From $17k/mo to $200k/mo: The Newest Company I'm Investing In

Hey friends. Welcome to capitalism.com in this episode, we're going to be chatting with the founder of one of the businesses that we are moving forward with inside of my fund, which is called the capitalism.com fund. And my partner on that is Sam Prentice. And also on the call is my right hand, Inez, who is also involved in the fund as well. And the reason I'm sharing this with you is so that you can see the types of deals that we both invest in and the ones that we look for when we are looking for new deals to sponsor. So there's two types of people who should listen to this. One, if you're an entrepreneur and after listening to this, you're like, I have the same type of business or I have the same type of vision, I have the same type of experience or track record as the case study we're going to go through, then you might want to reach out to us as a potential partner who can provide some capital for your business. And also if you are an entrepreneur who is just looking for the type of mindset that it requires to build an eight figure business, which I am very confident this business is going to be. And this business a year ago is doing $17,000 a month. It is now doing $200,000 a month 12 months later. And we go through kind of some projections in this conversation to suggest why this is probably going to double again over the next 12 to 18 months. Of course, you know, past performance is no predictor of future results and all of that other disclaimer stuff. But we're just excited about the rollout of the business and the potential of the brand. And if you're an investor who is either funding your own deals or you're looking for new stuff, this will give you some a keen eye into what we look for when we're looking to invest in a brand and an emerging brand, a brand that has enough upside to warrant taking the risk to fund an emerging company. So if you're an entrepreneur looking for capital or you're an investor wanting to partner with some E commerce brands, you can apply to work with us over@capitalism.com fund. And throughout this conversation, we're going to be chatting with Courtney Lee. She's been on the show before. She's been on previous Wine with Wyan episodes. And in this one we go through her numbers. We look at how she's grown from $17,000 a year ago to to about $200,000 a month pacing right now at the time of this recording, and we talk about her return on ad spend, her advertising strategy, how she launched, how she's growing, what her product roadmap looks like. And as a result, you'll get a really good sense for the type of mindset and strategy that it takes to take something into the seven figures and probably gonna be eight figures here over the next few years. So this is a really fun conversation. It's a really great case study. I inspires you and brings you new ideas along your journey. Enjoy. All right. Hey, Courtney, what's going on?

Hi, Sam. Hi, Inez.

I'm joined by the team from the capitalism.com fund. My partner Sam, my right hand person, Inez Manziano and Courtney, the CEO and founder of Primal Coffee. Because we're going to be going through.

She's our first case study inside of the fund and we're working on some other deals as well. But Courtney, it's been a few months since we really checked in on like when we first started about working together and kind of came to verbal agreements to work together. Why don't you give us and then the world shut down. So why don't you give us an update on what's been going on in your business?

Yeah. So do you remember when that backroom event. Well, was that in August of last year or. I forget, but it was sometime I think just before Christmas and everything. So for me, I guess what's happened is a so much more confidence and relief and stress and excitement, all of that being that Primal has. So I started this just to give a backstory, went all in, decided in 2015 that I was going to do Primal. And the reason being at that point, my dad was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. I was a part of two early stage rapid growth startups. I hated corporate, quit that wasn't startups. Both of those failed. But I really got a taste of accountability and taking ownership and really feeling like whatever I did was a direct impact on the business. And my dad's diagnosis was something that kind of hit us all and said, well, what am I doing with my life? Am I doing something that matters to me, that's meaningful to me? And Primal Coffee is kind of the product of that life moment. So I guess everything from 2015 up until I would say to when I met you, I was still trying to figure things out, both with myself and with Primal. But every month over month, it was a lot of confidence. And so I would say the end of last year in October, when I hit my first a hundred K a month in sales is when just the Rhythm started going. And then I met you. And I feel like it's just that culmination when you're doing all the right things. It may not happen right away, but at some point, everything that's meant to happen is going to happen. So I got connected with you, and since then, it's just been like, absolute madness and crazy in the best way possible. I had a killer Christmas season, killer January season with sales, and I thought, you know, most companies starts to slow down in spring after the whole new year side. Mine only got busier. So Sam had called me right when I was the height of my busyness. Covid hit. He. He called to just check if I was okay. And I was like, you know, actually I'm freaking out because business is too good. Like, my inventory that I thought was gonna last me until June was sold out in, like, mid April, early April. And it's just been a lot of learning. In terms of.

Not learning, I would say just like, managing all the stuff that's going on. But that's what I'm kind of good at. I'm like that organized chaos. So I can handle all things going at once. So thank God. Just all those relationships and, like, we can kind of go into this. But basically, all I'm trying to say is it's been crazy in such a good way, in such a blessed way since we met. And I think part of it is because, you know, I've just built so much of foundation and infrastructure to finally get to this point where I get to meet you and talk to you, and I'm finally ready. Everything happens at the right time, right place. And so, yeah, sorry, long winded. But that's just. I feel so strongly about just what's been happening and how I've navigated and how we've kind of crossed paths. And I'm very excited for this means for the future.

Yeah.

So help me understand the. You said you ran out of inventory in April. What you thought was going to last until June. What was the reason for the spike?

