From Broke to $400k/mo In 3 Years: Selling Unique Products & Licensing Big Brands w/ Paul Miller

Once I saw the amazing impact that we were having with the children's line and we have created a category that didn't exist before, I decided I needed some help. And one piece of advice I got from a friend of mine was seek out licensing.

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

Hey, fastlaners, welcome to Freedom Fastlane. This is run Daniel Moran and I'm obviously excited because this is a podcast episode I've wanted to do for a long time. I met a man a couple years ago named Paul who came up to me at one of our events, the first ever Capitalism conference, back when it wasn't called the Capitalism Conference. And Paul said to me, you know, one day we're going to sit down and I'm going to tell you how your work has affected me. And I listened to his story and he told me about being at absolute rock bottom and then discovering Freedom Fastlane. And what has happened since he hit rock bottom is that he has built a multimillion dollar business that is about to have worldwide distribution. And he did it by creating a product that had no market. You know, a lot of questions that I get in this space are what types of products should I sell? And what's interesting is that my first product did not have a market on Amazon. It was not a Amazon friendly product and neither was Paul's. You hear me talk a lot about building brands, not selling products. And if you're not convinced after some of the recent episodes that we've done here on Freedom Fast Lane, where people really exploded once they branded their products, or if you're not inspired to go the brand route, when you hear Paul's story, I think this might change your mind. Because what Paul did was he was selling a product and then he switched over and changed the branding up a little bit, doubled down on his market, and as a result, he now has deals with Disney, has deals with Nickelodeon. He is getting into retail stores like Target and Toys R Us, and he's about to have worldwide distribution. This has resulted in a business that did more than $4 million last year. It's on pace to do over $5 million this year. And that's before. Before counting all of the retail distribution. So Paul went from rock bottom just a couple of years ago, I mean, to literally being broke and broken, to building a multi million dollar business and it's only now that he has felt comfortable sharing the story. And I'm just so thrilled and honored to have Paul on the show. Because if any of you are going through a hard time, if any of you feel like you are at your wit's end, if you are anything like Paul, you will look back and say, that was the point where it all changed. That was the moment where I got to fulfill my purpose because it forced me into a new direction. So I'm honored and thrilled to have Paul Miller on the show. And if you are struggling in your business or struggling in your life, you are about to see just how quickly that can change when you're around the right people and you're following the right strategy.

Enjoy this episode with Paul Miller.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it's.

The day I've been waiting for my entire career. Paul Miller is in the house. Paul, what's up, dude? Thanks for hanging out with us.

Hey, Ryan, thank you. I'm so excited to join you, dude.

This has been a very long time coming. You know, I usually come in prepared to come guns a blazing with a bunch of questions for somebody, but I don't think anybody can do it justice except for Paul Miller. So I think I want to kick things off by asking you tell us a little bit about your business as much as you're comfortable sharing. And then I want to ask you about the story that I'll never forget you sharing and a lot of people are never going to forget. So let's talk about your business to start.

Wow. Okay. No pressure, right? So I'm going to just go back a few years and talk about how I got started in E Commerce. This is a part of the story that you obviously know because I think I told you first time two years ago when we met at the first Freedom Fast Lane.

Right?

So about three years ago, I was in the restaurant business. I had three franchise restaurants and basically I had been writing that business down for the last five years after 2008. And I had restructured my organization back down to just one restaurant. Lived about two and a half hours away from home, working every day, open to close, just trying to make my. My business survive. And one night, as I told you, came home about 11 o' clock at night to look at my email and you know, there was another message from Ryan.

And I opened that email, you know, and it was an invitation to Amazing selling Machine. I dug in, I looked at the testimonials and I signed up that night mostly because I needed a plan. B, I wasn't sure that I was going to be able to pull out of that situation in the restaurants. And I signed up that night and I just started digging in every free moment I had. But I should go back. And I wanted to tell you I actually looked it up before this interview that I first heard you on. SPI episode number 144, I remember.

Yes, of course.

Yeah. So I, you know, I'm a big fan of Pat Flynn and after I heard you on that episode, I immediately signed up and, you know, that's what led me. Your email kind of did its job and led me to you, so thank you.

Yeah, well, I mean, you were in a really tough spot when you decided to go into E commerce and that wasn't your background. So you were looking for a plan B. It ended up being the thing that made you successful. But what kind of a mindset were you in when you came home that day and checked your email?

