Jacob Asks, “I’m At $50k/mo - How Do I Get To $500k?”

Before we dive in today, I want to draw your attention to our new podcast called the road to 1 million. For those of you who have asked that we document the process of building a seven figure business by following the playbook that I share in my book, 12 months to 1 million. This podcast is for you. In this show we are documenting every step of the process from some of our students, from our own businesses inside of capitalism.com and and also the businesses that I'm investing in. I'm working with these entrepreneurs one on one to document and to help them grow towards a seven figure brand. My one regret in my entrepreneurial career is that I didn't document the hundreds of seven figure case studies that I played a part in over the years. So better late than never. And on this podcast we're gonna document the highs, the lows, the wins and the losses and all the steps that these brands take to to build a seven figure business. So if you wanna see behind the scenes of what it takes to build a seven figure business, make sure you're subscribed to the road to 1 million on Spotify and Apple podcasts. And when you do, I hope you enjoy.

This is the road to 1 million and I'm Ryan Daniel Moran. Hey, Capitalist. This episode is a little bit different because what you're about to hear is not something that we recorded to be a podcast. What you're about to hear is a kickoff call that I did with one of the brands that I recently invested in inside of the capitalism.com fund. And every time I invest capital into a business, we do a kickoff call where we're going through the inner workings of the brand to find out what's working and where they're stuck so that we can grow the brand. Obviously, I now own a stake in each of these businesses, so I want them to win. And so I sit on their board as a consultant or as an advisor and I help open doors for them and I help them come up with a plan to, to hopefully 10x right? And this is the kickoff call with Jacob, who has a very unique brand and he credits my book and the podcast with a lot of his success. So obviously that strokes my ego and I'm really thankful to be part of his journey and I'm really thankful that he created a brand that was cool enough for my partner Sam and I to invest capital into the business. So I always wanted to document some brands from the very beginning. It's why we started having these interviews on the road to 1 million. So Jacob comes on and we talk about how we can 10x this brand over the next couple of years. And you'll hear me tell him, you know, this is going to 10x over the next couple years if you follow this plan. Now remember, we didn't record this as a podcast. This is a very in the trenches interview with a brand that is growing and doing well. Well, now Jacob has a brand that on the surface looks pretty simple. It's a cup holder. And if you listen to any of my content, you know that I don't like brands that sell things like spatulas and just average everyday things. I don't like those kind of brands. I like brands that do something different. Well, Jacob does sell a cup holder, but it's a different kind of cup holder and you'll see that it has a much bigger vision than, than just being another cup holder company. And I think this will really clarify for a lot of you the difference between selling a product and building a brand. And Jacob is doing this the right way and it's already showing really healthy signs of life. So I think you'll see why this was a brand that my partner Sam and I decided to invest in. And I think that you're gonna feel inspired to see how solving even a little pain point in your own life can, can become a really big business, like what is happening for Jacob. And I also think that you're gonna learn a lot by hearing his challenges and the questions that he asks about how to take his idea and grow it to a multimillion dollar business. You'll also hear my partner Sam. He's on the call with me. And if you want to work with Sam and myself and get capital for your business or just have me sit as an advisor in your company, you can apply for consideration@Capitalism.com.

And remember, whenever you're ready to start your road to 1 million, come join us in the 1% over@capitalism.com 1.

Hey, Jacob, how's it going, man?

Excellent. How are you, Sam?

I am doing well. Jacob, why don't you give us a two or three minute high level of your brand just to catch round back up to speed and then I'm sure Ryan will go digging up on our questions.

Yes, for sure. Yeah. Great to meet you as well, Ryan. Super surreal experience to even be here, so I really appreciate it.

Does that mean you've been listening to the podcast for a long time and.

I need and I need to speak.

To you in podcast voice for the.

Rest of this meeting? For sure. It sounds a little more Familiar.

Yeah.

But yeah, I'd say borderline obsessed with the podcast and the book would probably be a better description. That's great.

Did you discover the podcast or the book first?

I believe podcast was first and it was around the exact time the book was being released, so it all timed out, like, perfectly.

That's great.

Yep. Got the book immediately and really got all my stuff on track.

So that's great. I'm so glad to hear that. Congratulations.

Yeah, thank you, thank you.

And here we are.

Yes, sir. Yeah, super excited to be here. But, yeah, brand is called Essentially Engineered. We're going to be rebranding to the name Integral here very soon.

Integral.

Integral.

Oh, Integral.

Okay.

