From $10k To $5M: Why I Invested $300k Into This Tiny Business (It’s Now Worth $2M)

I honestly see no reason why this can't be $100 million company. 2019 just had a single product, didn't even really have a business. I was working full time hours at my day job. I was a full time student. And then we fast forward just five years later and the company's at multimillion dollar run rate. And I just could have never done that without your team and the resources you provided. And we're not slowing down and we're going to keep going.

Guys, this is a really important and special episode to me because my vision@capitalism.com has always been to have a community that supported other businesses within the community. When I wrote my book 12 months to 1 million, I had this really exciting dream of being able to invest in the businesses that came from the exposure I got from that book. I wrote that for a specific group of people that I wanted to invest in. People that I wanted to have as part of our community@capitalism.com that we could support and mentor towards an exit. And there is an individual who read my book back in 2020 and implemented some of what he learned in there and built a seven figure company as a result of partnering with us. And we invested in this business, the business 10x and today we're casting a much bigger vision together and we're raising capital for it in a new and exciting way that I'm both nervous and really excited to do with him and with the rest of our community. So today we're going to break down exactly what the story looked like when we got involved in this company. We're also going to be sharing the inflection points of how this company 10x in a period of three years. And we're going to be talking about the vision forward, both what the company will look like as it expands and also how we're going to be involved and how the community can be involved. It's an exciting time for both Jake, the founder of the company, for us as a company, because we're changing the way that we do things and I think it's going to be really impactful to a lot of people and it's going to be a big deal for our community too because it changes the way that we all participate in these businesses that we are cultivating here@capitalism.com so I think you'll enjoy this as a case study, as a potential opportunity and also as inspiration for those of you who are still in the grind.

Well, Jake, here we are.

Here we are.

It's great to see you, man.

You as well.

I have a fondness for you and your brand because I feel like our relationship and our investment in your company is the first time that I really got to do what I wanted to do with my career. And it worked out.

That means a ton because honestly, for so many years there, I was like, just such a big fan before I even knew you.

So thank you.

Here is just like surreal.

I always wanted to inspire the next group of entrepreneurs, invest in them, bring resources to them, introduce them to a community, and have them have the support for them to build the vision that they wanted. And you're doing it, man.

Yeah, that's coming full circle for both of us here.

So you started the business that we're now growing together in 2019.

Yep.

And you found my work in 2021, is that right?

I believe it was late 2020. I found your book 12 months to 1 million.

And you've told me the story about you had a product, it was selling, but you didn't have a business. Why do you say that? It wasn't a real business.

It was not a real business. Cause I just created a product and put it on Amazon and didn't treat it as a real business. Cause in 2019, I was full time school and full time work. So this was really just my side gig. It was mainly like I was gonna try to make enough money to pay off my student loans and maybe just have something small like that and didn't really pay attention.

We have done that, right? I mean.

Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We're good.

Mission accomplished.

Yep, mission accomplished. But yeah, in 2019, I was just. I was in school for mechanical engineering. So I was always kind of looking to do something new, looking to make a physical product in that space. And I was working this job, I was at a civil engineering company that I was working while I was in school. And I'd have to bounce from construction site to construction site all day long. So I'd have to bring these big water bottles so you wouldn't run out. And it wouldn't fit in the cup holder. So I'd be in Denver traffic, I'd have it sitting on my passenger seat and I'd hit the brakes. And in Denver traffic, you'd hear that thing just smashing to the dashboard and it's like, well, it's gone forever. It's like you can never find it. So I got on Amazon, looked for something that would fix that. And all I saw was very low rated, mediocre versions of these cup holder expanders. So I Made a better one, brought it to market and it didn't immediately take off. But I would say just for a side gig metric, it did okay. So we wrapped up 2019 with 60,000 in sales. 2020, nothing really changed because I just had it on autopilot, kept it going on Amazon, didn't really focus too much. It did about 120,000 in 2020, like.

Doing 10 grand a month in sales.

Yeah, just.

And you're probably pumped about this. This little side thing is doing it.

I could not believe it. I was like. Because my plan at the time was still just to go get a corporate job anyway. So I was like, oh cool. Just all this side cash, whatever, like it was nice.

This is where I have seen the most successful entrepreneurs in start their journey. They start with a problem and they're solving a problem for a specific group of people. Trevor Blake wrote a great book, it's called Secrets to a Successful Startup. And in this book he talks about how you know you have a winner when you're starting with something that really annoys you. Something annoys you and it digs at you and it bothers you and you fix that problem. I know that my book is called 12 months to 1 million. It lays out the playbook to get to a million dollar business in 12 months. And there's a lot of hypey people on the Internet that will tell you the struct to building a really successful business. But the way that I differ from a lot of people is you build a brand that solves problems for a specific group of people. If you start with that intent rather than what you can extract from the marketplace, what you can get out of selling things and put into your pocket, that's a much better indicator that you're going to win. You start by solving problems. Either your own problems, like Jake, he had a problem that was annoying to him, or you have a group of people that you and you are solving the problems that they will face on their journey of transformation. That's when you know you have a winner. And the 12 months to 1 million playbook works beautifully when you start with that foundation.

Towards the end of 2020 I was like, before I jumped into the corporate world, I started to really think could I make this into a real business? And that's when I found your book and completely readjusted the path that I was on.

What changed, like what insight gave you the idea that this could be a real thing?

I feel like it was just doing so well by itself without even really messing with It. My main thing was, like, if I actually put my attention into this, what could it become? And it felt so dumb to not at least try that.

