He Made Multiple 8 Figures In His Mid 20s... | Robert Oliver

Isn't it fun to think about the fact that it was like yesterday, you were living with your parents, paying yourself $2,500 a month and now we're sitting here talking about nine figure visions.

I was 26 when I sold. It's painful to be honest. You know, great businesses are the best asset you can have, right? People can have stocks, people can have real estate. Like those are all fine things. But a good strong cash flowing business that you own and control, that is the best asset out there.

I think that is the thing that so few people get about. The difference between selling on Amazon and building a business.

Right now is the time to be building a business on the ground floor.

You got something good here? Maybe, maybe. Wait, maybe you are better at this than them. Did you go through a post exit depression?

Yeah, I did, I did. It kind of led through a whole like spiritual thing. Almost ended up in like a cult. There was some yoga involved.

Whoa.

Whole nother story.

But I'm glad I asked this question.

Yeah, that was wild. We have time for those.

Yeah, we do. We do.

Now.

Rob Oliver had a $30 million exit at 26 years old. That's the headline. But the bigger story is that I met Rob when he was our Amazon vendor broker. When he was just 23 years old in 2017, I sold a company for an eight figure exit. And Rob saw that and said, I think there might be some money to be made building Amazon brands again. He was a contact of ours that was helping us get more product into Amazon and then he started his own brand and he went to eight figures in just three years. In this interview I sit down with Rob to go through how he built a brand to eight figures in such a short period of time. And just so you know, it's not by looking at what everybody else was doing and copying what worked for them. It was about building brands. So we dissect the process to building an eight figure company and positioning yourself for exit. And in this interview, Rob and I talk about what we've learned as a result of seeing big private equity groups mess up companies and what we would do instead to build a hundred million dollar net worth over the next five years. If you listen to this story and you're like, I am ready to start my road to $1 million. It takes a full year. But if you're ready for that one year transformation on your road to 1 million, come join us. Apply for a spot inside the 1%. This is where I help people who, who have at least a year time Horizon get into the game and build businesses that they can sell. You can fill out an application@capitalism.com 1. So Rob, we met. I described it as like you were our Amazon rep or something. I actually, Matt had the relationship before I did. So you were like our vendor of some. How did we meet?

I was on the, I started on the vendor central side of the, of Amazon and not to get like too technical, but that's different from what everyone else does. And at the time it was of interest to Matt and so we actually had a relationship. You were one of the first brands I called when I stumbled on Amazon. It was sheer strength and like Uber Vita and Uber Vita.

Yeah, I got them, I got them removed.

I remember, you know that story. Yeah, I know when the thread went viral and you guys. Yeah, it was awesome.

Yeah, they were, they were a cheater on Amazon and they just were hammering us and, and we sent report after report after report and finally got it to Jeff Bezos assistant.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And now that brand was that brand and that individual who ran it was. It's completely banned. But that was like a two year process of trying to get them down.

So. So that's when I first kind of met you guys and developed the relationship with Matt and kind of kept in touch and I thought it was so cool what you guys were, were doing because both of you are a couple years older than me. So I was like the young kid who was, you know, wandering into this like wilderness of Amazon and I see you guys building this awesome business and so developed the relationship with Matt, had the vendor central connection. Basically vendor central is working directly with Amazon and Amazon wanted you guys. They were like, this brand's hot. We want to do some new year, new you stuff. Matt was interested and that's kind of how we got connected.

Yeah. And then we didn't meet until one at Capcon 2017 and you were just starting to say, hey, I want to build one of these brands myself.

Yep, yep. I think I had genius kind of in the wings, but didn't fully, you know, it was sheer. When you guys got that, when you guys had your exit, when that was when a light bulb came on for me that I was like, oh, this is like way bigger than just, you know, some little fun passion project.

This is more than affiliate marketing, making some cash. Definitely this is a business.

Definitely this is a real business and it's a huge opportunity and, and you guys are like sheer and your business. That's where the light bulb really came on for me.

Yeah. That's. I appreciate that. And, and you, you started building genius when.

I think genius was started in 2016.

Okay.

But very much like, you know, I was still working with different brands and, like, it was like my little.

Is your side thing.

Side thing. And I just was like, yeah, well.

You entered into a marketplace with a different branding spin on it. You know, you took, you had. I think you had mushrooms in every. Pretty much every formulation. Right.

Yeah. Our first thing was like, I saw Amazon. So back up real quick. I. I worked with a bunch of sports nutrition companies that I thought were terrible. And, and you guys, you guys had a similar opinion. Like, most people were underdosed, like pixie dusted, just not really putting their best foot forward. But they had the distribution. They had bodybuilding.com vitamin shop, GNC. So there's no way to beat them.

Yeah.

And then I realized with Amazon, like, whoa, you can kind of do whatever you want and the customer will decide if it's a good product.

That's right.

And so with that in mind, I just set out to make, like, really the most ridiculous stuff I could with our pharmacist partner. And just, I didn't expect much of it, honestly, at first I was just like, these are products for me. I want to take them. Let's see where they go. And it turns out there was a market for them. Yeah.

I think that is the thing that so few people get about the difference between selling on Amazon and building a business. If you want to sell on Amazon, you look at what exists. You try to do it 10% better than everybody else and get more reviews.

Yeah.

But if you want to build a business, you. You do something of very high quality work.

Yeah.

And it is slower at first. It's not as predictable as first. And you have a product that you develop for yourself or for a core audience, and then you continue to cultivate that as a community.

Yep.

And that's when you build real equity value. So it's not as predictable on paper, but it has way more upside and it's way more fun. And it sounds like that's the playbook you were following.

Everything you just said, like, I'm going to take that later and clip that because, I mean, really, like, that is the benefit. It drives me crazy seeing, like, people, people talk about Amazon is, you know, one of the traditional pitches is like, hey, go find a product on Alibaba that, you know, there's like, not enough competitors and you're going to buy that, you're going to put it on Amazon you'll be making passive income and your life will change forever. And it's like, no, like that's not the opportunity that Amazon presents. Amazon has a hundred plus million shoppers and it provides a platform for entrepreneurs to solve problems.

