From $1M to $100M in 5 Years | Organifi Cofounder Djamel Bettahar
In this interview, Ryan Daniel Moran talks with Djamel Bettahar, co‑founder of Organifi, about how the company grew from a $1 million launch to roughly $100 million in annual revenue within about five years. The conversation covers the origins of Organifi as a solution to the inconvenience of juicing, leveraging an existing juicing audience, data‑driven product selection, and a rapid first‑launch that sold out in days, effectively crowd‑sourcing capital. They discuss the pivotal role of affiliate marketing via ClickBank, offering unusually high front‑end commissions (up to 75 %) to drive massive traffic, and how that data fed powerful Facebook ad campaigns. The interview then moves to scaling beyond the first million: diversifying traffic channels (YouTube, podcast ads, Amazon), building a premium brand with 2.5× competitor pricing, creating a strong community (free Facebook page, paid membership, email list), and investing in product taste and quality. Djamel explains the operational evolution—adopting EOS, OKRs, KPIs, and sophisticated project management—to manage a growing team that peaked at ~150 employees. Key hires (COO, CMO) and their impact on culture, communication, and scaling are highlighted. The discussion also covers equity‑based incentive plans, phantom stock, and the decision to repeatedly decline external capital because of misalignment and cash‑flow discipline. He shares the constant cash‑flow challenges of a fast‑growing e‑commerce business, the importance of cash‑flow visibility, and the emotional toll (imposter syndrome, burnout). Finally, Djamel reflects on stepping out of day‑to‑day operations, the personal reasons for exiting, and his ongoing entrepreneurial drive, including starting new ventures and the mindset required to repeatedly “manufacture” belief and confidence.
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How do you grow from $1 million to $100 million? That's the question I'm asking today with the co-founder of Organifi. Organifi is a superfoods company that launched to about $1 million in sales in the first year, and then about the next 4 years or so grew to $100 million in annualized top-line revenue. How in the world does that happen? Today you're gonna see it broken down and how you can grow a 7-figure company into a 9-figure behemoth. So Jamel, is it true that you grew your business from $1 million in revenue to $100 million in revenue in about 5 years?
Uh, yeah.
Okay, and that business is Organifi, correct? You were the co-founder?
Yes.
And when you started that business, it was just launching one product to an audience, is that right?
Correct, yeah.
Tell me how that thing launched.
Yeah, so we had an we had an audience based around juicing vegetables. My co-founder Drew Canole, he was an online influencer at the time. We were selling how to lose weight using juicing as a tool, which consisted of like, you know, grocery shopping, buying vegetables, you know, running them through the juicer, making the juice, then cleaning up. And it was like this whole big fiasco.
That was his whole shtick.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
He was a content creator about juicing and eating your vegetables.
He was like, some people called him the Juice Man or, you know, yeah. The official page was called Juicing Vegetables. For a time, that was a very big trend and people were really, really into it. So we started, we were selling digital products and coaching to train people on how to do that, to lose weight. Over time, we realized that people were actually lazy, you know, for lack of a better word. They didn't want to like do all those things and it makes sense, you know? So we created, basically the done-for-you green juice where we combined a bunch of different ingredients from all over the world that were called superfoods because they were more powerful than kale, broccoli, spinach. You know, they were like ashwagandha, moringa, chlorella. So you could kind of get the same or more.
And this was before any of this was cool. I wish we should add that disclaimer. Like, this is before there were juice powders all over the place.
Yes.
This is before, uh, AG1 was called AG1. Yeah, this is This is before people knew what chlorella and ashwagandha were, right?
So organic was even a question. Okay, is organic real? You know, it was like, that was the environment we were in. Yeah.
So I think it's important to note that you were early in this trend and probably helped this trend become a trend.
Absolutely.
Right. So when you launched the business or launched the product, it wasn't like you had a lot of market data to say that this was going to be a product that worked really well.
Right.
So what was the expectation behind the launch? And then what happened?
Yeah. Oh, man. So the expectation was— I mean, we were just talking about Hail Mary. It kind of was a Hail Mary. Let me kind of like explain to you why we were actually going out of business. And the expectation was, ah, whatever happens, happens, you know, like we're going to give it our best.
What do you mean you were going out of business?
So we were sitting selling digital products.
Oh, the digital products business.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the juicing company, the training company, we had like coaching, we had memberships, we had all this kind of like infrastructure around helping people lose weight through juicing vegetables. Uh, that company operationally was losing like $50,000 a month, you know. So very, very—
you were losing 50 grand?
Yeah, yeah, it was a very scary time. It's a very scary time.
So you decide, hey, since we're losing $50K a month, let's just launch a product and see what happens.
Yeah. So we, we— it was, it was, it was data-driven though. So we actually had a blog that was getting like 8 million hits a month. And so that was, that was the majority of where our sales were coming from. We were just kind of like making money off of the leads that were coming off the blog. Now with the blog, we had data points that would say like this blog post about Moringa was really trending, this blog post about Chlorella really trending. This one about, you know, so we knew which ingredients were the most impactful to people. And so we decided to use that data and put all the top ingredients into one product. And that's kind of like how the idea formed. The second piece, right, was like, oh, juicing is way too much time. So here's the easy way for you. And then the third one was we actually did affiliate sales for different products. The first, the product we were selling, I think was Green Vibrance. At the time.
And I remember that product.
Yeah. Yeah. That was like one of the very, very first greens powders.
Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, it tasted horrible.
It tastes horrible. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a lot of the greens out there still taste horrible. And that is actually one of the key differentiators that we made a clear decision to make ours taste amazing. That was like from day one. And we had to go through so many iterations of production and formulating to actually make it taste good.
You know, so you, so you had these signs that there was something here because you were promoting something that was doing well for the business. You had traffic going to certain places where you said, okay, there are some signs here. So it wasn't a guess, right?