Honestly, I was in a really, really rough mindset. I had let my general manager go. I was pulling out, trying to restructure this restaurant that had been ignored basically for the last three or four years. So the team was in rough shape, the facilities were in rough shape and I was going to be lucky if I could pull it out and make a go of it. Because in that particular business, got to make your money in the spring and the summer because winter in that town there was just no business. So I felt like I really had a lot of time pressure to be successful.

And so that kind of pressure can either drive someone to success or it can make them crumble. I honestly don't know how you felt over the next couple years of couple of months. Did you feel like that pressure motivated you or did it demoralize you?

Well, it motivated me. You know, I really had no choice and to me, you know, failure was absolutely not an option. Here I am at that time, 53 years old, thought that the whole three store restaurant thing was going to be my retirement. Everything I had was wrapped up into the restaurants. So I was trying to save my last bit of investment. You know, I had 11 year old that time, 16 year old daughter, son who just graduated high school. So it was kind of all riding on me.

And what happened over the next couple of months?

Well, as I mentioned, I have a daughter. I came home for her birthday, we went to a restaurant, had our favorite sushi, and after that I took my son to his cub scout meeting where we played a game of kickball and the den leader asked me to Be the pitcher. So I went out there, pitched a couple of kids, and one of the kids, probably fourth kid up, hit a line drive about 10ft to my right. And I kind of took a diving catch, hit the ground and rolled over onto one knee. And I just knew something was very, very wrong. You know, I had a big lump in my shoulder. And I just knew at that moment everything was going to change. And it turned out I had just crushed my collarbone. And it was a very severe break, required surgery. And Denleader's wife took me to the emergency room. She probably thought I was big baby because I sat there and started sobbing in front of her. But the truth is, I knew it was over. It's over. There's no way I'm gonna be able to save the restaurant. You know, they're gonna foreclose. Everything's done.

So the restaurants going under, you break your collarbone? Did you lose your pickup truck?

And did your dog run away too?

This sounds like a country song going in the wrong direction. So tell me what happened, Paul.

You know, I had the little plan B in my pocket. I was dabbling a little bit, just dabbling before that accident. And, you know, I got home, called the franchisor up. I said, look, I'm done. I can't work. I made him a deal to take over the restaurant after August. This was in May.

And they would take over the restaurant in August and I would hire my GM back and try to scrape as much money aside as I could during that summertime. Well, I used my entire time recovering just to dive into everything. Amazon in particular, the tribe. Made a lot of friends in the tribe. I used my video background to do some open box videos for folks. And I had posted a couple in the tribe and said, hey, if anybody wants to send me product, I'll be happy to do a little video for them. And friend of yours? And mine responded, kellyanne video. So I made her some open box videos that she used and we struck up a friendship and she became my number one mentor in the tribe. We became great friends over time and, you know, I would run product ideas past her. We had some, some fun ones. I sold paper popcorn bags for a while on Amazon. On Amazon, I'd asked my wife, who was very involved in the kids school, hey, and she's the treasurer there. What do you buy, you know, what do you buy for the school that we might be able to sell on Amazon? She says, well, we always buy these popcorn bags, but they're 1,000 per case. We don't need Them for movie night and whatever. We don't need that many at a time. So I looked, and sure enough, you know, everybody's selling cases of a thousand. So I had a restaurant supply chain, so I ordered a case of a thousand for 12 bucks, got my kids and me to break them up into packages of 100, and we were selling them for $12 apiece.

And how did that work out?

It worked out great. Before long, I did everything according to the book. I made a new listing. I popped some fresh popcorn, showed how great it looked, made new pictures and everything else, you know, we were in. I was in popcorn. Heavens on 20 a day.

Well, I know that didn't end up being the business that really took off. So what happened with that product and that business and what led you to the business that you own now?

So eventually other people figured out was what I was doing. They found the same source, had several popcorn bag sellers on my listing. I called Kellyanne in a panic. Other people are selling my popcorn bag. So she was real supportive. I actually did have another food service product that I was going to create. And you're going to laugh at this. It was the ultimate meat claw.

I am going to laugh at that.