So we became acquaintance acquainted after you reached out saying, I have this thing, I might need some capital. Read the book. It's been growing, and we funded a part of the business and part of that growth. But you were growing before we funded the business, before we got involved, before we became partners. So there's something that happened there between, okay, I've got this $10,000 a month product to now I've got momentum and enough momentum that it caught our attention to want to be part of it. What was growing the business while you were waiting for us to become partners?

That was, I would say, the main thing that actually changed was becoming completely customer focused. Because obviously when something's just automated on Amazon, you're completely removed from that. So I had that big moment when I read your book was the main thing was finding someone to serve and learning from them and growing from that. So that was step one. So immediately in 2021, when I put more time into it, we got off of Amazon, put it on Shopify, we're doing Facebook ads. And the biggest thing was we were just communicating with customers, and a lot of valuable insights came out of that. Like, I really didn't even know who was buying the products. I didn't know the demographics. I didn't know reasons that would make them buy. Like, all of those things were learned very quickly. And once that started to come to life, it was very easy to scale from there.

So what does that mean in terms of results? Like, it means your Facebook ads are converting better. It means you're getting better reviews. What are the metrics that are changing?

Oh, yeah, all of the above and then some. It's pretty much infinite. I mean, once you start actually building these relationships with customers and people, get behind your business and support you, all of those things flow through a hundred times what they did before.

I remember you were doing maybe 40 or 50k a month when we got involved. And then I think we funded the big Q4 order.

Yep.

That was gonna sop up all your cash.

Yeah. So we came in contact at, like, the perfect time. Because the only negative side of actually building this into a real business and doing the things that I outlined was stockout issues, because the cash wasn't coming in fast enough. We didn't have net terms with manufacturers at that time, things like that. And we. We needed cash desperately to stop literally running out of stock of product. We could not get enough product in fast enough. So that's when I decided to actually reach out to your fund and see if you guys would potentially be interested in partnering.

Well, it worked out. I mean, it worked out for both of us.

Definitely.

Just curious from your side, did you think we would do the deal?

No.

Really?

I sent. I sent like a cold email, I believe. And I only knew you didn't know anything about Sam at the time. But turns out I was emailing Sam and I got a response and I was like, no way. That's great.

I love it. So the numbers that I have were 2021. You were able to get ahead of inventory for. For Q4, and you ended that year with 850. Yep, 850 in revenue. The next full year as partners, the business did 2.2, 2.2 million. So basically a 3X.

Yep.

I want to ask you a couple questions about that. But then 2023, 2.9 this year you told me off camera that if we don't crush Q4, 3.5, but we usually crush Q4, so probably 4. So 3 1/2 to 4 we're looking at. And I want to talk about what we're doing in 2025 and beyond. But you three X'd from 2021 to 2022. I think our business relationship was formalized in November 2021.

Yep.

So what changed in your mind that allowed you to 3x in 2022?

A big mindset shift when we actually met in person for the first time. So after the initial meeting we did at your house and pitching to your fund, and everybody there just kind of completely changed gears for me. I thought I was just kind of running this average small business, but seeing how excited everybody else was by the growth and the potential that it had really just flipped a switch in my brain to see that we can throttle this a lot more than I had even been doing.

I didn't know that because we, we asked you to present because you were a new investment in the fund and we had all of our investors there. And this was right as the world was opening back up. So everybody was just pumped to be back in person.

Yep.

And you present. And I guess I didn't realize that you hadn't grown that much. You're still got like a. A low seven figure business of that. You haven't had a million dollar a year yet.

Yep. Not a full one.

So what about presenting to a group of investors? Switched your mindset?

I would say just the, the vibe of the room is the Only way I can really describe it, like, just seeing the reactions on people's faces when we were talking about just specific data points, like, not only top line, but I outlined a lot of the major customer acquisition costs, things like that. I thought these were just kind of average numbers, and at the time they were not. And a lot of faces lit up and I was like, shit, this might actually be pretty impressive.

Okay, so you saw the opportunities you were sitting on that you were blind to, essentially. And there's a couple investors in the fund that have had $100 million exits or that have built eight figure companies. So they might have had a different perspective than you had sitting in front of a laptop at your house.

Yes.

And their confidence gave you the confidence that, okay, I think I really do have something here.

Yep, absolutely. It's. It's very tough. You said it best when you're at home and you're just sitting on the laptop by yourself and you're not sharing these ideas with a lot of people. You know, you kind of drift away. Like, you don't really understand what it's worth.

So, okay, you have a mindset shift that doesn't just give you a 3x increase. So what. What about that mindset shift? Change your behavior or the structure of the company?

I just started running fast after that. Okay. Like just getting down to building the business and expanding the audience off Amazon and pushing new products and doing whatever we could to maintain good customer costs while also expanding the top line of the business. And there was just a lot of fuel left in the tank that we hadn't even leveraged at that point.

So this year we're gonna do about 4 million. We think in some point this year you had a big aha where you wanted to take this next.

Yes.

And we put in some more capital. We also decided that we wanted to maybe raise some outside capital to fund this vision that you were starting to step into.

Yep.

Where did that shift happen? Somewhere this year where you said, I think I can go even bigger than what I've been thinking. Let me interject here and share a little bit about the partnership that we have with Jake. We invested in him when he was doing about $50,000 a month in sales, which is a really good start for a business. And over the last three years, he's taken that business to about a 4 to 5 million dollars run rate, and that's a really good return. That's good for our investors, it's good for Jake, it's good for us. The business has 10x over three years. And he was able to do that because he had this support in terms of capital, resources, connections, and just people who had his back during the hard times. Now, we would be happy if this was the end of this investment, if we sold this business and at a 10x return in three years, we'd be thrilled with that ROI. But because Jake had the support of working with us and our community, he started to see that he could take this much bigger. And he had a conversation with us about wanting to go beyond just seven figures. And he saw the opportunity that he was sitting on. If he made a few adjustments to his brand, he would have never seen that opportunity if he was just a solopreneur trying to figure it out all by himself. If he was sitting in front of a computer worried about what the temporary dip in sales looked like from quarter to quarter or day to day. He would probably be thinking about an exit at this point. But because Jake had the support, he was able to cast a bigger vision because he knew he wasn't going to be doing this alone. So this is the part where I ask Jake to share the insights of the vision that goes way beyond seven figures.