Yeah.

Like period. And that's where you're rewarded in a meaningful like way. Say you did get the right product off Alibaba and it kind of makes you a couple hundred bucks a day or whatever. Like that will fizzle out. That will not change your life. You build a brand like sheer strength. You build a brand like genius and you get an exit that you don't have to work anymore.

Yeah. In both of our cases, we started when there really wasn't a market. We almost built the market in a way. Our first, our first 100%, our first bestseller was our nitric oxide supplement back in like 2014 or 15. I, I like for you to guess when we hit number one in nitric oxide, what kind of volume we were.

Doing when you first hit number one? Yeah, like way back. I remember Matt calling me all excited, like maybe it was like 50 to.

100 units a day, like 25 sales a day.

25 sales a day.

That was not a lot. That was the foundation of get four products to 25 sales a day at $30 price point.

Yeah.

Because we hit number one in our category and nitric oxide at 25 units a day. When we sold the company, it was doing 200 sales a day. And now you have all these other competitors who are selling crappy nitric oxide supplements that you do way more than 25 units a day. And, and the market came to us and the market came to you because you created a great product. I don't think people realize on Amazon that you can create a market. You, you can create a whole new category for Sigmatic, kind of did this. Right. And they were quasi competitor to you.

How about, how about A.J. you know?

Well, well say what you mean about A.J.

People sometimes hear Amazon saturated or the opportunity's gone. When we started, pet supplements literally wasn't a thing. It wasn't a category at all. He branched into that world as like, you know, maybe he was like the second or third brand, but he was the person who really did it. Right. And what, $610 million later, you know, like.

Yeah, and we have another mutual friend who had a nine figure exit in pet supplements. That was in our little community.

Yeah, right.

And he like all four of us, you aj this third friend, myself, I need figure exit. You had an eight figure exit AJ had a nine figure exit. He had a nine figure exit.

Yep.

And we all built new categories. Yeah. I think that is what people miss as they're evaluating building a brand on Amazon or elsewhere. They think you have to look at what somebody else is doing that's working rather than just develop a great product for yourself or the people that you're trying to serve.

Yep. And, and that's what I've always liked about your, you know, messaging. Like you're, you're Internet native. Like you were born in this Internet world, but you've never conflated like, like you believe in true entrepreneurship, you believe in solving problems, you believe in bringing new stuff to the world. And that's lost in the general Amazon crowd, like to, to your point. I mean, it's always lost in the general Amazon crowd. And so if more people would apply that framework of, hey, I'm going to solve a problem, I'm going to create something awesome, like they would be, they would make way more money.

That is true. Not in the short term, no.

But after a year, it takes longer.

If you do 12 months to 1 million, why is my book not on the shelf? Needs to be in the background. If you follow the 12 months to 1 million plan, yeah, you'll make way more money long term. Tell me about the rise of Genius. Because now I look at it, I go into Walgreens to get my thyroid medication and your products are around me everywhere I go. I go into H E B here in Texas and your product, like your products are everywhere, but you didn't come out of the gate everywhere. You started pretty small. So tell me a little bit about the rise of the Genius brand.

Yeah, no, the actual story is like, you know, I gave my manufacturer a $5,000 deposit and said, help me with these two products and like, I promise you, I'll sell them and I'll pay you the, the rest because the PO is probably like 15, 20,000. And so there was some trust there. Shout out Dustin.

Dustin's good.

Started there. Brought two products to market. Knew the Amazon platform pretty well. I felt like they were really premium, you know, products. I was like, at very least I can sell through these and pay them back, you know. But that was one of those situations where you came out with a caffeine free pre workout and it was like clinically dosed and just a monster, a monster product. And I had to like shut off ads and, you know, beg them to get the second run made because we were immediately profitable, you know, and it was, it was Solving an idea there that just hadn't existed. There was like all these other clinically dose pre workouts, but no one that was like caffeine free and nootropics. Yeah, that was kind of my thing. I leaned into. And so we started with that, you know, made some money, paid the manufacturer down, and I was like, guys, I got to keep going. Can we, can we work out some like, net 45 cash can be tight in a physical product business. And so kind of leaned on them for terms a little bit and just got to launching products. You know, I didn't pay myself anything for like two years. Like, I was like, I think I could maybe squeak out like 2500 bucks or 3 grand out of the company. Same with us living at home, you know, like. But you're like, oh, I'm seeing this growth and on paper I'm, I think I'm making money, so let's, let's keep going. And, and that was pretty much it. Just use the Amazon springboard. I think about a year in, I realized that the real value here is going to be in creating a community. And, you know, I really started studying branding and like all the things that make Apple special or make Nike special, it's like, well, that, that's my world. That's what I'm doing here. So what, what are those traits? And doubled down there, really honed in messaging, you know, obviously, the visual identity, and tried to create something that existed beyond just like Amazon products. And that's what gave the brand the second life from, you know, Amazon to ultimately direct to consumer to retail, and just gave it life.

How big of a team did you have?

Only nine. Nine people at nine people.

And you were in your late 20s?

I think I was 26 when I sold.

When you sold. Okay. So you had to figure out how to hire people and inspire people. What was that like? It's, I mean, it's one thing to grow four products, 25 sales a day at a $30 price point for a year.

Yeah.

It's another to set a vision for a brand, hire people under you. And that can be a really bumpy transition.

It's, it's, it's painful to be honest. And that's not like one of my. I think there's different buckets of leadership and I probably fall more on the. Are you a football guy?

Yeah.

You have like, browns?

Yeah.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, I know it's been, it's been a painful life.

But hey, desean Watson, maybe.

So I could say all sorts of Things.

So we've got like, you know, it's like I feel like Bill Belichick, great blocking and tackling X's and O's. No, no. Like, I think he's probably a phenomenal systems and process guy. You got Pete Carroll over here in Seattle that probably doesn't do any of that. And sometimes run stupid plays on the one yard line, you know, in the super bowl and loses it for us. But great emotional leader. And I probably fall more onto that side. Yeah.

