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

Transcript

All right, today we're playing Shoot Your Shot, where we let founders come in, sit in the hot seat, and pitch us their business. We've got founders that have million-dollar businesses all the way up to $100 million businesses. They get 15 minutes, and in it, they start by telling us the one big number. Give us the pitch and shoot the shot. They get to ask us any questions that they want. Yeah, we've done this in New York City. This time it's in San Francisco. Now, whatever you're doing right now, you need to stop and go to Spotify or go to YouTube. Look us up on My First Million, and let us know in the comments which city you want us to go to next. All right, let's do it. All right, you want to bring the first guy out? All right, let's bring him out. What's up? How's it going? Nick, what's good? Hit us with a big number. All right, so I'm running a backup generator company in California. Okay. We're doing about $12 million in ARR right now. Wow. And we've got line of sight to $14 million this year and contracted to go out to around $25 million. Okay, so the big number is $12 million in revenue, and what are you providing for people you provide? Backup generator sales and service. So what does that mean? I'm a homeowner out here. That's right, yeah. I would just buy a unit, I rent a unit, or you sell it to power companies? We'll sell generators. Like a Generac. Service generators. We typically do higher-end units. Our clientele are typically the high-end estate properties, as well as large, more regulated facilities. So every telecom tower, every nursing home, every police station, fire station, every data center. So it's B2B? Mostly B2B. And the product that the high-end estate properties get, it's an industrial product. So there's all these businesses that, as soon as somebody says them, I'm like, oh, of course. Yet they've been a complete blind spot to me my entire life. I've never thought about it once. And I always wonder, how did that guy start thinking about this? So how did you realize this is a business I could go be a part of? So I started my career in management consulting, where you dabble around a bunch of different industries. At one point, I landed in a corporate job at NRG, a large power company in the U.S. I was doing innovation projects there, strategy. And one of the areas we had the hardest time finding good expertise in was backup generators. And a backup generator is, if your power goes down for one minute or 12 hours because of a storm or an earthquake or something, this thing kicks on, you're good to go. You do not want the power to go out when you're on the surgery table, unless there's a backup generator there to cover. Great. And so every surgery center, every hospital, they've all got them. When did you start the company? So I acquired the first one. And so this has been an acquisition venture. It started with a thesis, went around looking, trying to find a service provider to buy. We bought our first one in January 2024 and then bought a second one about five to six months later. And describe the industry. So is this a bunch of mom and pop companies, a few large players? What does the industry even look like? So very barbelled. We go head to head up against big, big industrial names like Caterpillar and Cummins and Generac on the direct side, where we're competing for the business of marquee names, big counties, big state contracts, and things like that. We also go head to head against the small mom and pop players. But really, the lion's share of the market is owned by the bigger platforms. So you did a search. You quit your job and did a search. You searched on the side. What'd you do? So this was actually my third search venture. My first one was an office plant company. What? An office plant company. Plants? Yep. Like? Yep. Probably, possibly those. How'd that go? Still own it. You own it? Bought it in 2017. We've done 14 acquisitions on that platform. Hold on. How much revenue does that do? That's around $10 million. What? You own it outright? Me and my partner. Yeah. Okay. How much EBITDA? A little over two. Was that a thesis, or that was I stumbled into a guy who owned a plant? That was a failed venture-backed startup. There's got to be an easier way to make money. Sitting on my couch, cruising BizBuySell in the way that a lot of people do with Zillow instead of. You had a venture company that failed. Yep. And so you were like a management consultant. But you were like a management consultant nerd. You were just like an academic. Totally. Like nerdy guy. Here's your board deck. Yeah. You're like, all right, now I need to get after it. So this company, it failed. Now we're going to get into plants. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to buy something. We bought it with an SBA loan. It was like the polar opposite of what I had been doing throughout my career, which is a mix of management consulting boardroom, Fortune 500 type of stuff, and venture-backed startups. And I guess there's a third leg to that, which is the small business world. And what was the second company? You did plants, then what? We carved out a portfolio of commercial landscaping contracts in that plant business and sold that to private equity. How much did you sell for? Just a little over a million. Okay. So that was the whole? But it was 20% of my cash flow and 80% of my headaches. Got it. And that freed me up, because I was the biz dev guy. I was finding the plant acquisitions. That business, I built it. I did the first acquisition. I did four after that. And then I handed it off to my partner to run. So you like doing the search, the biz dev, and you like doing the M&A. You have a partner who does operations? Yeah, that's right. How much did you raise for this third business? What's it called? It's called On Point? On Point. Yeah. So this is the first time we've raised outside money because we felt that, given where the macros were in terms of electricity demand booming, data center market booming, electrical contractors booming, we needed to raise some outside capital to meet the opportunity where it was going to be. So we brought in six and a half million. We did a significant chunk of it, but there's about five million of outside investment in this one. And how big is this going to get? I don't know yet. I think this business can get really, really big. Hundreds of millions? Hundreds of millions. I think we can get to where the question will be, it's really revenue throughput. Do we have the technicians to pull off the work? I've got the work contracted. It's purely an execution game at this point. And so describe, you said you go up against Caterpillar and these other larger players. What axes do you need to compete on? Is it price? How do you win the pitch? It's 100% speed. They are slow. They're good at what they do, but they're very slow. What's the speed difference? How long versus how long? For us, AI has been an absolutely central part of our strategy of speeding up every single process in that business. I need to be able to deliver a quote while my guy's there. These are complex machines with a very difficult parts supply chain. It can take weeks to turn around a quote from a, hey, your generator's broken to, hey, here's what it's going to cost me to fix it. And when we can do it, it's very, very slow business. And it's very, very difficult because of all the research and tribal knowledge, and it's spread across all these different vendors. How do you use AI to speed up that quote? Let's say the guy's standing there. Yep. Understanding what's the issue. Yep. Is he inputting something on his phone? That's right. And he's getting what? And we've done all the back-end work of every document that we have ever produced as a company has been adjusted and studied by AI. We've built a retrieval augmented system so that we can do research on the fly and produce answers on the fly. This is great. So there's companies, I've got a friend that owns an HVAC company, and it does close to 200 million in revenue. And he was complaining and lamenting overall, my business sucks for this reason, his business is stuck for that reason. And he was telling me, well, we just have to get better at buying Google AdWords. And he was like, the demand's there. I just have to operate. Let's say the guy's standing there. Yep. Understanding what's the issue. Yep. Is he inputting something on his phone? That's right. And he's getting what? And we've done all the back-end work of every document that we have ever produced as a company has been adjusted and studied by AI. We've built a retrieval augmented system so that we can do research on the fly and produce answers on the fly. This is great. So there's companies, I've got a friend that owns an HVAC company, and it does close to 200 million in revenue. And he was complaining and lamenting overall, my business sucks for this reason, his business, you're stuck for that reason. And he was telling me, he was like, well, we just have to get better at buying Google AdWords. And he was like, the demand's there. I just have to operate. And I was so envious of that because that's not what I have. I've got to teach people what it is and whatever. Are you in the weeds of training people, or is your personal job just finding who else you're going to buy? So we've put a pause on M&A right now. We're really trying to nail the operational workflows. And that's what you're doing. And AI support. And I'm doing a lot of the building myself. Is it a pain in the ass to train these technicians? I'd say it's more than a pain in the ass. It's impossible. Why? This is very, very... Training or finding them? Both. Because, A, there's not enough of them. Those that exist are on their way out, not in. And who are they? Field technicians. I know, but are they in the same category of an HVAC person? Where, if you give me eight weeks of your time, I could teach you how to do this. But it's hard to find someone who's willing to do it. I'd say not far off of that. Okay. It's mechanical. It's electrical. And it's both. And usually, very few guys are good at both. It's increasingly instrumentation and controls. So there's more computer and troubleshooting diagnostics. How much does a field technician make? Is this a job that people are going to want because it pays really well? This is a good job. This is an opportunity where the elite field technicians, they will clear well into the six figures, a guy with a high school education. But it takes time to accumulate the experience. And you don't see a lot of generators, so experience accumulates slowly. Even in