"We Bought A 6-Figure Business - How Do We Take It To 7?"

Hey, friends and neighbors. Ryan, Daniel Moran here. Welcome to capitalism.com today I'm going to be joined by two of our community members, Ethan and Garen, who recently purchased a business inside of the 1%. We have some trainings in there about acquiring businesses, and Ethan and Garen went out and bought a business that they thought had a lot of opportunity. And it's a really fun story about both how they got to this point and how they acquired the business. But a brief context is that these two brothers started a few e commerce businesses, both of which were sold, and so they had some capital to play with and they were looking for their next opportunity. And then this new acquisition popped up on their radar after having some conversations. And those conversations led to them acquiring a business that has been featured on Shark Tank but has been neglected across the board in terms of marketing and customer acquisition. And so in this conversation, Ethan and Garen Alexander just share with me their vision for the brand and the business, and I'm going to advise them on what I think their best opportunities are. So this is really fun to take a look at where a business is performing and see how we can make it a lot better. And as you're going to discover throughout this interview, this, this business isn't performing all that well in terms of profitability, but it's got a lot of other assets that make it really exciting. So this business has a lot of potential to be restored to its previous glory and also go far beyond what it's done at its previous peak. So I'm gonna go through my recommendations for how their business can be grown. And personally, this is just exciting to see the development of the entrepreneur who wanted to start something with, went through this podcast series, joined some of our trainings. He actually met his. The person who bought his business inside of the tribe, went through the tribe, sold his business, and is now buying a business that has a lot of potential. If they do what we outlined throughout this episode, I think this is gonna be a multimillion dollar business over the next 18 months or so. And the fun for us is we get to track their progress and see how they do. So I hope you enjoy this chat. Whether you are a new entrepreneur or you have an existing business, this is gonna train you to see where you might have opportunities that you're not currently pursuing to bring you to the multimillion dollar business that you can sell. All right, let's go hang with Ethan and Garen Alexander. Hey, friends, what's going on? Before we jump into today's episode, I have a pure, unadulterated ask. My book 12 months to 1 million is dropping right now. You can grab it over@capitalism.com book if you're position to buy a group of copies for your team, for your podcast listeners, for your YouTube audience, there's a section over there to do bulk orders with. Opportunities for me to come speak at your event or be on your podcast. I'm so proud of what we have done here and this is gonna make a meaningful, lasting, life altering impact on your followers, on your students, on your family, on your friends. Please go grab a copy over at Amazon or if you're in the position to buy a bulk order, go over to capitalism.com book if I've ever brought you value in the past, please buy this book for a friend. If you're starting a business. This is the clear path to building a seven figure business. I'm so proud and so confident that it's gonna have an absolutely radical effect on your life and your family. Capitalism.com book thank you so much for all your support over the years, all of your success stories, all of your hard work. This book is for you. Ethan Garen, welcome to capitalism.com I'm excited to hang out with you guys.

Yeah, thanks for having us, Ryan. We're so excited.

Hey Ryan.

To be here.

Yeah, I've been looking forward to chatting with you guys because I know you're kind of in phase two of your careers and you're still really young and Ethan, you, I know you reached out to me and wanted to talk about the business that you just acquired and I'm really excited to go there because one of my favorite things is looking at the assets that you've got and saying, okay, what can we do with this to make it something special? But, but before we jump into that, I know the two of you got to this point because you started a business a few years ago and had some success with it. Would you tell me the background of how you got into this game?

Yeah, of course. So kind of a little bit history about us. Garen and I are actually brothers and so we are five years apart and grew up and currently actually live in San Diego. I went to school for engineering and afterwards got an engineering position. And during that time I kind of figured out it wasn't really the right career path I had thought it would be. And so from that I was looking for other options and I figured that podcasting or listening to podcasts, I should say, was a good way of educating myself. Driving in the car or Whenever I had some downtime. And so I ended up binging on a whole bunch of business podcasts just to try to learn and educate in the space. And one of those, Ryan, I'm sure you've heard of it, the Freedom Fast Lane podcast back in the day.

Exactly. So that one, along with a few others really helped me kind of get an idea that I wanted to be in the physical product space. So I ended up starting a company, mostly Amazon, based in the 3D printing space and ended up doing that while coincide working in an engineering position.

And so ultimately you started a business in a 3D printing space.

Did you say I did? Yeah.

So it's funny, the only other person that I know who's a 3D printing business is Mike Chen, and he started a company that put the first 3D printer on the space. The space station. The International Space Station. I don't think that's what you're saying you did what that did.

We're not at that level quite yet, but no. So we were focused on 3D printing materials and supplies, so not the actual 3D printers themselves, but so that's where I started to put my focus and efforts. And I actually had a background and in the engineering community we would use 3D printers for prototyping and design type stuff. So I actually had some experience in that arena, which is what originally attracted it to me. We didn't get anything to the International Space Station, but we just focused on supplies and materials for those 3D printers. And that was mostly focused on Amazon. Kind of like what you mentioned in your podcasts back in the day and your heavy focus.

What do you sell in a 3D printing? I mean, I know nothing about this.

Oh, sure, no, not a problem. So the biggest thing in 3D printing space, they use consumable materials. So what it's called is filament. And so basically it's the think of a printer. You know how a printer uses ink? Well, 3D printers use ink, except in this case it's called filament, which is the actual material. Now these filaments vary on the type of material deposition that they're made of and everything like that. But most of them are sort of a plastic base. But I mean, we've gotten the technology advanced so far now where we could do a whole bunch of different types of materials, including metal. But so we were mostly plastic based type of filaments for these 3D printers that were mostly consumer users and sometimes some small business users.