Like a Ted Lasso.

Yeah. Like I'm, I'm here to like, I just, I'm running it with my heart, for better or for worse, which can.

I'm more that way too.

Yeah.

And so I have to surround myself with people who are the systems blocking attack.

And that's exactly what you did with Matt.

Right, right.

And. And he's a great partner there. So that was one of the first things I did that I was like, I think I was 23 at the time and one of my best friends had just graduated law school. And he's like super analytical, you know, kind of dry, like just more that personality. And I was like, I. I don't know why, because I don't know what you need at this point, but I was like, I don't know why, but I feel like I need you. So you want to come run this with me? And so, you know, cut him on, on some like performance equity. That was the first salary I could pay. And partnered with him and he was really the guy that helped build out more of the procedural stuff. And I think between us, we were, we were a pretty good team and ultimately got enough infrastructure in place that it kind of semi resembled a real company when we sold. You know, it's still like a bunch of 25 year old kids kind of running and gunning, but at the end of the day, we made it work.

Yeah. When you find that partner that you can really rely on to complement your skill set, things change real fast.

Definitely.

It's kind of amazing how when you have somebody who can keep you in your zone and you're free to run and that person's free to run, you can just move mountains.

Sky's the limit for sure.

It's really amazing what can be done. You have, it seems from the outside you guys really mastered the review getting game. I mean, you have tens of thousands of reviews on products. So how important was that to your strategy? And. And now, because I know you've been teaching this stuff publicly now, how important you think that is? In where we are in the marketplace.

Now, first and foremost I think you need a really good product, right. Like I don't think there's any overcoming any. Like you can't, you can't fake scale reviews like any, I mean even back in the day you couldn't like people could get, you know, hundreds of reviews or whatever, but you're not going to get tens of thousands in a positive light without having a really good product. So that's first and foremost. But when you think about it from like a, you know, product development standpoint or new company standpoint, I like to build the community first. Because if you have that community and you have people like emotionally attached to what you're doing and really bought into the, to your vision of the brand, well they're going to leave good reviews. Yeah, they just are like they, they're, they're going to be the first ones up there writing multi paragraph like you know, things. And so I think those are the components. Great product, clear vision and a very strong community.

What does community mean to you? I say building your audience at the very least. If you're brand new to this, you just spend 90 days while you're developing the product, building it publicly to build a community, build a little bit of a following. Then when you launch you'll have people who will buy it at a premium price and leave a review. That's your starting point. But what does a community mean to you in the context of running an eight figure brand?

So I have conceptually what that means which I think you just hit on honestly audience and all the pieces I'll give more like tactical of what I think, what I think a community should be in terms of an asset. I love places where you can micro engage with your direct audience. And so that was Facebook groups for a while. Like we had the genius ambassador crew which was like three or four thousand people. They'd post on social, they were all like, you know, I'd pop in there every day. Now I think less people use Facebook nowadays and so I think good places for community are Discord, depending on the audience and like you probably won't get a lot of women to, to discord but if you have a more male focused brand, discord can be great, can be great for gaming brands obviously I think like telegram groups and I think just general texts like Gary Vee was early with that, right. The text list and any place where you can go beyond just a great piece of content because that can be the top of the funnel. You know, you put out Content. If it's a health brand, it can be on health, whatever that can, that can get people's interest, but where you really get them bought in and in love with you. Is that more micro engagement?

For sure.

And just having that ability to commute on a. Communicate on a day to day basis.

Yeah. Facebook groups still work in some demos, I would even say most demos. But there's a lot more options now for, for communicate communication and the more intimate you can be. Like slack groups.

Yep.

Slack groups are fantastic.

Fantastic.

If you can, if you can get people in a slack channel that feels intimate, just like Facebook used to feel intimate five years ago. Some people would say WhatsApp groups, not my game. But Telegram has taken over a big part of that. So you mean the more micro, sort of less scalable communication is how you would define a community.

Yep. And, and I. Cause I, I think the. Especially early on, like if you build a, you know, $100 million brand, of course it just becomes less manageable. But, but in those early stages, I mean, a thousand people can make it for you, right? Couple hundred people can make it for you.

That's right.

And so being willing to micro engage, you know, engage with your true believers, that's what gives you some level of parabolic reach.

Yeah, I, I think people forget they want to skip right to the re. The big parabolic reach. But it starts with a few hundred people.

Starts with the foot soldiers.

That's right. A few hundred people that really care that you're really engaged with that can give you $100,000 launch.

Absolutely.

Because they'll buy it, they'll tell other people, they'll leave reviews and they'll give you the momentum. And it does not take that much effort to get a few hundred people to really care about what you're doing.

And in today's world.

Is Damian your student? He's a great example. And I don't know if that's part of your playbook, but how he built in public, that gets people engaged. And that's the start of his community. And it didn't cost him a dimension. I mean, it's just TikTok.

He built it on TikTok, but the whole thing publicly. And, and he wasn't even. He was talking about the product, but it was more about his involvement in the story of the product. Here's why I dropped out of college to start a cookie business. Yep. And he gets, you know, a few thousand followers on TikTok, but he builds a 5,000 person waiting list for this product and so as soon as it's ready, he sells out and then he has another order and he sells it. Now he's doing a new product and it has better margins and you know, people are coming over from this product and buying this one. Like that is the foundation of a brand. And that's when you don't have to be at the whim of Amazon's mood or where it's going to rank you. Yep. You are almost a more a partner with Amazon.

Absolutely.

But the game has changed since we were new.

Right.

And I'm curious from your perspective, if you were starting a brand now, what you would do differently than when you started genius back in 2016.

2016, yeah. I mean, for one. Right. Just being able to apply all the things I've learned, I feel like a cheat code. Like I would start with brand and community. I think how Damian did it, even though I have money today to like throw it something people, I have three pieces to building a brand traffic conversion, which everyone knows. And the third is story. And so if you can start getting that story out there and building your community around that, I think that's the ultimate cheat code for, for success, like you're setting yourself. How many people did he have on his list?