HVAC, you might do three, four service calls a day. Our guys are doing one or two service calls a day. And the consequences are massive. The consequences are massive. How big is the average contract? Hey, I want to tell you about something pretty cool. We have a database of all of the business ideas that have been discussed on this podcast. So hundreds of episodes the team at HubSpot went through. They pulled out all the simple, relatable, interesting, profitable ideas that we have brainstormed. And they're all available for download for free. Just click the link in the description below. Thank you to our friends at HubSpot for sponsoring this podcast and putting together this free resource for you guys. Back to the show. How big is the average contract? It varies tremendously depending on whether you're dealing with a three megawatt unit at an AWS data center or a Frank and Shirley's generator in their backyard. For the data center units, you're probably talking 25,000 a year in service revenue. And is there ever churn? There is, but generally they kind of want accountability on the vendor. And that is one thing that's hard about competing against Caterpillar, right? The facilities guys are like, well, I hired Caterpillar and they couldn't figure it out. So, right. So let me make sure I understand. It sounds like you do, you sell the generators, but you service them. I would guess servicing is more than new sales. Yeah. And you get brought in directly by the facility or by the guy, whoever the company is that made that, they put service, they need service technicians out in the field everywhere. So they subcontract out to you. So we're an independent. So we have to eat what we kill. So we got to go straight to the facility. We can work through the project, through the facilities operations companies like the JLLs and CBRE real estate. And now you're saying my biggest bottleneck is I got to get enough technicians to be able to service the workload that we have. How are you going to solve that problem? So we're still figuring it out. We've got every recruiter spun up sending us leads. Okay. Some of it is, you can pay to bring guys here. Will they stay here? Open question. I'd say we can find the guys who say that he knows how to fix those things. Can we select for the guys who actually know how to fix those things? I think we've had an easier time finding people and getting them in the door and selling them on joining our company than we have had being damn certain that when that guy shows up there, he's going to find the problem and fix it. But what did the, this is the second time we've mentioned him, but Tommy Mello, the A1 garage door guy, have you heard of that guy? Yes. And then there's tons of these influencers who are legit business guys. What have they done to, because they have all had the exact same thing where they're like, garage doors, a lot of the people who come to me are kind of problematic, and I got to teach him how to, I think he said, he's like, we teach him how to pet the dog. You pet the dog right when you come in, you ask, may I come in? He does sales excellence. Yep. But still, he needs the technicians to go do the work. One of the things we always talk about is, as an entrepreneur, it's easy to feel like I have this problem, this burden, and it's unique to me. And very few problems in your business haven't already been solved by somebody else. So the easy thing is to ask them, who else has solved this problem and how the heck did they do it? So he's saying, how the heck did the garage companies get to scale up their technician force? Who do you look at that's already done this? So you basically have to start a trade school. You are the trade school. You have to bring these guys up. My AC buddy who I'm referring to, he has Hoffman University. You have to. Have you done that? Not yet. We're not big enough to do it just yet. We're working on building our shop building. We have a third bay in our shop that is the training bay. And we've handed our lead technician an assignment to, we got to build out our own training capabilities. We've built the digital side of it. So turning every job we do into a training experience that can be relayed under the team. Because I need the guys to get more than one rep a day. If I can turn every rep we do that day into a bunch of reps. How are you turning it into a simulation? We've got AI reading everything that they do, everything that they say. And then at the end of the process, when they submit their report, we will flag the reports that are the best training material. When you're laying in bed at night and you're thinking, if we can do this, this, and this, maybe in five years we could sell. Or maybe I can have this much annual income, or whatever that number, that vanity thing is. For you, what is that? Man, I think for me, this is my third time around. And I feel like I'm doing this because I chose this. I wanted to be doing this. So it's kind of about what are all the cool capabilities that we could build that have never been possible before? Okay. And be specific, though. When you're thinking about this, what is that? What really gets you going? I think making really great jobs for these tradesmen, helping them, ordinary people, achieve really, really extraordinary performance. Yeah. I'm super excited about what we're going to be able to do and how we're going to be able to empower people who have never really worked for a company that gave a crap that much about the process. There was this really cool company. I forget the name, but they took out an ad in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times. There's some huge national publication, and they played off this idea of, you know how your grandfather walked me around the city and he's like, you see that building? So it's about what are all the cool capabilities that we could build that have never been possible before? Okay. And be specific, though. When you're thinking about this, you're like, what is that? What really gets you going? I think making really great jobs for these tradesmen, helping ordinary people achieve really, really extraordinary performance. Yeah. I'm super excited about what we're going to be able to do and how we're going to be able to empower people who have never really worked for a company that gave a crap that much about the process. There was this really cool company. I forget the name, but they took out an ad in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times. There's some huge national publication, and they played off this idea of, you know how your grandfather walked me around the city and he's like, "You see that building? I made that," and he was just part of the construction crew, or, "Look, about 50 years ago, we installed this thing," because there's this pride. And the ad that they put out, because they were trying to recruit people, is, "Do you really want to brag to your kids that you made B2B software just a little bit better?" Something like that. And I wonder if there's some cool, mission-driven angles that you could take to this recruiting, because when you talk about, "I'm passionate about giving everyday guys a chance to do something interesting." No, it's an interesting idea. And I think there's definitely a point of pride over, "Oh, we work on..." It's kind of fun too, because we work on a lot of high-end properties. So these are Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous type of stuff where we work on those properties. We put those generators in. And the mission-critical hospitals, whatnot. And that, right. There's such an important duty. It seems like I coached high school basketball this year, and our star player, the power forward, he's graduating. We were like, "Do you want to go play in college? We can get you in front of some scouts." And he's like, "I'm going to trade school." He's like, "Trade school doesn't have a basketball team." He wanted to go work for, he wanted to become an electrician, but crazy stuff, like hanging out of a helicopter, doing some repair on some crazy site. And it made me realize there's probably a lot of people who have the talent, whether it's veterans, whether it's ex-athletes. They like the idea of doing certain types of work, getting paid really well for it, not having to go to a four-year university. And I wonder how you can surface more of them faster, or where they're going today that you can tap into that flow. I think the stigma of the trades is gone. I think that is behind us. The things that we were told when we were coming up, like, "You got to go to college, make sure it's a good one, yada, yada." I think that there's some of that still there, but I think the stigma of going into the trades is behind us. And now it's like this is the opportunity for the tradesmen's craft to shine. Right. And we're trying to give them the tools so that they really can, and so that they can grow faster, learn faster. Well, nobody's built a great brand around the trade school, right? Like, what's Harvard? What's Stanford for that, right? Where could you be proud that you got in, that you're going, that you're coming out like a Navy SEAL who's going to be able to do all these amazing things? That to me is an even bigger opportunity than what you're currently doing because that's— Like $152,000. Yeah. It serves all kinds of industries. And there are some. They're really niche, and they're with that specific trade. Yeah. And so there's not a big one that everybody would know, "Oh, that's the stamp of approval." There's not a Harvard of the trades in general, which I do think there's an excellent opportunity there. Crazy opportunity for that, yeah. And I would love to work on that. I feel like right now I'm working toward that, and I need to understand it at a level of depth and have solved it for one quarter of the universe so that we could think about, okay, how would you next-level this thing? You have very kinetic and contagious energy. I have a feeling that in the next four or five years, you're going to be significantly further along than where you are now. It's very evident. Picked an amazing space, and it's so cool. We had a guy, the last guy was a franchise guy, and you're doing entrepreneurship through search and acquisition. I just love all the different styles. So I appreciate you coming on, man. Yeah. Thanks for having me. All right. We appreciate you. Thank you. We have someone else. Welcome. How's it going? Good. Excellent posture. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You scream good posture. I work on it. Yeah. Look at this guy. Jeez. I upped my game a little bit here. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. All right. What's your name? What's up, guys? I'm Kevin. Kevin. Yeah. Welcome. Thank you. Welcome to Shoot Your Shot. Hit us with the big number to start. So, big's relative. My number is 1.8 million. I think I'm a little unique with this setup because I actually just sold my business about two, three weeks ago. Nice. That's what I sold it for. Starter business on the board. Wait. So, you are— You just exited at 1.8? Just exited at 1.8. Yeah. That was a sale price. What did you sell for $1.8 million? It was a franchise business called Smash My Trash. Smash My Trash. Oh, I've heard of this. Have you heard of this before? What is Smash My Trash? Explain. Explain. So, the basic concept is companies that produce a lot of trash, industrial businesses, warehouses, factories, things like that, throw away a lot of stuff in these open-top dumpsters that are these rectangles that hold 40 cubic yards of stuff. The pricing model is that every time you fill it up and you need a new one, you have to get it replaced, and that can cost $1,000. Yeah. I used to get on top of ours and jump up and down. That's it. Imagine. So, imagine if a giant thing came and smashed the trash down. I thought I was going to hire someone to come and jump on the trash for me. That was it. No. So, we have these trucks that back up to the dumpster. Like you said, Sean, there's a crane on the back with this spinning spiky arm that goes in, pushes the trash down. The deal is basically, let's say you get 10 pickups a month at $1,000. That's $10,000 a month you're spending on trash. We'll get you down to, just round numbers, five, and we'll split the savings with you. Wait. So, one, a large company will spend 10 grand a month on trash? Yeah, or more. Who? Like a warehouse? Big factories, production facilities in agricultural California is where I was doing a lot of work. Wow. Companies that just— So, these are like, you just go to the parking lot. There's a huge dumpster back there. That was the opportunity. That's the opportunity. Is to smash the trash down so you have to do fewer pickups per thing because you're paying per pickup. That's it. And do smashing trucks exist already? It was a new concept. So, it's a franchise. This guy came up with the idea, started growing fast, decided to franchise it. So, these didn't really exist. They exist in Europe, but they're mounted to the side of the building. So, those companies would back the dumpster up. So, the insight was throw these things on a truck, have them drive around, and do it as a mobile service. So, you bought a franchise and then now sold your franchise? Correct. One location? How many? Five locations. Five locations. How much did it cost to buy in? I bought it in chunks. So, I think my buy-in was 185k. Up front? Up front. And then I— How did you have money before? I worked in tech. I was somebody who worked in SaaS and had the W2 thing. Sales, or what were you doing? Yeah, I was in sales and product and stuff like that, the kind of classic Bay Area W2 thing. So, this is so interesting. So, you're just sitting there at the office. You got a good job. So, those companies would back the dumpster up. So, the insight was, throw these things on a truck, have them drive around, and do it as a mobile service. So, you bought a franchise and then sold your franchise? Correct. One location? How many? Five locations. Five locations. How much did it cost to buy in? I bought it in chunks. So, I think my buy-in was 185k. Up front? Up front. And then I- How did you have money before? I worked in tech. I was somebody who worked in SaaS and had the W2 thing. Sales, or what were you doing? Yeah, I was in sales and product and stuff like that. The classic Bay Area W2 thing. So, this is so interesting. So, you're just sitting there at the office. You got a good job. You're working in tech. And yet, you're like, I need to get out there amongst the trash. What was the chain of events that led you to quit this safe thing and go buy into a Smash My Trash franchise? Yeah, it was a couple things. It was a growing sense of dissatisfaction. I- I started to realize late in life that I wanted to work for myself. And I was also in this venture world where you're going after the next round of funding, this eventual exit. And I was blind to the way that a lot of the world worked in terms of cash-flowing blue-collar businesses. And I started to get bit by that bug a little bit. I started hearing stuff about that. And I got interested. And then it was really when I got married and went on my honeymoon. And I waited till the last minute to book our honeymoon. So, we stayed at places that we probably shouldn't have gone to that were nicer than we otherwise would have. Started talking to people there at the pool and stuff and being like- No way. There's blue-collar things like- All the rich guys are trash people. People make cash doing businesses that are off the beaten path and interesting. Do you remember what they were saying? What did they do? So, one guy did real estate. One guy did a food truck, but did a food truck as a serious operation. Had many of them. I had also had the seed planted on my bachelor party. I was there with my friend who was in private equity. And he actually got into Smash My Trash before me. Gotcha. So, he planted the seed. And he was a private equity guy. Of the 180, how much was that a huge chunk of your savings? I did 85 myself. A buddy gave me 70. And then, so that was the equity. And then I did a $350,000 SBA loan as well. Were you like- This has to work. This has to work. Or was this a safe- I'm putting a small amount in? It felt like a pretty safe side bet. I had more than that that I would have been able to. But it felt uncomfortable. Okay. So, you decide to go in. You buy one. What happens? So, I actually bought three out of the gate. Okay. I bought three territories out of the gate. Now, territories in the franchise world, a lot of times people picture restaurants where it's clearly a unit. This is an area. So, I mean, it's really one business. The areas are a little arbitrary. How many years ago was this? This is in 2022. I got started. Okay. So, four years. Four years ago. So, got started. And part of the reason I got into it was I was interested in something where I could draw a direct line between brute-force effort and cash in the bank. I felt like in the tech world, I was so many layers abstracted away from eventually making money. That's a classic Warren Buffett metric, right? Brute force to cash in the bank. Yeah, exactly. So, what do you mean? You just meant, the more people I call, the more money I'm going to make. Right. I had this no-brainer offer. I had these people who definitely could use this and 100% could make money. And all I needed to do was go get them to believe me. Yeah. And I could just start making cash. And it wasn't this promise of some future outcome. And I found that really motivating. Okay. So, I paid somebody overseas to zoom in on Google Satellite View and put pins on every dumpster. Okay. And that was my plan. And I would drive from Walnut Creek down to San Jose to Salinas, hour and a half, two hours each way every day. And just trespass. Go into warehouses, try to talk to the person there who's in charge of the dumpster. Right. And just willed it into existence. Started driving beyond the confines of my territory. You don't even zoom in. You go, you drive. Okay. Contractor gives you a pin. You drive to the pin. You get there. You weren't invited. Knock, knock. Now what? So, not even knock, knock. Walk in. Right around to the back where the dumpster is. Okay. So, I built this up over time. I learned. Yeah. You don't want to go to the office because the office, they're going to tell you no. So, what I would do is, I had a red hard hat that I would put on, get the clipboard going- Oh, my God. Walk into the back and try to find the person who's physically loading the dumpster. You got the red hard hat on. Start asking questions. Most of the time, they would just tell me. They just seem to work there. He's like, dude, there's no construction around here. They just think you're the trash contractor for the company. Right. They're just not sure. They're just like, this guy's asking me, how many pickups do you get? Who's in charge of it? I start to size the account, get some info. And then I would go to the front armed with info. And then I would work my way to the decision maker. How many months until your first dollar? Right away. Right away. How thrilling was that first sale? Oh, it was great. It was great. I was out with our neighbors when they first, because these are chunky contracts. We're talking about large- I mean, for me at the time, a couple thousand bucks a month recurring revenue. So, it only took two, three, four accounts to basically pay my debt service and my driver. So, you had a driver right off the bat? I hired a driver right off the bat. Yeah. And did Smash Bros. give you this playbook? Or you were just like, I'm going to red hard hat this? Or they were like, hey, here's how you do it. They didn't tell me about the red hard hat, but they gave you the basic playbook. And then I, before I opened, went around to a couple other franchisees, including my buddy I mentioned, and just was like, show me everything. How do you guys do it? What works? It's like, have you ever seen those videos where someone's, my friend Neville Medhora, he's an Indian guy. And during South by Southwest, every year he dresses up like a sheikh. He wears a white thing and a hat. And then he's just like, I get it. And then there's these Instagram videos of guys who, they're like, I'm just going to look like a DJ, whatever that means. And then they get into the club. That's this version of that. Exactly. People just don't ask questions. So, this is amazing. Okay. So, you said you sold the business now. Year one, do you remember what the P&L was? What did you make in the first year of business? It's hard to say. Because in the first year, I bought the two additional franchises. So, one day I drove beyond the bounds of my territory and I found the trash gold mine, and I bought those two franchises and bought two more trucks. Okay. So, all the cash went right back in. Were all three territories successful, or one sucked, but another one was amazing and made up for it? That was kind of it. There was a great one. There's an okay one. There's a medium one. And then I added on these two amazing ones. So, I had to buy two trucks, had to buy two new territories. So, all the cash went right back into that. I think I probably did six to 800 K of top line in those first two years. Wow. What was