Got it. Okay, so you were, you were basically Selling ink cartridges for 3D printers. So it wasn't ink at all. It was the ingredients used for 3D printing. And most of your sales came from Amazon, you said.

Exactly. So, yeah, that's a great way to think about it. And so that was kind of my primary focus. At least my introduction into the business world was on that space.

Okay, great. So the two of you as partners, being brothers, Garen, I want to ask you this. What is your role versus Ethan's Role.

Kind of changes every day, just depending on what's needed. So in the first business that we had that we started together, that was really just my introduction to business. So the first six months of it was just learning, learning the operation side, learning the marketing side of it, just kind of figuring out what type of roles that I like. So going into more of the marketing, the copywriting, email, running, running all that type of stuff. So that's what I would say my role has typically been where Ethan's more of a taking on operations.

Interesting. Okay, cool. So the two of you have good defined roles. That's why I asked that, because that's really going to impact how I advise you on the new business. But before we pivot into that, how big did the business get? How long did you own it before you sold it? And what was that process like?

So this story kind of continues, Ryan. So this business I've been speaking about was just kind of my introduction into or my very first business that I started. And Garen actually wasn't a part of this one. And so it was a few months later down the road. We were hanging out one summer. He was in college and back for a summer break. And so we were just hanging out. And he asks me, he's like, hey, Ethan, I see you're doing all this business stuff that was in the 3D printing one that we're discussing right now. And he was like, hey, how do I learn a little bit more about business? Because he was studying engineering at the time as well. And I was like, well, the best way I know to learn about anything entrepreneurship, business wise, is to actually go ahead and get our hands dirty and let's do something together. So I was like, well, do you want to start a business together? So sure, let's do that. So that summer we ended up starting a different business, and that was purely off of Amazon and specifically mostly in the drop shipping space. So we did hold some inventory, but the majority of that was in the drop shipping space. And so to answer your question, Ryan, is that we built that from nothing. And over a couple years, we built that to be a couple million dollars in revenue per year.

That's great. So that was the business that you built, made your money from and sold, Is that right?

Exactly. And so last year we decided that, hey, we kind of took this business as far as we want to take it, and we had the passion to take it too. And so let's sell it. We also, Garen and I also run a real estate investment company here in San Diego. So we were going to spend more time focusing on. That was the plan. And that's eventually why we ended up selling it. I kind of missed the e Comm space and got a bug for wanting to do something again in the e Comm space, which eventually led to me looking into acquisition as a potential strategy for getting back into the e commerce space.

What did you do with the 3D printing business?

That one sold as well.

Oh, you did? So you ended up selling that one?

I did, yeah. So I ended up selling that one. That one was a couple years ago. That company wasn't very large, so it wasn't something I normally talk about a ton or has a lot of impact into the story, but yeah, that one ended up did selling. Funny story is with I know your tribe, but back a few years ago, I ended up meeting someone from there and that's how the acquisition occurred.

You sold it to somebody that you met in the tribe?

Exactly.

That's amazing. That's great. That's great. It's funny. I have a very similar story where, you know, I had a very small exit with my yoga company, but I rarely talk about it because the second exit that I had was just dwarfed the size of that one.

Right.

That's amazing that you met the buyer in the tribe. It's one of the reasons why we brought the tribe back very quietly was these types of relationships are just hard to replace. Okay, so, Garen, how old are you?

I'm 22 years old.

All right, so 22 years old and you have an exit on your resume and I'm sure that you were probably, what, 21 when the exit happened?

Yeah.

What happens to your brain when you have an exit and you're 21 years old?

I mean, just to be honest, I mean, it doesn't feel real. Of course, when it first happens.

It'S just something that you would have never expected. And like three years before that, I didn't even know the word entrepreneur or anything business related. Just being blessed to have someone, have a brother that brought me into it. Taught me everything I know. And just being able to run with that for a few years and be able to sell that, it's a good place to be when you're 21 years old and you don't have to go looking for a job right away right when you're done. Done with school and right when you graduate.

I would say that's true, yes. So, all right, great. So the two of you are in your 20s. You've got an exit behind you. You've got some capital to work with, you've got this real estate business, but you miss the e comm space. You decide to buy this new business. Tell me about the new business, how you found it, what attracted you to it, and then we'll go into how we grow it.

Yeah, of course. So I was looking throughout different sites. I was on broker lists, I was on different Facebook groups, I was looking on different website forums. So kind of just a shotgun approach, if you will, for different companies, just to educate myself what's out there and what I exactly want in a new company to be able to apply. So I had some criteria set out that I was looking for, and eventually I struck up a conversation with a gentleman.

And.

And now I don't remember if this was a Facebook group or a website for him, but we ended up chatting and he mentioned he was interested in selling a business, and I expressed interest that I had sold a business so we could talk through that portion as well as interested in potentially purchasing a business. And so we ended up chatting about it. And once I learned about what the actual business was, because I didn't know that going into our conversation, I really fell in love with the company. I think they had a great story, a great product created by a great founder that's really created a really cool brand and has really great customers. And so the name of that company is Tuluma Totes. And so I know the word tuluma is hard for people to spell, so that's taa L U m A. And the reason for that, it's actually not English. It means culture in Swahili. And so what Teluma Totes does is that we specialize in tote style backpacks. And so, Garen, do you want to kind of dive into a little bit more about what makes Tuluma Tote so special and kind of our mission?