So when Covid hit, the initial, like, first five minutes was, okay, what's this going to do? Got my team on a call. I said, let's. There's going to be two scenarios. One, we're going to. Is going to impact as well, because I knew that, all right, people are going to be at home, and there's an opportunity for us there that they're not drinking coffee at the coffee shop, they're not going out. So we have that opportunity. But the alternative is people stop Spending money because they're all holding onto the cash. So I said, let's prepare for that option. But I want us to focus and go a little that. So when I changed our marketing messaging, our Facebook ads, my Instagram copy obviously being very like empathetic to what's. Everyone's. What happened to everyone, but more so saying, okay, so let's. How do we work this into your life still? Because coffee is important. So all of us, right, so you can still enjoy your primal and your coffee. And here's how to do it. So I just started shifting a lot of the messaging, but prepared my team in the back end and all of my supply chain for what could have been the worst.

So you saw a spike. Would you say it was naturally or was a result of the messaging from the advertising that you started?

I think it was a combination of both.

Yeah, I think it was a combination of both. I mean one of the things that you talked about in your book, right. Is that one of the key parts, the three things for having this million dollar business is having the exposure and having an audience to talk to and effect yourself too. So when all this happened, I mean my platform is Instagram. That's my direct line. I don't really do email marketing. Tbd, like let's see what happens. But right now Instagram is my main direct channel.

Huh, we'll change that one.

Yeah, right. So like every time I do do it, it provides great results, but I'm just so resistant to all the current kind of email spamming anyway, so it's just my direct line. I just did my normal like Instagram story and just talking to people and doing my post. And so I think it's combination of ads, but also organically because I have that audience that I can when, when shit's hitting the fan, I'm like, hey guys, how's everyone doing? Are you okay? And just staying relevant. And it doesn't seem weird for me to be coming to them saying, hey, are you okay? Or like what's going on? Talk to me.

So what, what are, what are your sales pacing now?

So I did 160 January, basically did 160 January, February, March. But that's also like barring a lot of fluctuation out of stock inventory. In a stock inventory last month was 180. This month both thing goes right, I should hit 190, 200. So it's just. Yeah, that's kind of the pace. And it's just projecting every month, every month, historically for me and for Primal Every month we beat the previous month.

It's awesome.

We're literally just like a skate ramp and a straight uphill.

And is it still that capital is probably the biggest constraint at this point?

Oh, yeah. I mean, so I know, like one of the things that I'm sure we'll talk about is just what am I going to use the money for? Like, why do I need the money now? I kind of alluded to this, that since 2015, stumbling around for two years trying to figure out the formula, getting my groove. I'm a big proponent of investing in my infrastructure, my products, my audience first. I never felt right to take this kind of capital from anyone until I felt that I had a product of value and a business of value that you can add to. It's like the whole engines and cylinders, right. Right now I'm kind of at the point where I have all my cylinders ready, but because of capital restraints, I haven't taken money since very end or very beginning of 2019. So a while ago. So I've got these cylinders ready out of hard work and having good product, investing, all that, but I can only give a little bit amount of gas to each cylinder, right? So they're ready for that fuel, they're ready to go. And that's what I'm so excited about, is that, yeah, we'll talk about numbers of marketing, but inventory, what I noticed, like what's happening right now, I'm out of stock of things and to be out of stock of key products for a month is just unacceptable in terms of growing the business. And so I'm having to choose between do I invest my limited capital in my ads, do I invest in my inventory, do I invest in my team and myself? So those are kind of all of the things that I'm having to trade off between.

Let me ask a quick question here real quick. So Courtney, what is, what is the distribution like? What is the ratio of distribution of your different platforms that you distribute on? Like what percentage of your sales come from Amazon, from Shopify, from like direct to consumer? What is your platform mix?

So I just launched on Amazon in mid November of last year.

I have a different strategy than most people I think with Amazon, but only launching a couple SKUs on there since November of last year. I'm at like 264,000 for Amazon, but my the last 12 months for Shopify I'm like 1.2 million. So I'm like very disproportionately my website and my Shopify versus Amazon, to be completely honest, I don't really invest that much energy or time in Amazon because that's my discovery and marketing platform. Purely like come Amazon find me and I funnel you to my website. Yeah.

We can make a couple tweaks and not disturb operations at all. But improve the positioning on Amazon.

Right. That's the problem too with inventory. Is that the reason why I like ran out of stock of my variety pack, ran out of stock of my salted caramel and just haven't been able to replenish fast enough. So that's why I'm like, alright, well I just kind of coast on 40 to 50amonth on Amazon, get inventory when I can. Otherwise my priority is my Shopify, my Instagram customers because they're the ones who have that personal relationship with.

Well also you said you crossed the first hundred thousand dollar month in October, is that right? So we've almost doubled since then. You launched on Amazon in like January, didn't you?

Or like Amazon was mid November.

Okay, so it's been less than a year and you're doing $40,000 a month on Amazon. There's a very good chance that that doubles by the end of this year, if not more.

Right.

And almost, I shouldn't say guarantee when we're talking about the capitalism fund, but there's a very, there's a likelihood, there's a non zero chance that you double again next year on just Amazon. And so what the total business revenue is looking at, you know, pacing about $2 million. You're right on track to be doing $2 million on just Amazon next year. So I think you're a little bit hard on yourself on neglecting Amazon. You're right on pace for that to be a nice supplemental seven figure channel on top of your primary business. And as the primary business continues to grow, the engine of Amazon will continue to compound as well. So I wouldn't be so hard on yourself. You're in perfect shape.

