307: Eric Robichaud — How to Face Barriers and Grow the Business

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We're talking about a growth business, a growth business with some real challenges. I think we all face challenges of one kind or another, different times. We're going to hear some stories today from our guest. Hi everybody. My name is Bill Gallagher, Scaling coach, host of the Scaling Up Business podcast. We're joined today by Eric Robichaux, who's the CEO and founder of Green Goddess Supply. Right, right. Green gotta supply. And Eric joins us from just outside of the Boston area. I'm just outside of San Francisco. And we're going to talk about his business, his business journey. It's not exactly what it is, I think like so many of us. Not exactly what you think it might be at full at first glance. Oh yeah. I get a little sip of my coffee. Just a reminder before we get started, we've got hundreds and hundreds of shows now over years that we've been doing this, talking to authors, gurus, experts in everything from growth as well as the CEOs who have struggled with it, have been successful at it, about their growth, their exits, like that, all that and more@scalingcoach.com scalingcoach.com where we have all the tools, downloads, we can help you find a coach. You can sign up for one of our workshops as we talk today. We've got a summit coming up in Dallas. We've got a boot camp coming up in Lake Tahoe. We've got all kinds of things like that to help you learn how to grow, successfully grow and develop your business, your leadership style, your leadership team. Welcome to the show, Eric.

Thank you very much. Great to be here.

Yeah, I read a little of the bio and some of the prep stuff and getting ready for the show. I'm excited. Glad to have you on the show today to talk all about kind of what it's it's gone on. But I think it's interesting that, you know, there are some folks who maybe because of their age and time or their environment, you know, were more familiar. But you're like an outsider to the industry. I think that's interesting. We'll get into that. You started your career in software engineering, went to Rensselaer Polytechnic. Great, fabulous school. I've worked with lots of folks from there over the years and worked on gaming titles, software for games, that kind of thing, and then moved into this business. So what is the business? Tell us, tell our listeners. What is Green Goddess Supply?

What do you do? Sure, sure. So Green Goddess Supply is a cannabis tech lifestyle brand. Okay. So we, we produce cannabis tech lifestyle lifestyle brand. There's a mouthful. Right, so it's a cannabis tech lifestyle brand. So we develop products, everything from cultivation right through to consumption of the plants. Okay. So we can help you grow it and then store it, chop it, grind it, roll it, smoke it, end to end life cycle.

So enabling all of that. But not in the actual, not in the weed business itself, but the weed growing business.

Correct, Correct. We're an ancillary. They the terminology within the industries. We're an ancillary business. We are non plant touching as they say. We don't sell weed. We're not a dispensary. We just sell the tools and. Or another way, you know, colloquial will say like kind of like in the old gold rush days, you know, we just sell the picks and shovels and, and, and the jeans and, and the wheelbarrows.

You know, much cowbell for that move. Levi Strauss and a lot of bankers did really well here at San Francisco in the gold rush days by being in that being.

Actually did a video recently, I did a video recently and I, I use that analogy and I said look, there aren't too many 49, you're still out painting for gold right now. But who made the money? It was all the people in the ancillary businesses. Wells Fargo still around, Levi Strauss still around. You know, Studebaker went from their wheelbarrows to covered wagons to automobiles, you know, and then sold out. But you know, so yeah, we're an ancillary company and hoping for that same pattern. So.

But you said lifestyle and from the sound of it, it sounds like it's really about the consumer personal grower user, not the professional growers. You're not correct equipment for that, right?

No, no, we're not on the commercial side. This is all for end consumer and basically you Know, we're working especially on the cultivation side. We're trying to democratize the plant. You know, medicine shouldn't just be for those who can afford it. And so we're producing products that help everybody and anybody. We're empowering people, empowering everybody and anybody to be able to grow their own clean, organic herb at home themselves, quickly, easily, discreetly, inexpensively, and just basically targeting not so much those early adopters and the roll up the sleeve types, but the late majority, everybody else who just wants to be able to get their meds or grow, grow their, grow their canvas at home and, and do it easily. And I use the analogy like my car. I just want to stick the key in, turn the end, turn the key, and just get from point A to point B. I don't want to know about what goes on under the engine and all that complicated machinery. I just want it to work, work. And that's what we're doing with the armoire.

So you call it the armoire.

The armoire.

Right. And the armoire. It can sound very pretentious when you say it. I'm so smooth.

I've got an armoire.

I think we all pronounce it poorly, unless you're a native French speaker. Right, right. So this has got light and irrigation.

Absolutely.

For the growth of the plant.

It's everything, everything you need, all in the system. There's no other hardware you need to buy. It's got the lights, the fans, and I can actually do a demo at some point if you want to take a peek inside one of them. I got a couple behind me. I can show you what we've got.