Yeah. So pretty much in a nutshell, what we do. So we find fabrics just from countries all around the world. So anywhere from Indonesia to Peru to Zimbabwe, just from all around the world. And we Take those fabrics and then we make them into totes here in the usa. And each tote that we have is paired with a country. So that means the fabric will come from that country, and then part of the proceeds for each sale will go to support a person in that country. And so kind of what that looks like is it's actually we fund microloans for entrepreneurs and farmers that are living inside of that country.

Nice.

So I don't know if you know what a microloan is. It's just like a small loan for people who don't really have access to traditional loans or it's just too expensive. So in the areas they are, they don't have the normal banks that we do. So it's just hard to get capital for their businesses. So when we do these microloans, they're interest free. And then when they repay it, we just use that money to buy more fabric from that country. So it kind of starts the cycle all over again. So it's been pretty cool to be able to help all these entrepreneurs and business owners.

So basically what I'm hearing you say is that you're using entrepreneurship to encourage entrepreneurship in places that don't have traditional capitalism. Is that fair to say?

Yeah, exactly.

Beautiful.

Yeah. I mean, I know it's an idea that you've talked about on your podcast a lot about how business owners and entrepreneurs are the ones to solve the world's problems. It's not politicians, it's not government. So that's something we believe too. And we're just happy to be a part of being able to support these entrepreneurs and in places that they don't have a lot of resources and they can kind of just from the inside, they can solve the whatever problems that their community is facing.

Yeah, that's beautiful. So what can you tell me about the revenue of the business when you bought it and what attracted to you, attracted you to the. What allowed you to see, like, oh, there's something here. Not just from a. From a service based perspective, although obviously that's one of the reasons why you fell in love with it. What did you see as the opportunity that you could sink your teeth into?

Yeah. So really fun fact about this company is that they aired on Shark tank back in 2015, and so the founders, whose names are Jack and Ali, they started this company actually in college and they ran it for about a year or two, and then they were on Shark Tank. So they were a very small company. And then after Shark Tank aired, they absolutely blew up. And so unfortunately, at that time, they didn't get any investment with the Sharks. They were considered too early. They were a one product type company instead of an actual business is what the Sharks would say.

But even though they didn't get investment from the Sharks, they got investment from this huge new customer base that they had access to. And it basically took them from almost nothing kind of a company to a company doing over a million dollars a year. And so from that, they've been able to basically sustain their existence for the past five years. And so this company hasn't had any type of marketing other than Shark Tank back five years ago. There's no Facebook, Google, any type of the normal tradition marketing methods. They only sell on other websites, so no other type of platforms like Amazon. So there's a lot of, lot of equity built in this company just from what was given to them from Shark Tank and kind of the involvement that was based in all the customer support that they received from that. And so what we really saw, to answer your question, Ryan, as far as what we saw is we just saw an opportunity for a company that hasn't done a lot more than kind of that one experience. And so from that, Garen and I bring over experience from social media marketing, from actually being able to grow and increase new products for product lines for this company. So going off of kind of even what the Sharks mentioned five years ago to grow the company more than just being one product. And so that's what we really saw when we looked over this company, plus the product itself. It's hard to describe in person. I would encourage you to take a look on it after this podcast online, just to kind of see the colors and the very unique style of these totes. Because as Garen was mentioning, we take these totes from all over the world, or these fabrics, I should say from all over the world, and create totes out of them. And so they're very unique and our customers absolutely love them. And we get continually repeat purchases. I know we have customers with 10 plus totes that they own. And I know I've spoken with plenty of customers who are like, you know, I tell myself I should stop buying more totes, but I just saw this one released and I absolutely had to have it.

And I agree.

Gary and I ourselves own multiple people, our friends and family own multiple. Just because we're like, well, this one's cool, we want to own this one as well. And so it's a really fun product, a really fun customer base, and, well, as a lot of opportunities for growth and it also. So another question you asked as far as where we stand today in revenue. So when we took over the company just a couple months ago, we were, they were doing about 200,000 a year. So they went from exploding in Shark Tank to being over a million dollar a year company. And from that, just because there's been no marketing, there's been no push for more customers, more cold customers, and then no push for a purposeful repeat customers in the sense of new product lines is that that has slowly decreased over the years.

Okay, so I heard you say two things. I heard you say when you took it over it was doing 200,000, but then I also heard over a million dollars.

So sorry, in 2015? Yeah, in 2015, after airing on Shark Tank, that's when they became over $1 million a year company for a couple years.

Okay, so. And then they regressed because they weren't getting all that free marketing from Shark Tank. And when you acquired them, they were doing about 200,000 a year or on pace to do that, is that right?

Exactly. Yep, that's correct.

Okay, so just a couple questions for data purposes. Do you have an existing customer list or did that, did you not acquire that with the business?

We do, that was acquired as well. So that customer list is about 30,000 strong. I would say active. We're closer to probably a little over half that. So in the 15 to 20,000, that's great.

Okay, 15,000. Especially if they're buyers and they're active, that is more than enough to do damage. Okay, so tell me. So, so this, well, this was completely built off the back of essentially one, one PR appearance on Shark Tank. There's I, I did a quick look. There's no search engine optimization, there's no Amazon presence, you have some Instagram following, but it's clear that it's not maximized. So, so tell me where your focus is going and where you're collecting some of this opportunity.

Sure thing. So right now what our kind of purpose is at the moment is in the new product arena. So speaking with customers, reading through old customer emails that I've been able to search and find is that there have been a lot of customers asking for more products. And so we were actually in the process of that and we kind of had a funny thing happen due to all the recent events and COVID 19 is that our manufacturing, like Aaron mentioned, is here based in the US and we were actually deemed to be a non essential business. So last month we had to stop all tilt production and all plans of product development, which were actually in the process of designing some new products. And so that kind of got put on pause and our plans kind of shifted from there, at least for this past month. So one thing we could do is that we could be deemed essential again is if we started producing ppe, which is personal protective equipment. So we put together some samples of face masks and took some photos and then sent an email out and did a pre order. And so the customer response from that was incredible. I mean, it blew both of us away.