Yes, sir. Yep. So I started Essentially engineered back in June 2019 as a side gig for just an Amazon brand while I was going to school for mechanical engineering and also working at the same time. And I started it by developing this product here, which is just simply a cup holder expander with an expandable base grips in the vehicle's cup holder to accept larger bottles and mugs. So that one took off pretty quick in 2019, just a single SKU, Amazon only, no website. And then kind of started to realize like, okay, there might be something here. So after keeping it a side gig in Amazon Only in 2020, I quit my job at the end of 2020 of December last year to pursue it full time. Went to the website, started Shopify, started doing social media ads. And yeah, it took off decently fast even through the website has overtaken Amazon a bit now.

That's great.

Single SKU for 2019, just this product as the side gig, did 60 grand in 2019, just from June to January. Then in 2020 on Amazon alone, it did 120. And now after pursuing it full time and expanding the catalog up to September, we're already at half a million. And that's only with basically two SKUs at this point. With five more that should be live here in the next, I'd say two months max. There'll be at least five more products on the site.

Is the second product the car console.

Seat pocket, that one? I didn't even actually consider it as another SKU because it's kind of a mass seller. I don't think it's really going to hit the objectives that I would like to see. That one was a learning curve, mainly because it's available to other sellers on Alibaba. So it's just a bit too competitive, I believe. So it may get discontinued. This was the second skew, another cup holder. So in 2020 or 2021 when I really started taking it seriously and talking to the customers a lot and seeing what they wanted. This one was more for water bottles and people were like, hey, I would also like to take my coffee mugs with me. Is there anything for that? And there was nothing available. So yeah, we came out with this one for specific coffee mugs now to take. And that one took off pretty well. Well surpassed the 25 sale a day mark and is doing pretty well.

Good. And you say most of your. You're mostly the website's overtaken Amazon, but.

How do people find you find me on the website?

How do people find out to buy you at all anywhere?

So Amazon is basically all organic. I run very little ppc. Just maybe some sponsored product ad campaigns that are very cheap.

Website is entirely Facebook and Instagram ads.

Who runs those?

I run them. So it was a learning curve at first, but we've gotten it down to.

Customer acquisition of under $4 on our better months with a $28 average order value. So it's pretty good return and I think it's going to get even better when we can finally get the inventory stocked in and sell as much as I would like to because my constant struggle through 2021 has been just running out of inventory.

Enter us.

Yes. It's. I think it's perfect timing for this is going to work out very, very well.

Good.

So when I'm asking these questions about where sales are actually coming from, there's something that's running around in my brain as an investor. I'm wondering is this product hot because of a viral video or because they got some mentions in press somewhere? Did an influencer shout them out? Do they run an ad that worked? Are they ranking on Amazon? Was there a once in a lifetime event or a lucky break? I'm trying to find the source story about why there are sales. How are people finding you? Is there something that we can drag on for a really long time? Is there a real foundation here for us to scale something? When there is, that's when it makes a ton of sense to invest capital into the brand so we can grow those consistent and repeat sales. That's pouring gasoline on the fire and it flows frees up resources. Most people are expecting money to solve the problem of a lack of sales. But money is the amplifier of what is working or what is not working. Throwing money down the throat of a business that isn't taking sales is gonna make money disappear. So I'm always looking for that consistent thing that Money amplifies sometimes. That's as simple as we got a pay per click campaign that's working really well and we're able to acquire customers at break even or better. And we have a great email follow up sequence that is turning our $20 lifetime customer value to a $50 customer value.

Awesome. Great.

That's something that I can work with because we can throw more money down that tube and we can buy more customers and improve that email sequence. You see where I'm going when that nut is cracked? That's when I know that my money can go to work. That's when I go, we got something here. Let's go even deeper.

Man. There were a lot of that's what she said jokes in that little voiceover.

So when you say you have a $28 average order value.

Is there an upsell sequence that is adding to that? How does that get calculated?

Mostly people ordering more than one product. So a lot of people assuming multiple vehicles. So a lot of people buy two or buy a combination of both of the products.

Okay, so do you have a funnel back there or how does. Or is it just like add to cart. Add to cart order.

The website. I've tried to structure the website mainly as a funnel, but what I'm seeing is since it's just a basic physical product that solves a clear issue, I'm basically just driving them to the website, mainly straight to the page. When they click add to cart it takes them straight to checkout and a lot of people just straight up purchase from there. So there is a funnel structure to it where if you pass the products, I have some reviews listed there for buyer reassurance and whatnot that definitely boosted the metrics or sales metrics a little bit. But yeah, a lot. Don't spend a ton of time on the sites mainly there and just purchase.

Could you zip me a link in this zoom chat of if someone were to click on your Facebook or Instagram ad what the landing page would be?

Yes, one second.

Hey Sam. This is fun.