the biggest pain in the ass, looking back? The trucks. The operators, or- Not even the operators. Fixing the trucks when there are issues was something I just don't- It's a big truck with hydraulic equipment. And I eventually just adopted the philosophy that I had a mechanic, he was going to charge me what he charged me, and he was probably overcharging me. Okay. So all the cash went right back in. Were all three territories successful, or one sucked, but another one was amazing and made up for it? That was it. There was a great one. There's an okay one. There's a medium one. And then I added on these two amazing ones. So I had to buy two trucks, had to buy two new territories. So all the cash went right back into that. I think I probably did six to 800K of top line in those first two years. Wow. What was the biggest pain in the ass looking back? The trucks? The operators or? Not even the operators. Fixing the trucks when there's issues was something I just don't... it's a big truck with hydraulic equipment. And I eventually just adopted the philosophy that I had a mechanic, he was going to charge me what he charged me, and he was probably overcharging me. But when there was an issue, I would just overpay for it. You didn't exactly have a lot of shopping around you could do for smashing. Yeah. I just wanted to get it done. A lot of our accounts, they're paying us a lot of money every month. And if we can't get to them, I just was willing to pay a lot to solve that problem and have it not be something we deal with. So how much profit, how much take-home income did you do your last year? So it was the first two years and the last two years were very separate chapters. First two years, I was down there every single day, not taking anything out, reinvesting everything into new trucks and new territories. The last two years, basically 2024 to 2026 summer, it was maybe around 450 EBITDA, if you want to call it that. But 150K, that was debt service. So really my take-home was 300K. So why sell? It just felt like a starter business. It was always my starter business. I got into it because I thought it would be this direct line. It weighed heavily on me in a number of ways. One, these loans, and I got loans for the second two trucks. So this is that first 350K SBA loan. I got subsequent loans for the other trucks. So that's a personal guarantee. Yeah. In my head every day. A lot of people don't realize franchise agreements also have a personal guarantee where you owe them royalties every month as a percentage of revenue. I think most people know that with franchises, but there's minimum royalties, which means you either pay some percent of your revenue or this fixed amount on a schedule, whichever is higher. And that's a 10-year-long agreement that also has a personal guarantee. So I always felt like I could handle that, but that also weighs on you. And having these big trucks out every day where a couple of times a year I'd get a call that something bad happened. What did it feel like when the wire hit? It was anticlimactic a little bit. So I had already worked with my accountant on, all right, tell me after taxes, after everything, what the number is. I had seen that number in a Google Sheet. And then when it happened, I was very happy. My wife and I had a trip coincidentally planned to go somewhere the next day, so we did get to enjoy it. But now it's just back to baseline. Right. I feel the relief of not having the responsibility. I don't have my phone on me right now. I'm used to... You're walking around, you're raw dogging phone right now. No phone. What I'm saying is normally I would be stressed out. I could go back and there could be a bomb dropped on me on my phone where something went wrong. Who bought it? Was it just somebody else who wanted even more territories, or it was... who's the buyer? It was the neighboring franchisees. So it's a great thing where I was happy with the amount they paid. I think they got a great deal on it for them because they're just going to be able to fold it into their thing. Right. That's how a lot of franchise M&A ends up happening. I have a feeling that you're plotting. You have something that you've been thinking about. What is that? What are the list of things? And also, did you know what that was before you sold, or the space gave you the time to figure it out? So the first two years were a dead sprint. The last two years, I got it in passive mode. I had two kids, and so I wasn't able to go down there every day. So I did a lot of stuff to make it truly passive. And I spent a lot of that time trying to figure out my next move. I don't want to say too much about what it is, but I do have something in the works. What other opportunities did you consider doing that you did not? So what I got really interested in was this concept of how you could sell somebody a financial ROI no-brainer where the only objection is that they don't believe you, and it would be cheap or free to prove it to them. And so I was looking at all kinds of stuff like that. I think you can audit people's utility bills. I think the idea of doing site speed optimization for e-commerce is interesting. That was the insight that I thought was a fun playbook to run that was pretty straightforward if you're not that smart and you just want to work hard. What's really smart about your approach that I think very few people do is, in business, what most people do is they think about the product. They're like, oh, I love that product, or I know about that product, or I love this industry. They think about their college major or stupid shit like that. You work backwards from what type of sale process do I want to do every day, because that's going to be 90% of my existence as an entrepreneur, is just trying to sell, get more business. And so you were like, where's somewhere that I can just brute force, get dollars in the bank by going and calling or showing up on more sites? And then even just now you're like, and the pitch I want to be giving is a you definitely are going to make more money. All I got to do is prove it to you. And I can prove it to you at a cost that's very little to me, or a quick demo from my side to show you that the value is there. And I think so few people take a sales-first approach, but as an entrepreneur, that's actually all you experience in the business, is just growing the business mostly. The product is very fungible. You could swap the product out. Yeah. So what it is for me is I think, like you guys, I like business. I'm a business nerd. I like hiring. I like selling. I like figuring out the systems and the processes. So when you have that, you have the luxury of being able to pick a business that you think would be enjoyable and straightforward to run. When are you going to start it? I already started the new thing. And that's only three weeks ago that you sold. Yeah. Do you have a new mindset with this new one? What's changed now that you had that experience going into the new one? Do you have any new rules of how you want to do this? Bootstrapping. Bootstrapping. I found, and this is probably just because I'm more risk-averse than I care to admit, but this idea of the personal guarantee being tied to a franchise agreement, I really felt like the one-way-door, irreversible decision thing. So I think going forward, I'm going to try to bootstrap as much as I can and keep my options open as much as I can. What's funny is maybe your tech coworkers are like, this is very risky. This is insane, what you're doing. What I've noticed talking to a lot of entrepreneurs on here and through my life is that most entrepreneurs, I don't consider myself to be a very risky person at all. And most say that as well. They're like, I'm not that risky. It's this idea of there's a difference between uncertainty, which always exists, and risk, which you can reduce. Uncertainty always exists, and you just got to get comfortable with that. But you definitely can limit the risk, and taking those personal guarantees, that's actually quite risky. And so it's funny to hear that you're a risk-averse person. It's like great fighters. They don't pride themselves on how much risk they're taking in a fight. It's self-defense, hit and don't get hit. Right. And the best fighters, if you look at Floyd Mayweather, undefeated, What I've noticed talking to a lot of entrepreneurs on here and through my life is that most entrepreneurs, I don't consider myself to be a very risky person at all. And most say that as well. They're like, I'm not that risky. It's this idea that there's a difference between uncertainty, which always exists, and risk, which you can reduce. Uncertainty always exists, and you just got to get comfortable with that. But you definitely can limit the risk, and taking those personal guarantees, that's actually quite risky. So it's funny to hear that you're a risk-averse person. It's like great fighters. They don't pride themselves on how much risk they're taking in a fight. It's self-defense: hit and don't get hit, right? And the best fighters, if you look at Floyd Mayweather, who's undefeated, he didn't even really get hit that much, right? Didn't really get hit that much. It's like the black belts understand that it's about minimizing the damage you take while still winning. Yeah. There are all these investors, and they're like, rule number one: don't lose money. Rule number two: pay attention to rule number one. Yeah. And it's pretty funny. Let me ask you another question. I'm talking to my friend, who's a friend from college, and he's got a normal job, business. He wants to go do something entrepreneurial. And I think he wants to do it very much for the money. But I think truly the benefit would be that he's just going to have a lot more fun. He doesn't like his job, and just liking your day matters a lot more. You had a good job. You did it for four or five years. Did you end up way ahead financially versus where you would have been just taking your salary with raises and savings? Was it a big financial win, or was it the life win, the confidence, the fun that you had? Where was the win? I think about it as the escape velocity that I needed to go work. I can work for myself for the rest of my life as long as I don't mess it up. And that's how I think about it. It gave me that escape velocity out of that. Was it a financial runway, or was it confidence? It's financial runway. It's confidence. It's experience. It's pattern recognition, skills, and everything like that. And for me, I kind of had to do the—really because I bought the business so far from my house, I was going to try to keep my job for a second there. And then I realized I