From $0 To $10M - How I’m Rebuilding The Company That Failed

It's often been said that the best opportunities come when you least expect them. Well, about a year ago, an opportunity came my way that I did not expect. I remember I was in New York City for a meeting and my phone rang. It was my old partner, Matt. He told me about an opportunity that came up and he wanted to run it by me. Now I get opportunities presented to me all the time and most of them I pass on. And after he told me about it, I couldn't get it out of my mind. At first I wanted to say no, and I had all the reasons why I shouldn't do it. But emotionally, I couldn't let it go. I fell asleep thinking about this opportunity. And that didn't go away over the next several weeks. And that's because this opportunity wasn't just any old investment and any old opportunity. It meant something to me. But in order to properly tell this story, I need to go back all the way to 2013. In 2013, I was a kid. I had just put everything that I had into my Kia Sportage, everything that I owned. And I had moved to Austin, Texas in pursuit of a different life. I really had no idea what I was going to do with my life at that time. I'd had some success online. I had a situation six figure affiliate marketing business that I had recently closed because it wasn't bringing me joy anymore. I had a few copywriting clients in the meantime to pay bills and to make rent. But I was really looking for my next thing. I wanted something more purposeful. I wanted something that was more a reflection of who I am and what I wanted to bring to this world. So I started to take inventory of my hobbies, my interests, things like baseball. I was a young 20 something who was trying to add some muscle. And so I was getting into lifting. And for as long as I could remember, I was always a health nut. I was always looking at the new diets and the new supplements and the new things that were cutting edge in the health space. So in 2013, I call a friend of mine. My friend's name is Matt. We had met at a conference together back when we were both in college. And we had had little projects here and there that had made a little bit of money, but we worked really well together. So I called him and told him that I wanted to start a new company. So In June of 2013, Sheer Strength Labs was born. Matt was in the same phase of life as me. We were Both in our 20s, we were both getting into lifting. And over the next Three years, we developed a supplement line specifically for people who were adding muscle, people like us. Over the next four years, Matt and I built that company from a $600 investment that came from my bank account to a business that was doing over $1 million per month at its peak, Matt and I developed products that we specifically wanted. We had so much fun testing and trying different versions of products, and it was so much fun working together to create what we thought were best in class products. About a year into building the business, I found out that I was going to be a dad. And that really put me into focus mode. And about four months after that, Matt found out that he was going to be a dad. So we were in the same phase of life, building this company for ourselves while thinking about the legacy that it was going to leave for our children who are on the way. We ran that company for four years, and at the age of 29, Matt and I felt like we had built the business to our full capacity again. We were young entrepreneurs finding our way in the world, and we got an offer from a private equity group out of Dallas to buy the company for $15 million. At the time, it was the biggest success that I had ever had, and I was only 29 years old. I was a lion high. I had a full bank account, a big feather in my cap, and a really big ego. But as it turns out, what we were promised was not the whole truth. Despite taking home about $5 million from that exit after the dust settled. I was young. I didn't know what to do with the money. No one had ever taught me what to do with that amount of money. And no one in my peer group had had that level of success before. And to be quite honest with you, I thought I had the golden touch.

The golden touch. The golden touch. The golden touch. The golden touch.

