Zero To $100 Million In Revenue In 12 Months w/ Josh Bezoni

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What's up, fastlaners? Ryan here. Today I'm going to be interviewing somebody who just blows me out of the water because some of you are familiar with my process where I talk about going from zero to $1 million in 12 months. I break that down on a very specific strategy. If you don't know that strategy, you can go over to freedomfastlane.com.

That strategy. But today's guest blows me out of the water because he went from zero to a hundred million in 12 months. Yes, $100 million in his first 12 months in business selling physical products. Today's guest is Josh Bazzoni. He's a founder of BioTrust. It is a supplement company based here out of Austin, Texas. And Josh is going to be going through that process of how we went from 0 to 100 million. He's going to be talking about the sales processes they use, how he built his team. And those are the two pieces that he says really made a difference for the growth of BioTrust. He said a, it was a sales process and they used an internal sales process, meaning they take all the orders themselves. He didn't leverage any other channels. He leveraged his relationships and really strong conversions. That's how he got to $100 million. He also talks about the importance of his team and why he built his team the way he did, how he built his team, how he went out and found the rock stars that were going to be building his team. And get this, he did this building a virtual company. He does not have a physical office that he reports to every day. He is virtual. I don't know of any hundred million dollar plus businesses that are completely virtual except for BioTrust. So Josh is a guy that I'm just thrilled to bring to you today. So enjoy this conversation about going from zero to $100 million in your first 12 months with Josh Bizzoni.

Hey everybody, this is Ryan Daniel Moran and today I am joined by Josh Bazzoni. Josh, thanks for hanging out with us on Freedom Fastlane.

You bet. Great to be here.

I am stoked for this chat because you have a story that so represents what, what I think the way that entrepreneurs progress when they want to have really change the world type of impact and that's that you grew your cash flow. You had your business that spat out cash and then a couple of years ago you pivoted into something that is doing hundreds of millions of dollars. And that's not an exaggeration. So Josh, would you kind of dial it back a bit and talk a Little bit about that first business that you started that really got you off the ground and really made you free so that you could make that pivot. Talk a little bit about how you got started in that type of a business.

Sure. The company I have now with my business partner, Joel Marion, BioTrust Nutrition, and we sell all natural supplements and vitamin products and some food products. We'll get to that. As you mentioned later. But in the beginning, I went to school for biology and nutrition, and I didn't have a business background, although I grew up in a family where my father had a very small hardware store in Iowa. So I learned that business wasn't a scary thing. That's what I want to talk about a lot today, because I think people have the misconception that getting into a business, starting a business is very risky and very scary. As a kid growing up in Iowa, I didn't have that. That paradigm. I just. Business was, you know, par for the course, and that's how you made a living. And when I left college, I went to work for a gentleman named Bill Phillips. He ran a company called eas and it was the biggest sports nutrition company, really in the world. And it was out of Golden, Colorado. And I went up there without a job and knocked on their door and drove from Iowa in my 19th, probably 87 Crolla with 200,000 miles on it and knocked on the door, gave him a resume, and I was hired out there. But under Bill Phillips, I learned the industry, the health industry. He had a magazine. He wrote a book called Body for Life, which sold 4 million copies. And it was just an amazing thing for me to start off with a mentor. So the first tip I'd give to anyone out there is just find someone that has done what you want to do and try to create value in their life. Befriend them, even if you would work for them for free, and you'll learn so much. So Bill taught me a huge amount about business and charitable endeavors, and it was an amazing experience. Bill sold the company to North Castle Partners for hundreds of millions of dollars, which they in turn flipped it and sold it to Abbott Labs, who makes the product insure. And they sell Myoplex now, which Eastagen. And they were the first ones to come out with a creatine monohydrate product. So anyway, when Bill sold the company, he told me, hey, you should go out on your own, start your own company. I was 24 at the time, and I'd only been with Bill for two or three years. He said, you can do this. Go out there and start your own company. And I went out there and left eas, had read a ton of marketing books, learned how to write marketing copy, which is something we can get into because it was probably one of the best things I ever learned. Skill. It's made me the most money and allowed me to have the biggest impact on people is writing effective marketing copy. I learned that while with Bill reading books, which I'll recommend in a minute. But I left eas, came out with a Brain Cognitive brain boosting supplement to help with memory and retention and cognitive function. I was 24 years old. I wrote copy for it on a website, had the product built, and at EAS, I was making $46,000 a year when I was working for Bill. And when I launched my brain supplement, in the first week, the first launch, I made $46,000.

That's an okay day.

So I was doing cartwheels. You know, I was a poor kid from Iowa that had gone out, started my own company, didn't have a lot of money to start it. I actually started it on credit cards, which I wouldn't necessarily advise, but when there's a will, there's a way, and $46,000 the first week, I knew I was onto something. Now, I went from there and made a lot of rookie mistakes and had a lot of challenges. But.