You're very educated.
It was based on the data that you had in the business, but you launched this thing. And from what I know, you're out of stock immediately and then you're basically out of business because you can't sell anymore for like months at a time. You dealt with all of the things that an e-commerce entrepreneur deals with when they start to sell product. It's not a sales problem. It now becomes an inventory problem.
Yes.
And this is all you just trying to get to the first million. So walk me through that and then we'll talk about how the heck you took that into a $100 million empire.
Yeah. Our first production run, we were like, started really slow because we didn't have any expectations. We only had 3,000 units. We launched it, we did a soft launch on the first day just to kind of our Facebook page and it sold like, I forgot, like $20,000 worth of sales, which was a lot for us at that time. We were making $1,000 a day or something like that. The next day I did like $50,000 or something like that. And the next day $50,000. And so we sold out basically in 3 days of all the inventory that we had produced. So it was a nice like one proof of concept to like kind of like a cap raise, you know, capital raise, like crowdsourced capital raise because we had no money. So we were able to just, yeah, inflow a ton of cash.
Meaning the pre-sales basically were enough to keep you afloat.
Yeah.
Until the next inventory order came in and it was kind of like a capital raise. You sold your way through it.
Yeah, exactly. Crowdsourced kind of in a way.
So is that how you got to the first million? Is you just kept launching or kept getting that product back in stock and selling it to the audience? You don't have any Amazon presence or Shopify presence, you're just taking scrappy Shopify. Yeah, yeah, you were on Shopify.
Yeah, Shopify was our platform, actually. Oh no, it was not Shopify at the time.
I think this is pre-Shopify.
Infusionsoft.
Yeah. Oh my goodness.
Oh my God.
So old, Jamel.
We are so old. Yeah.
You were building e-commerce sites on Infusionsoft.
So we had to jerry-rig like fulfillment links and like APIs.
For everyone who thinks that it's harder to build a business now, You have not experienced what it is like to jerry-rig— is that the right term?
Jerry-rig, I think. Yeah.
To assemble a website with Infusionsoft and hand coding HTML and using WordPress themes. You have no idea how good you have it.
Your servers are crashing every day.
It's so much easier now. All right. So you're piecing together this site on Infusionsoft and you're sending your blog traffic and your email traffic and your Facebook traffic there. And that was basically how you got to the first million.
Yes.
Okay. So did you catch what Jamel just shared, that they had an audience and they launched that audience and they took about $15,000 in sales the first day? That's obviously awesome, but they had a few things working for them. They had a huge audience on Facebook. They had a YouTube following, they had an email list, they had another business. Most startup entrepreneurs do not have that, obviously. But I found that if you do a relatively adequate job of building up a small audience, even if it's a few hundred people, you may not come out with a $10,000 day, but doing $10,000 in a launch has been done many, many times. And the way that you do that is you build a small group of people, you nurture that group of people, you launch or pre-sell the first round of inventory with the target of paying for that inventory in that first launch. And our target for that is a $10,000 launch. If you wanna see how we do that and you'd like to work with us on launching your high-margin consumable brand, you can get on the waiting list for our next cohort at Capitalism.com/bootcamp. You're at the first million, you save the company essentially, you got a product that works, and then one, two, skip a few, 99, 100 million. You were there, and from, from that point onward, it was like 4 years.
Yes.
Right, from the first million to 100 million, it was— was it less than 4 years?
It was about 4 years.
About 4 years. Okay, so Tell me what the big steps or the big breakthroughs were that took you beyond that first million.
Yeah. So the first step— so I mean, first we were the juicing company, right? That one, it took 2 years of grind before we found Organifi, the product-market fit. So I just want to clarify that. Then second, from the launch of Organifi, we used our audience, but that quickly got tapped out. Right. So like, okay, great. We have this huge influx of sales, but okay, all of a sudden you've sold to everyone you could have, you could sell to. So what do you do? You find more yous, right? And that's where we discovered affiliate marketing. Yeah. And that's, you know, it was— you were kind of asking me about imposter syndrome the other day and I was like, yeah, because it's very real because sometimes you don't know why things had happened. Yeah.
For the record, like, I feel some imposter syndrome around you because I've never had a 9-figure company, right? I've had an 8-figure company. I've never had a 9-figure company.
Yeah.
So we're the same. So I feel some of that come up. And that's why I brought up like, at your level, do you still have imposter syndrome? And you were like, yeah, all the time. Today.
All the time. Yeah, exactly. And you're like, because sometimes like you do what you do and magic happens and sometimes you do what you do and shit happens. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, so we're like, we're just doing our thing and all of a sudden magic happens, right? And this other magic happened where like I got an email from Josh Valencia at ClickBank at the time. And it's weird because we were trying to figure out ClickBank with juicing vegetables and things that— but he was like, hey, I want to meet with you at Traffic and Conversion.
And ClickBank is an affiliate platform that has been around since the first dollar I ever made on the internet was on ClickBank. It was in 2006 and I made my first $100 and I thought I had won the frickin lottery. And that's how I made my first $10,000 a month was on ClickBank. Like, I got my start on ClickBank. ClickBank is still around to this day.
Yes.
And it's still a major platform. It just hasn't changed much. It's almost exactly the same as what it was 15 years ago. But ClickBank is a platform where people sell products and affiliates come to the marketplace to sell that product.
Yes.
So someone approaches you from ClickBank.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Josh approaches me and he's like, hey, I want to meet with you. So we meet at TNC and we start talking. He's like, hey, ClickBank as a platform wants to move into supplements and physical products. Currently we just have all these digital products and we want—
do you have any guesses on who pushed them to get into physical products? I don't know.