had to quit it. That was the case for me. I think for other people, the move is to find something you can step into and test out a little bit before you fully rip it. We've never done franchises, and I've always been a little skeptical of franchises. It's like franchises seem like a great business for the franchisors, not the franchisee. And so you did it. You have a good outcome. What's your current perspective on, like, are franchises a good place to go? Or did you discover some other franchise along the way that you're like, shit, I wish I had done that one? Now that I understand what makes these work, that's a way better one. Tell me something smart about franchises. I think there are three situations where doing a franchise makes sense. I think the first one is if the franchisor actually has some secret sauce. And the nerdy way that I think about it is if you listen to the Acquired podcast, they do the seven powers. If the franchisor gives you one of the seven powers, it could be worth it. So that's brand with the Midas touch, or it's cornered resource, like the Chick-fil-A recipe. You can only get a Chick-fil-A. That's worth it. Those are rare and in high demand. The second one is if you are going into it to do a roll-up. Franchises are friendly for roll-ups, I think, because you just have carbon copies of each other. The systems are—the integration is the hard part of a lot of roll-ups. The integration of a franchise is just the people stuff. It's pretty straightforward to roll up. And it's like a walled garden. If you're in the system and you have the appetite and the capital to do a roll-up, you can do it in a lot of cases. And a lot of franchises are ripe for consolidation because they're incentivized to sell a lot of units, because they make franchise fees on each unit. And then what that means is, in a couple of years, it's just begging for consolidation. And the third reason is basically my reason, which, if you're literally not going to do anything else, you're not going to do something unless you feel like you have the training wheels of a franchise. That's what it took for me to do it. I don't regret doing it. I probably won't do another franchise in my career, but it played an important role in my... It got you where you wanted to go. Right. I wasn't going to do it otherwise. Well, Kevin, you're the shit. Thank you for doing this. Yeah. Thanks, guys. Awesome. Thanks for coming on. Yeah. Bring them in. What's up? What's going on? Good to meet you. Great meeting you. What's up, brother? What's your name? Noam. Noam. Yes. Noam, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I'm excited. Okay. I don't know if they told you what you're getting into, but maybe start with what we call the Big Juicy Number. So give us one number that'll get us interested. All right. Big Juicy Number. We're doing $430,000 a month selling heated jaw massagers. Jaw massagers. Yes, sir. Okay. So that was my nickname in high school. Hey, okay. Damn. Less detailed, the better on that one. All right. So do you have one? What is a heated jaw massager? Okay, listen. I do have one. It fits in your pocket. Is this like a looks-maxing thing? Steve Jobs had a thousand songs in your pocket. He's got one hot jaw bone in your pocket. Is it kosher to share jaw massagers, or is this like a toothbrush? It's super kosher, actually. Okay. Yeah. It's not going in your mouth. But I mean, so I have two, actually. This one is what we're selling right now. Okay. It's the Gen 1. It's 3D-printed. It looks like a vape, all right? This one is Gen 2. I'm flying to China tonight, actually, so I'm trying to do it. But you basically click this button. Gen 1 doesn't work. Yeah, that one doesn't work. I gave all my San Francisco Gen 1s away. I was just at a conference. It's over. I only have this. But yeah, you have the two buttons there: adjustable heat, adjustable vibration. There you go. Okay, so I do this? Yeah. So it's a couple things. You have muscle scraping. Is that what we're doing? Some people are looks-maxing. But the main thing, actually, is it's for people with TMJ disorders. Right. So, I mean, there are tens of millions of people out there dealing with chronic jaw pain. And generally, that audience is not the looks-maxing crowd. My main customer is not that. But they do exist. So it is TMJ. Can you explain TMJ? In America, one out of every how many people have it? Give us something like that. Yeah. So around 5% of people seek treatment. But it's many more that have it and potentially don't even know. There are a lot of really common things that happen. The way I started dealing with it was five years ago. My jaw started clicking on the right side. I was like, okay. I think my mom got this. You get it temporarily sometimes, right? Stress and things like that can bring it up. Is it just annoying, or is it dangerous? So the clicking, if it's pain-free, oftentimes it's just annoying. Some people say up to one in three people have this at some point in their life. But for me, it started getting worse. It started clicking on the left, and then my jaw started locking closed. And then that would happen once a month, and then once a week, and then once a day. I would wake up and I couldn't brush my teeth. I couldn't eat. What causes this? It's a good question. A lot of different things can cause it. Clenching, for example. A lot of people have a clenching issue, clenching, grinding at night. Some things, a lot of looks-maxing, can actually end up causing this. It could be trauma to the joint. It could be all this. For lockup specifically, there's a disc in there, and it can displace. Some people say up to one in three people have this at some point in their life. But for me, it started getting worse. It started clicking on the left. And then my jaw started locking closed. And then that would happen once a month. And then once a week. And then once a day, I would wake up and I couldn't brush my teeth. I couldn't eat. What causes this? It's a good question. A lot of different things can cause it. Clenching, for example. A lot of people have a clenching issue, clenching, grinding at night. Some things, a lot of looks maxing can actually end up causing this. It could be trauma to the joint. It could be all this. For lockup specifically, there's a disc in there and it can displace. And you put this on your jaw how often and how long? So the idea is a couple of things for the musculature, right? Most people's pain actually ends up coming from the muscles. And because it's overcompensating, that kind of stuff. So you're using it as a scraper, a heater once a day or a couple times a day, 20 minutes a day. That's what the research says you should do, the doctors say. But honestly, it's just like, hey, I have a flare up. My head hurts. You go in, you work on the muscles, or you just have instant heat in your pocket. In your ass. Close to half a million a month. Yeah. So you sell five million a year of this. That's annualized. Annualized. Yeah. And it's called your TMJ pin? It's called your TMJ pin. How much does it cost? So we're normally $249. Right now there's a clearance sale. And did you raise funding? No. No, no. It's very much fully bootstrapped. Yeah. This is, I feel like I would see this on TikTok shop. I would see this on IG ads late at night. Yeah. Listen, I wish. You're the guy behind those ads. I am that guy. I am that guy on Instagram. I'm the TMJ guy. I think I've seen you. You're the face of this, right? I am the face of that. I think I've seen you. A lot of rage bait on Instagram. I love it. So what's, you said rage bait. Okay. So one of our big, most viral videos is, I'm on this plane, right? And this character you just went into. This absolute Karen next to me starts calling me out. She's like, "Hey, you can't be vaping on a plane." And I get really flustered. I'm like, "No, no, it's not a vape. Wait, let me explain." And I'm flustered, trying to explain that it's my invention. I made this. It's for people to drop in. It's not a vape. And that concept got like a hundred million views. Really? Wow. Wow. That's awesome. How did you think of that? Just to go with the Karen on the plane? It's mostly the vape. How does your mind work? It's the vape on the plane, really. It's like a vape on the plane. It looks like a vape. Everyone tells me that. So. Right. What's going to stop every Chinese knockoff from coming after you? I mean, listen, at some point they're going to come. But the reality is, when I started this, I looked it up. I was heated and massaging myself every day with a mug of water. I'd microwave it, whatever. And I would look it up, and there wasn't a heated massager for the job. There were no products period sold for people with TMJ problems. Not a single one, which was baffling. And so there was no brand. There was no. You developed the actual device. So I developed this, and yeah, I'm the first brand. Did you say you 3D printed this? Yeah. So the way I started the business is because, dude, listen, hardware used to be, I think, one of the most risky things you can get into, making a hardware device. You'll look at Shark Tank, people are like, "Yeah, I spent like a hundred grand making this." And it's like, dude, that was a big mistake. How much did you spend to make the first handful? I spent less than $3,000. And the idea was, there are three things that aligned in this age that we're living in that make it probably now one of the least risky things that you can do, making a hardware consumer product. First, having all the access to information. Engineering at this point is low key easy. Okay, don't clip that. But with ChatGBT, with YouTube, I didn't know how to make electronics. I didn't know how to make a PCB. What were you doing before? Looked it up. I was a mechanical engineer. I was in college. How old are you now? 24. How old is this? Three years since I started making it. And then two years of selling it. And so you're like, I'm an idiot. So you have a 3D printer at home. Yeah. And you're on ChatGBT at the time. And you're like, teach me how to. You're like, give me a. ChatGBT back in the day was not good enough. But then there's a motor. I mean, I don't know how electronic. So what did you do? You're at home. You've never made it. So I wrote out, what do I need this thing to do? I need it to heat. I need vibration. I need it to charge. It needs to be portable, whatever. You write out what you want. The obvious thing that it needs is a PCB. It's a printed circuit board. So it's those little green things. Yeah. It looks like a chip. It has a bunch of things, a bunch of lines on it. So to design that, I didn't know what to do, but I looked on Reddit. I