That's good, isn't it? While he's pulling this up real quickly here, I will say Jacob is one of my favorites. Like he's just as far as entrepreneurs that have their stuff together. Like when I asked him for his documents, it wasn't three weeks to put stuff together. He actually uses like real accounting and has his documents in a line like it was. It's a good setup.

I think we, our best partners are engineers and accountants.

Engineers and accountants.

People who get all the building blocks.

And we're like, okay, throw gas on it.

This is it. This will be the landing page straight from the ad. The price is a little lower right now than it usually is as I'm still waiting on my inventory to get out of LA. But when it does, they'll be up to 2499 for peak season.

Okay. Pretty basic, pretty simple, but it's working.

Yes, sir. Yeah, played with it quite a bit. This has been the best method so far. I think in the coming weeks here, I may go back through and see if I can make some minor tweaks and measure the metrics. But, yeah, it's been working out pretty well.

Okay, great.

And what are you spending on Facebook ads on average each month?

I would say, on average, three to 4,000.

That's a tough question to answer, I think, to some degree. Because, Jacob, you have been limiting your advertising spend because of inventory issues, right?

Yes, it fluctuates a great deal because I basically. It's tough to keep them from selling out previously. I think we're solving those issues now. I finally have a good 10,000 unit order in here that should be arriving next week. But yeah, as far as previously it was. They just pretty much sold right out. So I'd have to pause the ads.

Now, Jacob, your inventory issues, are they from order times, capital, cash flow? What's the biggest constraint there?

Biggest constraint, I would say, is capital.

Combined with odd time constraints. There's really been no set time where I guess, like, I can basically view the inventory, what I have left, order, and get them here. Like, it just hasn't been as easy as I figured it would have been that way because things with the shipping industry are just fluctuating so much now. My manufacturer is fairly consistent. I can pump out a good, you know, up to 10,000 unit order within 15 days and they'll get them shipped. But it's just I've had some shipments arrive in 20, 25 days, and I've had one now that's taken up to two months and taken even longer. So it's been kind of odd.

So it's been capital constraints with shipping delays. So you haven't had. Really? Sounds to me like you haven't had just a predictable cash flow. It's not that you've got a cash flow problem. You've got a predictability problem because you'll sell through and then you could be out of business for two months because it's sitting on a boat somewhere. Is that correct?

Yeah, that's very fair to say. Yes.

Got it. I Understand?

Yeah, I believe if we do, you know, with capital, if I could just have like a reserve amount of inventory, I think would really solve the problem. If I can just keep a few thousand on hand would be good. Yeah. I mean just a negative cash flow cycle in general of a physical products business is a little tough as just a startup, as in not having while trying to build the catalog and also do these big orders of product, it gets a little tight. Okay, that makes sense to me.

So our inventory financing side of this will really help in that sense of if we could order $100,000 worth of inventory. We've cleared a lot of bottlenecks in terms of helping essentially engineered scale. Is that right?

Yes. I think that's going to be the ultimate gasoline on the fire here, is, uh, we can really, once we get that inventory in and we don't have to worry about running out, we can really test the ads and see what they're capable of. And I think we're going to see some great results off that.

When you hear me reference the fund or the capitalism fund, that is the investment portfolio that I put together where I invest in businesses that come from our community, that come from the capitalism.com audience. So I have investors who have entrusted me with capital to put it into businesses and entrepreneurs that are good. And what we look for is a business that at least has the first million insight and a business where I know that I can come in and provide help, advice and a network to help that business grow. I specialize in E commerce businesses, especially ones that have audiences, because I know that I can hit a few buttons and help their sales grow. So if you're an entrepreneur with a business you're really excited about and you're willing to grow and you need capital and advice in order to become an eight figure company, you can put a notification on my desk over@capitalism.com fund. This is probably the only place where you're applying for me to give you money rather than the other way around. So capitalism.com fund is where you or someone you know can fill out a form and put it on my desk and to see if it's something that I might want to invest in.

All right, so where we are is we've got inventory that'll be hitting here in the next few weeks. We feel like we've cleared our biggest hurdle at its peak. What do we expect sales to be like? We've got a perfect world of inventory. Our ads are working. What's our kind of top end of what we can expect.

It's going to be tough to say that exactly just because I haven't had enough here to sell through it and actually see. But I'm anticipating off, you know these two SKUs alone, well over $100,000 a month. Just off of those, September was 95,000 and we still ran out at the end of the month. So we've, we've got some room to push and really figure that out.

And, and is that coming from the Facebook ads or is that from Amazon really kicking on? Why this? Where's the surge coming from in September?

That's a fun answer, Jacob.

I'm excited for this one.

Go ahead.

I'd say the main surge was ads and through the website. So we overtook Amazon by quite a bit that month through Shopify.