I think what I'd love to do is have you kind of tell the story of your career. Right. And I think as I was looking at it before, the thing that strikes me is that there's a whole series of accidents that we navigate. Right. Things that were unforeseen and like that kind of thing in maybe not everyone's life, but many of our lives. And. And we call that life.

Yeah.

So tell us of your, like, business life story.

Absolutely. Yeah. There are very few people that I know when I look back that are actually doing what they went to school for back in the day, you know, now I'm in my 50s now, so I mean, fast forward, you know, 30 years or whatnot, but there are very few people that are actually doing what they went to school for. Right. And it's just like you said, it's called life. It just unfolds my. You know, I Started off I was definitely the hardcore software engineering. I was a software geek and I was known as, you know, the computer geek for, for, for years and eons, which is really kind of hilarious to me now when I look back because I am very deep entrenched into this industry. I've been in this industry for, about the cannabis industry now for about seven years and you know, all in on it now. But when you take a step back and everybody that knew me from a very young age, I was, I was, I don't want to use Prodigy type but like I was like you know, 12, 13, reading my mom's college textbooks and stuff and I'm in data processing and all that and, and so I was into it from a very early age, knew exactly what I wanted to do and was really, really good at it. You know, I, you know, I was really good at what I did and did that for, for 25, 28 years. I was in tech. But when you look back, just the way things meander. When I first started off, my first job was at CVS headquarters. I, I designed and coded the whole centralized credit card processing and healthcare adjudication systems that still run today. Okay. Like 30 years later I left CVS. I had started my own side business doing consumer software. And this was back in the days of DOS actually and five and a quarter inch floppy disks and I developed.

My own, not that eight inch discs.

No, no, no, I would, I was high tech. I mean that was old, that was really old. Not the eight inch. We, we had the new high tech, five and a quarter inch and they would double sided, they weren't just single sided. Yeah, that was so, so yeah, back in the day I start, I started this consumer software and it was, I mean this was pre Internet, I'm talking late 80, like 89, 1989, 1990. So it was mail order and we were pushing the shareware try before you buy method of like demo versions and things like that. And I got on the board of the association of Shareware Professionals. I mean I was just all in on the software industry in 1993, 92, 93. My business was a side thing and it was getting busier and busier and busier and I had to decide, you know, you're going to fish, you're going to cut bait, you know, is this a site, a hobby or am I going to go for it? And I decided to go for it and kind of walk the plant and you know, jumped off into the deep end. I left, you know, CVS where I Had, you know, stock Options and the 401k plan. And I was on an upward trajectory, doing really well, getting promotions and climbing the corporate ladder and all that fun stuff. Guys that are still there, that I used to work with are now directors or VP level, you know, that sort of thing. Right. I walked away from that to start my own thing. I decided to go for it and I've never looked back. That was in the summer of 1993 and I've been working for myself ever since. And so I built a whole business doing, doing consumer software. That was where I met Vincent Bateti and we did a ton of children's. He was in LA and was on the licensing side, I was on the tech development implementation side. And we partnered together and did joint ventures. We developed the software, he got the licenses. So we did things like children's storybook products, movie books like Free Willy, Little Rascals, Batman and Robin. We did a lot of games and screensavers and all kinds of entertainment type software. Back then it was in a box, sold at retail. And then, you know, along comes the Internet, right? Come along comes the Internet E commerce. Things start shifting and game consoles came out and eventually Vincent and I worked together. We did well over 100 titles. I don't remember the exact count. But after about 10 years of working together he drifted more into, into game console stuff like, like Nintendo and Xbox and you know, console, like Sony PlayStation console games. And we went more into, off into the Internet. So we started doing less work together after about 10 years, from 93 to about 2003 and, and then I had built this company up and then I sold it and then took a small core piece of that business that the buyers didn't want, which was Customs Solutions and, and ran with that and basically built a digital agency. So we took, now by this point we're doing software development, but it's all, now it's becoming web stuff and database driven websites and, and we launched a digital interactive agency. And so that morphed all of a sudden became a little bit more of the marketing guy than just the tech guy. The tech and the programming and the web stuff was all the implementation of the marketing programs, but it was driven by marketing. So the next, you know, maybe 10 or 12 years was digital agency and that sort of thing. And it was there that, that's where the genesis of Green Goddess came from. It turned out to be a little skunk works project for a client. Really it was just a little side thing. I had a client who came to me and said he was a big seller on Amazon. He wanted us to do a whole bunch of custom reports and all kinds of Amazon API programming and all this stuff. And, and he's like, look, I have this problem. He's talking about the problem. He's like, I can't really explain it. He goes, really? To get into this and to do this, start an Amazon seller account and start selling some stuff, and then you'll see what I mean. And when he first brought that up, I looked at him like he had two heads. I'm like, like, that's kind of a big ask. You know, go launch a whole, you know, Amazon seller account, start selling stuff, buying inventory, shipping stuff. I'm like, I'm a software geek. Like, what, What? Like you want me to not doing that? Yeah, but he, he, he, he was persistent about it. He was persistent. And, and he was a big client. He was. We were doing six figures a year with him, just him. And he's like, look, I'll pay if you time. This is all part of the project. Just go do it. And I'm like, all right, fine, whatever. Like, fine. Eventually, I relented and we set up the Amazon account. And initially we were selling rubber cockroaches, slingshot, rubber chickens, like children's toys and novelties and just kind of what I call goofy, you know, and it was just because I didn't care about the products. We were just like, oh, what, what's. What sells well on Amazon, and okay, good, you know, just do whatever. Like, I would get the cells, well, turn it. Because that wasn't selling. Wasn't my point. It was, I just want to start churning all this data and all this and then start programming against it and reporting and all that stuff. So it was just a means to an end. And, but, but since I've gotten into it, I don't want to lose money, right? So as a little side project, we would look for, well, what are good products we can sell on Amazon? And one day I had a guy who worked for me in marketing. He was a young, younger kid. He was, I was his first job out of Syracuse University. And he was like 24, very clean cut. And he came to me one day and he's like, hey, I found the unicorn product. I'm like, what? He's like, for Amazon, I found a unicorn product because we had a checklist of, of criteria that we look for in the product. You know, for, for Amazon. Things like, you know, it doesn't have high volume, high demand on Amazon, is it A low competition. What are the price points? What are the margins we can get from it? You know, we had, like, seven different criteria we look at, and nothing would meet all seven. Seven. But, like, maybe we get to five out of the seven. That would be a good product, a good candidate. If you're only two or three check boxes, maybe not so good. He comes to me, he goes, I got the unicorn product. It literally checks all checks, all seven boxes. Like, great. What is it? He's like, yeah, it's a. Like, what? I can't hear. Look at me in the face. You know, stop looking at your shoes. Look at me in the face. Speak up. What? Good. A wee pipe. Oh, I'm fine with that. I'm fine with that.