I don't know. Oh, there you go. We'll see the magic. See the magic. The magic happens, you know? Yeah. I mean, Ryan has been the puppeteer behind all of this, right? Yeah. And he's like, we want you to be the first supplement on the platform because we know you're a trustworthy brand. We kind of want to clean up our image at the time. They're like very aggressive marketing. We want to like, you know, have a reputable brand as the first ever supplement on ClickBank, and which was profound because, you know, they have all these affiliate marketers who are looking for things to sell and we're going to be the only supplement on the platform, you know. So that was just like crazy. It took 6 months from there to like actually launching on ClickBank, you know, integrations, building funnels, sales page, everything like that. And then we ran an affiliate launch and it just like, it blew up again. Another magic stroke struck again. You know, so Scott Ruijck, like some of the top guys. Who was the other guy?
They started running affiliate, started running traffic.
Yeah, they started running traffic, but then they started competing against each other and texting each other like, oh, how much did we get? If I did, you sell today? Oh yeah, I'm going to sell even more. So like it was, it kind of like took on a mind of its own during our launch and it's just like, so there's a really important point here, which is this is basically influencer marketing before that was a buzzword. Yes.
Because, because the— one of the reasons I'm so hot on TikTok Shop is because TikTok Shop is ClickBank and Amazon had a baby, where you have, you have creators who are competing with each other to sell as much affiliate stuff as possible on a platform where people already have their credit card. And it is just— I mean, it is a marketer's wet dream. It is absolutely incredible. So this activity that you're seeing is kind of the first influencer marketing affiliate combination that set the stage for what is now known as TikTok Shop or influencer marketing. So you kind of had that early, the early days of it. And, and if I remember correctly, the only reason you could not have done this if you had a low-priced product, like you had a high margin, yes, premium product. So you could pay affiliates a good amount of money. Can't do that if you're selling a $20 greens powder. No. So could you comment on that?
Yeah, that was actually one big differentiator as well, that what we applied was digital marketing commissions on a physical product, which was like unheard of at the time. Like people give away 5%, 10%.
They still do. And I don't understand that these people are— Jamel, the marketers and e-commercers are so bad.
Yeah, they don't know what to sell.
Exactly. So give them digital product type commissions on this. And you were the first to do this.
So we gave 75% commissions. Oh, which is, which was crazy. We were like, we're going to give it all to you, you know, like that was our entire gross margin. So we gave 70. You had the option of choosing 75% gross commission or 30% lifetime commission on the pixel on the customer. So like, you know, so it was a highly incentivized. We were like, let's do it what they're used to. Let's give them the cow, you know. Which draws the best.
But you didn't have any margin at that.
No, no, no. We didn't have any margin. No, no, no, no.
We had a vision for bigger, you know, we were going to manifest the dollars.
We were manifesting dollars.
We wanted to make dollars. No.
Okay.
So how did that work out?
Amazing. Yeah. So after giving away 75% commission on the front end, we made it up on the back end. That's where the profitability came.
So you gave the affiliates 75% of the front end, not every sale forever.
Correct. Or 30% of every sale forever. Yeah.
Dude, you are making me so happy because this is the stuff that I just— I think most e-commerce entrepreneurs do not understand. Like, I will happily break even on customer acquisition if I'm going to get them on a subscription order and then, you know, keep them forever. I will do that all the time. I hesitate to interject here, because I don't want to give this secret away, but it's going to make somebody millions of dollars. I have said for a long time that e-commerce entrepreneurs are going to do TikTok shop wrong. They are going to do influencer relationships wrong because they're going to think about the short term and they're not going to think about the long term. And if you can find a way to incentivize your creators and your promoters with very aggressive commissions, especially on the front end transaction, those are the brands that are going to win. I'm telling you, there are people who are like, I'll give 25%. And here you hear Jamal saying that he's— he gave away 75% and this was 10 years ago. My friends, nobody's willing to do this. And the ones that are willing to, they're the ones that win. So take it from Ryan. Find ways to give aggressive incentives to your best promoters. Watch how fast your business changes. Okay, so you start to win on ClickBank.
Yeah.
Other people are promoting you. That took you to what in terms of revenue? You were at $1 million on your own to your Infusionsoft account. That took you to $5 million.
Yeah.
All right. So that was the big unlock. What other unlocks happened on the road to $100 million?
Yeah. So the other benefit to the customer acquisition was getting customer data. So not only do you make the money on the back end, but what we would now— we were like, okay, in the same way that we ran out of people to sell to, ClickBank ran out of people to sell to.
Oh, so where do you maximize the platform?
Yeah, we maximize the platform and the affiliates sold to everyone on the list already. So like they need something new. So but now you have the customer data, which then we inputted into Facebook. So now we're not running ads on cold traffic. We're running ads based on thousands and thousands and thousands of customer data points so it can find immediately the customer instead of trying to guess who's the customer like this. Yeah.
So you, you hit one channel really hard.
Yeah.
And then you were able to take that success and both fund and give the data necessary to win on the second channel, which would be running cold advertising.
Yes, exactly. So out the gate, like it was 2 to 4x ROAS, like out the gate on Facebook. Yeah. Didn't last like, you know, it lasted. I forget. It's hard to keep track of when ROAS compressed and everything like that, but out the gate, 2 to 4x ROAS was like amazing.
And did that take you to 10?
I think it took us to 20 or so. Yeah. Facebook ads. Yeah. Just the foundation of that. Yeah.
Why do you think—
because we did like— and then, yeah, 5 to like 17 or 20 the next year. Yeah.
Why do you think— wow, you went from 5 to 17 in a year?
Yeah.
Cheese and crackers. Okay, so—
or something like—
why do you think everything worked? I mean, the way that you're describing this is like you—
so everything—
the product converted.
Yeah.