Do you know the numbers?

Yes, one second.

Sam is gleefully waiting for this right now. He knows something.

He is, he is.

So this would be September metrics here. Amazon was 28, over 28,000. Shopify did 52,000 excluding any discounts that I offer on the site. So the gross numbers looked a little inflated. I didn't like it. So it was over 95,000. But I took that off just for more accurate myself. Cost per purchase ended up being 542. When I was really pumping the ads it was sub $5. I want to say closer to 4. But then when I turn the ad spend down to kind of put it on cruise control, it kind of damages the metric for the month a little bit. But yeah, that's how it's looking. These are all our sales channels and this is the general spread for September.

So getting customers for five bucks. As of right now they're worth 28 with two products. So if we add some more products here, we have a little bit more of an upsell flow. Yes, this makes sense. Do you want to tell me a little bit about the vision of where you want to take the product line?

Yeah, absolutely. As Sam was saying, my ultimate 10 year vision for the company is more of a white collar version of Weathertech. I like a lot of their company, but I think they may have some crucial mistakes for the way that the automotive industry is going towards more EVs and white collar type things. I don't think your product necessarily fit into that market as much and I also don't think they market to females and families as much as they do blue collar working type males and they're missing out on a big portion of the market. So my plan for that is my customer demographic is mainly 25 to 45 year old, 50. 50 male, female, married with kids. And the family aspect of products have really been selling. So I'm going to mainly go towards that demographic and expand the line from there.

I love this. And so you're thinking about the 39 year old mom of two who drives a Model X.

Yes, I think that's a perfect representation.

Yeah. And that is the growing market. Whereas Weathertech is more. Your 55 year old drives a truck in Missouri and gets his boots dirty.

Spot on. And I don't necessarily have a plan to go into floor mats directly, but just using that as an example, it's, you know, there's qualities about WeatherTech that people love and I want to keep those core values there, but I also want to see what they're missing out on. To me, their fitment and their durability is really great, but they're missing out on a lot of esthetics and comfort features that people say driving a Model X really require because I don't really see them putting one of those stiff plastic floor mats in a luxury vehicle like that.

Agreed, agreed. So this makes sense. What product ideas are coming out of that vision?

So as of now, the five in development, I still attack the cup holders pretty good off the bat because I have some knockoffs and competition that I can take away a lot of the total addressable market from them for a few small upgrades. So my main seller is going to be upgraded.

Do you have a patent on this, by the way?

Yes, my entire catalog is patented and trade dressed.

Okay. So, you know, you can just have those other listings removed.

So this one I, I have just a trade dress for. Since this was the first product, there were kind of knockoffs that got to it before I could basically enforce this one very well. So my next moves. This one was fully patented. This one will also be fully patented. And I think this new version is going to take over the old one by far simply because it fits this bottle and a couple others that the original does not.

Okay, but do you know that if you've got a patent, you can just flick off all the people who are competing?

Yep, my attorney's on it. We're just waiting for, I guess, the numbers to go through. They're all pretty new. This was in June and the patent process started then. So we will be, we will be.

But I mean you could just file them with Amazon and Amazon will take.

All of them down even before I get the numbers and whatnot.

I'm not sure.

I can help you with that.

Thought. I've had this thought a couple of times and I know, like, Paul Miller actually did this, Ryan, and I don't think he has a patent on his stuff. I think it's just a trade dress violation. You can go in and just prove first use and that kind of stuff and do some push there as well.

Awesome.

And a lot of times what will happen, Jacob, is these Chinese sellers that knock you off, you can freeze because you're. You're the bigger fish. So you can freeze their stuff first and then they won't fight it very hard because they, they know what they're doing.

Perfect. Yeah. My patents are also. It's patented in China as well, too. So we're, we're pretty stiff here. I. I don't have any, you know, urges to get in any legal battles, but it's like it makes me sleep better at night, you know, like, just. I don't have to worry about this stuff. Somebody else coming in and trying.

It won't be a legal battle. You just, you. There's nothing to fight. You just win.

I love it.

You just have them removed. Yeah.

Yep. But I think I have like four or five pending patents right now and all my new stuff, because that's just part of the process for me. I just want to make sure everything's secure and we don't have to deal with that type of stuff.

So.

Okay, great. What other products are in the pipeline?

So other than these cup holders, there's another version of that cup holder that has a foam mount on it. And then I have.

