Februarys Income Report - $1million

You're listening to Freedom Fast Lane, presented by capitalism dot com. This is the show about building businesses and investing the profits so that you can live life on your terms. And now, your host, the future owner of the Cleveland Indians, Ryan Daniel Moran.

Hey, fastlaners, welcome to Freedom Fastlane. This is Ryan Daniel Moran, and it is time for another income report. This is where I report on the status of my businesses, how they're doing, as well as my investments and their growth or retraction. As you'll see in this month, it was kind of a tough month. I got kicked in the teeth a little bit across the board. It was a little bit of, well, I had challenges in pretty much all of my businesses. And I will explain exactly what that looks like. It is kind of a kick to the ego when you report on your income over the Internet and you had a down month and a significantly down month, which I'll explain. So I'm eating a little bit of humble pie and sharing you some of the ugly details of things that happened. Total revenues, top line revenues were right at $1 million across my businesses, but there is an asterisk to that. And the asterisk is that is factoring in a new business. So I was part of an acquisition that closed on February 1st, and the revenues on that were $250,000. I'll explain more about that business towards the end of the income report. But if we look at the comparison of the businesses we were measuring in January compared to the businesses in February, there's about a $350,000 retraction from January into February. So that hurts. March is thankfully looking much, much better. But I'll explain a little bit about what happened in the down month. I am getting this income report to you later than usual because I took this thing called a vacation, or maybe it's a yay cation. It could be a soft V, but it's one of those things where you just don't work for like more than a few days at a time, which I don't know that I have ever done. It was wild and I feel great now. I should probably do that more often rather than running myself into the ground. So again, Top Line revenue was about $1 million over all of my businesses. And the breakdown looked like this. My primary business is my sports nutrition and fitness company. Top Line revenues for that were about 450,000. This is just one of those examples where we're kind of caught in the middle of orders, which means that we sell our inventory straight to Amazon on Most of our products, so they order in wa and we didn't have a whole lot of orders in February. We also did strike a fantastic retail deal that we are really, really excited about. We should be in between 800 and 1100 stores nationwide in the next 30 to 45 days. And as soon as that is live and actually physically in stores nationwide, I can talk more about it. Until then, my lips are sealed on that. But. But the orders did not come in until March. So we were kind of caught in the in between where Amazon ordered a lot from us in January and they ordered a lot from us in March, and we had the retail orders kick in in March, but there was this gap in February where we just didn't have the same amount of orders that we would normally have. A bit of good news though is we have really cracked the launch processes and the ranking processes on Amazon in a way that is more sustainable and profitable and faster. And we've really gotten good at releasing new products and getting them to market quickly. And I want to publicly acknowledge my partner Matt, who is just a master at getting products out the door quickly. And then the whole team has really made it a focus to both systemize and focus on the launch process of products, meaning getting them to customers quickly. So that has been a huge shot in the arm over the last 45 days. We've had a couple of products really come out of the gates swinging. So if you're listening to this and you either have a smaller business or you are, you know, you hear us talking about selling on Amazon or launching physical products, I cannot emphasize enough how important that launch process is for determining the overall success of your brand and your business. You've heard me say throughout the years that I'm comfortable going into the red. I'm comfortable over marketing a product. I am comfortable doing whatever it takes to get sales and reviews moving. And the people who do that most aggressively are the people who win. Whether that is using launch services or it is marketing to lists or it is buying traffic, it is what you do between the product release and customers buying that determines if you're going to be successful or not. And we have really dialed in that process inside our company and that has made the world of a difference. So 450,000 was the top line revenue for that business in February 2017, which is a drop from January. But things actually look really, really strong in March, particularly because of retail orders for a thousand stores or so. And I'll share more about that with you on future income reports. My next Business is Freedom fast lane and capitalism.com we had a significant drop in top line revenue here as well. It went from in January it was about 350,000 or 400,000. And in February it was about $230,000 in top line sales. And these are even uglier than we expected because we had a lot of those. A lot of those revenues are from rebills of people resubscribing to old programs that they've been a part of for a long time. But we had some of our best performing Facebook ads removed and that hurt. I mean, that really hurt. So we had about a two to three week period where we were trying to get the ad accounts moving again. And if you ever advertise on Facebook, you've been through this process and we've kind of cleared that as a bottleneck moving forward. But lesson learned in terms of not being prepared for that, not having backup ads or other, other ads that you can run, yeah, it just kind of stunk. So we also had expenses go way up on capitalism here. This is not a cash flow business for me. What we're doing at Freedom Fast Lane and what we do@capitalism.com is my 25 year commitment. It's the legacy that I roll every dollar back into other people and more advertising and more exposure. So when expenses go up and revenues go down, that can keep me up at night. So February was a tough month and we're finally back on track here towards the end of March. But the time from February 10 to about mid March was hard. So we're back in the clear, but it was tough getting there. Some good news on this front. We have an entire new course coming out April 1st for the brand Builder Bootcamp. A completely revamp of the of the products and we're