So this year, as I opened up some new segments of the company, I was kind of looking for validation outside of the customer list that I currently have to expand into some new markets. So when I do that, my main strategy is to borrow traffic from someone that does have an audience so I can connect with customers and make sure I'm on the right track, make sure I'm not just going to release a dud. It's just not a terrible idea. So I went to a Facebook group that has about a quarter million followers and just did a post about a prototype product that I was working on.

And did you have permission to do that or did you?

I did not.

Okay.

I. I said I did one of the. Please delete if not allowed. You know, not trying to step on anybody's toes, but I just thought like, hey, this is going to be very interesting to the people in this group, whether it's cool or not. Maybe they'll hate it and they'll talk bad about it, but hey, at least I'll know. So just put it in the group and it kind of blew up.

Like, this is a product idea that you're thinking about adding to the line?

Yeah, it was a prototype idea. And I just, I worded it like, hey, would anybody in this group be interested in trying this out, maybe giving me some feedback on the product? Like, I'm really, just curious. And it really, it just blew up in that group. Like, hundreds of comments, thousands of likes, hundreds of shares. And the top comment was it just kind of blew me away. As guys check just like, he's like, man, I think you're going to be a millionaire. And I was like, okay. I was like, maybe we're on to something here. Like, they seem to really like it.

And probably little does he know that you've. You've got a $4 million a year business.

I keep that under wraps.

Yeah. So you're getting excitement about this new product line. Can you say a little bit about why? Why the product line's different than what you've done up until this point.

So now that customer cost, customer acquisition costs are rising throughout every industry, it's time to expand into more expensive products, just higher AOV so we have more room to grow, more room for these rising costs. And essentially these are just things that are needed in the market anyway. So it just couldn't have timed out better.

In other words, the four times 25 sales a day at $30 is great to get to your first million and it got you there. Yeah, right. But now you're thinking about, okay, I've got 4 million at this point. I've 10 XED since this partnership was formalized in 2021. So we've 10 XED in three years. Is that less than three years? 20. That's less than three years, yeah. Holy snap. Okay, so we've 10 X in three years. Awesome. But now we got to think about what the next generation of products is, because the playbook's a little bit different to go beyond a mill.

Yeah, very safe to say. And I'm a firm believer that your next product should excite you more than something you've been doing before. Like, if you're just constantly just spitting out, you know, same price points, same excitement level products, you're kind of going to lose interest. I think now that you have a little more capital, a little more experience, you should move into things that just get you and your customers more excited.

So as you're looking beyond 2024, you wanted to hit a new demo, go after a product with a bigger price tag on it, and you know that's going to take a different skill set, a different amount of capital. What are you thinking about as you're planning out this vision and share a little about where you want to take the company now?

So going forward, I'm mainly envisioning this company as the white collar weather Tech is what I've said since the beginning I. When I started really talking to my customers and learning these things and just having these open, cool conversations and building relationships, that's where you get down to how you're actually going to build your company. And a lot of insights that came out is that a lot of companies in the automotive accessory space, they're just kind of dated. Dated for many reasons. The biggest point was demographics. Like when I started looking into my data and talking to my customers, I realized that 50% of women were buying my products. And when you look at any automotive accessory company, even the biggest players in the space. Have you ever seen a single ad target a woman or like. Yeah, I've just, I've never seen it. And that was kind of like a big moment for me. I was like, wow, these. These customers are just getting completely neglected. Not even sold to. And what if you actually did tailor content and marketing towards that demographic and see if they'd buy and didn't, you didn't.

Wasn't it a female influencer that really smashed one of the product launches?

Yeah, absolutely. We've had a couple now, but the biggest one, she was just a micro influencer at the time and we handed her one of our products.

What does that mean to you? A micro influencer?

I believe at the time she only had like around a thousand followers when she posted for us. So that's probably even below like actually.

That'S just a personal account.

Yeah, not much so. But yeah, we sent her the product and we were just kind of mainly just looking for content that maybe we could repurpose. You know, just did like a content deal. But she posted on her page anyway and it was just a very simple 22nd UGC style install vid showing the product, what it does. Her kids were using it and very basic. And when I logged into the website and Amazon account the next day, we noticed sales are going crazy on one specific product. Like they're liquidating, like they're all being sold. So I'm like, what is going on?

In the olden days, that was when a coupon got leaked and everybody was buying your product for a dollar.

Before my freaked out.

Yeah, but these were real sales.

Yeah, real sales. Full price. It was unbelievable. You know, I'm like, okay, something's up. Immediately found that video and it was rapidly approaching about 10 million views. Just.

Holy cow.

Yeah, on Instagram alone is where she was. An Instagram.

Oh, I thought it was a TikTok video. It was an Instagram account because usually Instagram videos Don't blow up like that.

Yep.

But you had this basically a personal account with a thousand followers. Go nuts.

Yep.

Why did it go nuts?

It was funny. The product kind of created some controversy in the market, which at the time.

What the product was. Cause you talked about the cup, the expandable cup holders. That was what put you on the map, got you your first, you know, 25 sales a day and beyond. This product was very different than.