Yeah. But fortunately, Kellyanne dissuaded me, and so did Joe Giamfola dissuaded me from doing the next meat claw. But let me tell you, it would have been the most awesome meat claw ever. It was oversized. It had serrated edges. It was called the saber tooth shredder. And I had a 3D printed, and they responded back to me that we don't print weapons. I had to explain to them this was a meat shredder. So anyway, I had to give up on that, and I had actually spent some time and money on drawings and 3D printing and so forth. But I took their advice and. And I gave up on that product. But in the meantime, I had looked at another product that I was very interested in. They were sleep headphones. And I had used a similar brand many years ago, and they stopped working. So I actually like to use them for podcasts and ebooks and things. So I found a manufacturer, and I ordered a small quantity of manufacturer's labeled headphones. Sleep headphones are like a headband with a headphone in them. Again, I followed all the principles, created a great listing, did some giveaways, and I had success with that very small quantity. So, you know, I went on, again, kind of using the principles that you teach, and created new colors, new styles, new feature enhancements, and we Started doing pretty well. And by August, by the time, basically my time was up with the restaurant, I was able to go full time on Amazon from May to August, completely replacing my income.

You went full time from May to August and replaced the income from the restaurant?

Exactly. Of course, my income from the restaurant had dwindled quite a bit.

Fair enough. But what.

Yeah, I was able to make a living and support my family strictly off Amazon by that time.

And so in four months or so, you were able to replace the previous business income. What did that feel like?

That was absolutely amazing. It was incredible. I've never ever seen a business that has this type of scalability with such a low investment. I had invested over $2 million in the restaurant business.

Wow.

Over 70 employees, tons of facilities, leases, equipments, lots of liabilities. This is the most amazing business ever.

Hey guys, this is Ryan. We're gonna take a quick break and.

We'Ll return to the show in a second.

If you've been listening to the last few episodes of the show where we featured entrepreneurs who have crossed the seven figure mark and are on their way to eight figures, then you undoubtedly have heard us talk about the back room. The Backroom is a group mentoring program where we cast the vision for getting to $10 million a year and beyond and being ready to sell your company, because ultimately that's where the big payday is going to come from. We also open up investment opportunities so that you can put your profits into places that give you more wealth and potentially more cash flow or even help you save on taxes. We have some pretty, pretty cool places where we put cash that give you sometimes all three. Plus you're in a room with people who are the best in the world at what they do. We bring in my team of advisors that help people get into retail. They help people clean up their systems, they help people clean up their books, they even help them reposition their companies so that they can be sold for more money. We also talk about what's working right now on Amazon and on other channels, but the focus on of the group is on casting the vision to get to eight figures and beyond and clearing all bottlenecks that stand in your way while also opening up other opportunities for you to enjoy a life of freedom. Because that's what we're after here. We're not just after this to work hard and work 16 hours a day. We're doing this so that we can have freedom. And we get freedom by making enough money so that we can invest into places that allow us to never have to work again and then building empires with people that we love doing business with. And that's what we're doing inside of the back room. And I could also tell you that we're looking to buy and buy into some of our students businesses through something else that we're doing pretty cool in the back room. But I will save that for another day because that is still in process. But if you have an idea that you're not sure how to bring to the marketplace, if you've got an audience that you know could be the hurdle ground for a really profitable seven figure physical products brand, or if you're selling enough product to be able to say, you know, I could step on the gas here if you've got that million in sight or you're beyond the million and you know that it's time to accelerate the process to get to that eight figure mark. Because you're playing the review game. You're, you're playing price wars. You're tired of sacrificing profit margins. You're working way too long for too little result and you want to clear those bottlenecks so that you can grow faster and have a sellable company. So one day you can have that ideal freedom lifestyle. We can help you inside of the back room. It's one of the more expensive things that we do. It's also the highest ROI thing that we do. So it is application only. You need to be ready for it and you need to be ready to move when you join. So you can go to freedomfastlane.com, click on backroom and, and see the application, see all the pricing details from there. Working with me one on one starts at about $100,000. Joining the back room is a little bit less than that. So just know going into it that it's a serious investment and it is only for people who either have funding, have sales and are ready to go once they join. So if that's you, go over to freedomfastlane.com, click on the back room and you'll see the application and full details.

A lot of people get into this and this is the only business they've ever been in. So they're a little bit spoiled or they're afraid to put $10,000 into inventory. And you're like, no, I had 2 million bucks into this business. So like, how is life different now?