You almost went out of business. There's that. But then after that, the first launch converts, the affiliates convert. Facebook converts, like, why, why does— why did everything work? Do not say I don't know. You're not allowed to say I don't know.
I think— I mean, I would like to say I know. So, so I have guesses, right? I have guesses. Like, everything was data-driven. We were, you know, calculated in when we went to the next traffic channel. We hired professional copywriters. Like, we tried to write our own copy, but for the ClickBank sales page, we hired like professional copywriters and paid like $50,000 to write the sales page, you know? So like, I think we were just— we were serious, you know? We were taking everything seriously. We hired like good Facebook agencies.
We—
I mean, I was running the Facebook ads at first myself, which was dumb. You know, you need to hire professionals. But I think like Taking it seriously, calculated, riding a trend.
I have a simple explanation for you.
Go for it. Go for it.
The numbers made sense. Yeah. You had a high margin product that was good.
Yes.
In a growing trend.
Yeah.
That people promoted and were happy to promote and you were aggressively incentivizing them to do so.
Yeah.
And you had the margin to be able to make the money on subscriptions and people wanted to keep it. And so you were able to effectively run advertising on a platform like Facebook because the numbers were there based on product quality, repeat order rate, and margin.
Yeah.
And I mean, it just, it sounds so simple. Yeah. I feel like a broken record talking about this, but there's the, like, margin matters.
Absolutely.
And having enough margin to be able to invest in a top-tier copywriter or Like in, in, in one of my brands, one of my supplement businesses right now, we recently raised price to increase margins so that we could be more aggressive with discounts and build a VIP group that we spoil our customers. And also we go, hmm, I guess we can pay that A-level designer to come do a brand refresh. Like that kind of makes sense now. So it just, it's so tempting to do a race to the bottom with margin. And I think you should have a race to the top. I know I just said this to Jamel, but The reason why Organifi was able to scale is because they had enough margin to do so. E-commerce entrepreneurs undercut themselves by lowering price and not trying to be an absolutely premium brand. How premium? Well, in Organifi's case, they were 2.5 times the cost of the competitor. And that sounds crazy to some people, but that gave them the margin to be able to pay really good people. And to advertise aggressively and to be really good to their creators and their affiliates. I'm telling you, if I would not launch a brand today unless I was intending on being an absolutely premium brand. And if you want to launch a premium brand with high margins, that's consumable, with recurring revenue, with a strong foundation to go to 7 figures and maybe have an exit one day, you can find out how you can work with us on bringing that to market over at Capitalism.com/bootcamp. I would like to know, did you get hate from people for charging $70 for a green sweater? Tell us about some of the hate you got. I mean, I just want to— everybody deals with it. It doesn't matter what you sell, you're going to get hate. Yeah. So please comment on the hate you got for having a $75 product.
There's internal hate and there's— and there's— yeah. So like people on the team, like the the copywriters would get frustrated because they're like, you want me to sell a $70 product? You know, it's like it makes their job harder to sell that. And then on the customer side, there's people that feel alienated. There's people that feel like you're elitist or picking sides or something like that, you know? And when you're, when you're in a heavy social media brand, it does become like a little bit of like being able to tolerate the comments. Yeah. Yeah.
And how did you respond to those?
Just ignore it. Yeah, just keep going. I mean, those are not your customers. They're like, great, our customers over here, you know? I think it's important to know that, that your customer impacts the performance of your business as well. So like having a higher priced premium product means you get premium customers and having a low price discount seeker means you have discount customers who are going to be complaining, who are going to be refunding, who are going to be sending back empty bottles, you know, buy 6 bottles, send them back empty, that kind of thing. So people at a higher echelon, they don't even refund. They're like, great. It's like, I didn't use it. Yeah. You know, so it's like a different—
a different— easier customers.
Easier customers.
Yeah. Now, in order to have a premium product, you got to have— I wouldn't even call it premium marketing, but you've got to have good enough marketing to justify the price. Some people will drop their price in order to get around doing marketing. You decided to come out of the gate 2.5 times the price of everybody else. So our marketing's at least got to be good. So was there anything that you did, had to do differently because you are a high-priced product? And how did you overcome the concern that the copywriters have of you're making my life harder?
Testing, you know, so, so first with the, with copywriters, like, let's, let's run it. If it doesn't work, you know, it's cool. Like, you know, You know, so like you just got to give them the out so they don't feel— and then the second thing with the premium branding is what we created was community. So like you not only were buying the product, but you, by buying the product, you had like you're joining the movement and the transformational movement. And it was like bringing Drew into your kitchen with you. And now we have, you know, Organifi sitting on the counter and like you're part of this movement. And that's what Organifi was built on. And that's what Juicing Vegetables and Fitlife TV and everything like that. It was built on the concept that we're in this together. And that was like our slogan for the longest time. There was an intrinsic value in purchasing Organifi, not just the product. And then obviously we have the highest quality standards. We have the best tasting, like we pay the most to get the best ingredients, like, you know, everything that's standard around like premium. Plus you're part of this movement and the movement/community.
Was this an actual community that was housed somewhere? Okay. Where was it housed? What did that look— what did the community look like?
Yeah, so we had, we had 3 communities. One was the, the open community, which is Juicing Vegetables. That was a Facebook page with like a million followers or so. And then we had Juicing Animals, which was a paid membership site that was built from the FitLife TV, which had several goats in a, in a juicer and juice their blood.
Some weird Illuminati shit.
Yeah. Actually, I've never thought about that name before.
That's a very weird name. You've never thought juicing vegetables or juicing animals sounds like you're draining a goat of blood?
That never entered your mind? Never came up. My God.
Okay. Wow. That was the first thing I thought of.
I don't know why the hell we call it that.
So, but it was a paid community.