Yeah, we went into some car seat products to make it easier to travel with kids. This specific product was just a kid console to where it just attaches to the car seat and they just have a spot where they can secure their things so they don't have to reach all over the place or drop them.

So like an insert in the car seat where they can put stuff and.

Yeah, we invested a lot into crash testing the product, making sure it was all up to par, safe and good product to use. And that's. That was the controversy of how safe is it? Can I have this by my kids? So a lot of people just started debating in the comments and it just became this ultimate. I wouldn't say fight, but argument.

Yeah. And people are. Some people are saying this isn't safe. Other people are coming to your defense.

Yeah.

Also gave you an opportunity to go into the comments and say, actually we've crash tested this.

Yeah.

Here's the data which makes you look really good. And as a result of all of this activity happening in the comments, video goes nuts.

Yeah. It caught the algorithm and wrote it for a long time. I think it ended up kind of slowing down. Just over 10 million views, if I'm not mistaken, which.

Which caused some problems because now we have a stock issue.

Yep. It was gone.

Yeah, it was gone.

Right.

And now we have a different set of problems of how much do we order. And can you recreate that momentum when the product comes back in stock?

Exactly. Yeah, it was. It was tough. You don't really have rock solid data. It's like you. Basically, it was right when the product launched too. So like we launched it and this happened within like two weeks. So we have no sales data, no real sales data. Like we had this, which is obviously great sign, super happy. But you don't really know how much to reorder, what to traditionally expect if you can't recreate moments like that all the time.

So at this point we have a few things that are indicating that this could be a winner for us as an investment. We see. Okay. We have an entrepreneur, first of all, who always reports his numbers always shows up for when we need to check in on the company, is well prepared, is thoughtful about his product line. We also now have a seven figure run rate with a product line that we want to launch and we're starting to build some distribution. Distribution in the form of influencers, distribution in the form of sell on Amazon rankings, happy customers. These are the kind of the early indicators we're looking for of we might have a winner here because we have multiple places where we can get a product out. We have a pipeline of products. We know that we have rushes at certain times that debt financing or equity capital would support. These are like strong early signs. But you started to say that understanding that the demo skewed 50% female that flies in the face of something like a WeatherTech. WeatherTech is, you know a multi nine figure company.

Yep.

And I'm thinking about their ads and it's always, it's always you know, dudes with boots and you know, and showing like the storm that they're weathering right now.

Yep. So this if you even see them to begin with because it's just such kind of outdated marketing tactics from the beginning in my opinion.

Tell me more about what you observe there.

Like I wouldn't really get targeted by any of their stuff online and I'm like obsessed with this market. You know, I would be like the target demo to where they should be hitting me and I'd still, you know, like I knew about them but never get targeted by anything. All I would see is TV commercials that really didn't even show anything new. They didn't really clearly describe what they had to show like a problem solution. It was just, it almost felt weird just like having these thoughts about why am I critiquing this company so hard. But I just couldn't look away from it. I was, I just thought it was not the right approach. And they're just leaving so much on the table with what they're doing.

And you, you always said you wanted to be the white collar weather tech.

Yeah, that's how I pitched this originally to me. Yeah.

That landed with me when we were first, when we were first talking because.

That was the epiphany was these companies, of course their WeatherTech is the leader but even all the others just followed in suit of WeatherTech. They all just kind of oh, this is what you do. This is how you market automotive accessories. It must just be only the husband that buy these. It must just be only these specific products. And I had data to show the exact opposite.

I Just read Gary Vaynerchuk's new book, Day Trading Attention and he goes off script in the audit book and says car commercials are the worst. Car commercials, they don't understand their customer. They just, they're big budgets and they're braggadocious, but they say nothing about the customer.

Yep.

And you're taking the opposite approach of really understanding the customer. And this gives you a new suite of products that you know are gonna do well. You were telling me that Weathertech is now pivoting into like pet stuff.

Yeah. Home goods, pet products. Which to me was just another just red flag from my perspective because I used their products for years. You know, growing up we had Weathertech mats and the family cars and liked them. And to me, my mind, Weathertech was auto accessories. And I wanted more innovation in the automotive market. And nowadays all I see is pet products, home good drip trays and floor mats for the home and stuff like this. And I'm like, makes no sense. It's not what I want. I assume everybody else is with me. We want more Weathertech car products.

Yeah. When we're, when we're really looking at any investment to make, you want to see that there is some much bigger market or much bigger vision than just one or two products. They're going to get to a million dollar run rate. Of course, like you want, you, you want to see that there is a big enough market to have a 10 or a 50x when you're getting involved in businesses like this. And I'm curious, going from a $10,000 a month product that you're doing on the side to now saying I want to be the white collar Weathertech which is a multi hundred million dollar company. There's some light bulb moments that have to happen in order to make that big shift in a vision. Can you identify when you started to believe that that was possible? To go from, you know, I got this cup holder I'm selling to actually I think that I might be able to be a better marketer and build a business that is compared to Weathertech in such a space.

Yeah, I would say just the market inflections in general. Of course, before you pursue down one avenue that you're going to stick with, you got to validate these things. You need to make sure the total addressable market can actually.

Work out to, to make this amount of sales to like make it an actual real business. But it doesn't really happen until you start having those same conversations with customers and seeing like, wow, the current companies here are making that much money, and they're just simply not serving their needs. And that was basically the only light bulb moment I needed to really start innovating in the space. Not only innovating from a product perspective, but innovating from the marketing perspective, too, of getting in front of the right customers that we needed to.

Yeah, they started copying you.

Yeah, they actually. It was funny. It was total validation. Total, complete validation. Because I said all these things about them and how their marketing isn't up to parents. And then we see them post just one of our very popular UGC vids that kind of took off. They copied it. WeatherTech copied it shot for shot and reposted it, like identical clip, shot for shot. And I was like, yeah, that kind of proves it. Yeah.