If you've ever seen Shark Tank, you've seen conversations like this happen in almost every episode. And it's the conversation about patents. And patents can be expensive and they can be. Be a slow process, but if you can get them, they can give you a really strategic advantage. And specifically, they can give you a strategic advantage. If you are selling on Amazon.com you see, Jacob is selling a product that he really invented. He really created something new in the space. And it's very easy for Chinese sellers, sellers, or American sellers for that matter, to copy you and to sell the exact same product on something like Amazon.com it happens all the time. Now. Most people who are building brands are not inventing anything or they're just differentiating something slightly in order to stand out. This is especially true in food and supplement and beauty and any kind of consumable. And all that's fine.

By the way.

That's really the focus of most of my e commerce work is on those types of brands. But if you've done something truly unique, it is worth going through the process of getting a patent, but only if it's truly unique. And also, don't wait to get the patent before you sell a bunch of stuff. Jacob did something cool. He's selling a bunch of stuff, and now he's going through the process of getting that thing protected. And the reason why that is important is because you can just prevent people from being on Amazon selling the same stuff. It gives you a true monopoly on that specific idea, and you want to protect that, but you also don't want it to slow you down. If you're doing something truly unique, once you've shown that it has left life and it has legs, go get a patent on that. If you're just slightly differentiating, or if you're not yet at the part of the process where you know you have product market fit, put it on the shelf and do it later. When you've got a true invention, even if it's for a car cup holder, get the wheels in motion to patent it sooner than later. Because if anybody else tries to sell that thing, it's like two clicks of a mouse to have them removed. And you have that advantage of being the only seller in the marketplace.

This is a rough prototype that has quite a few modifications on the final one. But as you can see these legs here, this sits in the passenger seat or whatever seat to level it, and has a strap and a seat belt strap to secure goods while people are driving around so things aren't bouncing all over the place. And this is also a steering wheel mount for a tray, which I'm going to push pretty hard for the Tesla aspect of a lot of people sitting at the chargers waiting for something to do. They want the steering wheel tray. They can keep their laptop, whatever goods they use to work on the go, bring it to the steering wheel. So there's that one, There's a trunk organizer that I modified to fit reusable grocery bags.

So the grocery bags, I've had the problems myself where after the store, they're kind of sliding all over the place organizers now, but none that I've seen that really have any decent removable bags. So the beauty with mine is it'll sit in the trunk. You can take your bags in the store, put your groceries in them, slide them in the insert, they stop sliding all over your car. Can be used for a lot more things than just groceries.

Cool.

This one is pretty much ready to go. It's another cup holder version, but the Emphasis on this one isn't specifically for a cup holder. It's for the phone mount. So the phone mounted cup holders are really massive market just for the placement of them. A lot of people prefer to have it in the cup holder. But the biggest complaint is that you eliminate a cup holder. So it's like why not build one that has a cup holder nice and charging capabilities. So a lot of Those, you know, 30,000 plus reviews around $30 sale price on Amazon. There's no reason this one I wouldn't think would sell worse than that. So I'm nice.

Good.

I think it should be a pretty good seller.

Yeah, those, those are the ones. Oh, and a children's car seat tray. Shipped out my prototype so I don't have it in the office right now. But it utilizes that same expandable base for my cup holders to car seat one and then it's just a tray so that the kids have something to play or eat off of on road trips and whatnot. So I want to, I want to.

Throw an idea at you. My, the one thing I hate about my Model S is installing the car seats is the biggest pain in the ass of my life. Tesla's. Tesla Model S's have absolutely terrible car seat installations.

And why is that specifically?

They're spaced out terribly and they're deep. They sink deep into the seat. So like I have, I have to like it takes all my strength. Like you wouldn't hear me going.

All this thing.

Yeah, that's, that's very interesting actually.

Now compare, compare that to like a friend who has an Escalade I put my car seat in. It's like click, click. And I'm like that's all it takes. Are you serious? So if there was an extension like as simple as like I can hook this in and then pop. And now I. Game changer.

Yeah. Definitely want to look into that because also it's in the future too. I would like to do more vehicle specific things especially for very popular models like that, you know, like one of the best selling cars in the United States that could be very huge. Even a car seat specifically for that model. That will be a little more expensive endeavor to do anything with a car seat because there's going to be crash testing involved. But if you can do one like you're saying to solve that problem specifically, there's no reason people with that car wouldn't buy that one over.

That's right. Like you have kids I assume based on what you're talking.

No kids, just a niece and nephew. That I obsess over.

Okay, got it. Cool. So when they're an infant.

You have kind of the car seat installed, and then you take the carrier and you just pop it in and out and it's the easiest thing in the world. Just pop and they're in.

Yes.

But when they're older and they have to buckle themselves, the seat is not mobile anymore. I'd give a left nut to be able to have my car seat be as easy to install and uninstall as the carrier was when they were babies.

Right. So it upgrades into kind of like a booster seat basically when they Correct. Okay. Yeah.