So.

So much so that we had to stop taking pre orders just because we were going to be weeks behind on fulfillment. This is a time sensitive issue and we want to make sure that we take care of our customers, especially those who trust us in the pre order process, and that we want to be able to make sure we get these out in a reasonable amount of time. So good news is that we are at this moment in time, we are just about shipping out all the pre orders should finalize shipping today. And so we should be able to start making more and actually building up an inventory stock and being able to provide a faster turnaround time by the time this podcast airs. And so from that, we're also donating a bunch of hospital masks to people in need because we have the ability to ability to do so because our manufacturing is really setting or it's really set up for sewing. And so all these masks are handmade and sewn. And so it's kind of perfect for what we were already doing. We just transitioned the materials we needed to get as well as the training we needed to do for the people to be able to instead of produce totes now start producing masks.

How much did you sell in the pre order promotion?

So combined with all the donations we're doing and the sales, it's about 10,000 masks. So it was almost six figures in sales. Just from email.

In an Instagram post, it was one email.

Did you say we sent? Let's see, we sent one email, then we sent one another a couple days later stating that we need to close up the pre order process. So two emails and an Instagram post.

Okay, I just need a moment. Yeah, so.

First of all, the thing that you should do as soon as your pre orders go out is reopen the campaign. I mean, without question, if people want it that much and you can, and you can fulfill it.

Reopen that. I mean that is a huge, huge opportunity. So great work there. I also just love how you made this pivot because internationally you've got the Most in demand item that you're able to produce in a way that is new and cool. And I think it's only a matter of time that people start using masks as a sign of self expression. It already kind of is because you're saying something about yourself if you're wearing a mask versus not wearing a mask. But if you can provide some self expression to the point where the fact that when someone purchases a mask it's helping someone in a third world country build up their economy, that is, that is just a massive, massive win and a massive opportunity. What other products, what other products were you considering before the shutdown?

Yeah, so we were actively in the process of designing a crossbody bag. So our customer base tends to be more female. Now we're not excluding males, but they just tend to be more female. And so really what we've done is that we've sent out and talked to customers, we sent out surveys, I should say, and talk to customers about, hey, what products do you want to see if we're able to start this process of developing and building new products. And we had a really good response for some sort of crossbody bag purse. And so that's kind of what we were investing our time and resources into before we were forced to kind of stop that process. So that's the next product we envision is a crossbody bag. So this is, Ryan, I don't know if you know.

You know, women's wear very much, but this is going to be a kind of a purse looking item. And so it's something that caters to, like I mentioned, more of our female demographic. But it holds very true to our tradition of using fabrics that come from all these countries and creating really cool, unique wearable items out of them. So that's what we've done with the totes, that's what we did with the face masks and, and that's what we're planning to do with these new crossbody bags once we're able to actually get the production process up and running again.

Great. And how have sales maintained, aside from the masks, how have the actual totes maintained?

See, that's an interesting question. So the travel industry as a whole really took a hit and I would consider us to be in the travel industry. And so right when all of this started to occur, when the travel ban started to happen, we really saw a diplomatic in everything going on. And so we were actually really affected by that and started to see a decrease in sales. And so I know with the masks and the support that that caused is that that helped us to kind of resurge those tote sales once again. And so from that that's been helping us to go strong. And another funny story is that sometimes it only happens a couple times a year, but sometimes Shark Tank will actually re air our episode and, and they just randomly do it. They don't tell us when. And so they actually did that last night. So that was a nice boost of sales.

This is great.

So we didn't know, I mean we checked, we checked on the website, like what's going on? And then I checked the TV Guide and lo and behold, Shark Tank had just run 15 minutes ago. And so, so sometimes it's unexpected, but for right now I'm seeing probably expectations are that the tote sales are going to slow down a bit during this time. I know we had started the marketing efforts right before all this occurred and we were actually getting really good responses from our initial tests. We were mostly doing Facebook type of ads and based off our initial tests, we were positive from day one in our Facebook ads. Now this is before everything kind of changed up, but that was what we were doing before we kind of shifted everything within the last month, month and a half.

I can see why you were excited to buy this business. There's a lot of opportunity here that isn't exactly. Before I give my analysis.

Tell me about the capital that you've got in the business and the team that you have in the business.

Well, you're speaking to the team. So, okay.

So at the moment, at the head it's Garen and I as far as the team and the vision and who's making those decisions. Now we do have customer support person in place to handle that and help us out on that. And then of course we have manufacturing team that is actually fulfilling and creating these items. So those are kind of the three aspects of the team. But as far as its vision and actual day to day strategy, that's going to be where Garen and I headed. And then as far as, as far as capital. So I mean really one thing is that we've been able to kind of since we acquired the company, slowly build up some capital capital to be able to reinvest that back into new products. So we, we should have enough to launch another couple products.

Okay, cool. So you're not cash constrained, but you're not swimming in money either is basically what I heard. And, and so you're, you've stayed really lean and you have a few products that you want to develop and that won't constrain cash. But you're not on a hiring spree either. So that's kind of my, my what I'm hearing you say exactly this.

This business has been run really lean from the start and that was kind of our plan to continue that, at least for the time being.

Okay. Why are you not on Amazon?

That's a great question. So we, we haven't.