It's so amazing. Yeah, the amount of leverage or liability that you have to get started in this business is again like no other. You can start with a Small amount of money and grow it over time. My biggest challenge has been funding inventory. I've had amazing growth in two and a half years. We're a multimillion dollar business and the sky's the limit.

So tell me, how long did it take you? I know it took you about four months to replace your income, but about how long did it take for you to get near or at that million dollar level?

Around 12 months. Around 12 to 14 months is what I sold a million total.

So during that span where you're going from full time to million dollars, what did you focus on to grow it towards that million dollar point?

Well, I was focusing on everyday nuts and bolts on Amazon, keeping an eye on my listings all the time, doing whatever I could, testing, improving images listings, ppc, really very focused on on the nuts and bolts and then also expanding my product line. So as you and I talked about, my headband headphone is called Cozy Phones. We're the number one seller of headband headphones on Amazon. And on end, I'm not going to say off Amazon, I'm in multi channels, I'm in Walmart, Jet, Amazon, eu. But what we did is expanded the line and I think a key turning point when I talked about improving our photos, I had a photo shoot here locally and our photographer put my headbands on her 11 year old daughter using her tablets and took a few shots that way. And that was an aha moment for me. I was like, wow, this could be interesting. This might be great for kids. You know, kids using headphones all the time these days. So what if we were to take this concept of headband headphones for kids and put fun characters on them. So I brought the idea back home and asked my daughter, who's an artist, she's actually a freshman in art school now, to draw up a couple designs for me. And she drew up a frog, a bunny and a cat I think. And so I did a frog and sent off those, just the sketches to my supplier. Said hey, can you make this? So she made them for me. We put them on, I think it was like Q4 of 2015 and they went fast and nobody even knew. I mean it's not something you're searching for. Headband headphones.

So how did people find you? I mean you're selling headphones and doing.

Fine, but that's a challenge because it's a new thing. Nobody knows to search for headband headphones. One of the things that I did, one of my neighbors is a special education teacher and she mentioned that Those headphones might be great for some of her kids. So I gave her a few to try out in her classroom. And the kids love them. Some kids have autism, some have sensory processing disorder. They can't tolerate regular headphones. So I took that information and I went to start giving away headphones in the different Facebook groups who have children who are struggling with those challenges. The response was just absolutely amazing. There are kids that can't participate in some school activities because they can't wear regular headphones or earbuds. But the problems that we solve go way, way beyond special needs. You can imagine, because you've got a little daughter, and little kids don't like wearing earbuds in their ears. That's just fact of life. They're uncomfortable. And if you've ever been driving the car with the child in the backseat who drops their earphones, it's a dangerous situation because they can't reach them. They're in a car seat right until, I don't know, five, six years old sometimes these years. So it keeps the headphones on. They're comfortable. They're volume limited, so they're safe. They can still hear mom and dad talking to them. They can leave their head to the side and fall asleep with the headphones on. We just hit a niche, and when people discovered them, we were on fire.

So how do you think people discovered that brand? Because, I mean, they're obviously not searching for the frog style or the different variations that you had to make it more kid friendly. So how do you think that people discovered you?

Well, we really try to dig in, appeal to certain keywords, niching down really far into, like, headphones for toddlers, things like that, where there's just not very competitive. I also included them as, for a very short period of time, variations of my popular headphones. And that's a really interesting technique, using a popular variation and then riding on its coattails for new variations.

So you did take the other styles and put them as variations. And did you leave it that way or did you split them?

No. So I would like take my adult. You know, I've been highly ranked for our category for a long time. So on page one of, say, our adult sleep headphones, and I threw the kids headphones on that listing, and when adults see it, they get it. If they're using headband headphones, they never thought about it, wow, do they have these for kids? But when they see it, they get it. So we kind of wrote out the coattails of those listings and then eventually broke it off into their own listings. But by that time we had reviews and ranking.

So you went from full time to million dollars in eight to 12 months. I can't imagine that it was all roses on the way up. So tell me about a day when things really sucked.

I can tell you about when I had half of my listings closed on Black Friday, oh, one time. And that was unknown why those got closed, but I got them reopened the next day. They said it was an IP complaint, but we never could get to the bottom of what it was about. And then I can also just tell you this. Last prime Day, again, I was actually at the beach with my family, but watching my phone as I always do, and all of a sudden sales just kind of stopped again. Half of my listings were shut down in the middle of prime day. As it turns out, my number one competitor had put in an IP infringement complaint against us. And we already know that we're not infringing. It was a really reckless move on their part and basically I had to get my attorney involved and say, you are going to be responsible for hindering our business. And we got them to withdraw the complaint within two days.