But the booster seat is unbelievably difficult to install and uninstall.

Right, right, Noted. Yeah. That's something I'm fully willing to dive in on. I think crash testing is even worth the money. I don't think it's that expensive.

And really what I'm. What I'm imagining is. So like, when they're a baby, you've got kind of the frame that's installed. And when I have my carrier and I'm carrying my kid around, I just. It just clicks into place. What I could envision is for the whole booster seat to have a thing that just clicks into place.

Right.

So like, if I have a friend who's getting the car, I can just unclick it and move it. Whereas right now I have to dig in, pop, like go way back in the back of the car, pop it out on both sides.

And then I'm like, I have to reinstall this thing. That is the worst part of my week. It is. It's just a big. If you can find a way to make car seats and booster seats better and easier to install on a Tesla Model S, there's a big pain point there.

Yep, I'm in. I love the vehicle specific, especially since it's such a popular one. And yeah, definitely solving a very clear pain point that will completely stick with my demographic too. So I love it.

What would you like to do with the remainder of our time today? I can kind of go through my sort of high level analysis or you can kind of bring to me the specific things that, that are on your mind for us to move forward.

Maybe a little combination of both.

Sure, sure. Why don't you, why don't you go ahead and start then?

Yeah. So at the moment, I'm just the one man show for this and I'm going to truck through Q4. But I would say my only addressable concern starting 2022 especially when these new products come in and we really prove them and get them selling. I think we'll be outsourcing some of the other things to keep me focused on being CEO and steering the ship. I think is where I really need to be to grow this thing. So yeah, maybe discussing outsourcing mainly just customer service and then fulfillment. We're already kind of in the ropes of getting that fulfilled. But I've almost been thinking of even taking a route of local warehouse small part time staff to fulfill orders if we get to that point. Because I've been having some pretty rough luck with fulfillment centers just because I think most are just. The logistics industry is just crazy right now obviously. And I don't think that's going to change.

When you say that, when you say this, do you mean just like a 3PL?

Yeah. Who are you using? So I did use Ship Bob and they gave me a ton of problems.

Have you chatted or worked with Falcon Fulfillment?

I don't believe so. Sam, what was the name of the one we were.

Quetico and Be Fulfilled are the two that we've worked with so far on that. That front to pursuit because they will also finance inventory as well.

Gotcha. Yep. So we're having the discussion with Quetico and I had a quick meeting with Shipmonk but nothing serious.

Yeah, I mean we send the most business to CO and to Falcon Fulfillment.

Both. Both will treat you well. I'm an investor in Falcon so I can kind of. I can yell at some people if things don't happen.

And they take my yelling seriously. Love it. So I have. I have some poll over there that would be a good resource for you but Coetico does a great job too.

Excellent. Yeah. So that's. That's plan one. I'm thinking maybe down the road getting a hub but if everything's honestly solved with the 3 PL this way I think it'll just be more beneficial. So we'll. We'll try to go with one of these routes for sure.

Cool.

Okay. What else?

Yeah. Customer service including social media management are probably is the thing that takes the next amount of my time.

This is an honest question. I'm not trying to lead you somewhere but why do you need social media for this brand?

Honestly just I'd say the biggest reason is me personally. Getting to know the customers has been pretty rock solid as far as building out the future vision of the brand and products. But yeah, just having the brand in this space has been pretty beneficial compared to just those that do you Know knockoff products and don't care, just slap them on Amazon. We already seem to be the go to brand for this category.

What, where, what social media platform are you mostly focused on?

Instagram has been my best results. What's the handle at essentially engineered.

Okay.

Do you know, like, if you could, if you could estimate it.

What do you think is, do you think that your Instagram results in sales?

Yes. It's not crazy at this point, but since I've had those months where I run out of inventory and turn off the ads, I still get organic traffic from Instagram quite a bit.

Okay, noted. Makes sense.

What else? Sorry, I'm keeping a running list before I go into, like.

Before I come up with your prescription.

For sure. I have some notes here I'm going to scroll through as well. But I believe those are the main concerns. Let's see. Yeah, I think at the moment those are the two addressable concerns. Obviously down the road this list is going to build a bit, but those are obstacles I think we can tackle as we expand the catalog.

Okay, cool. So a few things that I wanted to bring on kind of my list of recommendations.

Number one, be very careful not to get caught in a cup holder rabbit hole.

Gotcha.

It can be really tempting to see something that is working and think that doing more iterations of the same product are going to create hockey stick growth, but they don't. They create incremental growth.

Gotcha.

So Sam and I have a partner right now.

Their business.