I guess our focus has been more on the product development side rather than pushing this on Amazon. And the question I have for you, Ryan, is that Amazon is search based inquiry. So with this product, it being so unique, do you see a spot for a product like this? Because I don't know if it's necessarily searched for. I mean, of course if we rank for the big key terms in the space, people will see it. But with a product so unique, is Amazon, in your opinion a good channel for something like this?

Yes. The reason you're asking me that question is because the background that you have is in building a business that ranks for keywords as the source of its sales.

So you just. There was a big assumption in there that the way to win on Amazon is just to rank for keywords. That's just one of the ways you have secret weapons that other people didn't have in the form of a customer list exposure on tv soon to be influencers, which I'm going to talk about in a second. You have, you have a lot more assets than the person who has to grind their way to rank for keywords. So you're just, you're just hypnotized by past experience that you have to rank for keywords in order to do well on Amazon, but you don't.

Very interesting. So, so what you're saying is utilizing our customer base would help us kind of launch and stick in the areas where we actually are trying to go. Even though I'm kind of thinking about it, that it would be hard to get there without that list.

So sort of half of that was right. Yes, you can use your list in order to.

Start to build up momentum on Amazon as a channel, but you don't necessarily have to use it to rank for keywords. You just need to have another place where people can order from you in a place where their credit card exists and it's easy for them to buy from you and tell other people about you. So your. So my standard example for this is Quest Nutrition. Quest Nutrition was at one time the number one selling product on Amazon. Yes, they ranked for keywords, but that's not why they were the number one selling product on Amazon. They were the number one product on Amazon because people wanted it, because they had good marketing in other places. They had a good ambassador program. They had influencers talking about them. They were. They were in retail stores, they had a very solid brand and they were the number one product selling on Amazon. Number. Not because they showed up number one for protein bar. I don't think they did. In fact, their Amazon store was under optimized and kind of terrible, but they still were the number one product selling on Amazon. So the benefit that you have is that you have a strong brand advantage. You have a good story, you have people who. More people in the world will want this when they find out about it, but you are not letting as many people find out about it because you're worried about not ranking for keywords.

Got it. That makes much more sense the way you described it.

Yeah.

It's like.

Jordan Peterson doesn't do search engine optimization.

But everybody knows who Jordan Peterson is in our little world. Mm. Why? Because he has a brand with a lot of content that has influenced a lot of people. But if he didn't blog because he was worried about search engine optimization, everybody would look at him. Kind of funny, right? There's just a bunch of other ways that people could find out about him. And the same is true with you, because you have Shark Tank, because you have a solid customer base, because you have a decent Instagram following, and that's about to go up. And because you're good marketers with some Amazon background, having exposure to Amazon has no downside. Even though you can't see what keywords you're going to rank for right now, that doesn't matter.

Mm. Got it. No, that makes perfect sense.

Now, no one, in fact, no one on Amazon worried about ranking for keywords and said until that that nice little white boy went on stage and told people how to do a million dollars in 12 months. Nobody was doing that until I made that video. And that. And here, actually, this is a good distinction that I think you'll get. I made that video for newbies.

I made that video of your best shot as somebody. Now, first starting out is to rank for keywords.

You are not a beginner and you're not a beginning brand.

Right? Correct. So, Ryan, do you think, based off of what you know, if you were at the helm here, that that would be your number one priority at the moment is getting on Amazon?

That's a good question.

Because there's three things that are striking it striking me in the face and they are going on Amazon launching new products to your existing customer list and shipping your best products to influencers that you know would love your products.

You've got a very shareable brand, you have a very shareable story. And so getting that in the hands of as many people as possible who have some influence and the fact that you have raving fans who come back to you over and over and over again, that's a really good sign of a fire that's about to light. So those are the three things that are striking me in the face. I don't know offhand what my, my top priority of those three would be. So we can kind of let that percolate for a second. What do you think of my analysis of this so far?

I absolutely agree with. I know Garyn and I have spoken in regards to the new products as well as the Instagram influencers. And so those are two big programs that we are focusing on as far as some of our top priorities in this space. The one we hadn't and as we discussed, was more on the Amazon side of things, but I'm getting to understand your point of view better and so I believe that's something that needs to come back to the table to be discussed.

Guess yeah, I just don't see any downside to it and I only see upside. And if you try and figure out what that's what it's going to be from a, you know, an Amazon FBA standpoint, I think you're going to keep yourself handcuffed rather than free to really build this into a brand that, you know you can build.

I guess one concern of ours is, I guess this company has always driven people back to their site and then with being on Amazon, you don't necessarily own that customer, the customer data. What would you say in regards to, I know your experience with those other companies that weren't on Amazon and then now are on Amazon. How has their experience been by have they seen a large shift in demographics from customers, especially like repeat customers going from the site to Amazon, or is that really significant here?

I consider it a win when the product is in my customer's home and I consider it a win when my customer voluntarily starts to follow me because the product was so good. I don't worry about trying to manipulate people to buy in the way that I want them to buy so that I can control the customer experience. I focus on, on creating things that are so good that people, when they buy them, regardless of where they buy them, end up finding me and buying more, even if I didn't do anything to make them do that. Now, you have already done the hard work of making a great product that people want. The thing that's holding you back from really getting that out to more people is the fear that you won't control the process once you do that. You said, I don't want to put them on Amazon because I don't get the customer data, and I don't want to put them on Amazon because I don't know what keywords I would rank for. That is that. That is a mindset of trying to control the customer rather than letting the customer experience your brand in the way that meets them on their journey, which is something that you've done really well, well up to this point. And if you lean on that, we'll take this from 1 million to several million dollars.

Sure.