Right?

And he's like, you are? I'm like, yeah, I smoke. You do? And I'm like, well, yeah. I mean, but back then, you know, in Massachusetts, that was circa 2014. 2014, we did not have legalization here yet. It was paraphernalia.

Did you have shops that sold stuff?

Oh, absolutely. That. That is all legal. There's nothing illegal about that nationwide. There was a court precedent about that eons and years, like 20, 30, 40 years ago about that. So that stuff, you know, paraphernalia, we call them accessories paraphernalia, drug paraphernalia. That sounds like heroin needles to me. You know, so we say the 60s and. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Same, same. So I remember still looking at him going, no, no, it's fine. I smoke. He goes, you do? I'm like, yeah. I mean, we don't talk about it, but yeah, you know, it's like, oh, okay. So. So we got it. We started selling, and it turned out to be a huge seller. And he came to me about two weeks later, and he's like, hey, we're out of, you know, slingshot rubber chickens. You know, should I buy more? And I'm like, no. Like, why? I'm like, for every dollar we spend, we make, you know, know, a dollar a dollar back. You know, like, we, you know, we put in a dollar, we make two.

Yeah.

On the pipe, every dollar I put in, I'm making seven. No, let's get more of that. You know, let's do more of that. So we started sourcing more, and eventually you wake up about two, three months later and look back and realize that We've got about 12 or 15 products we're selling, and they're all smoking accessories. Interesting. Now we're running a marketing agency, and if you're a hammer, every Problem looks like a nail, right? Because that's what you do. We're a marketing agency, so at like, hey, we should put a brand around this because we are selling on Amazon and we can box out some of the competition if we have a brand, stop them from selling on our listings and there's strategy behind it. So we said, you know, we should really create a brand around this. And that's where the Green Goddess came from. We, we developed the Green Goddess brand because that's what we do. We had logo developers, designers, graphic designers, marketing people. And so we built the entire Green Goddess brand in house around these products and that. And as it started going well, it started catching more and more of my attention. And then I said, well, wait a second. And I started analyzing the market for real as a business and started seeing gaps and holes and opportunities and said, okay, wait a second. And that's when we, we pivoted and said, all right, if we're going to do this, let's do this for real now, let's. And we kind of tweaked the brand and the messaging and the targeting and, and started doing it for real and started taking off. And so by 2017, and I'll tell you the story about the armoire and all that stuff, but in 2017 is where we decided, like, let's go for this. It was the second time in my life of, you know, is this a hobby or you do it and like, let's go for this. I sold the agency to focus on green goddess 100%.

So let me ask a question. Before we get into the products that you chose, that kind of thing. In the world of Amazon though, can I just come along and go, I'm going to sell pipes and I'm going to add a few other things and I'm going to add some rolling machine or, you know, a bunch of other like accessories.

So. So back in the day, yes. Now I will fast forward today and say we're not selling pipes. Our Amazon business has gone to this because they've shut off. They've decided not that anything's illegal, but there's also what they call community standards. And they just say, oh, we just don't want that.