And it means that you're on their radar.

Yeah, right.

And like, which is another good sign if you're thinking about an exit at some point. If you're on the radar of a big company, they probably want to acquire you or are thinking about this is a potential threat. They're on your, like, they're. You're on their radar as maybe a threat or could be acquired. It's another really good sign of something that we like to see. Never, never had. Had it be shot for shot before until that happened.

Yeah, I was surprised because, like, everybody steals. You know, maybe just like a little motivation from some cop style.

Not shot for shot.

It was like I. When I said that to some initial friends, business partners, they're like, they thought I was exaggerating. And then I put my clip and just chopped it in with theirs. And it was literally shot for shot. It was like they even got like another white guy with a beard sitting in the driver's seat. Look, look very similar to me. Did the same thing. I was like, man, you had to, like, get an actor.

You had to try really hard.

Just called me.

So we've talked about how we got here, you know, now we have business really healthy $4 million run rate. We're happy, you're happy, Our investors are happy. You make a great case study. We want more people like you. But now there's a vision that goes way beyond a $4 million business. And it's actually building something that could be in the same conversation as a Weathertech or some of its competitors. And it was one of the exercises that I run some of our clients through before we invest in them is we have them look up, okay, you're in this sector. You're in the pet supply space. Look at what other pet supplies companies have sold for sure. And all of a sudden, the light bulb goes on where they see I'm in the same sector as these people. Yeah, I could be 100 times bigger. I'm selling similar products. That is a big moment. You saw that and you say, okay, actually, I'm going to make a play in this. So walk us. Walk us through. You know, you did the Facebook post. You get validation for the direction you want to go. Tell me about where we're going to go. 2025 and beyond.

2025 and beyond is going to be. We're going to slightly not pivot, just a segment a little bit into truck accessories. I'm a truck person myself, and I know how to speak to those people. And I think it's pro. It's. It's smarter to segment it a bit, just to tweak the marketing to really serve that audience. So as we get into the truck space, we're going to be expanding into much higher AOV items for trucks that essentially help organize and keep their goods secure.

Awesome. You did some early tests with customers and got the data on acquisition costs and profit margins and what the response rate would be. This is really how you validated it and then came to Sam and me and said, I want to make a splash in this direction. Could you give kind of a summary of how you validated that? Jake probably could have taken his business to seven figures without our help and without our capital. Most entrepreneurs can take a business to seven figures all on their own, but getting to mid seven figures or eight figures takes a different level of support, and it takes often a different level of investment. And you have to decide if you want to just cash in your chips at that point or if you want to expand into a much bigger vision. Expanding into a bigger vision takes a different level of support. It takes a different playbook, and it takes sometimes a different level of capital and investment, and that's where we come into the next stage of Jake's vision.

Yeah. So, I mean, being in the market myself is a huge help with that too, because you kind of initially understand some product categories that are missing and maybe some features that could really turn a generic product into something really special. So at this point, having a sustainable side of the business makes it a lot easier to have some capital to play with some new prototypes and kind of introduce the product to a market and just kind of see what they think. So that was where I was going with the borrowing traffic from the Facebook group and showing them our new product and kind of got a really good result from it. And then from there it was actually selling it. But we started out just selling kind of niche down, like into one truck with one product. So we can really hyper serve this niche. Niche down audience.

Beautiful. You're speaking my language.

Yep. It just creates this group of like super fans, you know, like when something is that niche down, there's not that much content specifically driven for what they're trying to see. So when you offer that to them and not only the content but the solutions that they need to make their lives easier, it really just kind of explodes because they feel the need to share it themselves. They feel the need to hop in and grow the business with you and follow along for the journey. So it just made that list so easy to build just from the relationship building.

So what was the first group that you went after? There was like a few specific trucks that you built the solution for and talk a little bit about what the product is.

And yeah, so I kind of went with. So when I started with the cup holder expanders, it was cool because you already kind of had a built in market with Yetis and Nalgenes and all those bottles. You were essentially making an accessory for it. So it's very easy to find those customers and very easy to ups. You're essentially upselling them on an additional product that makes their life easier for something they already have. So when I started the truck side, I did the same thing with modular toolbox systems. So everybody's using these portable storage toolboxes for everything from day to day work to camping to fishing to you name it. Just because it's easy storage to transport. So I have them. I knew there were not necessarily issues with the product, but when you transport them it kind of sucks. Like you have them sliding all over the truck bed. They're not locked and there's no way to lock them unless you're going to wrap them up with cables and do a bunch of stuff that takes too much time and isn't fun. And so we ended up making products to actually mount the modular toolbox systems to your truck and lock them so nobody can come in and snag your stuff when you're in the gas station of the store.

And didn't you make them specific for Ford trucks?

Started. Started with Ford. Yeah. To see how that was our first vehicle specific products. So we wanted to really test the biggest market of trucks.

Now every Ford truck owner is like, this is for me.

Yeah.

Like if there's no other solution, this is perfectly made for me.

Yep. If if you have a Ford, any model Ford at this point, and you also have a modular toolbox like, you are literally perfect. So it makes it so easy to talk and target those customers.

Yeah. So now you've proven that out, the numbers make sense. You go from I don't know what your margins were on, you know, the cup holder to I think they're like 70% on the truck because it's like perfect for the ideal market.

Yeah. We over doubled them, which was the goal too. Is just getting excited about the next step of the business and bringing out products that are more expensive and that gave us a much bigger margin to play with.

Yeah. People think that when you go super targeted to a group of people, you're cutting off potential profit and potential market.