asked for advice. I went on YouTube. I figured out how to design this thing. That was the first thing I did. Then you design the casings. You look up potential motors. You buy them all, test them, and you pick one. So you ended up assembling the thing yourself. Yes. Yeah. So I was assembling these things myself up until literally a year ago to the day. We got up to like 80K a month. I was assembling, shipping. I had two 3D printers running in my closet, in my apartment. And then I kind of went Alex Hermosi mode. I was like, wait, what if I just do this, but more? So I found a 3PL. And then normally a 3PL, I mean, you know this, but they just ship stuff for you. They fulfill your stuff. But I was like, hey, let me use your employees. I'll put my 3D printers in your place. You guys can use them and make them on the spot there. Yeah. You can make them. And so now my 3PL makes it. And that's how we were able to grow to this point. So you're flying to China tonight. I'm flying to China tonight. You're going to get, you already have, because this is made. Yeah. So I've been a prototype. You found something on Alibaba. What'd you do? No, no, I did not do that. That would be risky. No, I got connected. So I'm pretty big on Instagram now and YouTube. So I made sure to get connected via word of mouth. So I found a factory. Together with them, we designed this thing. I flew there a couple months ago. We got to this sort of golden sample. And now production is sort of done. The molds are done-ish. So I'm going there now to get the final samples, and then we'll be able to. How many employees do you have? I don't have any full-time employees, but I have contractors. I have five contractors. So have you taken money out of the business yet? Are you like. Oh yeah. I took a million bucks out of the business last year. Yeah. So this year it'll do, let's say, hypothetically you do 5 million in total revenue in 26. How much cash flow per, how much profit? So I found a factory together with them. We designed this thing. I flew there a couple months ago. We got to this golden sample. And now production is done. The molds are done-ish. So I'm going there now to get the final samples, and then we'll be able to. How many employees do you have? I don't have any full-time employees. But I have contractors. I have five contractors. So have you taken money out of the business yet? Are you like, oh yeah. I took a million bucks out of the business last year. Yeah. So this year it'll do, let's say, hypothetically you do 5 million in total revenue in 26. How much cash flow or how much profit? I don't know if you measure it. Yeah. It's around 20% net income. I don't know. I kind of look at it. It's just my business. Some of it's in the business bank. Some of it's my Vanguard. Some of it's in my personal bank. I don't know. I just take it as I see fit. And there's no repeat purchase, right? Nobody's going to buy. Yeah. There's no, yeah. But what is, I remember years ago when, you know, TheraGun. Yeah. I have a Hypervolt that I use forever. I love it. And I remember they came out and people were like, dude, all the Chinese companies are just going to knock this off. But they did. They did. But they did do a good job of branding it where I am into my Hypervolt. But then they also came out with 30 products. There's the things that do my legs, and I love all of them. And it's becoming my routine. Is there other things that you're going to, you can do? I do have this vision of being a brand specifically focused on making products for the TMJ community. The brand is your TMJ. Yeah. So it's your TMJ pen. Then I'm thinking your TMJ band. So we had this guy on the podcast named David. Yeah. And his whole company, and we started out as a shtick, but it wasn't entirely a shtick, where it was like, Sam doesn't believe that picking an important name is actually important. Yeah. And this guy's whole job, he makes a lot of money naming companies. He named Blackberry and Swiffer and. Sonos, Febreze. He named all this stuff. And I am totally on board with what he's doing now. And his whole, I actually just hung out with him the other day. His whole thing is, if you're a young entrepreneur starting your company, who cares? But once you get some traction, consider making a name that can last forever because it actually does matter. And I buy into that. I would highly consider keeping that as maybe the TMJ pen, that product, but having a proper company name. Yeah, that's possible. I don't know. I feel like it's just not the main concern right now. Maybe it's not now. For this product. Yeah. People, it's like, this is the TMJ pen. When people say TMJ pen, it's this. There's no other thing. So I think that's a pretty good name. But yeah, for the company. So you said you did have a question. Well, what was your question going to be? Well, yeah, my question was going to be, listen, you're going to be like, oh, money doesn't matter, da, da, da. But no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We won't say that. It's called My First Million, not just 1 million and stop. I've heard a lot of guests come on the show. They've made it, and it's like, oh yeah, da, da, da. I'm just like, nah, I want a couple of million in the bank. Right. I want that. So I get this urge to sell in maybe two to three years or something. Sell the company. Yeah. And I don't know what, therefore, I should really be focusing on. Because for me, the obvious thing right now is, hey, what's the main constraint? It's going and solving the supply issue. Then it's going to be demand. Short-term constraint. And then you have your long-term constraint in this scenario. Yeah. And I don't know what the long-term, maybe it is a long-term constraint to not have other products, but the issue is, I don't know what would be the long-term constraint. It would be super important then to weigh against losing focus on just cranking up more ads now. So maybe it's recurring revenue, right? Maybe I should get into TMJ supplements and oils and creams and stuff, or maybe it's having more products on the consumer side. Maybe it's having IP. Maybe it's having registration with the FDA. Maybe it's having. You have three options. Yeah. And you don't have to decide right now, but it's good to know what they are. Then when you're doing the business, you'll look for clues that support one of the three options. Either you can go wider TMJ. So you could say, great, TMJ, this helps, but it's not a solved problem. I can sell the creams. I can sell the oils. I can sell the supplements. I can sell the whatever. So you go wider TMJ. Okay. You can go wider pain relief. So maybe heated massage for other conditions, other parts of your body, the Hyperice model, the TheraGun model, where you're going to create, right, they're just a recovery company. Yeah. They're a recovery company there, and you would be a pain relief company. And you would say, okay, cool. I'm going to go find all the different types of pain. I'm going to create specialty products. I'm going to run the same playbook across them. And so right now, he did vibrating slides, is the big one that's going viral right now. That I think someone's, Nike is doing or somebody is doing. Yeah. So you could go wider in that direction of pain relief. He did maybe heated massaging pain relief, or you could just say, actually, I just got good at doing this model of content-based selling of products. I now know how to do a little bit of supply chain, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, but I'm really good on the marketing side, and I'm fundamentally limited by category and product. And if I just take, you know, I'm a nine out of 10 entrepreneur, I just need to find a nine out of 10 opportunity. TMJ is just a two out of 10 opportunity because of the nature of what I'm doing. And you just take your highly transferable skills of creating content, selling through content, and you just apply it to a better category that has tailwinds. You don't fight the small TAM problem. And you'll potentially have liquidity already. And you're so young, you're going to have money in the bank and you're going to have a bunch of lessons learned that, with a clean slate, this can be your starter business. Most entrepreneurs have a starter business, have a thing that they did early that wasn't their lifetime business. So that's the other possibility. So you don't know which one of the three it is right now. Maybe you should write down a hypothesis as to which one of those three it is. And then as you operate the next six to nine months and you're focused on growing this business, you'll at least be aware of and looking for clues as to which one this might be. Maybe you launch a little test in one of those three areas. You figure it out that way. Yeah. I mean, I think what it is, is I like to use the business as a learning opportunity, as a personal growth thing. It's probably going to be like, hey, is there more juice to squeeze out of that in the TMJ space? There definitely is. I think so too. Because when I, a few, a handful of years ago, I had Lyme disease and I would look on Reddit and stuff. Maybe you should write down a hypothesis as to which one of those three it is. And then, as you operate the next six to nine months and you're focused on growing this business, you'll at least be aware of and looking for clues as to which one this might be. Maybe you launch a little test in one of those three areas. You figure it out that way. Yeah. I think what it is, is I like to use the business as a learning opportunity, as a personal growth thing. It's probably going to be like, hey, is there more juice to squeeze out of that in the TMJ space? There definitely is. I think so too. Because when I, a handful of years ago, had Lyme disease, I would look on Reddit and stuff. And I noticed the very clear trend, and among some other friends who got sick with different illnesses or injuries, there's dozens or hundreds of injuries or illnesses where people feel like no one's listening to me. No one takes me seriously. What the hell? But I know something's wrong. I don't feel good. And so they go to these communities and they buy these products where it's like, finally, I'm being heard and I'm being catered to. And if I had to guess, this is one of them because I've heard that word, TMJ. Yeah. But when you see it clicking, I'm like, oh, that can't be that bad. And then the person who has it is like, it's horrible. Yeah. And if you go to the doctor, they're just like, well, just put the mice on it. Try not to stress so much. Like, yo, I'm pretty stressed because this hurts every day. Also, in addition to whatever caused it in the