5,000.

5,000 a day. He didn't spend a dime. It's all just storytelling and short form content. And so I would focus in on short form content, I would focus in on community. I would try to guarantee as many of the variables before I even dream of launching. Right. Because then all the Amazon stuff becomes easy. It does, it becomes easy back. Like back when we were starting, I think there was an obsession over SEO and, you know, where's Amazon going to rank you and this, that. And I've really simplified that in today's world that if, if you're doing all the other things right, you're going to succeed on Amazon.

Yeah.

Amazon's become more of a mirror of what's, you know, popular in the broader world than it has like a manipulatable search algorithm.

There are still brands that have manipulated and stayed there. I mean, especially in the supplement world. There's people have been there in there for 10 years and oh yeah, they haven't got away thousands of reviews.

Yeah, yeah.

But I kind of feel like their days may be numbered. Right. The marketplace eventually catches.

No, they're declining. They're declining.

Are they declining? For sure.

But it's slow because what happened is Amazon fed them so much traffic and so much, you know, like search history. They have, you Know, like that one test booster we were talking about earlier, they probably have, you know, 10,000 people on subscription just, just over the years. Right. So that it's dwindling. Like they used to be like 300 BSR and now they're a thousand and it'll just slowly bleed out and it'll eventually be replaced. It shows the power of Amazon, really, and the stickiness of like all of that.

Oh, for sure, yeah. It's hard to get people to change brands, but once they do, they tend not to go back.

Correct.

And so the building of the brand ahead of the launch on Amazon is really the play to solidify both sides of it. And that is how you build something that is of equity value that can be sold. You were saying that when you saw us exit, that was a light bulb moment for you. So what was it like for you when you go to the negotiation table with a group that wants to buy your company? And this is before the, this is before the COVID run up. Right.

So honestly, it was like horrifying and truly a terrible experience because I said that I didn't understand the world well enough. And so to me it was like, you get this one check and then you're done and it's all good. And like, so you just want that more than anything. And so you spend that due diligence process. Just like I didn't fully appreciate how powerful it is just to have an awesome business, which I had.

Yeah, I get that.

So by seeing this exit dangled out there, I undervalued what I had like in my hand, you know, like, I mean, I probably left 20, 30 million bucks on the table if I just had like held it and grown it through.

Covid.

Yeah.

Can you share the details of the transaction or are you tight lipped on that?

I think I'm. I think I'm tight lipped. Yeah.

But you had an eight figure exit.

Eight figure exit, you know, a great outcome for sure. So nothing to complain about. But just in hindsight, like what I tell younger entrepreneurs now is like, if you get to that point, appreciate what you've done and appreciate that, you know, great businesses are the best asset you can have.

Right.

People can have stocks, we can have real estate. Like those are all fine things, but a good, strong, cash flowing business that you own and control, that is the best asset out there.

Yeah. When we bought Cheer Back, somebody was like, oh, you're gonna buy it and sell it for 15 million bucks again? And I was like, I think I might rather just buy it and hold it for a decade or two. Because everybody who has had an exit wishes they had cash flow. And everybody who has cash flow wishes they had a big windfall. The grass is always greener there. And so I've actually grown fond of the model where you grow a great business and you borrow against it. Yeah. And that's your exit. It's tax free money. You let the business continue to grow, service the debt and then at the end of a few years you still have the business, you paid off the debt and you can have another borrowing against the asset as long as the business continues to grow.

And I didn't understand any of.

Me neither.

Any other.

That's why you and I both have YouTube channels now. Because I didn't know any of this stuff. Like we were just 20 year old kids figuring it out.

Look at like Gracio and Grove, you know, like, like that, that in hindsight that was such a, like easy to understand, you know. Oh, these things are incredibly leverageable and you can, you can leverage one to buy another and yeah. Becomes extremely scalable. Those stories didn't end well, but I mean it was still like multi billion dollars.

I know Thoracio didn't end well, but I think Grove is doing really well.

I think all of them are like relatively fine. And the. The founders of Thracio made off with you know, multiple nine figures. Yeah. You know, it's. It's all relative. Right. Adam Newman still gets to raise money. So he made someone money along the way. But you know, I'm point with all of that is just that I mean you get. I guess I feel fortunate to have like gained the sophistication after the fact. But I hope a lot of young people listen to this now and can apply what I'm talking about. Because I didn't have that when I was at the deal table. Right. Even in my deal. I was so anxious to get it done.

Yeah.

That if I would have maybe dug my heels in on a couple more points, you know, I probably would have done a lot better.

Oh, same thing with us. I mean when you. I was 29 when we sold. And when you have a 29 year old kid and I have, you know, a two year old and I'm figuring out next phase of life and you have a private equity group which you think is this. They know all the answers and they're coming in with a big check. It's like how I would be dumb not to do this deal. But on the other side of it you're like, maybe I was Dumb to sell the company. Maybe I, maybe I was especially looking at what happened on the other side of it where that they really ran the company.

Do you talk about that publicly?

Oh yeah, they ran the, I don't, you know, I don't share details that much, but they ran the company into the ground. And from my perspective, it's like, oh wait, I actually was good at what I did at 29. I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing. Oh, you're going to send me it? Write me a check. Great, let's do it. And now I wish I could tell that 29 year old, you got something good here. Maybe, maybe, wait, maybe you are better at this than them. And, but what came out of that was, was I, I did learn, I learned some ways that you could structure deals that I had no idea. I would have never known how private equity works if I'd not gone in.

That direction any of their money. Half the time it wasn't, it was like mind blowing. It's like these guys just made.

Yeah, so. So I realize now when you have our skill set of getting your fingernails dirty building companies and now you apply a little bit of what we learned through going through a private equity process, you can be a really dangerous entrepreneur in a very short amount of time.