Yeah, paid community where it was our highest-end customers, coaching clients, like membership clients, people that have been in the community for a while.
So they paid They paid for it, or this was— if you paid a certain amount, you unlocked it?
No, I paid monthly subscription.
Oh, OK. So it wasn't— so they have to pay to be part of this community.
Yeah.
OK, that's interesting to me. Most e-commerce founders are not charging for their communities, including myself. They're using this as a way to engage with their customers. So why did you have— why did you decide to do a paid community?
This was before Organifi. So we had this community still. So this was the community. This was kind of like the monetization. Optimization of the Juicing Vegetables page where we were putting out like training programs and, and group coaching calls and things like that. So it just kind of lived. We didn't, we didn't make that decision after Organifi. It just continued to live on.
So overall, you just had kind of like the collection of the social media pages and then paid community.
Oh yes. And then the email. Yeah.
Oh, and you're— so you treat the email as a community too? Yeah. Okay, got it. So when you say community, like the whole ecosystem of Organifi customers.
Yes.
There's an inherent connection to the brand because you've built this raving following.
Yes.
Yeah, that makes sense. OK, so we've gotten to $20 million with Facebook ads and with ClickBank. How did you go from there to $100 million? And by the way, this is like a 2-year period that you've gone from launch to $20 million.
Yeah.
You had to be freaking out at this point.
Yeah.
Yeah, we haven't even talked about who you're hiring yet. Yeah, there. But what took you from 20 to 100?
So that's when we had to become a real business. So like from 1 to 5, we had to become affiliate marketers. From 5 to 20, we had to be internet marketers. And then and beyond, from 20 beyond, you have to become business operations. You know, it's like, okay, now we have to build structure, team, product pipeline, product suite, upsells, like expansion, retail, multichannel. Like, it just— I mean, became like a true operational business. At first we were working out of Drew's living room, like in the condo, you know, and they were like, oh, we need an office now. Like, you know, so just becoming a real business is like that stage.
Okay, so this is where it became less about what you did and more about who you hired.
Yeah.
How you manage them. And so there was a clear decision that you made going from $5 to $20 million, which was we ran Facebook ads.
Yeah.
Was there a clear decision beyond $20, or was it more about who we partnered with from here?
Who we partnered with.
Yeah, was it more— was there a strategy like recruiting other influencers, sponsoring—
Oh, yes, yes.
Was there a strategic thing that you did, or was it team 100%?
No, yeah, so it was absolutely that. So at that $20 million mark, $20 million mark, we decided how do we get to $100 million? And that's when the plan came together. I see. So yeah, we were like, now we had our eye on the target. Now we had— I had $100 million on my wall. Like it was like, let's— that's where we're going, you know? How do we get there? That's why we had to build teams, because also we started stacking on YouTube ads, we started stacking on Amazon sales, we started podcasting.
Why did you just point at me twice?
I was like, Ryan, oh no, no, actually we were, we were at— we ran into each other at a conference. For instance, I was like, man, I don't know how to scale to the next level, you know? And he was like, have you tried podcast ads? You should try this. And then boom, unlocked an entirely new traffic channel that we didn't have untapped. Yeah.
At the time, I want to add a caveat here. At the time, 5 million at that point?
I forget. Yeah.
So at the time, I was very convicted that the, the biggest white space in marketing was podcast ads and YouTube ads.
Yes.
So at the time, I thought those were the most underpriced things, which is why I said that. And also, I don't know if I was consulting for Athletic Greens at that time, but I knew that they were your biggest competitor and they were spending a lot of money on podcast ads and they had made that work. And so I didn't find out until years later that you took that advice and ran with it. I knew that I inspired you.
We execute, man, we execute.
I did know that I inspired you to go heavy into Amazon. Amazon, but I didn't know for years later about, about podcast ads. Yeah, that is why I said that. Okay, so you started diversifying your advertising. Yes, adding more places to advertise, going on to more channels. This is where you start to diversify and add more people, correct?
Yeah, because to run that many traffic channels, you need a team, um, you need a high-performance execution team that also thinks and solves problems, not just kind of like robotic. So which kind of also comes to the community feeling. So like the team that we were building, it just— you felt like a family, like everybody was like rowing in the same direction and things could just move. And it's like, it's crazy when you, when you feel that in a team, it's like, it's just, wow. Yeah.
How many, how many team members were at Organifi?
I think we peaked around 150.
Wow. Yeah, that's a lot to manage.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. At the time, at $20 million, we probably were like 30 people or something like that. Yeah.
And that sounds like a big difference. Scaling a $100 million company.
Yes.
Versus managing 150 people and $100 million in, in revenue. So what are the big differences between getting there and staying there?
Yeah. So there's like the first step, which is product-market fit. And finding the traffic channels and executing the channels. The second stage is like, I can't solve every problem. I need people that can solve problems and also that have vision and think for themselves. But then how do you manage these people? So now I need operative systems. And we really implemented in full the EOS system from Traction. We also implemented OKRs from Google and then KPIs from Scaling Up. And we had like dashboards because I was— so my previous background, I'm an aerospace engineer, so I actually managed manufacturing lines and production lines and I kind of like took like Gantt charts and all that stuff and I flowed it into operating Organifi and like executing projects and plans and things like that. So it's really like building out a full-fledged high-performance operative team, you know?
It seems like EOS was a really important part of that process.
Yes.
Actually learning how to create checkpoints that you're putting all attention on and moving forward. Why was that such an important part of your growth?
Being able to see what's happening when you're not actually looking at what's happening is impossible, right? So like, I can't be the one looking at all the data. So you have to have systems that show you as the leader, like what's happening and how those performance metrics flow up into your visibility. When I was in it in the beginning, I could see everything, but I needed EOS and project management systems to actually see like what people were doing.
Did you have to become a different kind of person in order to do that?