Yeah, I just, that's part of the reason for money, right, is an inventory and it's just I can't supply, I can't provide enough inventory for my own existing customers. That's what makes me feel like, well, do I even send any to Amazon? Do I even put that on Amazon? Because I know that will be gone within three weeks on Shopify and that's my current situation.

I totally got you.

Yeah.

Courtney, give us a little bit of the assuming when we clear this inventory hurdle and you've got some reserves to be able to relax around the management of the cash flow where do you stand in the product rollout moving forward?

Oh, so with Primal, what's so exciting and what I was kind of trying to get out before with when I met you in August is my first time going to that. Really going all in on what I know Primal is going to shape into, which is. Yes. Okay, so we've, we've established that we are a clean, sugar free creamer that actually tastes good and that actually works. Now it's like, okay, what is the next. What is really this whole evolution of Primal and it's providing all these fun, unique flavors. And so the flavor roadmap, I've got circus animal cookie. I've got butterscotch toffee like crazy. The blueberry pancakes, I'm working on Italian speaker right now. So it's like covering all the main core bases but then going in the whole collaborations with cold stems collaborate where with Jenny's right. Having all that kind of brand collaboration. So on a product roadmap for creamers, it's just purely none of the flavors and that really high level, big exposure flavor collaborations with fun stuff like having fun on the other side. Because Primal, we have established that we are sugar free. We have not gone in on keto and that's very intentional because who knows how long keto is going to last. But I think sugar free.

I'm so glad you made that decision early on to not be another keto company.

So many keto companies and yeah, if news came out tomorrow that keto all of a sudden made you die at 50 years old, people would, everyone would stop. But there's so many companies who name themselves X Keto or keto X. So I say it is keto friendly, fine. But my goal is if you're just on a lifestyle to remove all the chemicals and processed stuff and then reduce the amount of sugar. Primal is going to provide you all the products you're ever going to need. So in terms of expansion, I'm really excited. I just finished, I think with the final formula for my all purpose baking flour, which is keto and low carb. But it actually creates cookies that taste like a Nestle Tollhouse. Like my family and John have been having so much fun tasting my cookies and all the pancakes, all these recipes that happen to be gluten free, keto friendly, low carb. So that's one avenue. Another is like the oatmeal side where Quaker oats is something my grandparents used to eat every day and now they just do plain oats. They scoop in Primal and it's Incredibly creamy, delicious. Like that's a whole market because there's die hard people who love oatmeal. So there's lots of different avenues that are ranging from gluten free or maybe it's low carb. Oats obviously aren't keto, but it's a really healthy food of a category that is kind of traditional.

It's basically a replacement, a healthy replacement for the Quaker Instant.

No, there isn't. There is none.

That is what you are doing. That is what this version of Primal will do.

Yeah. And my creamer already is the key to making plain oats taste incredible. So I already have the products ready. Essentially it's just about my source of biodynamic gluten free oats, which I also have farm to table. Best oats ever. Yeah. So my main thing is just the whole sugar free side. Right. And I think going all in on sugar free, but clean sugar free and good tasting sugar free. And flavors is a winner because flavor, if you have a better tasting version or more exciting flavors, people are going to buy you. So oats is a really fun place to go into the flavor side. Coffee creamer obviously too. And then just taking care of a couple staples but not spreading myself too thin because I think we have enough to tackle with just a couple categories and doing the whole physical like coffee shop, whatever, whatever you want to do. So.

Yeah, that's, that's great, Courtney.

Yeah.

I mean the thing that excites me the most is I know you light up when it comes to the flavors and that's awesome. It's your bread and butter. But I can't wait to help you clear this cash flow issue so that you roll out all these other amazing products. It's really totally.

And to just continue to be there with my customers. I mean, my audience is what has made me successful. And it took me a while about the audience.

Like, tell us how you built it, how it's growing, where your exposure is coming from. Tell us about that.

Yeah. So basically back when I started my Instagram was my website and I was having people pay me through Venmo and PayPal. And we talked about this before, right. Where my very first customer. So it took me almost two years to format the product. And then when I finally had my mvp, I was just on the Instagram rabbit hole, found someone using a hashtag, coffee creamer or whatever she posted saying that she's trying to lose weight for her wedding and she's trying to cut the crap out with her international delight hazelnut her name is Kelly. She's still like an amazing customer of mine supporter. And I just thought this was a sign from like whatever the universe saying sent to her because she said that the natural creamer she bought, the so delicious coconut one, was disgusting. It just tasted like water. And that is one of the key things I hear from people is all the healthy natural creamers taste like water. That's what my dad said too. So I said, okay, well, hi, my name is Courtney, I'm a young food entrepreneur. Can I send you something that I just made? I think it might solve your problem. And of course she said yes. And the rest is history. She got it. And mind you, she probably had like at that time, 400 followers. But those 400 people are her actual friends. Listen to her. And so she put this rave, like epic caption saying, if you're looking for a creamer, that's not crap contact Courtney. Here's her Instagram. And I was just doing every transacting through a DM and but because of that, it's always a friend of a friend. That permutation of like a friend network, that's how I built my actual audience is by actually being the one taking your order, talking to them like, hey, what are you looking for? What are you currently using? Let me help you. And I've kept that forward facing. If you go on my Instagram now, you still see me in it. That's still me writing all the posts I've tried in the past. Someone came on, said, oh, we should make it really pretty and clean looking like aesthetic and use this pretty picture. But then write your caption. And it was so, it felt so fake. It didn't feel genuine. I was like, I'm not inspired. So for me, the audience building is literally me just actually running my business with my customers, meeting everyone saying, hey, so happy you found me. Like, how can I help? What flavors are you interested in? And that's audience to me is just, I don't know, run your business, like actually be the one facing and talking to your customers. Don't hire some like person in Philippines.