Yeah.

All good points, Ryan.

The takeaway there is stop trying to control the customer and just go create more stuff and make it easier for the customer to find.

You got it. No, that's great.

I really appreciate it.

You're hard to find. Like, I mean, you're hard to spell. You're hard to find. Like, you don't rank for any keywords. You're not on Amazon. I've got to know who you are or see Shark Tank in order to go get the product that I want. I think you just need to focus on making it easier for people to find you and not worry about controlling every step of the process.

Great. Yeah. That's fantastic feedback. And I know it's something that hasn't been attempted before, so it should be very interesting to see how that goes. And like you mentioned, I 100% agree that the company is too hard to find, as you mentioned. So I think, because when we do hold outreach, let's say I'm personally talking to somebody or one of our customers shows one of their friends, or we are on Shark Tank, like I mentioned last night happened, we always get a very positive response.

Yes.

So I think any way in which we can get our brand, our story, our mission, out to new customers that necessarily haven't heard of us before, or maybe they just heard the name but haven't heard any more details, I think that really resonates with people because it is such a cool company, such a cool product, such a cool mission, that there's just. There's always been a lot of intrigue. And so I 100% agree on those lines.

So let me. Let me ask you a couple questions, and these are Leading questions, but forgive me. So you said you get a bump in sales every time you air on Shark Tank, correct?

Mm, correct.

Okay, so do you think there's a chance that that bump would be bigger if people found you on Amazon as well?

I would hopefully assume so.

That was like the safest way of saying yes ever. So. So. All right, let me see.

Yeah, I really hope so.

So let me say this differently. Do you think there are some people who saw Shark Tank last night and searched for you on Amazon?

Oh, 100%.

And what percentage of those people who searched for you on Amazon last night were able to buy from you on Amazon?

Right? Yeah, zero.

And what percentage of those people do you think then made the effort to find you on your store and buy from you?

That's the golden question right there.

Some, right? I mean, probably greater than zero, I would assume.

Yeah, but.

But had they searched for you on Amazon and found you. Right, it would have been 100%.

And so now this person has seen you on Shark Tank and they have bought from you on Amazon, but you're preventing that because you're asking the question, well, how do I get their customer data and control the customer experience?

Well, you lost that same sale by answering that question. Right, but what are the ch. Is there a chance that a percentage of those people who saw you on Shark Tank bought on Amazon now follow you on social media and end up joining your buyers list? Yeah, there's some. There's a non zero chance that some of those people are going to do that. And so the net effect ends up being much greater than the net effect of you trying to control the entire shopping experience.

Garen, I'm getting a lot of mm hmms from your brother. What's going on in your head right now?

Those are all really good points, Ryan. I think it makes a lot of sense to make this more known. Just have other channels where people can find us. Because being able to have customers which we have no data on is better than not having data on no customers.

That's right.

So I totally agree with that. And then also to your last kind of, the third thing you hit on is working with influencers and getting this in front of their audiences. I know that's something we really want to push towards something we haven't been able to. We haven't ever done it before. So there's things we want to learn in that space and then just start testing and trying that out and getting that into those people's hands. And once they see the product, we believe that that's something that they would want to share with their audience.

I agree. I think the kind of third leg of how this company is going to grow is that you need to have one traffic channel that you're building so you need to launch more products, but you're already doing that. You need to have exposure on another shopping site, which is Amazon, which I think I've effectively convinced you to do. The third is that we need another place to get a lot of traffic and exposure. And we could talk about SEO, YouTube, TikTok. We talk about all of them, I think from the, the outlook of things. Instagram is your play because you're a travel friendly brand. You have a lot of cute girls who use your, who use your stuff. You have a lot of nature photos that you can use. And here is your play on Instagram. Even if you never sponsor an influencer ever, your play is to get your customers to share photos of them using your products and you bringing them onto your channel and tagging them back and then doing that over and over until you've got daily content that you can be putting onto your own channel. You're also telling your own story via either selfie videos or text on screen videos. You're showing clips from Shark Tank. You're documenting the growth of the business and telling the sharks why they're stupid for not investing in the company.

You're showing your product being used all over the world. You're showing pictures of the farmer that you then gave a micro loan to. You do long form stories like text posts about the farmers that you, the farmers are the textile workers that you influenced in whatever country. You go behind the scenes and show show photos of people who are making the textiles and how it's impacting their life. Now this becomes a lifestyle brand. If you're able to show the behind the scenes of the business. This becomes a really real, this becomes a brand with 500,000 followers instead of 11,000 followers. And it will happen very quickly and you won't have to ask influencers to talk about you. They'll be so entrenched in the story of the brand that the influencers will naturally talk about you. That is what we are going for here.

So Ryan, a question on that point is based off of your experience, what has been a good way to encourage, as you mentioned, influencer posting behavior as far as initially getting that content from, from others, utilizing the product in nature or wherever they are and then being able to kind of start the process that you mentioned of daily content from.

Those so Are you asking how do you encourage your customers to produce the type of content that is easy to share?

Exactly. Yeah. What in your experience has been a good way to go about that?

You start by celebrating the heck out of the really small wins. So you, you.