You start seeing where serious money is made. Right. Like, I hope that doesn't. I always feel bad when I say that type of thing because it like can put people off. Like, oh, you, you know, multiply figures or whatever. But no, it's like, no, there's, there's definitive levels above that. And a lot of the time it comes from understanding of, you know, just dealing finance. Yeah, definitely.

I mean when you realize that money isn't real, just as made up idea and it's all agreements.

Yeah.

It's sales. What is this worth? Let's figure it out. I don't know.

Right.

But somebody agrees to it. Now it's worth that. And there's an. Now the marketplace says it's worth that. It's a story. But when you apply that kind of idea and structure to building a real business. Now you see where you can build nine for your company.

Yeah. It becomes leverageable. That's why if people wonder why people go to Harvard and Yale to take the finance stuff, it's to take that story and put it in a really nice spreadsheet where you can mathematically tell it.

Yeah, that's right. Now you're a few years post exit and you've been creating content Recently. Why did you decide to go to content route recently?

You know, I enjoy this world. I think. I really do think, you know, social media is one of the best things and it's one of the worst things in the world. And it's a. It's a special opportunity to be able to.

Expand in so many ways. It opens up so many doors, like just by. By being able to be on these platforms and be seen, it opens connections that you never would have dreamed possible.

Yeah, well, it's just like building the community for a brand at the beginning.

The same thing.

You know, if we had not. If I had not been creating content around shear when I started, we would have never met the retail broker that got us into a thousand retail stores. We would have never met that influencer that we partner with women and never met that employee that we hired that is still at so a big wig in the Amazon world. And so by documenting the process either within the brand or as a personal brand, it opened up so many relationships for us to be able to pursue new routes of distribution, relationships that became strategic relationships. And it sounds like you're saying it's been the same thing on the personal side for you. 100% in the social media world. You're just meeting people that you would have never met. You realize it's kind of a. It's a small community. Like if you, you know, a few people, you know, pretty much everybody.

Definitely, definitely. And it just keeps. I don't know, the world's so dynamic and everything's always changing and just being able to, like, have a finger on that pulse, I think it's. It's extremely beneficial.

You moved to Puerto Rico a couple years ago. Is that a tax move?

Yeah.

Tell me about it. I. I know very little about this.

No, I mean, I guess my take has been.

A lot of pieces that. So very top of the funnel here. Seattle is not a great place to live most of the year. Summers are fantastic, but generally, like, you know, kind of gray and dreary and. And so we had always considered moving. And you know how it is when you sell a business and you write a check that makes most people sick.

Yeah.

Myself included. And so I didn't really want to do that again. And so, you know, started investing in stuff and I'm kind of doing some of the math. I'm like, man, it would be really awesome to. To not pay tax on this. Right. And there's not a lot of ways you can legally do that without.

Just a lot of effort and hustle. There's ways to reduce your tax bill. But it becomes a huge game and it's not.

Becomes a job.

Yeah, it becomes a job. It really does. And so we looked at the whole Puerto Rico thing and we're like, you're telling me you live there for half of the year and you only pay 4% federal income tax on ordinary income and you pay zero capital gains. Well, that's worth checking out, right? And so we go check it out. Right. As you know, the pandemic's already rolling, so work from anywhere is a thing. We're there, right. As Biden won the election and starts talking about increasing taxes. And so I'm like, oh, this will probably, you know, this has been around a while, but I feel like with all the relocation and all this stuff, this area has some serious, that makes serious long term potential. And so still we don't know what we're going to think though. We're kind of like Puerto Rico third war. Like, you know, that was when Trump did the whole like he wanted to train it for Greenland. And so I don't have like the most positive association.

I remember him saying something about like, we should buy Greenland. Was there actually talk of him trading?

He made some comment like it was never serious, but he.

Okay.

You know, it was like he. Yeah, so Puerto Rico could use a rebrand among some people. But anyways, we go down there and we check it out and I mean we fell in love. Like we're in this awesome development.

You know, like everyone else down there is some sort of interesting entrepreneur that is there for one reason or another. And so just pretty much immediately there's like this super strong community and network effect and, and so we, we picked up the family and, and we, we went.

That's really fascinating. 4% on ordinary income. If you're there for half the year or I think it's six months plus a day or something like that. That is kind of wild. So if you enjoy being there, you can basically reduce your tax bill to almost zero. So you're making a long term play here on your next thing, your next income, you get to keep it all.

That's, that's the plan. Yeah, for sure.

That's, that's really fantastic. My brain is kind of stuck on this point now. I'm probably never going to move down to Puerto Rico.

No. But it's so interesting and like when you say it like really slow and just like that's what I'm doing. Yeah. You're like, hold a sec. Like I, I recommend at Least everyone go, go check it out. There's even one, one video I did that went, you know, pretty viral. It's like, it's a Hormozi clip where he's just like, you know, oh, live where you want to, like, don't worry about taxes. And I'm like, it's like amazing there. Like, it's not even to me it's better than Seattle for most of the year. And then when you bring the other entrepreneur, like I had never been connected like that with like extremely high net worth individuals. Yeah, like we've ran. Do you know John Paulson shorted the housing market 9 billion at the very bottom. Like he owns the whole St. Regis there. Like, you know, we got to know him, we've got to meet other like, you know, really, really successful, interesting people. And so I, I, I think it's a awesome place and I think it's going to keep built like rising like that.

You know, what have you learned or how has your brain changed being around that?

All that finance stuff we were just talking about like that the more you. Finance is the language of the elites is kind of what I've distilled this all to. And the more fluent you become in general finance, the less you work, just period. I mean you can work all you want, but in terms of, you know, direct return, it's understanding how finance works, how deal structure works, how all of that stuff works. It's not limited to just, you know, our types of businesses. It's, it's everything.

Could you give me an example of how you might apply that to your next move or your next business? Like what's something that you've learned that you're like, I'm actually going to apply this into my next thing.

It'll have to be opportunistic. So let me give you like a, like a post example, right, with genius rather than selling. I, if I wanted to be really aggressive, I mean, for one, let me back up further. Very top of the funnel here. I appreciate what money actually is on like a grander scale. You know, like hundreds of millions of dollars is much different than, you know, $10 million. The luxuries of life that come with that are dramatically different. So it kind of adjusts your scope a little bit. You know, people are.