Courtney, this conversation is the best part of my day. Yeah.

It'S just because you did it right.

Yeah.

And you did it right. And from like an investment standpoint, you look for a couple things. One, you look for the can't miss entrepreneur. Right? Like that money amplifies what they're doing. Right. Doing a lot of things right. And you look for the thing that money is going to accelerate the pace of things, but you have to assume that the pace of things are good things. And Phil Towne says you should invest like you're gonna own the whole company. And in this case, like.

Even if the numbers didn't make sense, your passion for the customer and the audience and the product line is so great, you'd find a way to make it work. And so there is no going out of business.

Right.

I don't think people realize that, like, when you have really good products that people naturally want, there is, there's really not a going out of business.

Right.

Because there's still fundamental underlying demand. You might have to, like, pare down operations to be profitable again. But when you have something people naturally want, yeah, there, there is no going out of business.

And when they like you, I mean, and they actually care about you, because there's a lot of, like, we were talking about a lot of noise right now with CPG brands and products that the barrier to entry is so low. But what's really hard still is actually capturing the loyalty and the true passion, like the people who are truly your fans. That's what's difficult because there's a lot of people. Anyone can spend a $3 million on ads and take a customer from me to try. But I can't even tell you how many times I've had my customers tell me, hey, I tried X brand. Oh my God. This just confirms why I'm primal for life. Yours are so much better. I love you. Like all my ads that go on right now, you know, one of the keys, and this is an issue, I see a lot of companies, entrepreneurs don't respond to people. You're running ads, but you don't respond to comments and questions, which is so weird to me. Or it's very generic. And we take the time. I love that. I love my team and I, we take the time to answer every question. But like, I have my. All my customers because we've built that relationship and rapport. They answer it all for me. So if I can't, if I'm like MIA or my team's MIA for like a week, I'll come back and it's all taken care of. Because all my customers know how I run my business. They know my policies, they know how to make it. So they educate everyone else. And that's something that at this point now I really see is so valuable and why I'm so happy that I invest in building true relationships and friendships. I have them on a first name basis. I can name you hundreds of people who are my customers that I know I'm on first name basis, I know their favorite flavor, I know what they always order. So I think that's so special. I never want to lose that.

So I have a quick question here on that note, because this is what's really cool and I was really attracted to about this Courtney is just the relationship you have with that audience is so huge. So here's something I would like to know from a number standpoint is number one is. And we can get into how the number is calculated but like the general cost to acquire a customer for you and then the follow up question that is like what percentage of those customers reorder or do we have any kind of a ballpark of with a consumable. The lifetime value of a client is obviously very attractive because if they're a lifetime client and this is a long term purchase, it could be a significant number there. But what's the average reorder rate when we add a customer into your audience?

Yeah. So right now every month we are around like the 20 to 25% return in customer. But here's the thing is right now, so of the so lifetime for Primal since 2017 to now, total sales is 1.62, like 1,626,000, whatever. And what's crazy though is within the last like 12 months and more so towards like the six month range, we've done that like 1.2 million. So we've just seen over the last few months an explosion of first time customers. Which I want, I always want to look at the returning and recurring thing. There's so much work I can do to improve, but it's also kind of skewed because we've just, I mean my ads now I was telling Sam, so on average my return on ad spend month over month is 5.337. So we're kidding.

Yeah. Hold on, hold on. I got a thousand questions.

Wait, wait, hold on. So real quick here. I'm gonna let you get to all your questions, but I'm gonna do something here if it's okay. Am I allowed screen in this? I'm just gonna pull that up real quick so it can be seen. So this was something Courtney sent me a little screenshot from a phone and I thought is that okay to share that, Courtney?

Yeah, that's okay.

We can add it out because if not too late.

Right.

So she sent me this and like I had to go. I'm gonna be honest. I went and I googled return on ad spend to make sure I was reading this right. Because this was, this is a lot of fun to look at. So go ahead with your questions, Ryan.

Alright, so first of all.

You said your return on ad spend was like five point something, right?

Five point. There's the average of these. Yeah, 5.3. So that's why I started the November.

Now there's a, there's a, there's. First of all, is that, is that front end or are you tracking a certain like lifetime return on this?

This is purely from my Facebook, from ads manager. So on. This is why I was ads manager. Yeah, this is my Facebook ad. So that's what I'm saying. I'm really skewed because I have so many new people coming in. Because this is your run end. Yeah. This front end.

I now I understand now why you're like, do I spend more money on ads? Because your return on ad spend is ridiculous.

Yeah. And the cost to acquire the customer is $6.

OMG, we're so gonna blow this up. Okay. Second, my other question was you said.

Oh, shoot, you were talking about.

Something. I'm so distracted and turned on ads, I can't think of anything else. It's like the hottest girl in Texas is walking across my screen right now.

I'll loop for a second here, Ryan, because.