So I'll tell you a quick story. I was on a coaching call last week inside the tribe and there was a customer who was selling consistent, doing consistent sales, but not a lot of sales. And I, and, and she was seeming a little frustrated. And I asked, okay, how many reviews do you have? And she said, zero. I said, okay, so you're doing daily consistent sales with zero reviews. Why are you frustrated? And she's like, well, I did an email blast to get reviews and I only got one person who replied back that she would share her experience. And I said, okay, if you went all in on that one person, do you think that there's a chance that that one review would give you a bump of sales? And she said, yes. And I said, and do you think that by you being so celebrating that review so much that you took a screenshot of it, put on Instagram, publicly thanked her and celebrated it, that other people might be encouraged to leave reviews too? And she said, yes. And I said, do you think that some people would see that on social media, read the review and buy your product? And she said, yes. And I said, and do you think those people are now pre framed to leave you more reviews in the future? And she said, yes. And I said, do you see how this one review can take you from a few sales a day to that 25 sales a day that you're going for? And she said yes. And the same thing is true for you when it comes to sharing the content of your customers. If you have one person who shares a great photo of them traveling with your with your totes, you celebrate that like mad. You re share it. You tell the story about how this customer came to know you. And then somebody else says, oh man, they really made a big deal out of that one post. And they post their own. And you celebrate that one like mad. And then you email it to your list and you're like, this, like this person is making a difference in the lives of entrepreneurs in whatever country in Papua New Guinea. Like, this person doesn't even realize that, yes, they're enjoying their trip to Tulum, but they have no idea that their purchase made such a big impact. And this textile worker in Papua New Guinea. And then somebody else is like, man, this is really, really is a big deal. And you have a P.S. if you've got a picture of you and your bag, we'd like to celebrate that on social media. Reply to this email and let us know. And you get three and you're like, oh, we got three responses from a list of 15,000. My life is over. But then you celebrate like heck on those three people and then that ends up getting more and more and it's just a snowball that starts to build. And if you go all in on that and you appreciate the things that are showing up, more will show up.

No, that's awesome, because we do. I mean, a good, good benefit of this company is that the product itself is so shareable is that we do have hundred of customer posts, as you mentioned, that share their photos with us. And we have on our site we have over 2000 five star reviews of the product itself. So there's a lot of content in there to draw from. What I just heard there, Ryan, is that there should be a better influence on the actual story of the individual and the impact they're making per each post, which is something that I haven't necessarily seen been done on this brand before. So for example, let's say we had a customer tag us or send us a photo on Instagram. They were traveling, let's say somewhere in Africa and they have a cool photo next to a lion with their backpack. Is that in the past? If we've reposted, we of course tag them, we'll kind of say where they are. But that's generally as far as the content of that post, nothing really tied to the impact that that tote is making, nor any further story of the customer. But what you're saying is a bigger impact in this regards is to. To tie in what we're doing, our mission, as well as the story of the customer, to draw in more and hopefully produce more content from that so that we can continue sharing and growing our impact and mission from that.

That's absolutely right. And by you just taking some of the reviews that you've got on your site and taking them and screenshotting them and posting them is going to engage your audience and bring in new people. By you just repurposing the same content that you've got and tying that all back to a mission and just being more aggressive in making long form posts that celebrate your customers, you'll have daily content very quickly and then that makes it easier for people to find you, makes it easier for you to get in touch with influencers and a snowball just starts to Build and pop.

That's awesome.

So those I think are your three orders of operations. If you go all in on Instagram, launch on Amazon and release some new products and be aggressive with your list like please, if you have not gone through the four part email series, swipe files that I put in the 1% and have done bonus promotions around and stuff like use that and that series combined with an Amazon launch and new products and an Instagram following, this is a multi million dollar business very quickly.

And that's our goal is to be able to grow it to much larger than what they had done in the past. Even with Shark Tank.

Yeah, I think you're sitting right on it.

What questions do you have for me if any at this point?

Sure. So we touched upon the two, well the two aspects we touched upon Amazon as well as influencers. So the final aspect you mentioned is the product development process. And so in that, Ryan, did you have any special way of approaching that to figure out what my next product would be? When I had this product line, this brand, I wanted to expand.

Yeah. So the, the first focus is on the customer and who they are and developing products specifically for them. You mentioned earlier that you thought you're, you consider yourself a, a travel specific brand. Explain to me why that is.

So most of our customers have a special tie to the products. At least our most passionate customers seem to have a special tie to the product because of the areas that they visited. So let's say that we release a tote from Molle and now everyone who's been to Molle, they have some sort of connection to that. So we often hear stories of oh, I absolutely love this tote. Not only do I like the fabric and the design of the tote, but I went to Mali too. So every time I think about it, it reminds me of my trip to Mali. So there's really a big aspect of connecting our culture here in the US to those other cultures around the world that people have personally experienced through travel. Now that's not always the case. Sometimes people buy it because they've always wanted to go there or they just love the fabric design. But that's traditionally why or why I said in the past it's more travel related. And then additionally something we didn't touch on, but we have a special program in place called our Traveler Edition program. And we actually work with customers who are, who go and travel these variety of countries and they'll actually go find special fabrics from these local artisans that can only be found in person. And we'll work with them. They'll bring the fabric back to the US we'll actually make tote lines with them and end up giving them a free tote and a portion of proceeds. But it's a way that we actually partner with, with travelers themselves to create tilt lines as well, to create the impact into these countries that they personally love and have a connection to, but that we personally may not be able to necessarily get to within the next year. So it's a way for us to kind of expand our reach and our mission through individuals who are also traveling.

Yeah, I understand. So.

Traveling is great. It's specific enough. I just get the vibe it's not necessarily a traveling brand. I don't know. This is just kind of a gut instinct of mine. But it. Your. Your brand is really not empowering travelers or even celebrating travel. Traveling. Your brand is really more about breaking down the boundaries that keep us apart. Right. So, I mean, like, you're exactly. You're investing in entrepreneurs that don't have traditional capitalism. You are. Your customer is the person who is traveling and getting a better understanding of the world. And traveling is one of the routes in which they do that. The fact that you're making really high quality masks right now, and your customers loved that so much, that's not necessarily a travel thing. That is more of like a. It's more of like, we're all in this together kind of thing. And so you are. You are more a brand, I think, that celebrates and makes it easy for us to break down the barriers that keep us apart from one another. And traveling is one of the ways that we do that. But I think if you could broaden that a little bit, you'll get more product ideas of how you could serve that.