Like, you know, you think you get $2 million, you can retire and like, maybe you can if you want to live like a.

Really a modest life.

Yeah, you can. It's all good. But then you see how someone else lives and they have the three or four different houses or. And again, that's a deadly game. So I'm not, I'm not saying play that game. I'm just saying you get a lens into what's.

What's possible.

Yeah, what's. What's possible. Or like, you know, do you want to go to Athens? Do you want to take your family? What's it cost to fly private? Oh, my God. It's $250,000. Like so, you know, travel with kids. This is. And you're going to do it comfortably. This is what it costs. So you get a different view there at the very top. And then so practically speaking, as you're building something like genius, as you're building something with like sheer, you're like, okay, what, what gets me to, you know, a nine figure enterprise value. And it is understanding leverage. It is using the bank's money. So, like, if I could go back on something like that. Matt Newman, I don't know. Like, you know, I mean, Havasu is the same as sheer, and it was the same as genius, cash wise and whatnot. And I think our brands were a lot cooler, but, you know, it's spinning off the same kind of cash.

Right.

And he had a private equity background. He said, well, let's leverage this and go buy another one and buy another one and buy another one. And. And that is that understanding that if you're in a room with a billionaire now, that they'll. They get that, like through and through.

And so. So in other words, I think how I'm piecing this together is if you could go back and you're running genius and it's an eight figure company you exited because you were 12 years old, basically. But knowing what you know now, you might say, all right, I'm gonna borrow against this asset and buy another business and then partner these two together.

Yep.

And so basically what you're doing is you're buying that business with no money.

Yep.

Because you're using the asset that you have as the collateral.

Or I could go. I could go raise a little chunk against genius. Right. Because the valuation is X. Yeah.

So, okay, now it's clicking for me because that's just how do I make the pie as big as possible? If I borrow, if I sell a little piece of this at a $20 million valuation, I didn't take $20 million, but I took three or four. And that's enough for me to be.

A down payment comfortable. And now. Yeah.

And now I can take a piece of that, make a down payment on another Business that I'm also going to borrow against.

Yep.

And now you can actually create and.

We have double the cash.

That was, that was, it clicked for me there and it is something that I didn't understand about money when I got into this game was that money is created through debt and leverage. We think that the Federal Reserve prints money. What they actually do is they make it harder or easier, cheaper or more expensive to create money by borrowing.

Yep.

Because borrowing is just future money.

Yep.

And so when you sell a company and someone else uses debt to buy that, you've created wealth.

Yep.

It did not exist before. You have now expanded the pie.

Yep.

So the more that you can think about that to find other companies to bring into the roll up to bring into the portfolio, now you can really cast nine figure visions and even bigger.

Yep. And you see how it works in a, in like cyclical nature too. Like we just experienced something that I had no idea what that was. Right. And there was so much money being created and so many people getting huge exits.

Yeah.

And now we're, now we're moving into a different trough. And that's good. I mean now it's like time to build, keep your head down and kind of get ready for whenever the next one will come. Because they do come.

That's right.

When it's like down, people think it's down forever and when it's up, they think it's going to last forever. But now, right now, right now is the time to be building a business on the ground floor.

Yeah, totally. I mean we're, we're starting to talk about this in the capitalism fund where we have a brand in the, you know, in the car space. And it's one thing that brand has gone from. We invested in, it was at $50,000 a month. Now it's doing like three or four hundred thousand dollars a month. That's great. But it's going to keep growing. So we're looking at this going, okay, well we have some options here. We could keep growing this, which we will do, but maybe it would also be beneficial for us to go find a blog in the car space and buy it and raise money to buy it. So it's none of our money, but we still own a piece of it and use that to promote the car brand. And then maybe there's another car brand out there that is the same target audience. We can acquire a piece of that or all of that and use other people's money to do it. And that has, that's how I've Started to apply what I learned from this messy exit that sometimes I regret doing and applying it to the playbook moving forward. And when you start to think that way, it's like, oh, this, this is where money, this is where the real money is made.

Definitely.

Isn't it fun to think about the fact that.

It was like yesterday you were living with your parents, paying yourself $2,500 a month, and now we're sitting here talking about Nine Figure Visions.

It's wild. I mean, I was going through my Instagram stories like archive, and five years ago, you know, I'm sitting in a, like a freaking YMCA with a bootleg cameraman, like trying to film a bodybuilder talking about one of my products. You know, it's like pre exit and it's like I look like I hadn't showered ever. And it's like, oh, wow. A lot can change in five years.

Yeah.

And a lot can change in 10 years. And so I think when you do zoom out a little bit and try to find, you know, enjoyment and like what you're doing in the day to day, any sky's the limit.

Tell me what you hope to accomplish by creating the content that you've been doing. Genius CEO is your YouTube channel.

Yep.

So what are you hoping to accomplish by doing that?

I think long term, just getting involved. I found out I really like the process of branding, community building, all the creation stuff. I love that I don't want to do it in an intense operational scale anymore like myself. And so I think the more I can get involved with these companies that are maybe seven figures looking to go to eight and help refine a lot of that, like maybe they've gotten off the ground and they have some success. They don't know where to go from there. Yeah, I think the more of those deals that I can get involved with in any, you know, any practical manner, I think that's my intention with all of this.

Man, this is wild. If you think about your play, my play, Hormozy's play, Rob Dyrdek's play, they're all kind of similar. We've all had. We all kind of grinded our way to success, figured out some things and now we go, oh, there's actually value here. There's other entrepreneurs that don't know what I wish I had known. And so I'm going to go help them expand the piece of it. It's kind of interesting to think that the market's going in that direction. There's people like us, that new Entrepreneurs can partner with in order to take a lot more money home, build a much bigger pie. And that's just capitalism expanding the pie exponentially. It's really exciting to think about what the next chapter of our community's entrepreneurial journey is going to be. Because like partnering with a, a you or a me or Hormosi or a deer deck did not exist when we started this game. No, like at all. And now you can do that and have capital brought to the table. It's just, it's wild to think about what could be created.