Sorry, Sam, before I lose it.

Go ahead. Got it. Go ahead.

25% repeat customer.

Absolutely.

Does that mean that 25% of your sales are from repeat customers or 25% of your customers come back and buy again? Which one?

That's the percentage of the monthly sales.

That's phenomenal. I was hoping you were going to say that, but when I first heard it, I got a little bit scared. Yeah, those are, those are fantastic numbers.

I'm done. All right, let's go.

But yeah, so like I am even this month. I mean, I'm so right now. I've been using a digital marketing agency, which at first I wasn't sure. I've never done Facebook ads before. So I thought, okay, maybe I got to use the agency. I also didn't have the time to dedicate to learning about it. And they're great. But as we month over month, I know my customers so well. I know what images would work, I know what captions work that I ended up just saying, hey, tell me what ideas. If you have any ideas to spitball, tell me. Otherwise, here's the direction I think we go this month. Here are the ads. I take all the pictures, I do all the captions. It's collaborative, but like I still do most of it. That To a point now where my newest hire, he does digital marketing. So why would I not bring it in house? Because. And that's kind of the whole circle to circle bring on full circle is that's the benefit of investing so much and knowing your audience and building relationships is I know what works. That's why my turn to ad spend. I'm not shooting in the dark. I'm not throwing spaghetti on the wall because I know who to target. I know what to say to each target. And yeah.

And when you're running your ads.

Yeah.

Is the checkout process, are you sending them to Shopify and an upsell process or just a front end process?

Just, just my website. It depends. If there's a picture of like the butter pecan or like a limited edition flavor, it's obviously linked directly to that product on Shopify. But I don't have any funnels or like landing pages that are taken to. That's something that I would love to start building out because there are so many different offers, so many different things to do. But right now it's very basic and just link to the product that's in the picture or just link to the website.

Yeah. Beautiful. That's beautiful. Well done, Courtney.

Thank you. It's been a lot of work, but I'm really happy now and kind of on that whole. Why now? Why is now the time is because of all this. Right. I've done a lot of the legwork to get it to this and I'm so proud of it that I'm like, I know we have value, but I know that there's also value to enhance it. The right kind of, you know, people to come in and the right money. Yeah.

Would you tell me a little bit about the audience size on the different platforms? Email list, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. Like where. Give me, give me all the numbers you got.

Right. So Instagram, I have 26.5 thousand followers. Facebook, I really don't do much on Facebook. But that one, I think I'm at 4000 something followers on their page. Page, group people. Then email list. I'm like 35, 36,000.

And you don't email them?

No, I only email them when the new flavor, like the new. When there's a reason, like a new flavor is coming out or like it's live.

Oh yeah, yeah.

But I have such mixed feelings about email marketing because some companies email me every damn day and I like, I get so annoyed with them. So I want to find. I know there's a reason. I know there's an application. But I also am just. I don't need to email people. I don't want to be in their inbox every day.

So, yeah, I don't know.

I got you. That's also why versus I got you.

Okay, thank you.

Inez, what do you think about all this?

I think she definitely needs to email them, and I'm actually shocked. There's so much value you can give in emailing them. You don't just have to sell. You can be telling them things, which is, you know, there's so much value in the email marketing. Yeah. You need to jump on that train. Yeah. It's because I see the way that people talk about email marketing is the way I look at my Instagram. Like, I use it. So, yeah, I think of Instagram as my provide value other than just selling. I, like, never sell on Instagram. That's just what I'm doing. Hey, guys, I'm in la. I'm doing production. Sweet cream or what flavor do you want? I'm doing this. Choose this. Like, but I can see how I can translate some of those pieces and think of it in the email marketing or email marketing sense. Mm, yeah. Yeah.

Well, Sam, do you want to go through, like, our. Our plan, if you will, of what we're gonna do here?

Can I ask one or two other questions real quick on this, real fast? So on this. So, honestly, Courtney, I love it. And on the email front, one last thing is I remember when I talked to you maybe a couple weeks ago, just all the different applications of what was really cool about the way the pandemic came into play here. It's just a chance to really, like, engage with your audience in a big way of, like, taking that. That comfort of coffee in the morning, like, what that does for your mental state and all those kind of things, or what I got turned on to on my side as I'm over here thinking, if you can convince people to quit buying their dang Starbucks every day, like, yeah, you say, like, hey, you can go create that customer say right now. You can't get it as easily. You're not going out for it. Learn a better way, and you might have a lifetime customer off of that.

I actually did do an email marketing campaign. Oh, sorry, my ring just flew.

Don't lose that.

I'm not used to this yet. So, yeah, I did an email marketing campaign about that kind of around when it hit, but I waited for all the noise to die because a lot of companies jumped in on that. But a lot of it seemed Very disingenuous. So I kind of just wanted to wait to see what felt. When it felt right for me. And it did really well. I did. I got a huge sales boost after that email. So I get, I know the value of email marketing and it's just getting myself or someone to like do it right.

No, I think Starbucks is gonna buy us. Starbucks is gonna buy us when everything is going digital and they're starting to.

When it's going digital and they realize that this is just, I mean you got a healthier way. You encourage people to be financially and physically healthier. Like I was just, I was, I had to recover for a second. I was like, this is just so beautiful.

Yeah.