They don't have anything that would be considered drug paraphernalia.

Right, right. So they're like, we just don't want that Now. Now, of course there's a lot of humorous stuff like Amazon, it's a love hate relationship and they are very predatory. And I think it's actually, I mean, it's antitrust, it should be illegal. But they, they watch all the data from all their third party sellers and if something takes off and goes well, magically they start selling it and then they put their own, their own customers out of business or, or you know, squelch their sales. I think that that's like.

It is and I, and they do it at a different level in a way than others would. But if you think about it, our grocery stores have done that for years. You know, they'd have, they had store brands that would come on and they watch very closely all the sales of everything in the store and they could decide which brands to have and which to not. And, and, and today they kind of look like consumer brands or like mainstream brands. I remember at one point there were like generics that were supposed to be the ultimate. But it does seem like this happens in other sectors as well.

Yeah, but it's, it's a little different if you're just selling in like a grocery store. Amazon, they are, they are providing a platform for you to sell. They are providing a serve. It's different. It's not just a store where they just stocking stuff and you decide not to stock your stuff anymore. They're not buying my products. They're giving me a platform for me, everything. Trust me, Amazon does not pay me a penny. I don't sell to Amazon.

Right? No, no, no, you're selling well, there is a, there's a Amazon business. Right. That's a different sector. And they do buy some things and sell them about.

Right. And what most people don't realize it's about now, I don't know, right up to the minute, you know, but in broad strokes, it's like half, it's like half their, half their revenues come from third parties. Only about half of their revenues come from them buying and selling things directly. But they, they build this platform and offer this platform for sellers like a Shopify or whatever. They offer a platform for you to set up your own store and sell stuff and then they turn around and analyze all the data, you know, so, you know, it's, it's, it's a tough business. But they, they have like today, all the pipes that we were selling before those have all been shut off and, and we can't sell any of those anymore. But, but you know, back in 2015 it was like the wild 14. It was the wild west and it was all, it was all new. And people will say like, oh, I go on, I find a pipe right now, okay, right now that'll be gone tomorrow. That's because there's just millions and millions and millions of third party sellers with. With bazillions of SKUs and they can't see everything in real time. Eventually they catch up to it and get shut down.

So where do you. You sell direct on your own website now?

Yes, mostly. Actually what we do is wholesale. Mostly we wholesale to smoke shops, head shops, dispensaries with all our whole catalog. We have a whole catalog, about 300 SKUs of product. Our wood products, storage products, bamboo keefe sifter boxes and things like that, grinders, pipes, etc and we mostly sell them wholesale. But then we do have our own website, the armoire homegrow system. Right now eventually it'll go wholesale but right now it is only direct from us. It's direct to consumer because it's a specialty project product and it's kind of large and shipping's an issue and all that stuff.

So.

So that's a direct consumer off our website and we do have all the products on a website that people can buy them. So if we're not in a store near you then you can go on our website and get it. So. So we do sell online, but it's not our primary. It's our secondary. The primary is also.

It's remarkable how community standards and distribution and things change and evolve and they go up and down and swing back and forth like a pendulum. And I was at a pretty tender age when I bought my first album, right. There were records and, and eight tracks and that kind of thing around the house. But I bought my own album for myself was Pink Floyd, Dark side of the Moon. Yeah. And I bought it in a neighboring town. I was living on the north shore of Wahoo and I bought it in the town of Haleiwa and a little record store slash head shop alongside some pipe screens and rolling papers, right.

And.

And I was like, you know, that was a very like big thing to get all those things at that age. And you know, on my own.

Especially. Yeah. A Pink Floyd goes on out. Listen to some Pink Floyd. That's a great. That is, it's. It's like peanut butter and jelly.

Yeah. And an album where all the songs work together and flow. Right. It's a little less common these days, but although coming back in some cases, but. And I think like that was a thing that you could go. There were head shops, right. Paraphernalia stores, but they were specialty kinds of things. You knew exactly where you were. They were in some communities, but definitely not in Others not welcomed in places. And I think it's interesting that you sort of saw that sort of blowback in Amazon initially where there you're selling some things and then you're off it. Now you're selling direct and you're selling to stores who are doing similar.