Yeah. You know, I mean, I mean, it's one thing to manage an influencer.
I mean, like, yeah, that alone is its own skill set. And then you become an e-commerce entrepreneur and then you become an 8-figure e-commerce entrepreneur and— but now you've got to become a whole— get a whole different skill set of managing people and learning operations like that. That is a total transformation.
Totally, totally different.
What did you have to learn or who did you have to become to be able to be a good leader of a multi-8-figure and then 9-figure business?
Yeah, like I think there was— there was definitely a turning point when I became more human, I guess. The beginning, when you're an entrepreneur, you're kind of not human, right? You're kind of, you're, you're kind of like a robot that's like on a mission to go, and you forget about people's feelings and leadership. And, and you, you, because you are pushing the buttons and you're executing, you're making things go. When you have a big team, you have to lead, you have to inspire, you have to have like plans that can unfold and And I guess like from like being like a robot to like being a human transition, you know, I don't know when it happened, but like I had to like care about like what people are believing and feeling and like driving towards and kind of casting that North Star vision versus me being like, let's go, you know, it's like, come with me. You know, it's not like you're dragging them. It's such a different way.
You went from being a wrecking ball.
Yeah.
Like you have to, you have to, be a wrecking ball manufacturer.
Yeah.
You've got to tell people where to go and how to go and get them to act like you would not.
We would not want to work for me. Like from the beginning, in the first few years, you would not want to be the person working for me because I was just like, yeah, just because you were a wrecking ball. Yeah.
But a few years in.
Yeah.
Then you were different.
I would— I still was the same person, I guess, with, with with understanding that I needed, needed the team to perform versus like, this person is, is replaceable. This is a tool in the cog that I'm building, you know. So it's like, this person has their own ideas, this person thinks differently from me, this person— oh wow, I didn't see that, you know. Like, okay, I'm open to that. What else you got? What other problems can you solve? What problems am I not seeing that you already solved, that we're solving? You know, it's like it's a whole different— there's human to human, you know. It's kind of like, I guess, in the— I guess right now you would think of like using AI, like on the other side it's just AI, but when dealing with a person, there's— that person is a person who, you know, like they're not tools.
Who were the important hires, or what roles were most important to get right as you were scaling to $100 million?
I mean, the two top people was my COO and my CMO. Amy Beaver was my CMO. She's amazing, helps us scale. She's super analytical, strategic. And then May was operations, which she actually had this like more compassion and she kind of ran— she oversaw supply chain, HR, like people, culture, everything like that. And I would say those are the two like biggest Levers. Now Amy Beaver is CMO at, for Dave Asprey. You know, she, she went over there and then, uh, or Mae's running, uh, VP of like some other like conglomerate or something like that, some portfolio company.
Okay. And what was so important about those hires that made them so integral to the success of Organifi?
Yeah, thanks for bringing it back. So I'll start with Amy. Amy was a very like, she's, she was similar to me in sort of like hard driving, a little bit like analytical, but she could hold so much more information. So she was able to scale the team where I thought we needed a marketing team. I was like, no, we need an e-commerce team. She's like, no, we need brand, brand team. We need, you know, social team. We need e-com team. We need— and she was able to split what I thought was one job, because when you're an entrepreneur, you're doing everything. You forget how many jobs you're doing.
Uh-huh.
And so I'm like, CMO, you got one job, marketing, you know? And she's like, that's 5 jobs.
Yeah.
And she's like, okay, now I have 5 teams under me, which is part of scale, right? Like, oh, now this person can focus here, this person can focus here, and that— and those 5 people then hire teams under them. And so she was able to like see the bigger, bigger, bigger spread of roles and responsibilities and allocate, you know, director of creative and stuff like that. I think Mei's special skill was really communication and leadership. So she helped me kind of communicate to the team when I was being too robotic, like she could actually— oh yeah, like change management. If I was like, you know, this part of our business is broken. This person is not doing this like this. I can't— I'm hitting a wall. Somehow she could convince them to change. Yeah. You know, and that's like a skill of communication, of like compassion, of being a human that I just didn't have because I'm like, this is how it needs to be done. You're going to do it. And that doesn't work at scale. But she could do change management where we could be like, all right, we need to do this direction and this direction. So I was like, very, very cool complementary skill that I didn't have and I probably still don't have.
So in both of those cases, what you highlighted about those roles was that they were good with people.
Yeah.
One could see the roles that needed to be filled because marketing is copy and it's email and it's social and it's advertising. It's not just one person, it's all these different roles. And then the other was really good at engaging and connecting with the people who were put in place.
Yes.
So it's interesting that in both of those cases, as you were growing to $100 million, it became about people.
Yes.
That's fascinating. How did you recruit and keep those people incentivized? Once you have good people, you're a growing company. You know, people are paying attention. You know, they're trying to be recruited by other companies. So how did you recruit them and how did you get them to stay?
Yeah, so I think it came back to the community. So we did have incentive plans, which I think enrolled people in the growth pressure.
Can you share what those looked like just from a high level?
Yeah. So we had a phantom stock plan with equity available and then also bonus structures. So like financial incentives as well as equity incentives so that everybody is kind of like on the same team and we're growing towards the same goal.
And at what point did you start rolling those out?
Probably 2017 or so. So I think when we— yeah, after we got the second office. So we were in Drew's living room condo working on couches, and then we had an office in Little Italy, about 3,000 square feet, and then we moved into a 14,000 square foot office. And when we moved into that big office, then at scale, we kind of like decide, okay, we need like So I don't know what the dates are exactly, but how did you value the equity at that point?
Because yeah, when you're, when you're incentivizing employees to have equity, you've got to be able to show them what that is worth and what their total comp package can look like.
Yes.
But how did you make up that valuation number?
