, that's for sure. JULIE: Yes, it's very different. MARK: Right. JULIE: It also depends on what limits you want to hold. It can go a little lower, it can go a little higher. But know that that carrier's going to have some premium finance terms to help you out so that you're not paying everything all up front if you don't have the cash up front. And really, when you open your doors, you want to protect yourself and your clients, and do it right as you start out into your private practice, because if you wait six months or a year down the line, and now decide to go, and you've got some money in your pocket, now you want to purchase the malpractice, no carrier in the marketplace is going to cover your prior work history to the day you open the doors to the day you decide to get that policy. MARK: Oh, wait, okay, so now that's important. I want to make sure that we're all understanding this. So if I sit down, and I open up my office, hang that shingle, and I'm doing a lot of marketing, networking, doing the things we all try to do to get the name out there, and I start to have a little bit of work, not much yet, but I build up, you're saying that … So if I wait six months to buy my first policy, all of the work that I've done up until the day I buy that policy, I'm, in essence, bare on, that the policy doesn't cover that? JULIE: You are, exactly. You're bare on that time frame. MARK: Okay, that's good to know, right. JULIE: Because a lot of new attorneys don't realize that when they open their doors, and it's a really key, important fact to before you open your doors, before you take that first client, is to get that coverage in place. MARK: Okay. When I think about … So I'm hearing that the premium is relatively affordable. Is that a normal kind of premium? Because it seems to me, I guess what I'm trying to get at is, you know, I don't … I haven't been in this long, so my exposure, if I'm thinking about the insurance carrier, it's got to be pretty low. What does that play … What does that mean to you guys? Am I on to something here, that … What happens to my premium in the early years? JULIE: Good question. You are on to something. So, starting out, when you come into a carrier and they give you a new quote for a new policy, you have no work history behind that quote, that policy. And so you're going to get a credit for having no work history. They know that when they're quoting you, and they're putting that factor into the premium before they release it to you. So as your exposure increases over the years, as your practice builds and you get more clientele, your premium is going to mature, or some people call it in the industry “step rating,” where you can expect gradual increases over a six-year timeframe. So basically, by year six, your premium would have almost doubled, provided the carrier has no rate increases, as well as you haven't reported a claim and a settlement has been reached in that six-year timeframe. So there are varying factors, but maturing rating is common in all professional liability policies, including those for lawyers. Yes. MARK: Okay, so, all things being equal, the good news is … I mean, I understand that my risk matures, but it levels out. JULIE: It does. MARK: So I don't keep seeing these increases my entire life, because heaven … Okay, I got you. So roughly six years in, I'm considered fully mature, okay. The final point that I'd like to just explore here a little bit is this, you know, what is it … Why do I want to have an insurance policy, in terms of what protection am I buying? Because I can see people sit here and say, “You know, again, I'm just starting out. I've got my computer system, and I got a good deal online,” or whatever it might be, “and it's furnished lightly. There's just, it's not a lot of assets, you know? I don't have tons of money I'm trying to protect and these kinds of things.” So I could also see just waiting a bit until I'm more established before I start to think about insuring. But how do you respond to that kind of perspective? Do you see where I'm going with that? JULIE: I see where you're going with that, and I hear that quite a bit, but you also have to put yourself in where your future is going for your practice, and as you're starting out, it is a litigious environment that we live in now, and if you take on a client, and for some reason, a year out, you still don't have coverage, they're not happy with what they did, you have no coverage. You have nothing to help back you up in case you maybe did something wrong, or maybe you didn't do anything wrong, but still, that's what you're paying for. You're paying for that peace of mind to cover your practice as it grows, and if a misstep happens along the way, that's where the policy comes into play for you. MARK: Mm-hmm (affirmative). So it's, in other words, I'm buying a little comfort. I can sleep at night, you know? JULIE: You can sleep at night. MARK: Yeah, yeah. And I'd also think, I suspect, I mean, colleague to colleague here, too, I think the other side that gets overlooked at times is we're also just trying to protect the client. JULIE: Exactly. MARK: I mean, it's … I want to work … If I think about who I'm hiring, I would want to work with a lawyer that's insured as opposed to one that isn't, because again, sometimes just mistakes happen, you know? JULIE: They do. They do. MARK: So I think it's important for all of us to just kind of remember, not only are we buying peace of mind for ourselves, but we're doing … There's no disciplinary rule that says we need to do this, but it is the right thing to do- JULIE: It is the right thing to do, absolutely. MARK: … you know, to make sure that these clients are taken care of, should some misstep happen. Well, I appreciate … Do you have any final thoughts, or anything else you'd like to add on this? JULIE: No, I think that about covered everything. Thanks. MARK: All right. Well, thank you very much, Julie. It's been a pleasure, as always, and I'll see you around the halls. JULIE: All right, thanks, Mark. MARK: Well, thank you very much for listening, folks. That concludes this current episode. If you have any questions about the issues we've discussed today, please don't hesitate to contact me at mbass@alpsnet.com. We'd love your feedback on the podcast, to include hearing about any other topics or issues you'd like to hear us cover. Thanks again. Have a good one.