Yeah, because you know back in 60s, 70s, even the early 80s, it was initially all the paraphernalia, the accessories were illegal. Not for any reason, but it's the same thing that would just happen with seeds actually brand new breaking news just with this week in the seed world that, that oftentimes progress is it comes through a lot of hard fighting, you know through, through it's hard fought hard one and with, with the accessories it takes a lawsuit and someone filed the lawsuit and actually they were here in Massachusetts, someone filed a lawsuit and one and it set precedent and, and basically they made the statement that, that the product that you have to legality has to be about the product itself, not intent or intended usage. A cereal spoon, you can free base with a cereal spoon. That doesn't make cereal spoons illegal drug paraphernalia. It still has a valid use. Okay, right. So that's where you started seeing a lot of you know, for tobacco use only and that kind of stuff back in the like 80s and early 90s and ST stuff. And because they said look there are legitimate uses and whatever, it does not make it necessarily drug paraphernalia. You know, it's just a, a glass pipe or a grinder or a rolling tray like these things are. And, and a judge, a federal judge agreed that yeah, these things are legal. You know, if you, you take the same thing and you're doing cocaine with it, it's drug paraphernalia. If you're smoking tobacco out of it, you know, it's just a pipe. So where's that line? So that's when all the accessories became legal. And then all of a sudden you had head shops popping up everywhere and it would, it's been sold everywhere because they're not illegal. The same thing just happened with seeds. They deemed that cannabis seeds. This week the DEA put down a ruling and it was because a lawsuit pushed against it and said why are these things illegal? There's no thc. You're regulating thc. Psychoactive. There's no THC in seeds. There isn't. It's a seed, there's nothing in it. And, and the judge came back and ruled that in the lawsuit that it's true. You can't go off of like the. I forget the term they use. But basically the. The original parent. Like. Like where it's derived from, you can't go off of. Well, this was derived from cannabis that had thc. Great. I don't care. Right. This seed does not have any thc. The. The regulations, if you want to regulate against now germinating and growing, that. That's different. But the seed itself is just. And they said. And the DEA accepted that and put out an official ruling from. The DEA said, yeah, seeds are seeds, and they're just all classified as EMP seeds. And they're all seeds. Illegal. And it's usually because there's a lawsuit and then a ruling and it becomes precedent.

It's interesting. So many industries happen from a moment of change, right? We open the show talking about the Gold Rush and Sutter's Mill. They found some gold and. And there were settlers and people first, the Native Americans who were here before all of us. And then came the Mexicans, and then we took it from them. And then the people just swarmed for the Gold Rush. And all the earlier occupants, in particular the Native Americans were really dislocated, mistreated. And by that shift. And then in other industries. I worked for a while in telecom, and that whole shift to the modern telecom that we know really happened with the breakup of the old Bell system. And that was a lawsuit, right. That MCI found themselves in a little bit of a business, and then AT&T tried to shut them down, and then, boom, we have something, right? So there's a shift in the world, right? And even now, like, we just had the pandemic, we're still dealing with the sort of trailing edge, maybe of the pandemic. It certainly feels like it, but things have been massively dislocated, and there are people trying to sort of go back to the way things were. And yet probably you never actually go back. You're always altered by a major event.

Yeah, there are these cataclysm, like you have growth and then some cataclysmic event that, like, really pushes things forward. Some. Some event. And like you said, the pandemic here has. Has changed things irrevocably. You know, to some extent. Some things will go back to some. Some semblance of normalcy, but. But there are things like zoom meetings. Zoom meetings are here to stay, you.

Know, video remote, a long time ago, but they were the domain of very large corporations and very large corporations, government entities, that kind of thing. Then they moved down and became more consumer, but they still weren't, like, broadly Accepted, except in a few cases, we had things. But then, boom. This, like, changed everything, right?

And the same thing, like, with the work from home remote work. I mean, it was around the fringes. It existed. Some people did it. I started a virtual business when I sold my software business and. And then shifted the digital agency. I did that with a home office, and my team all worked remote. I had a smaller team of, you know, they're like half dozen of us, and we work remote. That was almost unheard of. It's like, oh, you're not a real business. You know, you're working from your age.

You don't have an office.

You don't have an office. You know, and we were on the. And I. That was something I was concerned about. However, I marched forward and did it anyway for several reasons. I always, you know, it doesn't scare me to be a blazer trailblazer. But also, at that point, I had sold a business and carved out a piece. You know, we were doing some custom work already, so that became the core. I already had a core customer base, and they already knew me. So it wasn't like I was trying to put my shingle out on the Internet and, you know, start from scratch. You know, I had a client base and I had, you know, and they already knew me and. And our level of professionalism and all that. And so it was a little bit less risky. But I was doing that back in, like, 2005 when that was not. And it was like, oh, really? And it was like. And when. I'll be honest, there are certain times where I did sort of just avoid talking about, or I won't say hid, but didn't bring up that, you know, working from home office or that we're a virtual company or whatever, you know, and today it's absolutely. Today it's a norm, you know, it's like, oh, really? Oh, you. Oh, that's cool.

Yeah.

Oh, you work from home office. Oh, great, great, great. It's all. It's changed. It's definitely changed. I've been through that in the early days where it was like, not. It was not necessarily. There were people who definitely looked down. Oh, you're not a real business, you know, whatever. Or wouldn't have. Wouldn't have hired us just because we're a virtual business.