Getting that company off the ground and starting it just led me down a path that I want other entrepreneurs and other people who are thinking of starting a company, I just want to encourage them to take that step in a strategic manner because it'll change their life. It's an amazing thing, entrepreneurship.

What was the strategy for launching that first product on your own? Did you have a list that you had built? Were you advertising somewhere? Were you leveraging affiliates? How did you get it off the.

Ground to get it off the ground again? It was a Brain Cognitive product, and it was in a pill form, and it was developed by scientists, and it was tested, and it was a quality product, first of all. So you always got to start with a quality product, and you've got to be passionate about it. And so I thought to myself, who this was in, like, 1999 or 2000, and the Internet was really in its infancy. But I found a company that sold products to golfers. And so they had an email list to golfers. It was called Better Golf.net. they're no longer in business, but I figured golfers needed mental focus to play better golf. And so I rented their list for $4,000 wrote an ad, they sent a solo email to that list and from that list I generated the $46,000. So it was a 10x return on the initial investment. I knew I was onto something. But prior to that I did a lot of research into the company and it was an initial 4,000 investment, which I didn't really. I'd done some smaller tests before I did that and it was a big step for me and it turned out well. But yeah. So the first product was Brain Nutrients to golfers.

My understanding was that that wasn't your big success or the thing that made you a full time entrepreneur. I was under the impression that you had a different business. I didn't know about the supplement startup, 1999 or 2000. So did you scale that business? Did you pivot? Then what, what happened next?

I built that business over the years and ended up selling it, exiting out of it. Learned a lot of lessons along the way. But just back when I moved to Austin, Texas four years ago, four or five years ago, I had sold my previous company and I started basically from scratch, I started an ebook company and I was seeing what was going on, selling content. And so.

Everyone out there, you don't have to have a shark tank idea, you don't have to have a product that you build overseas. You can literally start a company by just selling content. And what I mean by content is informing people, giving them information on really any topic of interest out there. So I went to a website called clickbank.com and that's where it's a marketplace for people who are selling content in all kinds of areas. Self help, weight loss, health and fitness. Really any type of content you could write about that you're interested in. There are people selling ebooks on that website and some people are selling millions and millions of dollars of these books every year. So what I, what I did was I'm passionate about health and fitness and helping people. And so I wrote an ebook. And most people are scared to write an e book. They think sitting down and writing an ebook to create a product would take years. And I know some people who have spent months and months writing these books. But the thing is, I had someone interview me about a weight loss and health plan that I had been teaching and preaching for years. And they interviewed me. We had that transcribed into a book and the product was literally done in a few days. We went through and edited it. But I guess that's a tip for everyone is that even if you're not an expert in an area, if you Have a passion about it. You could interview experts, record those conversations with the expert's permission, of course, and get those transcribed. And all of a sudden you have a product that you can sell. That's what I did in the beginning. I went to clickbank.com I looked at the weight loss market, and they have the top 10 ebooks that people are selling in that category. I created my own ebook and then wrote marketing copy to sell that ebook. And I looked at examples of people who are doing really well in the industry@clickbank.com I didn't copy them. I emulated some of their strategies. You never want to copy someone. And so I had the. The book in the digital format. I wrote the sales copy, which we should talk about. Some tips on writing sales copy. And then I went to the partners out there that were doing really well, introduced myself and persuaded these good folks to sell my ebook by promoting it to their list that they had built. And after that, I started getting orders and building my own list. And that's the important part, is when you build your own list, that's where the real value is in your own list. Because once you have people who trust you and you're sending them emails and encouraging them and giving them tips and they believe in you, then you can start promoting additional products and services that may be of interest to them and you get a piece of those sales. So there's a lot we covered there, but you probably want to go back to the copy aspect of it.

But in a nutshell, I'm curious, Josh, because what you just outlined is the strategy that was really, really hot, like six or seven years ago. And the skeptic in me wants to say, like, good on you, Josh, but it's 2016 now. Would you still advocate that somebody start a business in the same way that you did back then?

I would, because I know so many people who are doing it well right now and living this great lifestyle and making a positive impact for people. So it's still creating an ebook. It's still done the same way.

Selling it on clickbank is still done the same way. They handle the transactions for you. Because that's scary for a lot of people, is trying to set up a website and figuring out how to take sales and all that so you can just hook into ClickBank's interface and selling is done the same way as six years ago. And marketing copy is done pretty much the same way. The only thing that's really changed is the social aspect with the taking off of Facebook and other social platforms, but it's really done the same way. If I was going to start all over again today, I would do the exact same thing.