So would it be fair to say that when you broke your collarbone, that was rock bottom and that was what forced you to make a change and you've been building a new empire ever since?

Absolutely. The worst thing that could have happened to me is if I didn't break the collarbone and I continued to make progress and claw my way back in that one restaurant. It's so cool.

I'm sorry to interrupt, Paul, but it's just, it's one of those things where you can only connect the dots backwards. Right? And we resist. We resist those moments of courage that force us into a new action. But so often we look back on those times and they're the best gift that could have possibly happened to us. And that's what I'm hearing you say happen to you.

I actually have chills running up my spine right now, the way you put it. And it's absolutely true. I couldn't imagine a better outcome. And I can't say how grateful I am for everyone who's helped me along the way. And there are plenty of folks, a lot of them, you know, include you and your tribe. It's been amazing.

And what do you think has been the greatest contribution to your business's growth? To a million dollars. And now beyond a million dollars. Now it's a multimillion dollar business.

Well.

Once I saw the amazing impact that we were having with the children's line. And we have created a category that didn't exist before. That's what it is. It's a whole new category. I decided I needed some help. I needed some advice. And I started calling around to people I knew in the industry and asking for advice. And one piece of advice I got from a friend of mine was seek out licensing. My goal was to grow and protect my brand. Yes, we have filed for international design patents, utility patents, and all that, but you and I both know sometimes our foreign competitors don't care too much about that. So I'm asking myself, how can I differentiate and grow my brand? And this friend of mine mentioned licensing. So he said, yeah, you should really sign up for the upcoming licensing show. This was probably January or February of 16. The show was in the spring. So I signed up for that show. I used their matchmaking service. And before I even got to the show, I had a deal with a children's book author of a book called the what if Monster? Kind of teaches confidence for children. I struck up a great relationship with Michelle Nelson Schmidt, the author. And we made a monster cozy phones. And, you know, she has an audience of 20 or 30,000. So she's out there just promoting the heck out of my goods, of our goods, our common product together. So that was amazing. And we actually had that licensing deal and product in hand by the time we got to the licensing show. And we used that as a case study when I went to go talk to other licensors.

And someone recommended that you go this direction, but you had not gone in this direction in the past. You didn't have a licensing background, correct?

No, zero. I had no clue what licensing was, and it took me a lot of time and energy to figure it out. So I did that deal, which was really easy because it was one entrepreneur to another very simple deal. We came up with a boilerplate licensing agreement. It was easy because it's just again, us dealing directly. But a few months later, I got an email from little company called the Disney Company.

I've heard of them.

And they wanted to know if I was interested in licensing. So then I really got nervous. I said, well, this is the big time. I can't do this on my own. I don't even want to talk to them without getting somebody in my corner who knows about this, because this could be really easy deal to screw up if I don't understand the language, the terms, you know, and you know, the industry. So I sought out a licensing consultant. It took me a long time to find Somebody, because there are not a lot of people that work on that side of licensing. There are an awful lot of people that are out there selling their licenses to others, but not who represent product owners or suppliers like us who seek licenses. So I found somebody. We ended up speaking with Disney and then she connected me with Nickelodeon and Hasbro and we had three licensors who were very excited about our product. We ended up settling on Nickelodeon, as you know, because your daughter has a few sets of our headphones. And I ended up doing a license for four of their top properties. The number one being Paw Patrol, which is about the number one kids show in. In that age range.

And what did that do for your business? What did those deals? How did it implement, bottom line?

So first of all, I learned that creating licensed product is a completely different project than sending a sketch to my supplier and say, make this frog. Right? It's completely different. It requires approvals, first of all, just to get the license. It was meetings and approvals and a series of events, negotiations and everything. But once you have the license, then producing the license in an approved manner with approved packaging and all that is a whole piece of work, completely different than what we are normally used to. So you have to get up to speed. I also found a licensed designer who knows how to work in that realm and is used to working with that approval process. So surrounding myself with really great licensing professionals was key. But the result was we launched our licensed product, first licensed product, in fall of 2017, just this last fall. And it was a home run. So I was organically on page one within say three weeks.