So you could say, I mean, one of our other businesses, a fashion jewelry business, was selling a great deal of jewelry with Amber in it. And then a movie came along, Jurassic park, right? And Amber suddenly got interesting and popular, and that business like, exploded overnight. And so I think there are things that are lucky breaks, and whether they. For the business, right. If you were in. If you had Zoom or any other kind of platform like that, the pandemic was a lucky break. It's a perverted thing to say, right? So what would you say? Have been your biggest lucky breaks so far?

Yeah, so we've had a few. And obviously there is serendipity. Like I said, I didn't sit down here and say, like, dude, I'm gonna get into the weed business. Like, that's not what happened. I was a tech software guy, and, you know, I had a client like, oh, you need to know, like, all right. And we just kind of, like, tripped into it. The. The. The. There's an old saying that I heard, you know, I was in my 20s or something, but that luck is when opportunity meets preparation. So it's when, you know, when opportunity knocks, are you there and ready and are you answering the door? So there's a lot of serendipitous things that happen, but, like, with this, you know, it's also paying attention to this stuff and looking at and analyzing, going, okay, wait a second, there's something here, you know, but, like, I'm doing what I'm doing now. Again, not because I ever wanted. I wanted to be in the weed business, but it just. It just happened. But I recognized opportunity did the analysis and jumped in. When the pandemic hit, another thing that happened is people started staying home and started, you know, victory gardens and started growing their own vegetables and growing their own stuff, and they were spending a lot more time at home. They started thinking about more home stuff. So home massively, right? Yeah.

Yeah.

So homebrew really started to take off, which was. Which was helpful for us. That was a good thing. And so, yeah, there are times where, you know, like, that it just is. We have a product and, oh, look, the market matured around it. Oh, great. Okay. So that was very serendipitous. Other times, things happen like that, and it's a matter of, do you recognize it, see it, and run with it? You know, do you take advantage?

If that's your lucky break, then along the way, we have crises, moments that nearly kill us. What would you say have been your biggest crises so far?

Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, the old saying, if, you know, whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. I must be worried. Really, really strong, because I had things that almost killed me. The. Yeah, actually, all the. All the supply line stuff has been just an Absolute nightmare. It's working itself out. It's still not finished and fixed. But things like just not only goods that you're importing, but even just materials to make your goods. You know, everything. You know, there's so much stuff. We're in a global economy that like so much is imported from all over and, and shipping is going through the roof and, and then the delays, you know, factories all over the world in India and China and the US and all over the place, factory shutdowns, you know, things like that. And then the shipping. You've seen the stories about like the 40 or actually at one point it was up TO I think 72 ships anchored off of Long beach. Can't get into port.

We've had them perfectly on in our work down there. We. You could look out and count them sitting out there.

Yeah. And I'm like, oh yeah, those are ours. You know, we had boats out there just where it would be like two weeks to get to port of la, two weeks in. So if we order product two weeks later, we've got it. Okay. It turned into, well, six weeks to get to Long beach and then it sat there for two months.

Right.

And once it gets there, you have no idea. So you have customers when you got to be ready, when you get ready. I. How about I have no idea. I have no French clue because it's just sitting. It's here, it's arrived. It took three times longer, but it's here. But it. I don't know when it's going to unload. And we had one took 63 days to unload. It was like over two months.

You know, this is an interesting thing. It's going to, it's. We are being reshaped globally right now. The massive disruption, dislocation happening now in Europe over concerns about energy sourcing from Russia and security realignment. Suddenly Finland and Sweden, Sweetland, a brand new country, new country. Sweden and Finland are now thinking about joining NATO where they wanted to be neutral right on the border with Russia for the first time. Fascinating and disturbing, dislocating. And now people have got to be going, huh? Maybe we should be concerned about sourcing things from China because where they seemed like they were going to be reliable and consistent and very pro production and business. Now it's like I don't know if they're going to do it and do they have hostile intentions on their neighbors?

Right, right. And one of the things that, you know, with people, you know, I hear stuff all day long from people who don't aren't involved and don't know what they're talking about, you know, but just, you know, go to some political rally or something and come back. Oh, made it. Made in America. You should make it here. Like, gee, thanks, genius. Okay. It takes years to set up production lines and teach people and get factories going, you know? You know, like. Like, we do some product. We do production all over. We do production here in the U. S. We do production all over the place. Okay. But we do production China as well.

And we have a profound labor shortage.

Here in the U.S. oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the thing is, you know, people are like, oh, you should make it here. I'm like, great. I would love to. I can't even get the materials here. The materials aren't even made here. So, like. Like, it's. It's. It has to come from. It has to come from somewhere anyway. Right now there's just so many fundamental levels of infrastructure and foundation that also need to catch up to all this. But there are materials that just. Just. We can't get them here. You know, they have to be reported. So. But the thing is that, you know, dude, we were working on this four years ago. There was no such thing as a pandemic. And it was a very different situation back then. And it was. It made economic sense and so forth. So you can't turn on a dime. You know, it's like, we are getting.