Like your total addressable market. And there is some truth to that. But the fact that you're making it specific to one person means oftentimes your prices can go 2x3x and the conversions are much stronger because people see you as the solution for them.

Yep. And I will say, like, you should be cautious if you're going to niche down, as I think you should, and create these superfans and just some things to look out for. Don't limit your business to only be able to serve that forever. You want to be able to have the total addressable market, but simultaneously be able to niche down. Like, I always use GoPro for this example. The founder has said the best thing he ever did was rename the product GoPro. I believe he was going to name it Surf Cam. So perfect example. It's like, yeah, you would have had this raving group of surfers, but you limited yourself to only surfers instead of an action cam. So calling it GoPro but starting with surfers to really get them excited and bring it to mass markets was a genius play.

Yeah. So in this case, you've proven out that it works for Ford truck owners.

Yep.

Now you're going to go after the rest of the total addressable market. Do you know what that total addressable market ends up being? I mean, weather tech, like we Googled it. The revenues are somewhere between 100 million and 700 million, depending on which Google result you pay attention to.

Yeah. And if you just look at total addressable market in general automotive exc accessories, that market this year I believe is 400 billion projected. And then that's supposed to grow to upwards of 800 billion by 2030. So it's not slowing down.

Not slowing down. So I guess we'll take a minute here and say what we're doing next, because we've always talked about doing unofficial raise for you. That was not just the fund, but bringing in other strategic people to support the business. And we're at that point now, which we're really excited about because we think we're at this inflection point of being able to go from a seven figure company to going after a much bigger addressable market. So I. I just want to ask from your perspective, why do you need capital? What. What do you, what do you do with the money at this point? Because some people are looking to say this is the end point for some people. Right. A lot of people follow my work.

Yeah.

Like seven figure business that's making it and they don't see the other side of it.

Yeah.

So what, what do you do with the money when it shows up?

I just feel like I can be moving 10 times faster than I am right now. And essentially that is what any capital we raise is going to do, is completely expand out the catalog that we already have planned. We just need to disperse capital to make that happen. And why, I mean, we have plenty of margin, we have plenty of Runway to do that. But why go slower when we can take a small chunk out of the business and move twice as fast?

And what does that mean to you, going faster? Does it mean hitting more different types of trucks? Does it mean being more aggressive with customer acquisition? What does that mean to you?

Yeah, I would say a combination of both. I mean, initially it's going to go straight into product catalog expansion, which we already have quite mapped out. I believe we have 10 new products in the Runway right now to release before Q3, and 10 more in the design phase. So it's just getting to that point where now that we have this customer base and all the validation and we've proven what we're doing, we can start sprinting and we could either take it slow or we can inject a little capital and move twice as fast and get to these more exciting valuations much quicker.

This is half a selfish question, but also, I've never heard you. You've never shared this with me. I've heard it kind of through the grapevine. Originally, we were just capital partners and a little bit of strategic advice. And over time, there's been other opportunities or relationships that have been brought to the table or introductions that have been made that have been helpful.

What in our relationship has been most helpful in helping Integral grow to this point to where now you can actually cast a much bigger vision.

The whole Mindset shift. And I know a lot of people probably say that, but until you experience that, it. It cannot be understated. Like, if I hadn't met you and the team and we hadn't been discussing this and doing these events as much as we do, I would still be probably limited to my own beliefs and barely had the company at a million at this point. I can almost guarantee that.

Yeah, that's. That's nice to hear. Not how I thought you were going to answer the question, because I'm think I'm thinking about, like, the inventory management relationship that was brought to the table or like some of those connections.

Oh, yes, of course.

Being able to support you, to sit, think about the next chapter, to think about. How would I grow this into a $50 million company?

Yeah, the. The Cat Fund has brought to me essentially a full Rolodex of resources to make my life not only easier, but my time is now allocated exactly where it should be. I need to sit in the seat where I'm designing products and finding new products and serving my market and steering the ship to expand the business. Because of the relationships brought to me with the CAT Fund, I'm now able to do that. We have the full Amazon account is fully managed and we have logistics management as well. So it's literally been like, I can't even tell you how much has been taken off my plate. Like, I can now do exactly what I'm supposed to be doing, which now is a major reason why. Why we're at the value we are.

This is what I love. I love keeping the entrepreneur in the owner's seat. A colleague of mine once said that I love the owner's model so much because it's what I wish existed when I built my businesses. It is the strategy of keeping the owner in the visionary seat and bringing in the resources that free that entrepreneur up to be able to cast a bigger vision. And when you have proper support and when you have other people who are contributing, where they are also owners, where they are experts, then you have a business that can scale beyond just one person. Our job as investors and advisors to Jake is to bring in those resources and to make sure that the business is properly capitalized, meaning it has enough money to be able to keep those relationships in place so that Jake can keep casting a bigger vision. Otherwise, this is a brand that would have been stuck at low seven figures. And if that's you, you've got a brand that's stuck at low seven figures. It is probably because you're trying to do everything yourself. And you have not utilized the owner's model to free you up, to focus on the most important things that drive the next chapter of the vision of your business. So if this is you and you need help with resources being brought to the table and you need to be freed up to be back in the owner's seat, you should reach out. You should at least take a look at what we do, because we have a lot of resources that we can bring to the table to free you out of the weeds and put you back in the owner's seat of your business so that you can build a much bigger vision. And I'll say, when we started the fund and we started our relationship, these were resources we didn't have, and we just. We hit a constraint. How do we solve this problem for Jake and for other people that will follow in his footsteps? And we made new relationships that made that possible, and it unlocked a new area of growth for you.