really, really excited about them. It's gonna get a lot of people, some amazing results and we have completely rebuilt the members area of the tribe. And if you're in the tribe, you're gonna be really pleased with the simplification and the new bells and whistles that we have put into the tribe. And we have really spent this quarter building a foundation of what we are building. We have our content distribution processes getting a lot more streamlined. We're getting in front of way more people. Our podcast downloads are way up and we're really proud of the things that we're releasing in quarter two of this year. So quarter one was a grind of setting a and building systems and getting through Facebook slaps. But we are coming out on top and are really excited about what we're doing in the world and the impact that we're making in people's lives. Hey, over 100 millionaires created through our trainings and even just the free content that we put out there. And we are ramping that up and really excited about where we're going in 2017. Okay, so my next business is Body Vega Nutrition, which sells its primary product is a fish oil. On Amazon, revenues were about 70,000, which is another dip, seems to be a trend here. And this also kind of kicked me in the teeth in February because of some tension it's put on my partner and I. This has been. This business has taken a long time to get off the ground. And I will share a little bit about what's gone on with that business at a later date. But for now, I want to talk about what our plan is moving forward to actually get a business like this moving. What do you do when you've got a slow mover? And we had to kind of face that and say, what? You know, do we drop the business? Do we sell the business? Do we grow the business? Do. Does one of us exit? Do we buy each other out? And what we have decided to do, at least as of right now, is to create a plan to get the products that are not yet over the hump. Over the hump, meaning if you've got a product doing like 10 sales a day that's not super profitable, what do you do to get them to 50 sales a day? So it's actually building your business. And for us, that might require more capital. It might require just building, biting the bullet and spending the money to really push things over the edge. But it is really doubling down and saying, are you willing to spend the money and the time to drive these over the hump? Do you go out and blast them more? Do you hit your list harder? And that's the question that you have to face in your business. And what we've had to do internally, we've decided, all right, let's do what it takes financially in order to drive these products over the hump. And my partner and I have kind of gone back and forth on different strategies, but what we plan to do is to use Viral Launch, which is the service that Casey Goss shared about here on the podcast a couple weeks ago, and driving our biggest movers, which are fish oil, ashwagandha, those two, primarily until they are over the hump and really selling substantially and focus on nothing else and just drive those two until they're really winning in the marketplace and continue to collect the customer leads and their email addresses and then following up with them to get them to leave reviews and buy other products. So this has, I've long kind of been public that this business has been the slowest to get going. It took a long time to get to that million dollar point and it's just barely staying there. So I'll keep you posted on the process of growing that. But humble pie, again, I'm three for three on businesses that have kind of kicked me in the teeth. In February of 2017, let's get to some good news. In February, I was part of an acquisition through a division that Clement won, Sean Coyne and myself have all put together called the Capitalism Initiative. And the Capitalism Initiative is an investment fund to buy brands that have an impact, that hit a big audience and that are posed for really, really aggressive growth. So from about November through January, I was involved in negotiations to acquire a company called Foxbrim. And Foxbrim is an anti aging brand that sells oils and cream. And it was started by someone who listens to Freedom Fast Lane and comes to our events. And we'll be having him on the podcast here over the next few weeks. And I'll also be sharing more about the story of the acquisition, how we paid for it, how we acquired it, the investors who are involved, and I will be revealing the entire process to you. The business did $250,000 in sales in February, which is great. The first month that we had it, sales held steady. And that's important because through that first month, the team, which is headed up by Sean Coyne, my former partner on Zen Active Sports, the yoga brand that I built and sold, he was getting to know the rest of the team and their processes and we were fumbling our way through figuring out all of the different moving pieces in the company, as well as getting to know the team members and how they're used to doing things. And the company is based in Orlando, Florida. We're all based in Austin, Texas. So there's traveling back and forth and there's communication and virtual meetings and all kinds of things that you're figuring out within those first 30 days. So to have everything stay steady, right at $250,000 in top line revenue, huge thumbs up, we feel enthused about that. Our plan for growth is aggressive and exciting and Sean Clement and I will all be sharing about that on future episode of Freedom Fast Lane, where we'll document what we're going to do. To take this from a $3 million company to a $10 million company. So we acquired FoxBrimm officially on February 1st and things look great. We're really excited about the team that have us been that we've acquired along with the asset purchase. And I also want to give public credibility to both Clement and Sean for managing the process and managing the team and leading the vision and operating the company. While I have just been able to sit in the chair and say, yeah, I'm a part of that, which has been really gratifying for me and freed me up to do what I do best and they're doing what they do best and they're doing an amazing job. I couldn't have done it without them. And it is an example of how the right team and the right partners really make all of the difference. So I owe a lot of my success to the partners that I have have been with, including Matt Davis, Clement, Juan, Sean Coyne, Evan Donahue and the rest of the team that works alongside me. So that gives us a total of $1 million in total revenues, three downs and one solid and and March thankfully looks to be more on the up and up, but February.