Yeah. So we made the valuation based on the goal. So we're— yeah. So like, okay, here is, you know, here's where we're headed. Here's what the multiples are at that level. When we get there, this is kind of what your equity will look like.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah.
So they're incentivized to get there. All of your focus was on this number.
Yeah. Yeah.
Every— everything was— all your incentive plans were on that number. It's on your wall. Everybody was focused on this. Yeah, that's actually I have never thought to do that.
Yeah.
Okay. Create the incentive plan based on how we get there. And this is what this will be worth once we get there.
Yeah.
But until then, what? Nothing happens?
Correct.
Did all— did all of these kind of vest when you hit the number?
Well, they vest after certain years. So there's also vesting built into the plan. So like, you know, was like 4-year vesting, like 25%, you know, or waterfall. So it's 25% per year or waterfall upon liquidation event.
So it just kind of, you know, how did, how did you learn that or structure that?
Oh, mentors. Yeah. So I'm in different business groups like EO, but I think, yeah, we had attorneys like help us out with it and structure. It's a very delicate sensitive. Yeah. Conversation like comp packages are like very delicate is this is the only word I can kind of use. So I think like we had our way of figuring it out, but I don't think it was like, you know, the only way or the, you know, we had attorneys figure it out. We had— I had mentors figuring it out. We had people that I trusted helping me figure out that had been through exits before, that had raised money through venture capital.
I meant to ask you if you ever raised capital to fund all of this growth.
Yeah, no. So we actually went through 3 rounds and every time we were about to take the money, we decided not to take the money.
Like at the 2-yard line?
Not at the 2-yard line. Okay, so we get LOIs. So here's the funny thing. When raising money, we put together a plan of why we need to raise the money and what we're going to do with the money. And then we just keep going and we execute on that plan. So while we're raising the money, we're executing that plan. So we're like, oh, we don't need the money anymore. We just doubled, you know, it's like, okay, we don't need it. And then we go like, oh, maybe we should raise, make another plan. And then we start executing that plan and then we double again.
So the value there was that you guys sat down and made the plan.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like, what would I do if I had this money?
I had this money.
Well, we're going to do that anyway.
And then you didn't need the money and then you need the money and you say like, oh, what if I— what would I do if I had this money, and then you say, can I do that without the money? Oh yeah, I can. Let's go do it. You know? So it's like you realize, like, you can be creative and do it without the money. A lot of times, like you said, right, something about pissing the money away. Bladder.
Oh, the bladder rule of finance. The more money in the system, the greater the pressure to piss it all away.
Yeah. Yeah. So like you can raise, you can raise money and blow that money. But if you actually don't have the money, you get to be creative with the money you have and you can have the same effect.
You say there were 3 rounds.
Yeah.
Like 3 times that you consider raising capital.
Yeah. Yeah.
And you decided not to on all of them.
Yeah. Yeah. For 2 reasons. One, we, we continue growing even during the— so we were like, okay, this is— we don't need this. Money. And then the second, it was like misalignment with the investors. And so like, I think it's very, very important that if you do end up raising money, that the investors that you kind of finally shake hands with really align with you. Because business is not straight. Like, the story I'm telling sounds like a straight line, but it was more like this, this, this, this, like all over the place. Then if you pinpoint the numbers goes like this, but in between those, it's not straight.
Yeah, it feels like absolute chaos. From the outside, it looks like everything's going great.
Yeah. And every day you think it's going to fall apart. You're like, oh God, you know, end of the world.
And what kind of things made you feel like that?
Uh, I mean, Facebook algorithm changes, right? Um, email algorithm changes. Uh, it's so weird how e-commerce businesses are so dependent on these algorithms. Like inboxing all of a sudden, uh, lose a key hire, right? Uh, or, uh, lose a key influencer. Like, we had an influencer who could generate $1 million in a week. All of a sudden, like, because she's doing so well, right, she's like, oh, I'm gonna do my own thing. Yeah. And then boom, you lose $1 million a week. So, like, it's like if Jordan was like, uh, Nike, I'm going to Adidas, you know? So, like, that, that happened. Many times. And we actually like built products specifically for specific influencers. And then that product line goes away, you know, multiple times. So like there's just like cash, right?
Cash.
Oh damn. All of a sudden we didn't realize we had sales tax due or taxes, you know, income tax due. And you're like, oh dang, that money is sitting in inventory. We have $5 million in inventory. We got $3 million due. How do we move that inventory into actual money so we can pay it? You know, there's just chaos. Chaos. Payroll. We got to pay $1 million today. Okay.
Were there ever times that you were out of cash or close out of cash?
All the time.
All the time.
All the time. Yeah. When you're growing, when you're growing, you don't have cash. Like cash is like, it's, it's, it gets tied up into working capital. So like the bigger the business, the more working capital that it needs. And so money just kind of goes into the business and stays in the business and you need that business to run and stuff like that. So like we're always, always tight. Yeah.
A couple of years ago you exited Organifi, but you didn't sell the business. You simply removed yourself from operations. That's a different kind of exit.
Yeah.
You can sell the company for a whack ton of money or you can systemize yourself and replace yourself.
Yeah.
Why did you make that decision and how did you go about doing it?