If they didn't work with us, they'd go out of business. And the reason why they were struggling so much is because they're obsessed with perfecting their number one seller. And so they keep iterating on their number one seller. Meanwhile, the number one seller doesn't sell enough to build a business around. Like, they've got to come. They've got to keep improving the business, not just the product.

Yep.

And I see you just on kind of the edge of flirting with that now. Thankfully, you're in a much healthier financial position than they are. But you have a very hard time scaling this business if you become product obsessed instead of brand obsessed. So that's why I kept asking this question, like, what else are you going to develop? What else is this? Because your first answer was cup holder, 1, 2, 3 and 4.

I was like, whoa.

Right. So you'll never be the weather tech if you don't expand beyond that. So I would really like to see you thinking about what new problem to solve and your brain is already there. But I want to see you accelerate the timeline for bringing those products out instead of waiting for the next couple or next couple or next couple. Does that make sense?

Yeah, 100%.

Yep.

So those, those products will give you 10% lifts, maybe 20% lifts, but a new product that hits will give you a hundred percent lift, a 200% lift.

Yeah, absolutely. For, for what it's worth, the absolute main focus is basically any product that is not a cup holder. The reason there's been so many iterations is just because it takes basically zero effort. Like you can, I can just have the manufacturer say, hey, I'd like to add this on. And then they can.

It's a trap, Jacob. It's a trap. Yep, that's a trap.

And I remember I, you were saying something, I don't know if podcast, maybe book or something about basically someone who did the same thing with basically getting caught up in like different colors of the same sku and things like that. It just didn't make sense. So. No, it definitely is.

Actually. I don't know if I told the. So sometimes when I tell stories, I have to make creative omissions in order to protect the innocent.

Yep.

That story was based off of the yoga company that I sold.

Oh, yes, yes.

So I sold, I sold my yoga, my yoga company and yoga mats were like, they were crushing it when we sold this company. They're just crushing it.

But we also had yoga mats, yoga towels, and what the company did was they said, okay, you've got a black yoga mat, let's roll out 11 more colors. Well, there went all your capital, there went all your focus for a 10% improvement in sales.

Yep. Yeah, no, that, that makes perfect sense. And I need to focus a lot more on that because, yeah, it's especially like we're not here for 10% increments. We're for the, we're for the next product that's completely different, that does the same or better in sales.

This pro, this, this company can 10x in two years.

Yeah, I, I fully believe so as well.

So I, I am not telling you from a place of belief. I'm telling you from a place of experience. This company can 10x in 2 years.

I love it.

Jacob has a real opportunity here to brand himself as a different, more white collar, more suburban, mom friendly kind of trusted car brand. If he doesn't limit himself to being the cup holder guy, that's a really dangerous trap. And a lot of entrepreneurs fall into that trap where they have a product that's where working and so they keep iterating on the same product and they have nine variations of the same product that has diminishing returns. You can have two complimentary products or two similar products, but if you pigeonhole yourself into the same type of product just done nine different ways, then it's just really difficult to grow a big brand. You've heard him compare himself to Weathertech, which is a car accessory brand that's a billion dollar company. And they're famous for selling floor mats and plastic floor liners, but that's just their entry point. They also have sunshades and seat protectors and trunk bed covers and mud flaps and pocket hand sanitizer holders for germaphobes on the go. I mean, they have, they have all kinds of stuff, they're just known for one thing. And then people come back and they, they buy all kinds of other stuff from them. Jacob has that same type of opportunity as long he doesn't fall into the trap of being the cup holder guy. That's why I'm pushing him so hard to think bigger and differently. So remember, when you go to launch a new product, think about what is going to multiply the brand. By that I mean what's going to get new customers and entice your existing customers to buy from you again? Sometimes that question is as simple as asking what's the next logical thing that my customer will buy on their journey? I know that sounds simple, but a lot of entrepreneurs will sell one product and then come up with a variation for that because they're now afraid of their second product bombing. And I'm here to tell you, it might bomb. And that's when you move on to the next product that serves your person. When you are focused on that person and you build a nice halo of products around that person. These kinds of brands can grow really, really fast. And if you have the vision for it, it can happen. And Jacob does.

You haven't had that experience yet, so that's belief on your end. It's I just know it. So you might have to rent my confidence for a second. But if you go down the cup holder route, yeah, this will be a $700,000 business in a year. But if we create new products, this can be a $5 million business in two years.

I love it. I'm going to take that very, very seriously.