first place. My first specialist I went to prescribed me 2000 milligrams of Tylenol a day. I was like, if I had to make a guess, you're going to grow a lot over the next three years and sell it. And I think that would be pretty cool. These are fundamentally pretty tough businesses to sell. You know, non-recurring niche product, heavily based on your marketing genius. So it might be that optimizing for the exit sometimes looks different than optimizing for cash flow. And so you want to weigh those out. Again, you can go look at some comps and be like, who's done this before and exited? Well, let me go talk to them and understand, do the factors that made that a successful exit match what I have fundamentally in my business? But if it's just a cash flow business, that's great. Cash flow businesses can be awesome. Have you ever talked to any bankers or brokers? I haven't. A lot of times people only do that when they're ready to sell, when they should have done it three years earlier. And you find out, you're like, I have a number in my mind. Just tell me what I need to achieve to make that number possible, and I'm just going to go do that for two years. Tell me three companies you looked at that are like this. What did they sell for? Why did they get what they got? When did they do it? And you're like, okay, it could be this revenue, this cash flow, and these are the five or six other metrics. I'll just do that for three years, and then I'll look up and be like, okay. Okay, yeah. If you guys know any, I had some people reach out on LinkedIn about it, but they seemed kind of skeezy, so I was like, I'm good. Yeah, no, I would talk to Quietlight. They're more of an online brokerage, but they're easy to talk to. If you go look at their thing, they have a lot of these FBA businesses that they sell that are kind of like, I would say, lower-durability, lower-quality businesses overall, but they seem to be selling. So they know how to package those, what type of businesses work and don't. Oh, Quietlight brokerage. Okay. Yeah, dot com. So go to them and then go look at brokers in your space. Maybe you just have to Google and tell Chat GBD, go do deep research on who's sold, who are bankers that sell products like mine? I don't even know what the name of this category is, but it might be non-medical wellness devices. Okay, cool. And you could email the founders of people who have had exits and say, who all did you talk to? Because everyone who sells a company will talk to three or four. They'll say, I used this person. They were great. These two were kind of good. But I would not delay this. What Sam said is, he's absolutely right. You don't talk to them when it's time to sell. You first talk to them a year or two before to actually understand what you need to do in the next 24 months to be a sellable business in the end. And the good thing about a sellable business is if somebody else is going to want to own it, it's probably the same reasons you would want to own it. Yeah. So there's no harm in building a very sellable business. Because at the very least, you made a business that's higher desirability to own for yourself or for somebody else. Yeah. Dude, thanks for doing this. You're awesome. No, of course. Thanks for having me. Good luck in China. Yeah. All right, that is part two of Shoot Your Shot. We got one more episode coming out of the San Francisco location. We got three more founders coming up on the next episode. Make sure you're subscribed on YouTube, on Spotify. We looked at the data. I think 80, 90% of you guys are not subscribed who watch the episodes. What are you doing? Subscribe so you can watch episode two. And do me a favor, whether you're a listener, then you're going to go to Spotify, or if you're a watcher, go to YouTube, put in the comments the city that you want us to go to next. Right now we're doing this in San Francisco. We've already done New York. We'll go somewhere next to do it. So let us know in the comments right now. That's awesome. How did you think of that? Just to go with the Karen on the plane? It's mostly the vape. How does your mind work? It's the vape on the plane, really. It's like a vape on the plane. It looks like a vape. Everyone tells me that. So. Right. What's going to stop every Chinese knockoff from coming after you? I mean, listen, at some point, like they're going to come. But the reality is like when I, when I started this, like I, I, I looked, I looked it up. I was heated and massaging myself like every day with like a mug of water. I'd microwave it, whatever. And I would look it up. And, um, there wasn't a heated massager for the job that there were no products period sold for people with TMJ problems. Like not a single one, which was baffling. And so I like not, there was no brand. There was no. You developed the actual device. So I developed this and yeah, like I, I'm the first brand. Did you say you 3d printed this? Yeah. So the way I started the business is cause like, dude, listen, hardware used to be, I think one of the most risky things you can get into making like a hardware device. Like you'll look at shark tank. Like people are like, yeah, I spent like a hundred grand making this. And it's like, dude, that was a big mistake. How much did you spend to make the first handful? I spent less than $3,000. And the idea was like, there are like three things that like aligned in this age that we're living in that makes it probably now one of the least risky things that you can do making like a hardware consumer product first, having all the access to like information, like engineering at this point is like low key, kind of easy. Like, okay, don't clip that. But with chat, GBT with YouTube, like I didn't know how to make electronics. I didn't know how to make a PCB. What were you doing before? Looked it up. I was, I was a mechanical engineer. I was in college. Like how old are you now? 24. How old is this? Three years since I started making it. And then two years of selling it. And so you're like, I'm an idiot. So you have a 3D printer at home. Yeah. And you're on chat GBT at the time. And you're like, teach me how to like, you're like, give me a chat GBT back in the day was not good enough. But then like, there's a motor. I mean, I don't know how electronic. So what did you do? You're at home. You've never made it. So I wrote out, what do I need this thing to do? I need it to heat. I need vibration. I need, you know, it to charge. It needs to be portable, whatever. You write out what you want. The obvious thing that it needs is like a PCB. It's a printed circuit board. So it's those little green things. Yeah. It looks like a chip. It has a bunch of things, a bunch of lines on it. So to design that, like I didn't know what to do, but I looked on Reddit. I asked for advice. I went on YouTube. I figured out how to design this thing. That was like the first thing I did. Then you design the casings. You look up potential motors. You buy them all, test them. And, and you pick it up. So you ended up making the, assembling the thing yourself. Yes. Yeah. So for, I was assembling these things myself up until literally a year ago to the day. Um, we, we got up to like 80 K a month. I was assembling, shipping. I had two 3d printers running my closet in like, in my apartment. And then I, I kind of went like Alex Hermosi mode. I was like, wait, what if I just, you know, do this, but more, you know? So I found like a 3PL, uh, and then normally a 3PL, I mean, you know this, but, um, they just ship stuff for you. Uh, they like fulfill your stuff. Uh, but I was like, Hey, let me use your employees. Like I'll put my 3d printers in your place. You guys can use them and make them on the spot there. Yeah. You can make them. And so now my 3PL makes it. And that's how we were able to grow to this point. So you're flying to China tonight. I'm flying to China tonight. You're going to get, you already have, cause this is made. Yeah. So we, I've been a prototype. You found something on Alibaba. What'd you do? No, no, I did not do that. That would be risky. Um, no, I, I got connected. So I, I'm like pretty big on Instagram now and like YouTube. So I, I, I made sure to like get connected via word of mouth. Um, so I found a factory together with them. We, we designed this thing. I flew there like a couple months ago. We, um, we got to this sort of like golden sample. And now production is like sort of done. Like the molds are done ish. So I'm going there now to like get the final samples and then we'll be able to. How many employees do you have? I don't have any like, like full time employees. Uh, but I have like, you know, contractors. I have like, um, five contractors. So have you taken money out of the business yet? Are you like, Oh yeah. I took a million bucks out of the business last year. Yeah. So like this year it'll do, let's say, let's say hypothetically you do 5 million in total revenue in 26. How much cashflow per like how much profit? I don't know if you measure it. Uh, yeah. It's around like 20% like net, uh, income. I don't know. I, I kind of look at it. It's just like my business. Like some of it's in the business bank. Some of it's my Vanguard. Some of it's in my personal bank. I don't know. I just kind of like take it as I see fit. And there's no repeat purchase, right? Like nobody's going to buy. Yeah. There's no, yeah. But what is like, uh, I remember years ago when, uh, Thera, you know, TheraGun. Yeah. Like my, I have a Hypervolt that I use forever. I love it. And I remember they came out and people were like, dude, like all the Chinese companies are just going to knock this off. But they, they did. They did. But they did do a good job of like kind of branding it where I, I am like into my Hypervolt. But then they also came out with like 30 products. There's like the things that like do my legs and I love all of them. And it's becoming my routine. Is there like other things that you're going to, you can do? I do have this vision of being like a, a brand specifically focused on making products for the TMJ community. The brand is like your TMJ. Yeah. So it's like your TMJ pen. Then I'm thinking like your TMJ band. So we had this guy on the podcast named David. Yeah. And his whole company. And like, we started out as a shtick, but it wasn't entirely a shtick where it was like, Sam doesn't believe that picking an important name is actually important. Yeah. And this guy's whole job, he makes a lot of money naming companies. He named Blackberry and Swiffer and. Sonos, Febreze. He named all this stuff. And I am totally on board with what he's doing now. And his whole, I actually just hang out with him the other