Yeah, it's amazing. For those that have not worked directly with you yet, like, you're getting a monthly meeting with you and members of your team that are literally asking you, what can we do for you to make your life easier? And it does not get much better than that.

Well, I appreciate that we are. We are partners at the end of the day, so we are raising capital on the capitalism marketplace, which is really exciting for me because I've always wanted.

To do this, and same year, and.

And there's. There's the kind of the VC route of raising capital where you go out and you get big checks and you have private investors, and that's essentially what we did for the first round of the fund. But my vision, like, what really gets me up in the morning, is knowing that there is a community of people that can support the people who are sprinting.

Right.

Which is why we're not looking for $100,000 checks. We're looking for three, four, $5,000 checks from a lot of people who can support this brand and will be willing to make introductions and want to be a part of something that is sprinting in the right direction, in a much bigger direction, and will leave reviews for products. And when you have a few hundred people that are supporting a brand like this, it means the world. If you mean that, meet that one influencer or get that one review, get that one testimonial. That changes everything. So that's. That's why I'm pumped about the way that we're structuring this.

Oh, of course.

I'm. I'm curious, from your perspective, does it make you nervous to raise? Like, I know we're advocating for the raise, but like, as an entrepreneur who just started this with a $10,000 a month business, how do you feel in that moment of taking on capital from outside people?

I will say I feel extremely confident about it or I would not be sitting here or doing this race. If I were collecting money and had no use for it or nowhere to immediately deploy it, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

And when you say immediately deploy it, you mean into product expansion, A little bit of marketing? Is there any place else?

No, those are going to be my two main focuses, essentially. Just more income streams for the business, more proven income streams, and then, yeah, probably reserve a little bit to get it in front of the right customers.

You've shared with me, this was a light bulb moment for both of us that in this new truck line, not only are the margins better and not only is our bigger raving fan base, but that influencers are reaching out to you, that people are starting to contact you. We won't say the name, but we'll just say a very, very famous person is a customer.

Yes.

You saw, I think you saw the name coming on Shopify.

Right. Which is crazy because I'm removed from that part of the business as well. That's more of just like customer service at this point, like viewing day to day orders. I swear it was just like a crazy sign. I was just sitting in front of my computer at the time and I was like, I saw the name. I was like, no way. I was like, obviously this is just a joke. Yeah.

Somebody just put it in as a fake name.

Yeah. But it was fully validated. It was real.

So it's a, a very famous person. Everyone knows who this is.

Yes.

And this was one of those signs where we said, okay, we need to go move faster to.

Yep.

You know, like we, we want to support the momentum that is going in this business. So I want to hear from you in this, in these next, like two to three years, what do you want to see happen and what, what do you envision happening that is different about just growing a few products that take you to $4 million? Where do you envision this going? Like, how big can this get in your mind?

Yeah. I honestly see no reason why this can't be a hundred million dollar company. I mean, when you look at others in the space and where they lack, they're essentially the procter and gamble of automotive accessories.

What is that? What does that mean? Exactly.

They have complete disconnect from their customer base. And you can tell because they're lacking innovation. Anything new that does come out, somebody else came out with it first. I have not seen an actual original idea in years. Now it's getting quite ridiculous. So if we fill those gaps and we can just stay true to our company values of never losing a solid connection with our customers, there's no reason we can't innovate enough on top of what we've already done to get to that level.

What do you need in order to hit, you know, at mid eight figures, low nine figures? It's funny, I'm now asking the question that you just said the cap team asked, which is how can we support you? Literally like my, like what gets me really excited is the thought of a community rushing to support somebody who's doing cool things. So like what, what do you need? What resources do you need access to that would make that easier?

Yeah. Of course there, there'll be many hurdles as we go and scale, but uh, mainly anything we can put in place that keeps me in the seat of developing products and talking to my customers is where I belong. That's how I like to steer the ship of the company. That's what I want to do until, you know, the whole time I'm a part of it. That's where I need to be. So additional systems in place to ensure I can only do that is perfect.

Aside from just part of our job.

Yeah.

And the partnerships that we bring to the table.

And you guys have knocked it out of the park. I'm able to fully sit in that space seat and it not only relieves stress for me and my day to day, it's just better for the business.

Yeah. So our job, bring capital to the table, bring relationships to the table, bring some infrastructure support.

Yep.

Your job, keep innovating, keep being really good to customers.

Yep.

At some point we might need to build some bigger in house infrastructure.

Yeah, absolutely.

And that will be, you know, part of what we navigate together. For now, the capital we're raising is going towards R and D, new product development, some customer acquisition, and we're already in striking distance of some of those panning out and being really successful.

Yeah, absolutely. We have the roadmap just fine tuned at this point. It's tested, it's proven. All we have to do now is expand proven things just to more vehicle models which potential customers are already asking for daily. So it's, it's mapped out very well.

Obviously I don't want this to Be a big pitch for why people should come in and back you on the marketplace. Although I'm really selfishly, really excited that we're going in this direction. But if people want to do that, they can find out@capitalism.com marketplace all the details of what we're doing. That talks about the company transformation and the 10x you've done over the last few years. Hopefully the increase that will happen over the next few years. I'm curious from your perspective how you've changed personally because you were planning on going to get a corporate job like 10 minutes ago.

Yeah.

You know, now, now you have a mid seven figure business and we're, we're casting a much bigger vision for how big this can get. What's changed for you personally?

Yeah, it's, it's kind of crazy to think back. I mean 2019 was really not that long ago. And in 2019 when I started this, I was literally just in my own Amazon account looking for search terms for PPC manually and just doing all that in the business stuff. And now here we are talking to venture capitalists and even discussing mergers and acquisitions for other companies. So it's, it is a complete and utter transformation.