Good, good. The next thing that's on my list of recommendations is it would be worth your time and capital to spend five to 15 grand to have somebody redo your website and your store gotcha so your store's fine. It's obviously converting and this is not. So this is not an emergency problem. But as we're scaling and we're turning up Facebook ads and we want to be spending 30 to $40,000 a month instead of 3 to 4, that conversion rate is going to matter. And you've got some what I would consider obvious conversion gaps, but it's obviously not holding you back that much. But it would be worth paying someone to come in and do a Shopify optimization, build out your copy, create some really good videos and testimonials, pieces of user feedback videos that aren't just showing the product rotating, but also people using and installing and doing all of that. That will be worth your time and your capital, whether you do it internally or you completely outsource it, or a mix that's just worth your time and focus.

Yep. I've seen the videos like that work too as like a lot of my Facebook ads and stuff are pretty much exactly that. And they convert the best by far. Good.

You should have them on your sales page.

Yep, I'll. I'll get that added. And as far as rebuilding the website, do you have any specific recommendations on companies or people or.

I sadly don't, but I'm more concerned about your landing pages than your website because that's where the traffic is going to end up going.

Yep. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, I'll, I'll get something vetted and get that in the works very soon.

And I mean, that's something you could do if you told me. Yeah, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to plan for that for March.

That's fine.

It's obviously not holding you back that much. You want to get the sales flows coming in again and get your inventory in a good order before you turn up the heat. But that's something you should think about in the next six months.

Jacob, are you in the 1% group? Out of curiosity?

Yes. The slack back room.

There's slack back room and there's our community on Facebook.

If you're not, I'm gonna. What I will do is I will poke for the time being for you, but that's a great place to like ask for a lot of these things like website landing pages and stuff like that. That's a great place to ask for. That is what I found.

Yeah, I'm not in the Facebook group, but I would love to be here.

Well, capitalism.com1 is how you join the 1%, but the slack channel, there'll be plenty of people in there who can help you in the back room, but you should just be in the 1% overall anyway. It's just a really good community. Okay. So the next thing on my list, hiring a customer service social media person is a very easy hire. Write a job description, put it on upwork. Don't give yourself the burden of having to hire anybody. But you're really talking about a 10 hour per week person at $16 an hour. Yep. To have a very good one.

So. Yep, I'll check. You said upwork is usually your go to.

Yep.

Cool.

Yep. Yeah. That I've been highlighting a lot of the major pain points of that and things they would need to know along the way. So it should be. Even making the description and getting them trained should be extremely easy at this point.

Right, Cool.

Yeah.

And then, and then the final thing on my list is this might go hand in hand with hiring somebody to redo the landing pages. But when you've got some additional products, a proper funnel will go a long way for this business. By mean a proper funnel, I mean that as soon as they check out, they see an ad, you know, a one click upsell option for the steering wheel tray.

Yep.

And then they see another option for.

Something else. Right. That, that alone can take your order average order value from 28 to, to $40.

Yep. I love that. I, I'm absolutely planning on that when the catalog expands at the moment. I, I tested out some mugs that I sell as well and upsold them with the one of the cup holders and it worked out pretty well as well. But that's not the focus of the business so I'm not concerned with the mugs and going to stray away from that. So. But yeah, just a little proof of concept.

That's what I got for you, my friend.

Yep.

This is our path to victory is pretty straightforward.

Yeah.

Good work, my friend.

No, thank you. I owe it pretty much all of it to you, honestly.

Thank you. I'm going to clip that and use it as an Instagram post. Hey, please do.

This thing has been a lifesaver. I'm telling you. I've gifted that book to probably 10 people.

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Well, it's so much when they're like, I'd like to get involved with some physical products or E commerce. I'm like, don't take my word for it. It's like there's your roadmap right there. I was like, ask if you have any other questions beyond that, but start There.

Well, I want you to know I wrote the books that I could have more conversations like this I wrote. So I know you're thankful for me, but you're also helping fulfill the vision that I had when I did this was I wanted to write a book that would get me more deals where I could provide value to people who had great products and great businesses. So I'm just as thankful for you as you are for me.

Oh, great. Greatly appreciate it. I can clearly see that and all the value you provide us. So I'm. Yep, can't say it enough. Just so happy to be here. This is pretty surreal for me.

Thanks, man. Appreciate it. Hop in the 1% so that we can get you involved in the community as well. And we're here if you need us. Just shoot us an email.

Yeah, absolutely.

Or on the back backroom channel or whatever you want.

Yeah, for sure. I hope to have some great updates for you guys here real soon. We're going into the most interesting sales time of the year and I'm always excited for that.

Good, good. And we'll hopefully meet you in January at our next meetup and we'll be here if you need us in the meantime.

Yep. Awesome.

Jacob.

Be there in January.

Good.

We'll catch up here soon, man. But this is great meeting. Super excited for you, but absolutely.

Thanks again, guys.

All right, great to meet you.

See you, bud.

Bye.

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