Kicked off of Amazon. Were you independent of them before they made their changes or.

Yeah, so, yeah, and I'll make two points there. So. Yes, we were. We were. By that point, the. We started on Amazon. Amazon, but quickly realized. Once. Once I realized, like, there was something here, and then we started analyzing it. Then I saw the holes in the marketplace. I saw where they're. You know, we started analyzing it like a real business. And we developed and we developed an angle and a mission and all right, here's who we are, and here's what we're trying to do. And this is what we're. And we went way off Amazon. And like, like today, Amazon is probably like, not even 1% of our business. You know, it's a very, very small, minute piece of our business. But now Amazon, we didn't get kicked off. We're still selling on Amazon. But what it is is they started delisting individualized products. And at this point, they've delisted probably 80 or 90% of my. My catalog on that I started with on Amazon. Like, but it's a. It's a slow death by a thousand Cuts. You know, they shut off this one, then they shut off that one a week later that. It's like every day you walk into the offices, like, oh, what now? You know, they shut off another product. You know, they shut off products they were selling. They were selling grinders. And then. And we got a notice that, like, you can't sell this. This is a drug paraphernalia. I'm like, dude, you're selling grinders.

Well, it's a big company, and they don't know everything that they're working on. Right, right.

Well, they have millions and millions of SKUs. And I'm sure there's probably 400 people in some compliance department somewhere just looking at products and scanning things. And, you know, like, that's a whole other thing too. Like, they would shut down something that's perfectly fine. Fine. And we would. You. You can dispute. And then it go. Then they take another second look at it, and they go, oh, yeah, yeah, right. And they would turn our product back on. All right, great. All right, good. Then two weeks later, it gets shut down again. Oh, there's a drug paraphernalia. Like, no, it is not. Stop. Like this. What we do is we got to the point, we realized, right. The pipes, we don't fight that stuff. And that's long since dead. But there are other things, like. Like rolling trays and stuff. I mean, like, you roll tobacco, you can roll whatever. It's not drug paraphernalia. You know, they'd shut it. Oh, there's a drug craft for an alien. Shut it down. And we're like, no, no, it's not. We push back. We show them one, like, oh, yeah, okay. They turn it back on. But I think what happens, they also have automated bots, you know, that go through and troll that are doing stuff. Right? Yeah. And so they would say, oh, yeah, you're right, and turn it back on. And then two weeks later, it shut down again. Then we have to dispute it again. And it gets. And then every time it shut down now. Now you lose your sales velocity and all this other. It's just. It really. It really hampers your business. It really does.

Let me. Let me flip it a little bit. In the process of growing this business, what have you learned about yourself? Where have you gotten better as a leader? And what have you learned about your limits?

Right, right. So I did learn about passion. I see. When I. If you remember what I was saying about my journey, I went from CVS or I was doing, like, credit card processing. Big, big, big system stuff. And then I went into. I started my own business was consumer software. We did games and screen savers and goofy stuff and we made people laugh and smile. People loved our products. And 30 years later, I've actually, it's not often, but I have about once a year I get someone who finds me on email. Oh, I've been looking for everybody. I just found. I got a new Windows machine. And, and you know, do you still have the floppy disks from such and such? I'm like, dude, that was 30 years ago. No, I don't have that floppy disk anymore. But I've had a couple cases where I'm like, actually I do. And I just like, I'll pay you for it. I'm like, I don't even care. This is not a business model. I'll just be. I'm just being a nice guy. Here you go. And I drop one in the mail to him, you know, but it, because it's, it's. They're fun, they're funny, they make people smile. We enjoyed. We, we made people smile. And that was a great thing, you know, and it was software that we sold. It was in a box, okay? And it was, it was commodity software. I eventually, as my business grew, and especially once I sold that business and I started doing the consulting stuff, for the next 12 years, I was doing business services and it really killed me. And I felt dead inside. I love my clients. My clients were great, but it was all I. There were actually parts of me that I felt almost not jealous, but resentful. I felt almost resentful because I'm self. I'm working on everybody else's business, not my own. I'm helping you build and market yourself better and sell more stuff. And I'm helping you and I'm helping you and I'm. And I'm busting my chops helping everybody else, and they're doubling sales and tripling and they're doing all this great stuff and all that. But like, it was, it was a grind. I found that in the services business, you know, we could, we could produce twice the quality and at half the price, three times faster, and it's still not good enough, you know, and it's, it's like people and, and I got burnt down on it and I realized I'm making good money, but I'm dead inside. Like, like, do I want to? You know, can I? And you, you see these stories all the time. Like, like, you know, famous people. And so, you know, the rich and famous and all that who are like, you know, all right, I'm making good money and I'm wealthy and all. Yeah, but, but I'm just. But there's no joy in this. And when I got into the, what I saw in the Green Goddess products, it wasn't, it wasn't because it was weed or it wasn't the type of products, but it was like, wait a minute, this is a consumer product. Again, like before, if someone's being a curmudgeon and giving you a hard time, but they're your lifeblood, you have to just suck it up and be like, okay, we'll do it over again for the 19th time. You know, it's like, whatever. Yes, sir. Okay. Yes, we'll work on Saturdays for you. Because you didn't tell us about the deadline till the last minute. You know, whatever. Now it's like, first of all, we don't get complaints. The products just work. I mean, the commodity products, they just. A grinder, it works. You know, but those random one in a million where like I had a guy like, oh, my thing scuffed. I'm like, here's your 20 bucks back. You're all set. Thanks. Have a good day.