It's going to result in bigger and bigger numbers as it, as it usually does. And it's, it's so obvious in hindsight too. And I think the. I don't know if you went through this, but for, for me, part of it was we've done this for long enough that a lot of it seems like second nature. Like very basic stuff that we do every day. And then it's not until you say it out there and someone's like, oh, that's. That's how that works. Yeah, I thought everyone knows that and. But they don't. Right? And so going back to your former self, it's like, what would that former. You want to hear? And starting there and I think it's a. I think you do a lot of good in the world.

Did you go through a post exit depression?

Yeah, I did. I did. It kind of led through a whole like spiritual thing. I almost ended up in like a cult. There was some yoga involved.

Whoa.

Whole nother story.

But I'm glad I asked this question.

Yeah, that was wild. We have time for those.

Yeah, we do. We do now.

Oh yeah, it was so. So basically, yeah, I sold the company, had my daughter. So that kind of like lined up with that whole thing was like totally didn't get along with the private equity guys. It kind of was what it was. So I stepped away from the company. I started going to this like hot yoga studio all the time. And it was like, you know, that was like the one thing where I could like find some peace. And I'll kind of like skip over some of the details, but the dude running it was. He. He's like this 65 year old, like ex military dude. And he was like definitely kind of juiced up but like written. He's married to the other studio. The other. The owner of the studio. She's like 35.

I'm actually imagining from Napoleon Dynamite, the Rex. Rex, Rex Kwondo.

Grab my arm. Other army. My other arm. I Be like a loser when I go home to startle at night. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I'm imagining.

Kind of like that for sure. And so he's got this like community in, in. In Bellevue, which is like the most affluent area there. And he's got like, you know, there's Microsoft employees there, so it's like, whatever. And he kind of like takes a liking to me and. And like at one point I was going to invest. Like this is like right before COVID hit. Like I was going to help him open another studio, start getting in the numbers a little bit. It's like this place is a disaster. There's like some lies going on, like, but still you're doing this every day. And the really, the sick part about this guy is, you know, when you meditate and you get in like a very peaceful state, you're in a suggestive state. And so he would manipulate that to his like, liking and he would do it to mostly like, he would do that to women. And so this is what I find out after the fact. He would like, you know, like people would meditate and like, he'd like touch girls just like, but in public, like in comfortably. And so he was a predator at the end of the day is what was going on.

And I heard documentary made about this.

So.

Or are there just so.

Yes. No, no. So. So this was not him, but pretty much so that's Bikram. Bikram yoga. Little Indian dude, Bikram Challenger. He's not allowed in the States anymore. Made hundreds of millions of dollars like running this stuff. A lot of male descendants of Bikram got into yoga for that. It's like a really psychologically up thing.

I see.

And I got to experience it firsthand. I had no idea. I like trusted this dude big time. Like, knew his whole life story. Like he was super cool to me. I ended up. And this is how far he got me along. I put in 150 grand without a contract signed. And that's just kind of how he operated. Like I was ready to get. We were going to get a contract signed. This is Thursday. The world shut down on Saturday.

Wow.

I all these things click for me. Friday afternoon I was on the bank. I went to the bank, got the bank statements. He had withdrawn 10,000 in cash twice. So there's like 135 grand in the account that I'd put 150 with random cash deposits. Looked at the teller, I was like, yeah, give me a cashier check for 135,000 took that, like, ran and put it in my bank and pulled out of that whole deal. But, like, the reason I'd done all that too, there is right after that, that's when, like, girls started coming forward and they're like, he had done this, this and this. I was like, oh, what the. Like, it got really weird really fast. But the pandemic, I guess, kind of like broke that one off.

Slowed it down at least.

No, it broke it off. It was like you were out of the suggestive. Like, if you're going there, you're practicing yoga, then you're meditating. You end up in like kind of a echo chamber web.

Sure, that makes sense.

And that's what happened.

Well, this is such, like a white boy privilege thing to say. But these are the rich people problems. Like, oh, now there's a cult that takes all your money and you're manipulated. And when you're 26, or in my case, 29, like, I wasn't in a cult because I basically grew up in one, but I gave my money to people that I shouldn't have given money to. I invested in things with people that I trusted. There was. Oh, my goodness. One of my favorite stories is there is a guy here in Austin who, after my exit, kind of befriended me a little bit. And I had come out of the fucking woodworks. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, people know you got some money.

And I'm so happy for your success, man. I've always been rooting for you.

I got this deal.

Yeah, Yeah. I mean, I don't mean to push on you, but, like, if you want to meet the founders, they're really impressive guys. And then I remember being on like, you know, a second or third breakfast date and being like, oh, you're trying. You want my money? Like, you don't even care about. And I turned to one of the guys at the breakfast and I was like, so tell me why you want me in this deal? And he pointed to the guy that had got me. He's like, I trust his character. No, I want to know why you want me in this. And froze up. And I'm like, oh. And I sat at the table. I was like, oh, so you just want my money? I'm just a barrier to the money? That is.

I hear you're quite liquid, Ryan.

And these are the things that you're definitely not prepped for. When you're a 20 year old that has success, you are not prepped. Like, people want things from you and they're going to come to you and they're going to act like you're close and you're not going to be close. You are the barrier between the money that they want and I know that it's like such white boy privilege thing to say, but that is a very isolating experience.

I don't think it's like a white guy specifically thing.

Like I just mean like a privilege thing. Once you have money, these are the things that you don't see.

Because I was gonna say aj even on a bigger scale now he's got some crazy stories.

Does he?

I think it just keeps happening. I do. Like even in. So keep your guard up.

What.

What do you tell the people who are just starting now like on your channel when you meet them? Because.

There are people who say nice for Ryan and Rob. They got into this game when Amazon was a wide open west. Game's different now. It's super competitive now. And then there's people who are young and hungry and just want to be told what to do. I'm curious what you tell people now that are just getting into the game.