But hey, so real quick here. So I heard you said your cost to acquire customer. Awesome number there. What are your, what are your margins? Your profit margin? Let's talk about that just real quick here. Just so we have those numbers here and I've kind of locked them in here because that's a big thing. When we factor the return on ad spend. We know we spend X dollars, we make X number. What does it look like from profit standpoint?

Yeah, so right now I'm at around. I gave you Sam, the case scenario of like buying one large bag. So from.

Producing the product, trading, it's my fulfillment center, fill in the center, setting it to the customer. We're sitting at around 67% at that.

At a profit margin. So you.

Profit margin.

Yeah, it costs you 350 to get it to them and you make 650, give or take.

Yeah.

Yep. Awesome. That's. That's beautiful. A 60 plus percent profit margin on the products that we're looking at. And the idea is as you scale, you should be able to reduce the cost of acquisition.

Well, here's the thing too is so the fulfillment partner that I use, they're called shipbob and I have really like them so far. Definitely offer me so much more deep insight to things. And they have warehouses in Dallas, in Moreno Valley, which is Southern California, Chicago and Pennsylvania. And so once you start splitting up your inventory when you have enough and you can split between four warehouses, the speed to customers is faster. So better experience, but also the cost. Because right now I've been filling out of this one Chicago warehouse. I finally just opened up Southern California. But because I couldn't buy enough inventory, that's why I go out of stock of certain warehouses, I have to split inventories. And one from Chicago, one from Southern California, that's like I'm just paying twice the shipping now, because I don't have enough at one location. But once you start spreading it out and you have enough, oh my God, the margin, I mean, it just gets even better and better. So you reduce the cost of the actual good and then reduce the cost of shipping. Shipping is just ridiculously expensive nowadays. But yeah, you can reduce that with. Ship up with my fulfillment center.

Awesome.

Pretty cool.

And then I have one more question kind of on logistics. Then let's shift into maybe just a little bit about kind of direction. Because one of the things that I know we look for here is always making sure that on the front end there's a good partnership where we think we can add value to you and you think that we can add value to you. And so part of that is just making sure that the basics, the infrastructure is right. Which so far everything sounds beautiful, as we've already discussed. But then the next thing you look for is saying, what's the direction you kind of see? And then kind of pairing the business with a potential partner saying, where is that going to go? So last, only other logistic question I had is as far as your company right now, from just an operational standpoint, do you have any, like, what. What debt, if any, do you have on the company right now?

Yeah, I mean, the only debt I have is just literally I use. I have my credit cards. Like, I love Brex. Brex is awesome.

Yeah.

But I have like Brex, my American Express Gold card and an Amex Business Amazon business card. So I just have like my credit cards that I use, which I'm able to pay off fully. Like, I don't. Not carrying interest on anything. But that's pretty much the debt that I carry is just. I use a combination of my checking account and credit cards to revolve and pay for everything.

Do you tuck the credit cards into the bootstraps you're doing the business with or.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. At any given time, I'd say it's like 40 to 60,000 revolving that. Like I paid off everything in full every month. But yeah, yeah, okay, that's.

That's what I kind of assumed from having talked to the past. I wanted to make sure I covered it. So let's transition into kind of the next steps and what you're going for. But why don't we do that by asking. So when you think of, when we think of invest in you, you think of having an investment made into you. What. Why do you want an investment? Like, what would that do for you? What are you looking for? Out of that.

I mean, so for me, it's. It's ability to have the kind of freedom to continue to get back. I have glimmers. I've had glimmers of hope over the past few months. I brought in a girl, Veronica, who's just absolutely crushing it. And I've so like that relief and feeling, oh my God, I don't have to do that part of the business anymore. I don't have to worry because someone competent and able and someone I trust is able to cover that. But then I'll get pulled back into when Covid hit and now sales are going up like we're out of stock and I'm diving back into supply chain, diving back into cash flow stuff like how do I do this? And working with my accounting firm, there's so many things that I keep getting pulled back into that's in the business that I'm not able to fully release and just focus on. Like, actually I would say even the past few days, I've been really uninspired with Instagram. And when I do that or when I feel that, I know that there's a little bit of like pressure for me to be in other parts of the business, I'm not able to fully immerse myself in like my genius. Right, Ryan, you talk about that. Go in your zone of genius. Where do you add the most value? And part of just taking money obviously means a like the whole stresses of inventory and supply chain and fulfillment centers. Having out of stock of this, I'm splitting orders and like all that stuff I assume would go away, right? Because now we have ample inventory, we have ample, like our costs have gone down and I can really just look at everything with a really clear picture for five minutes. Like, let me just look at everything for five minutes clearly, you know, so that's kind of one of the big reasons why I know that capital is part of the solution. Right. It's just part of it. Freeing up these things that are easily solved with money. Like, that's just a money issue. So that's one thing. And other thing is I do think that it's time for I want to play in this next level of business like entrepreneurs and business people. I know I can kind of run with the big guys and I want to learn, like, I don't know, this is my first company. I don't know everything. I don't know what I'm doing some of the times with certain departments. And so just being able to be exposed to a lot of people who have Been there and done that or who want to help me. That's the other amazing value add is that I know I've got a good baseline to start. So just having other people to come and give advice or help, you know, help show me different things that I wouldn't have ever looked at my business, like, because I don't know what to look for in some ways, you know.

Yeah, that's great. That's great.