Yeah. Yeah. Replacer. It's not a life changing event. It's easier and you control that relationship.

Right? So it was. And then what we're doing, like with the armoire, we're just so passionate about it. It's like, so it sparked that passion. We're empowering, take control, democratizing the plant, letting them do it themselves, and we're helping them be successful. And that's, it's really rewarding and, and it's just a different business. So one of the things. So back to your question. One of the things I learned is also about assessing, like, am I just kind of like floating through life making good money but hating my job? Like, no, I'm, I'm passionate about this. I love what I'm doing now. I sold the last business because I was like, I'm dead inside and this sucks. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna struggle for a while. I'm starting over at 50, struggling in a startup, you know, to get it off the ground again. But I'm willing to do that because I'm not going to just keep, you know, making good money, but just dead inside and hating my job. I'm like, I work for myself. If I hate my job, whose fault is that?

Yeah, I think, I think there's something really good that you point out that is useful to look at so it's great to feel like what you do matters. It's great to have fun with what you do. And those are distinct things. Right. And then to actually be good at like have some skills, you're going to kind of know that if you stay in business for a while or not, like I might be good at this. So you learn that, oh, you're good at designing things, you're good at finding opportunity, you're good at managing certain things. You enjoy this thing. You feel like what you do, like it matters, like it's something useful for doing. The intersection of those things is, is very powerful.

And, and, and this is my, I don't know, fourth or fifth serial entrepreneurial type business. I, you know, spun off businesses from different things. I, I even glossed over a couple. I had like a little spin off business from one of the others that I sold off and. Yeah, and so one of the things that I, that I came to realize at one point is that business is business. After 30 years, business is business. We might sell different widgets, but the mechanics are the same. I learned that a long time ago. I was on a train ride when I was only 20. I was in my first business, 20 something. I was in my first business selling software, you know, games and screensavers and what. And I was on a train and sitting there across at dinner on the dinner car, they just pack you all in, you know, some random dude across from me, he was all covered in paint and everything and, and he had gotten on the train in New York City. And so I'm start chatting, so what do you do? And he's like, oh, I'm whatever. He goes, I, I design. I have a business, I'm the owner and we design and build sets on Broadway. So like you know, cats and things like that and whatever. And so we're like painting the garbage cans and whatever and all the, the whole set does not. We do set design and, and construction and painting and all that. And his background was fine arts. So this is construction. But then his, his big thing is the final touches to make it all the look realistic and, and all that and the shading. And we start talking and he's complaining about the issues in his business and it's customer the collections and, and taxes and it's like, you know.

Right, yeah.

And, and that's when the light bulb went on at like 20, whatever. I was 24, 25 years old. Like wow. Like that could not be more. He's working with his hands couldn't be more different, more foreign to me. Like I'm a software geek and this guy's like painting sets in Broadway. But at the end of the day we're both complaining about, you know, hiring, firing good, you know, finding good people. You know, what all just business is business.

Well, that's probably a good place to end it. Today we're, we're pretty much a little over time. If you want to know more about the business, go to Green Goddess Supply. There's a lot of S's in there, but we'll put the link in the show notes and on the crawl on the screen. Right now if you're watching on video on YouTube or Facebook or LinkedIn, it's there on the crawl start now. It'll be in the show notes and so on. GreenGoddessSupply.com is where you find all about Eric's business there. Oh, there it is on our screen. So you find all that there. I want to give a big thanks to Wanda Mitchell producing our show, getting our guests ready, scheduled, everything like that in the background. Yay Wanda And I want to give big thanks to Vern Harnish, author and creator of the Scaling up framework that we use to help companies grow every day. If this show helped you in some way, please like subscribe, you know, get notifications on it so that you get them all the time. We put out new shows every week for years now, but also share it with somebody else. Right. Pass it along if you want to drop us line suggestion for a show, some feedback. Question about something. Can we help you find a coach or something like that? Info scalingcoach.com is a good email to write to info scalingcoach.com all those episodes and more@scalingcoach.com I want to give shout out to our production company. Our audio is edited by Albert Burge at Podfly Productions and our shownotes are written up each week by Ein Kadina with proof by Tim McGowan. Thanks again everyone for listening for watching. Keep scaling up. Bye bye.

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