Was a tough one. I'll give you a quick update on my or really a non update on my investment portfolio. There really haven't been any changes. I'm still of the opinion that things are overvalued so I am not buying additional real estate or stocks. With one exception. Target is currently in buy territory according to my criteria. So I am buying Target stock right now. It just got kicked in the teeth due to some earnings reports, but their company's still solid, their dividend is still solid and I think that is the best deal on the market right now is buying Target stock. Apart from that, I have one house that just recently got renovated and is now being rented, but other than that, I haven't made any purchases in real estate or any purchases in the market. I did just purchase a company, so that was I guess that is substantial. And my other investments include the fulfillment company Falcon Fulfillment and the restaurant that I own in Avon, Ohio, right near Cleveland called Fresh Planet. And it was a long winter in Cleveland and that hurt revenues of my restaurant. So I don't have a whole lot of good news for you in today's income report. So let's move on to major changes that I am making to both get the businesses back to where they need to be. And again.

Spoiler alert, March was great, but I'll give you a little bit of some changes that we're Making to businesses. First of all, we have the retail orders the about a thousand stores nationwide. I'll share more about that on a future podcast. But that's really, it's really opened up a whole new world of business having multiple retailers interested in your business. And it's just given us a completely new pipeline to bring our products into the world. And I really like the quote from Brian Lee, one of the founders of the Honest company alongside Jessica Alba. And he says my goal is to have my products in people's homes and I don't care how they get it. So having multiple places where people buy your products, retail being one of them is just such a game changer for the company. And we're really excited about that because we have the ability to put things into retail and because we've been able to prove a new launch process that has made it possible for us to release products that we didn't think were possible before. So we have a really exciting pipeline of new products coming in. My physical products brands both on Foxbrim and on my sports and fitness company. So really excited about about having those processes dialed in on Foxbrim specifically we're focused on some physical product funnels specifically from using Facebook ads and Facebook video. We did a training, it's on YouTube. It was a tribe training. But if you look up a training we did that's on YouTube called Facebook+Amazon equals millions, we might just have to post that as a podcast episode. But we did a very case study heavy analysis of how people are driving Facebook traffic specifically through video into physical product funnels and how that is working to really change companies. And if you just think about some of the examples like Squatty Potty and Dollar Shave Club and Poo Pourri, those are kind of the famous examples of viral videos. But there's four or five models for doing that and I've seen examples of them all working. So we are looking at those funnels and looking at duplicating them into Foxbrim to give us another distribution channel for the products that we're selling and being able to do it outside of Amazon. And then the last thing we're doing is on capitalism.com we are bringing a few brands that we believe in on as clients and helping them grow their business by giving them exposure and also helping them with some of their marketing. And what's cool about this is my entire team has a say or contributes to those clients success. And there are certain brands that I believe in that we can highlight on capitalism.com that we can help with their marketing processes or help with their Amazon presence that my team has experience in. So working with the clients, we can both give exposure to companies and brands that we believe in, but it also gives us content that makes the world a better place that wouldn't necessarily get out there if it wasn't for my team having a say in the message that got out in the world. So I'll share a little bit about what that looks like. But I know from our audience and from our marketing processes that we can work with a physical product brand and we can create content around them. We can highlight them and give them exposure in a way that will grow them immediately, in a lot of cases, can double their company just from us adding some marketing processes and, and us giving them exposure. So I've kind of been sitting this as an idea for a while and I floated it out to a few people that I wanted to work with. And I've had between four and six people come in and say, yes, I would, I would like to benefit from that exposure. So we'll be rolling that out between March and April 2017, and I'll report on some of the, some of the results from that over the coming months. So that's what it looks like. That was February of 2017. It was a humbling month, but it was good for setting a foundation and clearing some bottlenecks and setting the rest of 2017 for growth and some exciting things. So I covet your feedback on these income reports because it's always weird and uncomfortable for me to share kind of the numbers and the nitty gritty of my businesses. So if you found value in this, please let me know over at the show notes freedomfastlane.com so that I know to keep doing them because if you don't like them, I would actually like to stop. This is uncomfortable for me. So your, your feedback is appreciated. So if you found value in this, let me know@freedomfastlane.com and also do me the service of sharing this with someone that you know, needs inspiration to say, hey, there are people who sell a million dollars a month, even on a down month, or just would benefit from following along the journey of businesses that are growing and changing and, you know, sometimes struggling. So you sharing and spreading the message is always appreciated. I love and appreciate and covet your support and I am always grateful for you listening and supporting Freedom Fast Lane. And I'll see you guys on the next episode.

Sam.