Cool. Now, you've brought up copy several times and I know that the product itself, while it was a good product and it was based on your experience, that wasn't necessarily the secret sauce that made it sell, it was the sales process that made it sell. So tell me a little bit about how you build your sales processes. And I know you've leveraged kind of the same processes for building BioTrust, which is now an enormous company. So comment to that.

Again, sales copy writing, marketing persuasive copy that gets people to want to take action is again, like the number one or two skill I've ever learned. And what I did when I was working for Bill Phillips is I read books like Ted Nicklaus book called Magic Words that bring you riches. And if you were to read one book, I think that's probably the book that encompasses and taught me the most about how to write sales persuasive sales copy. Again, Ted Nicklaus Magic Words. And I also read books by Dan Kennedy like How to Make Millions with youh Ideas and the Ultimate Sales Letter. And I wrote, I read Old Copy by Gary Halbert. He wrote a book called Maximum Money and Minimum Time. And he's got newsletters which he wrote, which are fantastic, teaching people how to write copy. And Victor Schwab has a book, I believe it was Victor Schwab called Tested Advertising Methods. And Joe Sugarman has a book or several books on writing copy. But that's where I started and I read these books and I just learned there's a format to writing sales copy. It's kind of a template and it's posing a problem that people have and can understand.

And then bringing to light a solution. So it's problem solution. And these books get into a lot more detail. But basically you're trying to solve a problem that someone has out there with a solution. And again, it's formulaic a bit. But when you go through it and you learn that you can literally sell any product online. And that was the foundation of learning how to write copy. And again, once you learn that skill, you can sell almost anything online. And that's where a lot of good businesses stem promise is copywriting. Right in the beginning.

And when you launched your ebook company and you were writing copy to promote it, did you just throw up a sales letter and start driving traffic to it? Were you split testing a whole bunch of different elements in order to get it to convert. What was the process like once you had some copy up there and you could collect orders? Was it just a matter of the number of people who promoted you? Did you have the best converting offer out there? What separated your success from those who try this process and don't do as well?

I think the copy and the marketing is what separated it. I think of copywriting like a song. If you can get Taylor Swift, who's written hundreds of number one hits to write you song for the radio, you're going to have a good chance of being successful with it because she knows how to write great songs. So copywriting is the same skill. 100 people can write copy to sell one product and there's going to be one form of copy that does well. So it's usually the person who understands the market and their needs the most and can talk to that in a persuasive manner. So it comes down to the copy. And again, I don't want to inhibit anyone from starting the company because they're scared, because they don't know how to write copy. Because you can go to elance.com or guru.com and there's some good copywriters out there who can at least get you a good start on copy which you can adjust and it's not that expensive. So again, going back to what we were talking about before, you can write that book by interviewing experts or having someone interview you. You've got that starting place, you've got that book, that ebook to sell. And then you can go to elance.com or guru.com and have someone help you with the marketing message. You're well on your way to starting a company just with those two things.

So I know you ran this business for several years, but I'm not sure when the transition was, but it was. You had the ebook company and then 1, 2, skip a few 99, $100 million company. So I know that you pivoted at some point, started BioTrust at 100 million your first 12 months. I think you can correct me if I'm incorrect, but where was that transition point? And. And then I want to dive into what that process was like because I'm kind of in the middle. I've got my cash flow businesses and I can either pivot from the businesses that are doing 10 million and try and grow them into hundred million dollar companies or I need to find my thing that changes the world. So would you spend to me as the active listener who's curious about your transition from that company that did really well into now. This thing that is just massive.

Sure. So the ebook company was more of a lifestyle company. I had three employees.