Tell me, tell me more about that part about the, the mergers and acquisitions. Where has that come up in the conversations?

Yeah, we, we haven't done anything firmly yet, but it's in talks of just now that we're getting to these top line capital points. We can potentially bl business up to get to this $100 million level by potentially acquiring other sources for our company. Whether that's acquiring another automotive accessory brand, whether that's acquiring an automotive blog for customer acquisition, anything like that. If we have the capital, it makes perfect sense to acquire something like that just to move even faster than we already are.

Well, we have a bunch of people starting to arrive for the Mastermind dinner we have planned tonight, so we'll wrap here. But let me just say we're super proud of you and we're really glad to be part of the journey along with you. I just want to wrap by asking if you, if there's somebody listening to this that is in the same position that you were in 2020 doing 10k a month, wondering how big this can get. What advice or what would you, what would you share with them?

I would, number one, I'm a little biased, but read Ryan's book. Honestly. Honestly, I reread it every year. It's more applicable now than it was when it came out. 100%. It's it's actually necessary now. At the time when it came out, you could probably get by by putting something on Amazon and just maybe autopilot. That is not the way these days. You have to follow your process. Read Ryan's book and honestly buy everything.

That Ryan ever sells.

Just, I would say, other than the book. Just be consistent, Chip away every single day, keep moving forward. It'll exponentially result to much bigger things.

Well, we're about to have dinner and hang out with a bunch of people who did exactly that.

Yep.

And really proud to be a part of your journey, man. Congratulations on everything you're doing. I'm real. I'm really excited for our next chapter.

No, I can't thank you guys enough. I would not be sitting here without all you guys. And it's just. I'm really grateful.

Thanks, man.

Thank you.

Full disclosure, everybody. We are raising capital for this business. We believe in this business. We think that this business has a real shot at being something special. It already is. It's already created a 10x return for us as investors when we got in early a few years ago. I have to tell you, please do not consider my involvement in a business a reason to put money into a business. We are doing an experiment@capitalism.com where we are now creating a marketplace where we bring the deals that we really believe in to the rest of the community. And we're not looking for $100,000 checks or $500,000 checks. We're building this like a community. We're crowdsourcing it. You need to be an accredited investor. You have to be willing to lose money, and you have to be willing to participate in the growth of a company. Meaning we want people who are as excited about these opportunities as we are and want to treat it like it's an opportunity to give back. So this is not meant to be a part of your portfolio that creates 100x return or that you live on. And I'm some dude that you follow on the Internet. You shouldn't take anything that I do as a reason that you should invest in something or consider being a part of something. But I've always wanted to build capitalism.com as a community that supported the opportunities within the community. And that's why we're structuring this the way that we are. So if you want to find out details about how you can be a part of this business and be a part of the community that is supporting this business, you can find out all the details@capitalism.com marketplace. And you can also Sign up to be alerted for when there are future opportunities on the marketplace as well. You're going to see more opportunities like this as we feature some of the brands and the businesses that we're really excited about and we'll be opening the doors to investors who want to be a part of contributing to the success of some of these brands. Thanks everybody for watching, for supporting Jake. We'll see you guys in the next episode. Take care.

And now a quick word from Jared.

One of our members in the 1%.

I was bankrupt and crippled to making a million dollars in a year. And then I grew that business and kept growing it. So like my whole world changed financially very quickly. Like it was amazing how fast it was able to transition and like turn once things got rolling. Ryan in capitalism.com Pretty much like taught me everything I knew about like E commerce and specifically branding was the biggest thing that I think capitalism really does well and they focus on teaching their students about building a brand and just teaching business to people. Like everything he teaches is stuff that he's done. You know, it's not like from theory that you're going to learn. So it's like all stuff that he's done. So I think the biggest thing that capitalism.com helps you with is that you're getting to learn from somebody who's done the exact thing that you want to do, which is the most important thing in the world. Like I'm in the like coaching business now. I like to help out other business owners. The biggest thing is going to someone who's done what you want to do and then learning from them. That's how you fast track your results. So if you want like the fast lane and to get your results really quickly, you go to capitalism.com and you have them show you what to do so you don't make all the mistakes and you get there really quickly. When it was the best money I ever spent because I went from bankrupt and crippled and all this other stuff to a million dollar a year business in one year, which is exactly what he teaches. And I was like, holy crap, this stuff works. Starting a business, it's scary. And so you have so many questions that go through your head about different things you need to do. When you have somebody who can just lay out, you know, a simple plan for that you can follow, that's like the biggest thing ever because you don't get stuck in your head thinking, well, maybe I should do this over here, maybe I need to worry about that over there. But to have like somebody who's done what you want to do. Lay out a plan that's like the fast track, fast lane, 200 mile an hour like euro train going across the country to just get what you want. That was like the most beneficial part of the whole thing was just being in charge of my own life instead of having to stay somewhere I didn't want and do a job I didn't want to do. I mean it was really important to have that freedom, which is what I think everyone is kind of searching for. So I was, it was a very healthy exercise. It and was able to let me focus on many other things in my life and not have to worry about that stuff anymore.

If you found value in this podcast and you're ready to go deeper, here are three resources where we can help you. 1. You can grab my book 12 months to 1 million on Audible or Amazon. It has over a thousand reviews and it's the playbook to building a seven figure business. Second, you can join our community of entrepreneurs who are following a plan to build a 1% net worth by building businesses and investing the profits you can get plugged in@capitalism.com 1. And third, if you're looking to go deeper and build a seven figure business that you can sell, you can work closely with us inside the Capitalism incubator and you can get on the waiting list and find out what we do over at capitalism.com Inc. That's capitalism.com Inc.