Yeah. So that decision was, I think at a certain point I kind of felt like burnout, you know, I think like it's, it's hard to be running at 100 miles an hour thinking about the amount of work that you put in and like, it's like, okay, you kind of reevaluate amazing results, right? I'm like, oh, amazing results. But like what I went through was like a divorce. Like I didn't get divorced. I was engaged. Like that fell through, like during, because I was working so much, you know, like you just kind of like give your blood, sweat and tears to it. So I'm like, okay, like, what do I want to do right now? And so that conversation kind of happened. We had my CEO really wanted to be CEO, so we want to give her an opportunity. Drew was also available to step in. So I was like, oh, why don't I take the opportunity to take some time? I discovered music. I became a DJ, music producer. I started like touring and playing festivals and things like that and just kind of like soul searching in that sense of like, okay, if it's not just about the money, like, what would I do? You know, because at a certain point when you're scaling, grinding so hard, it becomes like $100 million, like that. Like, yeah, I don't care about anything else. And then the rest of life kind of takes a sideline. Yeah. So, so that decision was made in like 2022, 2023 or so like that. Yeah, which, which gratefully, like, everything kind of like—
so the COO became the CEO.
Yes.
Which allowed you to— yeah, to step out of operations.
Yeah. So kind of like the ranks, uh, moved up.
If you were to enter into a business that was doing $1 million, what would be your thought process and your approach to start taking it to $100 million?
Yeah. So the first thing I would say is there's two pieces, right? There's the data and there's a team. So like, one, do you have— do you have the team in place? If not, you need to start building the pieces. Just like draw out your organization chart. Two, do you have all the metrics that each of these people on the chart would deliver on? You'll see the gaps. You'll be like, oh, this— I'm missing this person here. I'm missing this person here. Oh, I don't have eyes on this number right here. So that would be like just like level 1, you know, like, do I have that? Second, it would be like iterative cadence of problem solving. So like, how often are you identifying the problems and solving the problems? Because that's all business is, right? Like, it's how many times you can solve a problem and how fast you can solve it. So if you're at $1 million, how many problems are you solving? Can you solve faster? And that will like just escalate, escalate, escalate. Like, and problems, I mean, like, do we have a traffic channel that works? Do we need another traffic channel? Do we have an influencer? Do we have the product? Is the product right? Do we have a secondary product? Like there's— it's just like so many things, right, that you have to think of. And having a process, an iterative process on solving that. In EOS, they call it the IDS. And so you're doing it like every week. You're just like listing out all the problems and then assigning somebody to solve all those problems. And you're just, just knocking them out. Of course, you got to have the vision and believe it and know where you're heading, and then people like Ryan will show up and like tell you things, and then magically— yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And some people like don't believe they can get there. I think that's probably at the core of everything. It's like self-confidence. It's believing in yourself, believing it's going to work.
Did you believe in yourself when you were setting a target to $100 million?
So when I set my target to $100 million, I 100% believed in myself. But before that, there was a lot of doubt. And during, there's doubt. And then also having achieved it, I'm like, did I do it? You know? So it's like, but like, I flipped the switch, you know? And Drew and I were partners on a handshake deal. And because we kind of built this thing, and it was like a handshake deal, you know, cash payouts, everything. It was paying out, no problem. But like, our partnership wasn't like solidified, like for real. Um, you know Vinnie Fisher? Vinnie Fisher also was one of my mentors, and he helped me kind of instigate the conversation to make the partnership official. And once that was official, my— I flipped the switch, and it was like, let's fucking go. You know, and I think like you can either flip that switch when you— if you're the 100% owner, right? But there was like a little bit of me talking about incentives, like, you know, equity and everything like that. Like there was a little part of me that like was like, I can give it 99%, but 100% isn't there. But once it's locked in, okay, it's 100% time. And that's when the confidence and the switch flips and everything. And you just go and people like Ryan show up and people like ClickBank shows up. You know, it just kind of like starts to unfold when you are just locked in and committed.
Do you think you can manufacture that?
I think it— I think in the beginning you have to manufacture it and over time it becomes real. Having not done it before, you don't know what's possible, but almost in a way that naivety gives you the freedom to dream and to manufacture it. And then being at— having done it comes with its own curses, like fear that it's going to crumble, you know? And I think like we, we are always manufacturing it, you know, and it becomes real for moments in waves and then you're back to manufacturing it. And I still—
you mean the belief comes in waves?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The belief and the certainty. The faith, right? Like that you can do it. But that's what it takes. You have to be, you have to kind of be a little crazy. You have to be, I don't want to say like a little bit of brokenness in you that you're trying to prove to the world. Like, I don't know if you need that. I had that when I was young. Like I started, you know, it was like my late 20s and there's like this little bit of like, I'm gonna prove it to the world, I'm gonna become great and da da da, and that kind of drives you. But yeah, I think it takes like a constant because you're going to be hit in the face and you're going to be hit in the face, then stomped on the ground and then kicked when you're down and then, and then dragged on the street. And then at that moment, you're going to have to manufacture it again, you know? So like, you will have moments of the belief and the faith and the self-confidence and it'll be taken away and then you're just constantly going.
So would you want to do it again?
Yeah, you would. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's in you, you know, like, I feel like you can't not do it. Like, if you're an entrepreneur, either you're going to be waiting to— you're going to be at your corporate job waiting to start your company, or you're starting your company. There isn't going to be a point where you're not wanting it. Even after having done it, and I'm doing it again, you know, I'm starting another company. I started— I did— I had like a few years of a music career, right, which I put the same amount of like rigor into. And now I'm like at it again. I'm starting another e-commerce business, you know, so It's just like it's an itch that will never go away. And I think it's different. There's different levels, and I'm excited to actually start playing on a different level with capital and like venture and private equity. I think like the game then becomes like buying businesses and growing businesses and like stacking businesses and it's like the next level, but it's still the same. Game. It's still like understanding the market, understanding the teams and the leverage points.
And, and it becomes a life sentence. You get the bug, you are destined to be an entrepreneur forever once the bug bites you. Yeah, unfortunately it never really goes away.
Unfortunately. Fortunately.
Jamel, this is great. I mean, I'm so impressed with what you've done. You bring out my imposter syndrome in all the best ways. Thank you for sharing with us. Congrats on all your success.
Thank you, Ryan.