I think that's an excellent point. I was actually speaking to someone this weekend, kind of reviewing who we would define as our ideal customer.

I know traveler is an aspect of that, but I didn't have a good broad definition of what that exactly looks like. I think that's a really good way of phrasing it and a different way to think about it.

Yeah.

So when you think about that, do you have other products that come to mind?

Oh, now you put me on the spot. So I would have to give that a little bit more thought. I don't know what. What comes up to on top of mind right at this instant, given that shift, because I know with everything I've thought of and discussed before with those past products, those are coming up right now, but those are more in the lines of continuing kind of the disposal bag tradition that the company has been based off of. And so it's really been, at least for our focus, before we had this call, Ryan, was our focus on new products was kind of continuing items that you use to carry accessories, carry, you know, whatever it is you need while you're moving out and about in the world. So that's kind of where the original mindset and kind of thought process goes as far as new product development. But as far as, as you mentioned, bringing the world together, I'm not exactly sure at this point in time what that looks like as far as new products.

So there's a couple things that come to mind for me. What does that person buy once they meet someone on their travels, have a child and stop traveling so much?

They start buying baby gear, they start buying bedding, they start buying reusable bags, they start buying things for the home. Now these are all super broad, right? But can we still give that person the opportunity to make purchases that express that part of themselves that believes in breaking down barriers? Now how would they do that? They would do that by buying bedding that was made from the same materials that supported the same person in Papua New Guinea. They would buy clothes with the same mission. They would buy things that other people can see, like swag and T shirts and bumper stickers and things for their, like the cases for their computers. Now, now these, none of these might connect with where you want to take this, but the point being that that same person who is traveling and experiencing the world without borders then matures and goes through other phases of life as well. And if you can serve them through multiple phases of life, then you have a customer not just for a few years when they're traveling, but for the course of their entire life.

Yeah, that's a. That's a very interesting way of thinking about that and something we definitely haven't given thought to. So thank you for bringing that one up.

You bet.

Well, what else, what else? Before I let you guys go, Garen, I'd love to hear from you what's going on in your brain.

Yeah, well, I totally like that. That's a huge, just like mental, mental shift. Just stepping outside of what we are doing day to day and just looking more at, okay, what are our customers actually? And they're not always traveling nor do they always need those types of products. It could just be something more broad, something that they can use for their self expression.

That's right.

So that's.

Yeah, that's pretty good.

That's a good way to think about it. They're using it for their own self expression. Yeah.

Right. I have a fun question for you. So I've often heard feedback of this product that the product itself is so much better in person than how we can convey it via photos on a website. Have you ever had a product in such a setting where it's just so much better to have an in person experience than photos of a product? And if so, how did you kind of get around that? Because I mean I've heard multiple times that I want to convey the qual quality, the uniqueness, just the really cool factor about these totes. I don't know if photo is the best way to go about that because I often heard feedback it isn't.

The way that you will do that is in two ways. One, get your customers on video saying something like that, demonstrating why they like it. Your customer can sell your product way better than you can. So that's number one. Number two, you can do it with a retargeting sequence on your Facebook ads. When you're able to run Facebook ads again and your your first product being a text on screen story based video that is, that is your. That is your top of funnel ad story based around the mission of the company. Your follow up video is a demonstration of how the bag works and your third follow up video is customer testimonials. Because if someone buys the story, they buy the product idea and they see other people like it, your conversion rate will be absurd. It's your three part series to overcome that. But most of that realizing the quality will come when your customers talk about it rather than you trying to show it.

That's great. That's definitely something we need to implement.

That will do very well for you.

Great. Well guys, I think we'll wrap here. Where can people like. I would like to kind of follow along on your progress. Where can people follow the development of the brand?

Yeah, absolutely. So I think it's always fun to look at what the totes look like and kind of get a visual understanding of what we've been talking about here today. So of course you can find us on our website. So we're@tulumatotes.com and I know that's a little hard to spell. So if you just search Tuluma totes in Google we rank basically first page for any kind of spelling of tuluma most of the time. And if you can't find that, we're also at carry a country.com because our slogan is carry a country because these, these totes in our mission that we're doing allows a person here in the US to help and support, like we mentioned, fund those micro loans and support those other business owners, entrepreneurs in those other countries. So effectively, we're carrying countries when we do so. And the brand itself is really fun and unique. And Jack and Ali, the founders, they're fun, optimistic, punny people. And so if you want some smiles, every Friday, we generally release a Feel Good Friday blog where we highlight travelers and their stories and maybe a new tote line if we're able to produce totes again. And then those are always fun blogs, easy reads. They're pretty punny. Garen puts those together. And so if someone wants a laugh or a smile, I would encourage them.

To go there on Instagram. If they're not on Instagram, put them on Instagram, please.

Just like Ryan said, we're Instagram talumatotes. Okay, so that's kind of all the places you can find us.

Good. All right, Jason, gents. Well, I'm excited to watch your development. I think you're sitting on something really special, so keep us posted. We're rooting for you@capitalism.com awesome.

Thanks so much for your time, Ryan. Really appreciate it. Had a lot of fun being here.

All right, thanks, guys.

Thank you so much, Ryan. Appreciate it.