So forgive me for being stupid, Paul, but my understanding of licensing is you obviously are swapping branding and logos, but I was under the impression that they would almost buy it wholesale and distribute it. Is that not the case? Or does licensing just allow you to put their branding on your products and allow you to sell it?

So the form that you talked about may be a form of licensing, but not the form that I'm talking about. Okay, so in my. This is a little known form too. It's a way that I'm using it to differentiate our brand and to associate ourselves with legendary brands. What we're doing is we are in essence renting the right to use someone else's IP or property or character on our product. So if you sell umbrellas and you want to make a Disney Princess umbrella, then you go to Disney and say, hey, I want to make my umbrella with Disney Princess on it. And you strike a deal with them to License their IP and put it on your umbrella and then you sell it as the supplier and the merchant. In this case, you're going to sell it and pay them back a royalty.

Got it. So are you writing checks to Nickelodeon or is Nickelodeon writing checks to you?

I'm writing checks to Nickelodeon.

Got it.

But you say that it has really affected the bottom line, the business in a very positive way.

Absolutely. But it goes well beyond the sales because when you're talking about growing your brand, you can think about the associated benefits that you'll have from a license like that. If you have a Disney umbrella, for example, you now are going to appeal to that very wide audience of raving fans for Disney. Right. And if you approach a distributor or a retail rep, how much easier is it going to be able to get into retail if you have a Disney umbrella versus the RDM Enterprises umbrella?

So it really opens up amazing opportunities in other sales channels and eventually, depending on where you want to go, wholesale distribution, for example. For us, what it did is shortly after we launched, Nickelodeon invited me. They invited me to two events. One was out in a little city called Bentonville, Arkansas.

Yeah.

And we had a nice meeting talking about Walmart out there. The next one was to the Dallas Toy Fair. I don't know if you even know that it goes on out there.

Nope.

But I went out there and that's where another friend of mine who I had met in Bentonville introduced me to a distribution company. And once I showed him my Nickelodeon products and our Cozy Phones originals, they went crazy. And I had an offer in my email within 24 hours of the time I got back from that toy show to do a global mass market distribution deal.

Was that through a major retail store? Was that through some other distribution play?

So they are a major toy distribution company and they are already in all the major mass market retail. So all they have to do is call their buyers and add this into their product line.

Got it.

So it's Walmart, it's Target, it's Toys R Us, Walgreens, cvs.

Here's how I'm kind of pulling piecing the story together. You started with a product, you didn't quite know who the market was or what the brand was going to be about. Once you discovered what the brand was going to be, that's when you made changes to the new product line and made products specifically for the person. So now you've got a brand versus just a product. You went all in on that and started looking for new distribution plays. Licensing played a piece of that. And that opened up new relationships that you wouldn't have had. And that has been kind of the sweet sauce that has taken cozy phones into the multi millions. Did I misrepresent anything in the story?

No, I think that's it. You captured it very well. Multi channel was a big part of that too. So when we also started to get success, I went into multi channel as quickly as possible. I have my own fulfillment center. Not my own, but I use a 3 PL as well as Amazon. So that was a big part of the strategy to diversify off Amazon. Cozyphones.com Of course, good success with that. Also, it's a Shopify site. So Shopify and these other channels. And then as you said, the licensing and moving from there. It's just the doors that licensing opens have been just revealed to me over and over again and makes me think that it's a pretty good way to go. And I look forward to. I've got quite a few other licenses in the queue now that we can execute. And here's the thing, Ryan. When you have Paw Patrol cozy phones, nobody else is going to have Paw Patrol cozy phones, and most likely not in that category as well. Are there headphones with Paw Patrol on them out there now? Yes, there are, but no headband headphones. Same thing with, you know, your Disney umbrella. If Disney has already given that license to someone else, more than likely they're not going to give it to another manufacturer. There is exclusivity sometimes, but it doesn't serve their purpose to have multiple suppliers with the same license.

That's beautiful. I think we should have you back at some point to talk all about licensing because this is really fascinating, Paul.

Can you tell I'm excited about it? Yeah.

Well, I want to take a second and think back about the day you broke your collarbone, which was like rock bottom for Paul. You've got $2 million into these restaurants. They're gonna go under. You just break your collarbone and you don't know what you're gonna do. That was just three or four years ago. So, like, what do you say to the person that just broke his collarbone? I mean, what do you say to the Paul of three years ago? Could you have ever imagined that life would change this dramatically, this quickly?