day. His whole thing is like, if you're a young entrepreneur, start your company, who cares? But once you get some traction, consider making a name that can last forever because it actually does matter. And I buy into that. I would highly consider keeping that as maybe the TMJ pen, that product, but having like a proper company name. Yeah, that's, that's possible. I don't know. I feel like it's just like, not the main like concern right now. Cause like the. Maybe it's not now. For this product. Yeah. Like people it's like, this is like the TMJ pen, you know, it's like, it's like when people say TMJ pen, it's this, like there's no other thing. So it's like, I think that's a pretty good name, but yeah, for the company, like. So you said like, you did have a question. Well, what was your question going to be? Well, yeah, my question was going to be like, listen, you're going to, you're going to be like, oh, money doesn't matter. Da, da, da. But no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We won't say that. It's called my first million, not just 1 million and stop. I've heard a lot of guests come on the show. It's like, you know, they've made it and it's like, oh, yeah, da, da, da. I'm just like, nah, I want a couple of million in the bank. Right. I want that. So I get this urge to like sell in maybe two to three years or something. Sell the company. Yeah. And I don't know what, therefore I should like really be focusing on. Cause like if it, for me, like the obvious thing right now is like, hey, what's the like main constraint? It's, you know, going and solving the supply, the supply issue. Then it's going to be like demand. Short term constraint. And then you have your long term constraint in this scenario. Yeah. And, and I don't know what the like long term, like maybe it is a long term constraint to not have other products, but the issue is like, I don't know, like what would be the long term constraint. It would be super important then to weigh against like losing focus on just like cranking up more ads now. So maybe it's a recurring revenue, right? Like maybe I should get into TMJ like supplements and, and oils and creams and stuff, or maybe it's having more products on the consumer side. Maybe it's having IP. Maybe it's having registration with the FDA. Maybe it's having like. You have three options. Yeah. And you don't have to decide right now, but it's good to know what they are. Cause then when you're doing the business, you'll look for clues that support one of the three options. Either you can go wider TMJ. So you could say, great TMJ, this helps, but it's not a solved problem. I can sell the creams. I can sell the oils. I can sell the supplements. I can sell the whatever. So you go wider TMJ. Okay. You can go wider pain relief. So maybe heated massage for other conditions, other parts of your body, the kind of hyper rice model, the, um, there are gun model where you're going to create, you know, right. They're just like a recovery company. Yeah. They're a recovery company there and you would be a pain relief company. And you would say, okay, cool. I'm going to go find all the different types of pain. I'm going to create like specialty products. I'm gonna run the same playbook across them. And so like right now the, those slot he did, he did vibrating slides is like the big one that's going viral right now. That I think someone's Nike is doing or somebody is doing. Yeah. So you could, you could go wider in that direction of pain relief. He did maybe heated massaging pain relief, or you could just say, actually, I just got good at doing this model of like content based selling of products. I now know how to do a little bit of supply chain, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, but I'm really good on the marketing side and I'm fundamentally limited by category and product. And if I just take, you know, I'm a, I'm a nine out of 10 entrepreneur. I just need to find a nine out of 10 opportunity. TMJ is just a two out of 10 opportunity because of the nature of what I'm doing. And you just take your highly transferable skills of creating content, selling through content, you know, and you just apply it to a better category. And you, that has tailwinds. You don't fight the, the small TAM problem. And you'll potentially have liquidity already. And you're so young, you're going to have money in the bank and you're going to have like a bunch of lessons learned that with a clean slate, like this can be your starter business. Like most entrepreneurs have, have a starter business, have a thing that they did early that wasn't their lifetime business. And, you know, so that's the other possibility. So you, you know, you don't know which one of the three it is right now. Maybe you should write down a hypothesis as to which one of those three it is. And then as you operate the next six to nine months and you're focused on growing this business, you'll at least be aware of and looking for clues as to which one this might be. Maybe you launch a little test in one of those, one of those three areas. You figure it out that way. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think it's what it is, is like, I like to use the business as like a learning opportunity, like as just like a personal growth thing. It's probably going to be like, Hey, is there more juice to squeeze out of that in, in the TMJ space? There definitely is. I think so too. Because when I, a few, a handful of years ago, I had Lyme disease and I like would look on like Reddit and stuff. And I noticed that the, the very clear trend and amongst some other friends who got sick with different illnesses or injuries, there's dozens or hundreds of injuries or illnesses where people feel like no one's listening to me. No one takes me seriously. What the hell? But I know something's wrong. I don't feel good. And so they go to these communities and they buy these products where it's like, finally, I'm being heard and I'm being catered to. And it's, I, if I had to guess, this is one of them because I've heard that word TMJ. Yeah. But when you see it like clicking, I'm like, Oh, that can't be that bad. And then the person who has it, like, it's horrible. You know what I mean? Yeah. And if you go to the doctor, they're just like, well, you know, just put the mice on it. Try not to stress so much. Like, yo, I'm kind of pretty stressed because this hurts every day. Also, in addition to whatever caused it in the first place. My first, my first specialist I went to prescribed me like 2000 milligrams of Tylenol a day. I was like, I would, if I had to make a guess, this will, you're going to grow a lot over the next three years and sell it. And I think that would be pretty cool. These are fundamentally pretty tough businesses to sell. Um, you know, non-recurring niche product heavily based on your marketing genius. So it might be that like optimizing for the exit sometimes looks different than optimizing for cashflow. And so you want to kind of weigh those out. You don't even, again, you can go look at some comps and be like, is there any, who's done this before and exited? Well, let me go talk to them and understand, like, does the factors that made that a successful exit match what I, what I have fundamentally. In my business. But if it's just a cashflow business, that's great. Cashflow business can be awesome. Have you ever talked to any bankers or brokers? I haven't. A lot of times people only do that when they're ready to sell when you should have done it three years earlier and you find out you're like, I have a number in my mind. Just tell me what I need to achieve to make that number possible. And I'm just going to go do that for two years. Tell me three companies you looked at that are like this. What did they sell for? Why did they get that? What they got? When did they do it? And you're like, okay, it could be like this revenue, this cashflow. And, uh, you know, these are the five or six other metrics. I'll just do that for three years. And then I'll look up and be like, okay. Okay. Yeah. I, if you guys know any, I had some people reach out on LinkedIn about it, but they seem kind of skeezy. So I was like, I'm good. Yeah, no, I would. So I would talk to Quietlight. They're more of a online brokerage, but they're easy to talk to. If you go look at their thing, they'll, they have a lot of these like FBA businesses that they sell that like, are kind of like, I would say lower durability, lower quality businesses overall, but they seem to be selling. So like they know how to package those, what type, what businesses work and don't. Oh, Quietlight brokerage. Okay. Yeah. Dot com. So go to them and then go look at brokers in your space. Maybe like, you know, you just have to Google and like tell chat GBD, go do deep research on who's sold, you know, who are bankers that sell products like mine? Like, I don't even know what the name of this category is, but it might be like non-medical wellness devices. Okay, cool. And you could, you email the founders of people who have had had access and say, who did you, who all did you talk to? Cause everyone who sells at a company will talk to three or four. They'll say, I used this person. They were great. These two were kind of good. But I would not delay this. What Sam said is, he's absolutely right. You don't talk to them when you're, it's time to sell. You first talked to them a year or two before to actually understand what you need to do in the next 24 months to be a sellable business in the end. And the good thing about a sellable business is if somebody else is going to want to own it, it's probably the same like reasons you would want to own it. Yeah. So there's no harm in building a very sellable business. Cause at the very least you made a business that's higher desirability to own for yourself or for somebody else. Yeah. Dude, thanks for doing this. You're awesome. No, of course. Thanks for having me. Good luck in China. Yeah. All right. That is part two of shoot your shot. We got one more episode coming out of the San Francisco location. We got three more founders coming up on the next episode. Make sure you're subscribed on YouTube, on Spotify. We looked at the data. I think 80, 90% of you guys are not subscribed who watched the episodes. What are you doing? Subscribe so you can watch episode two. And do me a favor, whether you're a listener, then you're going to go to Spotify. Or if you're a watcher, go to YouTube, put in the comments, the city that you want us to go to next. Right now we're doing this in San Francisco. We've already done New York. We'll go somewhere next to do it. So let us know in the comments right now.