We got you 100%. No, absolutely. And it's always. It's always a pleasure when you have. It's kind of a rare thing to have the opportunity to do business not only with someone who's competent and, you know, excelling in their space, who, you know, just shines the way that you shine, but it's also just fun to be around. That's always, always a plus to have that all linked together, too.

Yeah, for sure. And the thing too is I think I'm in a good place for anyone. For you, for anyone is because I don't need money. I don't need that. But it would help. You know, I'm. It's because there are some people who are like, okay, if you don't come in and save me, I will go out of business. I will die. Or I am, like, completely don't know what to do here. I'm not in that position.

So I think that's also the difference is that I feel comfortable for you guys or anyone else looking at my company because it's not like a damsel in distress. I need you to like shit ton of money and save me, create my products for me. Find me a new supply chain fulfillment center. Find me a new coat packer. Like, we're good? We're all good.

Yeah, awesome. Good.

Well, what.

Let's. Let's go and kind of end on this is or whatever else you have if we need to get to anything else. But as far as, like, next things that you really are looking forward in the business or anything, anything else that you have coming down the pipe that you would like to say. Like, here's some of the directions you see. Big expansionary options for Primal or New Directions. You want to take it?

God, Ryan, I don't know if you remember back at the backroom event, I told you, like, a dream of mine would be wanting to have, like, the Primal Cafe. Primal coffee shop. I 100% think that the idea, like, the concept of having health, this kind of an option and kind of a Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory vibe of everything looks and tastes so like naughty, but it's actually good for you. And right now, again, I don't think the trend of healthier, better for you and sugar free is ever going to go away. That's going to be a hundred percent a thing. But right now every coffee shop, restaurant is the side. You know, one item on the menu is sugar free or like one on the menu is gluten free or keto friendly. The whole business, the whole aspect of it would be that concept. And so I don't have a full like flesh idea business plan at all. But that's one thing I'm very excited about. And I know that there's something, potentially something. Even if it's like a Starbucks thing, right? Where we have a Starbucks on the menu of Starbucks we have the whole primal section or even if it's a white label, like who knows. But that's a whole area of business that I know at some point I think there's something there, but I don't really know. I've never been thought about. Yeah, I've never done business in that direction. Don't know anyone who's done business in that direction of scale of like franchise or just having this massive presence.

I don't know, you know, but we have those relationships. So it's perfect.

Yeah. And it's just so fun, right? Like it's just such a fun. I have a whole concept on the whole Pinterest board that's like my dream. That's what keeps me going, right. Is that I know this is something I know I can do. Let's just keep it there. Meanwhile, let's just focus on right now and what.

So kind of our stage one is going to be solidifying inventory because there's an immediate bump, there's an immediate low hanging fruit and a bump in sales from just being back in stock and some of the things are that are depleted right now. And then stage two, we have our two next products that we're going to roll out. I hope you throw in a third in there. And the nuts in the nuts.

Thank goodness. They're like crack.

Yeah, they are.

So we have kind of a product rollout map and then from there we have more expansion which is like fun ideas and relationships and scale. And along the way we already have the advertising dialed in to be able to acquire customers profitably. And we have that foundation of the levers we can pull in order to turn on faster growth.

Right.

I have a plan to take this from 2 million to 10 million, right?

Yeah.

Results not guaranteed. Asterisks no.

Results not guaranteed for sure.

For anything. Because I'm an idiot on the Internet.

Results not guaranteed, but effort will be guaranteed.

Well said.

I will work my hardest. But no, I was gonna say, like, one of the things that I know I can absolutely work on and have the free. Like, it's just about time, right? So, okay, why haven't I focused more on Amazon? If you look at my Amazon listing, it is legit. Just the basic. There's no enhanced brand content I don't have. You know, it's so basic and. Or with the retargeting and email marketing, like, why don't I do that? Because time, like, I. I can always do so much and my attention needed in these more urgent things, like, I just. I can't. So to be at the place where I've got people I can trust in each area. And I know that. Let's go spend on ads, you know, because right now, the comments that. It makes me feel, inevitably feel bad is that now on my ads or even on my Instagram page, people going, hi, like, all the flavors I want are sold out. When are they coming back? Like, when I just see this a lot, I'm like, oh, my God. You know, it's just. I'm losing out on so many people who would have tried me, but maybe they're going to go buy something else in the meantime. So I'm losing on a lot of. A lot of business, a lot of sales. Which is why, like, it's so crazy. I still did 1 80. I still did 20k better than the previous month, despite being sold out of everything because people are, like, desperate to get creamer, right? Not going to go to the grocery store. And that's one of the ad copies I did was, hey, don't fight for the last bottle of coffee. Me at the grocery store. Try this. I deliver it straight to your door. You don't have to leave the house. That crushed it like, that did so well.

Well, Courtney, we're thrilled to be working with you. I mean, Sam and I have said this is like, this is what we wanted to do when we grew up, right, was to work with people like you who have exciting businesses that we like regardless of what the results are. We like the business, we like the customer, we like the direction, and we love the entrepreneur. And because of all the relations we have, we can bring value and capital to help this grow. But if this was a colossal failure, which it won't be, we still love the company, the brand, the direction, and we're Just thrilled to be a part of it. So congratulations on all we've done and all you've done. And this is the very, very beginning.