No, I don't think I could have. I had hope. I always have hope. I have a never say die attitude. I don't think you know this. I'm a Marine. I was active duty for 11 years. Failing isn't really an option for me. But knowing when to Fail is definitely one of my weak points. Should have known a little earlier in the restaurant biz, but I just say take my story and take the hundreds of other stories that are like that when you're, you know, sitting there in the waiting room with a broken collarbone to say, oh, this seems like a great opportunity.

Yeah, I like, I like to say if you're going through a crappy time, get excited because you might look back and say, that was when everything changed.

Hey, guys, this is Ryan. We're gonna take a quick break and.

We'Ll return to the show in a second.

Hey, guys. You know that my financial strategy is to build businesses and to invest the profits. And when it comes to investing the profits, I look for cash flow. I look for it to be backed by something real and I look for tax efficiency. It's why when I recently sold a business, I. I called the good folks over at Four Peaks Capital Partners and today's episode is brought to you by them. You've heard them on the podcast before when I interviewed Mauricio Rauld on the topic of Mailbox Money and why investment funds could be a source of passive cash flow for some entrepreneurs. I use investment funds like Four Peaks as part of my long term strategy and, and I'd encourage you to go listen to the episode called How Rich People Generate Mailbox Money and you might want to check them out if you're looking for opportunities right now with asset.

Prices as high as they are.

I am mostly looking at cash flow opportunities, which is why I had them on the podcast. So make sure you check out that episode on Mailbox Money with Mauricio Raul.

So let's look forward now, Paul, how big of an empire do you want to build out of this thing?

My goal is to.

Become financially independent. You know, I'm now I'm 55, two years later, so definitely would like to take my foot off the gas a little bit in the future, near future, do some traveling with my family. My son is a seller now. My son is an active duty Marine. He had his first Q4 and sold about 350 units. So I want to help my kids along. My daughter's an artist. I'm sure I can find some way to incorporate her work into the business. But I haven't defined what my exit point is exactly. It's definitely over 10 million. I just don't know how far beyond 10 million I want to take it at this time.

Can.

Do you feel comfortable sharing what the numbers look like right now and how the licensing deal, what Percentage of the growth that will be sure.

We did over 4 million last year and that was just absolutely amazing. And that was with a very small window of opportunity for licensed products once they hit the market. Like I told you, you can probably expect probably a nine month development cycle, six to nine months to get licensed product out there, which may seem shocking when you're used to two or three months.

Yeah, right.

But to do it right, that's what you have to do. So we have that. I think that just in my regular sales channels this year I'm shooting for 6 to 8 million. I doubled last year from 2016. That was about 1.9. So I more than doubled last year. I'd like to do 6 to 8 million this year and all of my online channels expanding even beyond Amazon eu. And then we have the retail. So believe it or not, it's a little bit late for retail for Q4 of 2018 right now. But what I'm really excited about, our products were displayed at the Hong Kong Toy Fair in January. We got a great reception from a lot of big retail buyers. And then next week I'm gonna be at the toy fair in New York where I'm gonna be able to stand beside an exhibit of cozy phones.

That's amazing. Well, what do you expect the revenues to be from the licensing deal and the retail distribution? Do you have an idea, if it's.

Not too late to get into some of the big players? And I've been told it is a little late, but if we can still do it for 2018, we could see 3 to 5 million just from. Just from the licensing, just from that distribution deal.

Right.

So we might get you to that 10 in the next 12 months or so.

That's my big goal. Yep, 10 is my big goal.

Paul, when you look at just the last few years, you know, you have come so far and the future is very bright for where you are going. So if we were to fast forward through there, what do you hope that your legacy is?

I want to see a cozy phone on every kid. I look forward to getting onto the airplane and seeing parents putting cozy phones on their kids. I look forward to going into the retail stores and seeing them there. I think it actually is a great thing to see people enjoying using your product. So. And of course, kids is only part of our market. We've got active and sleep also. And so it's fun to see your products out in the wild. As you know, having a nice acquisition event at some point would be great. But I do want to Keep a piece of that company. And I think I lost a little bit track of your question.

I just want to know what you want your legacy to be.