Everything that I was touching was turning to gold. And I pretty much assumed that that trend would continue after I had an exit, especially now that I have a ton of cash in my bank account and this skill set, and I'm the first person to ever have a business sell for this amount. In my industry, I knew that my next thing would be bigger than the last. So I put a lot of the money into startup businesses, and I put a lot of the money into firms that promised passive income and a lot of upside. A lot of those projects failed. And dealing with that failure and that financial loss has been one of the biggest and most expensive lessons of my career. Now, in my mind, that was all okay, because I still had another exit coming from the private equity group that owned my previous business. But that's not how it went. The business that I sold, well, the private equity group, they ran it into the ground. A few years after selling it, the private equity group bankrupted it. That additional $5 million that I was promised, gone. So for the last few years, I've been trying to move on. I've been building other businesses. I've been rediscovering my skill set. I've been teaching other entrepreneurs. But the failure of my big success has haunted me ever since that day. Enter 2022. I'm walking the streets of New York City, and I get a phone call from my old business partner, Matt. Matt and I hadn't worked together for a few years at this point, but he was working for a private equity group that was overseeing physical product brands right before they were about to exit. And it just so happened that the private equity group that he was working for had acquired my old business out of bankruptcy. And while I'm talking to him, he says, ryan, you're not going to believe this, but they want to sell you sheer strength and for pennies on the dollar. Hold on a second. Are you kidding me right now? My mind started to race with all these ideas and all these memories of what used to be. I started to think about all kinds of ideas, and I started to think about the different products that I could sell. And he says, on the other line, you could bring it back, dude, you can do this. I felt this surge of confidence come up in me because I started to think to myself, like, I did it once, I can do it again. And I've got so much more experience now. I know so many more people. I'm a different entrepreneur than I was 5, 6, or 10 years ago when we started the company. And then the doubt flooded it. I started to think, well, what if this is a colossal failure? I mean, five years ago, I felt like I had the golden touch. Lately, I feel like I have the. The touch of poo. Everything that I touch is turning to poo. So if I touch this brand, what if it's a big failure? What if I buy this company back and it goes into the ground even further? I mean, if the private equity group that bought it and had all these resources and all these people, if they ran it into the ground, then who am I to take this thing over and to rebuild it? Thankfully, I didn't need to make a decision that day. So I went on with the negotiations not knowing how they were going to go. I started having conversations with the new owners of the business, and we started talking about what the numbers would be, and we started talking about what a takeover might be, and we started talking about what the opportunities were and why this business just wasn't taking off. So at one point in the negotiations, I walked away. I just let go of the attachment to it. I decided, you know what? I don't need to prove anything. I already had my big success. I don't need to show that I can do it again. And I let go of my attachment, and I walked away from the deal. And they came back and the numbers changed. And then it looked like an offer that would be really hard to say no to. So after six months of negotiations, tons of phone calls, times of doubt, and times of excitement, I finally closed on the business, and I bought it back four months ago. Today, I am once again the the owner of Sheer Strength Labs. As soon as the deal closed, I was mortified. The first thing that I noticed was just how much chaos there was in the business. Instead of sticking to a core group of products that served a specific person, the last owner had just launched a whack. A ton of products all over the place. They were just selling random products that they thought other people would buy at. At first, I felt this compulsion to, like, keep up with the chaos. It's like, we gotta write emails or we gotta post content. We gotta manage all of this different inventory. And eventually I got to this point where I realized I couldn't do that. I could not manage all of that chaos. So I had to get to this place where I had to say, okay, we need to go back to step one. So I took the first product that we ever sold at Sheer Strength, and I completely reformulated it. Now, this was the process that I enjoyed most as the owner. The first time I called formulators, I called manufacturers. I called friends who are knowledgeable in the space. I talked to medical doctors, and then I went and worked on the branding and the packaging until I had a product that I knew would just blow the socks off everybody who tried it. Now, this time, I don't have my partner Matt. I don't have anybody that can help me with this. So the next thing that I did was start making Vogels. The first person I talked to was my partner, Sam. Sam and I run a fund together. He's the financial wizard. He's the one who can crunch all the numbers. He's the one who can bring in the relationships with investors. He's the one who can help lawyer things up and make sure that the numbers are strong. Next, I needed operational support and marketing support. So I partnered with two additional people that I knew, Tomer, who had a team of people that could build funnels and run Facebook ads. And I partnered with Gabe. Gabe was on the front lines with clicking buttons on Amazon listings and also knew how to work with suppliers to make orders and do all the backend stuff that I had forgotten how to do. And I asked one of my team members, Inez, to slide over for a little bit and help me clean up a lot of the chaos, like getting logins and taking care of purchase orders. That core group of people allowed me to stay in that zone of genius, coming up with ideas, building relationships, and casting a vision that was exciting enough that other people would want to join in on. And finally, I needed an audience. I needed a group of people that I could launch this to. I built my audience in the entrepreneurship space by documenting my journey, But I don't have a fitness following. So I started making phone calls, I started dialing and emailing people that I knew that I thought might know somebody or I thought might be able to help. And I started to create relationships with people that might endorse the products if they felt good about them, or people who had followings that I could hire or that I could give equity to in order to make them part of this vision. And I created partnerships with two medical doctors that had influence and followings. And I've started a relationship with a fitness influencer who has the exact demographic of the people that I want to target with this new vision. When I started the company, I was a skinny dude who, you know, wanted to have some muscle. Now I'm a dad. I have two kids. I have an expensive car with two car seats in the back. I don't care as much about having abs. I still care, but not as much as I want to age really well. So I'm not going after the 25 or 27 year old hard gainer like I was 8 or 10 years ago. I'm going after people like me, people that I want to serve, other dads, other people who are thinking about longevity and aging well and being fit into their 60s and even their 70s. So all of our products, all of our marketing, all of our branding, all of our funnels, all of our ads will speak to that person. Today, I'm four months into this journey. Sometimes it feels like nothing's happening, but when I zoom out, I see that we've developed four products that are legitimately best in class. And I've developed relationships with medical doctors and one person who has a following of 1.3 million people that are the exact demographic for the people that we want to target. We totally rebranded. We have a clear person. So it feels like nothing has happened. But behind the scenes, a lot of really good foundational work has taken place, and it's starting to get fun again. Ever since my exit, my full focus has been on capitalism.com and helping entrepreneurs grow, get to their first million. Because if you get somebody to their first million, you change their life. My mission there is to create a million millionaires. One million millionaires. But there's something about being on the field again that makes me feel fresh, that makes me feel alive. I still have thoughts in my head about what if this fails? What is it going to look like if I can't make this work? I mean, hell, I. I wrote a book that sold 200,000 copies that talked about how I built this business and sold it for $15 million. If I buy it and I can't make it work, what does that say about me? I still. I still have those fears. I still have those thoughts. But I have to try.

I can't not try. Because if I'm not willing to do what I tell other people to do, then what type of a mentor am I? If I don't believe my own stuff, then how could I ever have the conviction to help an entrepreneur on their journey? So, yes, I'm scared. I'm scared about the downside. I'm scared about what people are going to think. I'm scared that it's going to be a failure. I'm scared I'm going to lose money. But the upside is that I proved to myself that I didn't just get lucky. I proved to myself that I have a skill set that works. It still applies. Today, I proved to the people that follow me that they can do it, too. And so if you take anything away from this video.

I just want you to have permission. Being okay in the grind, being on the field and taking swings and misses and learning along the way, because as soon as you stop doing that, that's when you fail. That's when everything falls apart. Ask me how I know. Now it's 29. High on my own supply and flush with cash, I stopped learning. I thought I was just good at it, and therefore I didn't have to do the hard stuff anymore. Well, that didn't work out. So now I've been humbled enough to do the humble work that is required to build a great business again. So I hope this gives you permission to just embrace being on the field learning. So if you want to see how this plays out, subscribe to the channel. You want to see my playbook for how I'm planning to build this company? Look at the free resources in the description of this video. And I hope that you'll follow along for the second chapter of Sheer Strength, and maybe that'll be the sequel to another great book. I'm Ryan Daniel Moran with capitalism.com and sheer strength Labs. Thanks for watching.