Master TikTok Master Short form content. If they have no, like if they have limited resources, limited money. Go study, Damien, study. Have you seen the cocktail cards guy?

No.

It's a similar deal like turned it into a real business. 300,000 followers on, on TikTok ex bartender got fired, starts telling his story, releases, you know, these cool cocktail cards doing probably 100 grand a month on Amazon, like zero to a million. And so I think the game just always changes. But that doesn't mean there's, there's, there's more opportunity. It gets very fast.

When I, when I wrote 12 months 1 million, there wasn't, there was no big TikTok virality.

Yeah.

@ the time and now I still say it takes a full year to get four products, 25 sales a day. But sometimes you have a video take off and it builds an audience and that goes to 25 sales day like.

Tomorrow.

Yeah. And that didn't exist. And so it gets.

Faster. I think it's a better time to be building today. Honestly, it's way different. But like you said that people don't fully appreciate what short forms content is doing to the world. When we go, we just got back from Japan, me and my wife and when we're there, she's not googling stuff to do. She's on TikTok looking at stuff to do in the area. And so it's becoming a search engine. Like it's becoming.

It'S eating the world in A way that's going to create like major artists are being born on Tick Tock, major, you know, brands are being born on TikTok. Everything is happening with the short form revolution and it's, it doesn't require anything to get started. There's fashion brands doing millions of dollars a month with limited drops that are just know how to make that really good short form.

Content.

Yeah. And so I think it's as big as ever. And you mash it with the Amazon piece and you can have yourself a life changing.

Business. That is magic. Right. When you build up a little bit of a community via that approach. I call it the traffic triangle. You have the place where you have short form attention or traffic. You have the place where you're getting exposure. Then you bring them into a community, Slack group, Facebook group, text group, whatever. And then you have the conversion piece which is always email for me.

Because it's the highest traffic.

Triangle. Traffic.

Triangle. I love.

That. Those three pieces exposure with. Because you're creating for short form content we say and then you bring them into a community and then you bring that community onto an email list in crush any launch. Yeah, you can sell whatever product you want. You do that for 90 days. It's really hard to go.

Broke. You can't, you.

Can'T. I mean you just win if you do that for 90.

Days. Most people aren't willing to figure out the. It's like you need your first like video to go semi viral or whatever and then it kind of like light bulb comes on. You're like that. That's what made me go more all in on this world. You know, when you started I think you could what was like the big platform when you first started on.

Social? Was it like on.

Social?

Yeah.

I mean started before Instagram. I mean it was really all long forms of YouTube and.

Podcasts. And then there was like a window there where a lot of things were like kind of closed off. Like all the platforms went closed loop. Like you kind of, you know, used to have Facebook posts that could kind of pop.

Off.

Yeah. Instagram could go viral and then there was like a period where it was very, very closed off. Like you needed to kind of network or end up on the right podcast or whatever. And nowadays you can have one or two videos just rip, just pop. And all of a sudden you're a thing or your product's a thing. And I don't think enough people fully appreciate that. That's what changed my perspective. I had like, you know, I was kind of just messing around on TikTok and I had one get a couple hundred thousand views. I was like, oh, okay, there's something going.

On.

Yeah. And we've seen it. How many new stars have we seen born? The, the most controversial ones, obviously, like Andrew Tate. But I mean, that's a guy that was literally relative, like literally unknown to, you know, most of the.

World. Two.

Years. The most Googled man in the world. Yeah.

Crazy. Or at least he says he is. I don't know if he is, but he's. If you say something.

Enough. There were days, there were days he was most.

Googled.

Okay. But not, he's not generally the most.

Googled. That's. That's really good advice, like mastering the traffic and community side. And if you do that, you can pretty much do anything you want. You can make Amazon be more of a partner rather than being the boss that you're trying to appease. They do that, you.

Win. Think about it. I said traffic conversion story. We talked about story. But people's problem more times than not is profitable traffic. Right. And so they have to like focus in on the conversion and like all the details around that. But if you're not paying anything for your traffic, how can you.

Lose?

Yeah. I mean, it's that simple. To make Amazon ads 10 times more expensive than they were five years ago. Short form.

Content. Free to make. Yeah, free. Free. And ten times more.

Exposure.

Yeah. It's really amazing what can happen in a few years. Definitely. I'm really excited to see what you do next and I'm really glad you came. Thanks for being here. Congratulations on everything you've done. It's been a really amazing journey and we're still. Doesn't it feel like we're still getting.

Started? Oh, we're young. We're definitely just getting started.

Yeah. Good to see you, man. Thanks for being here. My favorite part of this interview was when Rob and I were talking about how we. We wish we had done things a little bit differently. We wish that we had known what we know now. But back when we were selling the company, we could have made millions and millions of dollars more. But now the benefit of that is that we take that into our partnerships with brands that we have an equity stake in. That is my selfish end to all of this. I take equity stakes with some of the brands that come through our community from people who read my book. We have one story inside of our portfolio of somebody who read my book, got to $50,000 a month on their own, and then we bought into the company and now they're, they're going to do $5 million this year, just two years later. So they'll have a full 10x in that time. That's where I get excited. That's the game that I am playing here, is partnering with people who are building brands in my audience. If you're not at that point yet, the place where you need to start is you need to get into the game. You need to give this a year to 18 months of getting your brand off the ground. You literally just heard the playbook for doing it. You also heard what's different now and how things can even be faster now because there are more opportunities to get fast exposure when you're ready to get off the sidelines and into the game. One way that you can start is to come into our mentoring community which is called the 1%. It's@capitalism.com 1 and if you're already over $100,000 a month and you need some help get getting to eight figures, you can apply to receive investment and mentorship from our team over@capitalism.com fund and we can mentor you and invest in you and help you get closer to an eight figure exit, which is our goal for our highest level clients. Thanks so much for watching. I'm Ryan Daniel Moran with capitalism.com I'll see you guys next time. Take care.