So there's one other piece of that. And you and I talked about this a little bit. I have shared my story with a lot of sellers, and this seller community has supported me so much. I've seen them come back to me and say, tell me about licensing. The same kind of questions that you have. What is this all about? And I've shared my story. In fact, I had a couple of sellers come with me to the licensing show last year. Liron Hirschkorn. You know, he and I are in the back room together. And Liron came with me to the licensing show last year, and guess what? He's got a license this year. So I just kind of showed him the ropes. And Liron was the first one actually to say, paul, you've got to do a course about licensing. Nobody even knows about the opportunity. They don't understand. So with the distribution deal, I have some of the work of scaling this huge organization is off of my back now, and I'm using some of that time to focus on developing a licensing course.

That's great. Well, I look forward to helping with that when it's ready. And, you know, it just occurred to me, Paul, if you're looking at licensing of just the Disney franchise, what that means is that every time a new movie comes out, you have a new product that you can sell, and every time a new niche opens up, you can be the first mover in that niche. It just occurred to me that, like, you know, other people do the hard work for you in terms of product selection. When you structure it that way, you're.

Right on the nose. In fact, I will share a funny story with you. When I signed up for the licensing show last year, and through my Disney context, I was invited to this special Disney meeting in Vegas as part of the show. And you had to stand in line and everybody had to seal their phones up into a plastic bag, turn them off, seal up, put them in your pockets. And there were guards everywhere. They shuttle us into this big room. And there was an hour and a half long bonanza of what's coming up for Disney in the next two years. And Disney is saying to you people in the audience, you guys are manufacturers, you're product owners. Here's what's coming up. We want you to make stuff with Disney on it.

And you're sitting there pumping.

Does that blow your mind? Yeah.

And you're sitting There pumping your fist, going, I got it in the bag. Disney.

Yeah, they want. See, what people don't understand is Nickelodeon doesn't make anything Disney. And this isn't completely true, but many licensors don't make stuff. They've got salespeople in their organization whose job it is to sell their intellectual property to product manufacturers, and then they help them market and sell it.

And that's where you and I come in.

Exactly.

Well, Paul, I'm so proud of what you have done, and I think your story is inspirational to so many people, and I'm just so humbled and grateful to be part of it. And I'm thrilled to have you in the back room to open up those opportunities to. To get you to 10 million and beyond. So thanks for being an inspiration. Keep on changing the world, buddy.

Thank you, Ryan. I'm very grateful for your leadership in this space and having, you know, introduced me to so many wonderful people that have really helped to make me successful.

Thanks, Paul. Keep it growing, buddy.

Bye.

Something magical happens when you take an idea and you put hard work behind it and you get around the right people and you play for the long term. And what happens is you get stories. Like, Paul, when someone goes all in on something, you find opportunities and you find people that will support those opportunities. I don't know where you are in your life or your career, but in the event that you are ready to step on the gas, this is the kind of stuff we do. You know, we empower entrepreneurs with the training to be able to take their idea to the marketplace. We do that through a course called the Brand Builder Bootcamp. We help them get to a million dollars and beyond through our accelerators. We take people who are at a million dollars and we open up new distribution channels like retail, like licensing, like relationships, like giving them access to funding. We get them ready for sale. This is what we do inside of the backroom. If you're a fit for any of these, head over to freedomfastlane.com and join one of our communities or apply for one of our communities. And when you do, you'll be around people who have done it before. You'll be around individuals who have been where you are, who have dealt with competition, who have dealt with people nipping at their heels, who have dealt with the review game, who have dealt with not knowing how to take an idea to the marketplace, who have known that they're sitting on something but weren't sure how to take it to the point where it was a really sustainable, scalable sellable business and we'll clear those bottlenecks. The whole point is to cast the $10 million vision. It's why I talk about this so publicly. I'll tell you my ideas, I'll tell you the product I'm working on. I publish all this publicly because my purpose here is to cast the $10 million vision and to clear the bottlenecks that stand in your way so that we can create 100,000 DECA millionaires in my career. That's what we're up to@capitalism.com and I'd love to have you be a part of that. And if not, that's cool too. So thank you for listening to the show. I thrive on stories like this.

This.

If you have a rags to riches story where you hit a hard time, you discovered freedom fast lane and you want to share that with the world, I would like to feature you on the show. You can message me on facebook@facebook.com ryandaniel moran or on Instagram, send me a direct message. I'm under the handle RyanDaniel Moran. But most importantly, I appreciate you listening to the show. It's why I do this. You keep me going and I'll see.

You on the next episode.