Right. I think that's the main thing I talked to Sam before is I just want to be able to feel like everyone's working hard. I'm not doubting your work ethic, but it's all, like, fun. Right? It doesn't feel like we're all working, but we're all working together and we enjoy. And yeah, like you said, even if it failed, we would still be able to laugh and have fun during the process because. Okay, well, what do we do? Right? But I'm really excited. Very excited. I love everyone that I met from your team. So I'm just beyond stoked. And that's been one of the biggest hesitations is finding someone I can trust are people who aren't gonna be predatory or some people who's gonna hold me off this whip. I'm on this ball and chain having to provide you with this, like, crazy amount of numbers and finance stuff that I don't even know how to put together right now at this point. So that's what's kind of always deterred me from going this direction. Yeah.

Yeah.

And just for anyone who is watching or listening, our plan is we have a third party that we work with who does bookkeeping and looking at numbers and. And can free the entrepreneur out of that part of it and also keep ourselves and our investors informed of what all the numbers look like without this being. Without it being a stressful thing for anyone. And they're third party, so we know that they're accurate and they're not fudged by the entrepreneur.

And our job is to free up as much entrepreneurial genius as possible by having enough capital to allow the entrepreneur to focus on what they do best. Stay in stock, be innovative on products, and then we get to bring relationships and opportunities to the table that will help accelerate that plan and that path to growth. So.

We can't wait to move forward with you, Courtney.

Thank you. I'm so excited, too. My whole team, my whole supply chain. Like I said, I've built, not even customers, but in terms of who am I source my ingredients from, who produces my stuff, who ships it and fulfills it? Everyone. I'm on, like, first name texting basis. I can call them and I keep them updated all the time. Right? Like, hey, guys, like, oh, my God, did you see my Santa's cookies? Did you see my king cake launch? Everyone saw it. Everyone gets my Emails. Everyone's like, oh, my God, you're sold out. Because they got my email or they saw my Instagram post, you know, so everyone's involved. And I think that's also the other fun part too, for this journey is that, you know, as an investor or even for me, just having peace of mind on all that end before you come in makes me feel good. They're all ready to ramp up. They're all ready to ramp up when we need to.

Courtney, you are always a pleasure. And this is a. Your enthusiasm is as contagious as anything I've ever seen. I love it. So I am so glad you jumped on the call here today. I think this is an awesome spot to wrap it up. This was phenomenal. Anything else to add?

Nope. Good. No. Oh, you're asking me? No, I don't. I'm good. I was just asking Ryan. I was looking at Ryan.

All right, well, hey, the capitalism.com fund. If you are an investor looking to back some exciting e commerce companies, you can apply to join us over@capitalism.com fund if you are an entrepreneur with an exciting business that needs advice and capital and you've at least got the million dollars in sales in sight. Inez, is that the same URL?

Yes, sir, it is the same URL, just a different box to click.

Okay, so same URL, capitalism.com fund. And then there's an application that'll put it in front of us if you'd be interested in getting capital and working with our team. Courtney, we're so proud of you. And it's just the beginning. Congratulations.

Thank you.

And a year from now, we'll be celebrating the growth of Primal and its next chapter.

Yeah. Thank you. Just really quick, I was going to say like the same time last year I was doing like $17,000 a month. So if you invest in the right things. Exactly. Everything Ryan says in his book, right. Invest in your audience, have your platform, create the genuine exposure place to have that exposure and communication. You. You will do it and have a good product, obviously, but it's possible. You don't need. You don't need to pay for shit. Like I have some people saying, oh, I can get you this, but all it cries is $30,000 here. I'm like, you can pass up these easy, these opportunities very easily if you feel if you've done the right things in your brand and follow everything that you say in 12 months to 1 million.

Thank you very much for the book.

Yeah. No, it's true, though. Yeah. When I read it I was like, yep, yep, yep. Exactly what I did. But I didn't know it. So it works.

It's good. I'm definitely using that as a clip. So thank you very much. All right, everybody, thanks for hanging out with us. We'd love to see you@capitalism.com fund. Thanks for watching or listening and we' see you on the next episode. Take care. The thing I just absolutely love about this conversation is that she did the small things really well for enough time for to hit pay dirt.

She is the model of what I talk about inside of my book. 12 months to 1 million. Which is why I raised the fund for the capitalism.com fund to fund these amazing entrepreneurs that do the work, that finish it, that go through the process, hit seven figures or at least have a very are in striking distance of their first million and that we know we can add a lot of value to. So what an amazing case study. I'm so proud of Courtney and I can't wait to work with her and to work with more deals like this. So if you're an entrepreneur or you're an investor and you want to come to the table together and create some really exciting growth and exciting businesses, then hop over on capitalism.com fund. You can fill out the form to get on our radar and we'll just open up a conversation to see if it makes sense for us to have further conversations and work together down the road. All right, thanks so much for listening to the show. Congratulations to Courtney on all of her growth. And I just want you to know, if you're an entrepreneur who's starting their journey. Courtney started off with doing janky sales on Instagram and then hit $17,000 a month in sales. Still not even a seven figure business. And then she started to hit pay dirt, you know, a couple years in and now she's off to the races and we're going to do amazing things together. So I want you to know that if you are pounding pavement at the beginning of your journey, but you believe in what you're doing, you're right on pace. So I believe in you and I'm rooting for you. I'll see you on the next episode. Take care.