And it was doing maybe $3 million a year, which is pretty amazing to do with three employees. And net profits were maybe a million dollars a year after expenses. So I was doing really well. But I quickly figured out in the E book business, although it's an amazing lifestyle business and created this lifestyle that I could only dream about before, I just got this entrepreneurial spirit where I want to change the world and I want to do something bigger. And so I just couldn't figure out a way to do that with the ebook business. So I went back to my, my path which was developing scientific products, formulas, vitamins and mineral formulas, protein powders. That's what I'd done at eas. And so while creating the ebook company, I've become friends with a lot of the affiliates and affiliates are just partners and you cross promote each other's products. And that's really how I was advertising those days. I wasn't even buying a lot of media. I was just doing partnerships with people. And what I kept hearing from all of our partners over and over again was that they wanted a quality nutrition line that was all natural, that wasn't filled with the chemicals, artificial colors, flavors, preservatives, sweeteners that could harm people's health. And I met a gentleman by the name of Joel Marion, who's my business partner at BioTrust. And Joel is like the LeBron James of Internet marketing. He's just an amazing marketer and just a great guy. And we had the same ethics and wanted to help people at the foundation of the company as well, which we can get into our charitable aspects. Our charitable mission was very important. So I met Joel and I had a conference just like you, Ryan, are having these conferences and you had one several months ago that was a big success. I did something similar in Austin. I had a big event where Tim Ferriss came and spoke and Bill Phillips came and spoke and, and a lot of people came to this event out of Lake Travis. And there I met these partners. I met Joel, my business partner. We decided to start BioTrust because I already had a large list of people who are interested in health and fitness and who had bought my ebooks. And I had these partnerships with all these other people who were selling health and fitness content. And so when we started BioTrust we had a built in distribution channel of, you know, 100 of the top fitness experts online that already had these large lists. So when we started BioTrust, we weren't worried about how we were going to get sales. We already had this built in distribution network of all of our affiliates. So our first product we launched was a protein powder. A few years back, Tim Ferriss said it was one of his favorite products, which helped us a lot and our affiliates got behind the product. First product we launched and I believe it did like $3 million when we initially launched it. So that was kind of our. And we realized that we were onto something big. But there's a lot of lessons to talk about on how we started that. But once BioTrust took off with that first product, we knew we had a challenge on our hands because once you hit a home run in the marketing and you have a great product, you've got to then pivot to how do you build this infrastructure, how do you hire people, how do you build inventory? It's very interesting. So I'm sure we'll cover that next.

Yeah. So I just want to break this down. It sounds like you had the audience from the previous business and that gave you the firepower to launch to an existing audience and test an offer. You also had some contacts that you built up through your previous business, through good networking, through, through launching your own event that gave you some credibility in the marketplace. And when the two came together, you had both affiliates in your existing list and an offer that converted really well with a product that people wanted to share and talk about, which is why Tim Ferriss started talking about you. And it started to spread and at that point it's got a life of its own. Am I missing anything or misrepresenting it or was it a good product with good marketing and good connections that, that put it all together.

That is it in a nutshell. And to start the company, we had to build our own technology platform because we do something called lifetime commissions, where once somebody sells a product of ours, they get paid for life every time that customer that they referred purchases from us again. So it's a very unique model, not done on cookies or anything. It's legitimately tied into all orders. So that inventory. Joel and I started the company on a million dollars we put into, but that's money that we'd accumulated from other companies. And so we spent a million dollars to start BioTrust. Fingers crossed. Putting our best foot forward. And that's how we kicked it off.

And was the first product that protein powder then?

Yes.

An all natural protein powder. And it's an important product because anyone interested in fitness should be getting enough protein. And most protein powders out there. We solve a problem with them because they're full of growth hormones and antibiotics from cows and artificial colors and sweeteners and flavors. And so people think they're taking a healthy protein product, but in fact they're taking a product that erodes their health and can cause problems. So we saw a problem in the marketplace, we provided an all natural solution and that's really what entrepreneurship is about, is finding these problems and creating solutions.

You're speaking my language on that point. But you have this massive success out of the gate. I know you probably then have. You've now got an inventory hurdle that you've got to clear because you are selling. You've got a great sales message, you've got people promoting you. You've not sold physical products since your, your brain supplement. You've been in the ebook world. So you don't have infinite scalability because you've got inventory that you've got to clear. Plus, I know you rolled out a whole series of of products that got you to that hundred million dollar point in year one. Like this had to be a messy operation. You speak so eloquently and you sound so calm, but I imagine like I'd be freaking the heck out. So what was really going on while you were scaling this to $100 million year one?

Yeah. So the first 12 months we did 100 million. Now, luckily, I had had a decade of entrepreneurship before and I had grown like the brain supplement company and ran into logistical problems and customer service overwhelm and supply chain issues. So I wasn't going into this complete rookie. Luckily, one of the lessons I'd learned in a previous business was that when you build a company and before you launch, you should build it to scale, to scale quickly and expect. It's always great to err on the side of being optimistic in the number of sales that you're going to achieve. With all that said, when we launched BioTrust, there was still a moment where Joel and I looked at each other and just basically said, oh shit. Because. Because when you've got a tiger by the tail, it takes a great deal of sleepless nights to get it under control. So to answer some of your questions, here's an example. We started off with maybe 10 customer service reps. We now have probably 130 or 140 customer service reps. But we had to scale extremely quickly in customer service because if you don't treat your customers right, you start getting all these negative feedback online. And in a day and age of Facebook and social media. You can put a company out of business before they even start. So I knew that. So we ramped up customer service, first and foremost, right away. And we didn't have a centrally located facility. So all of our employees at the time we started BioTrust were virtual. Joel lived in Tampa, I live in Austin. Everyone we were hiring all over the country was working virtual.

Our customer service reps were working from home. So we did that because we wanted to get the best people and I didn't care about where they were geographically. I wanted the best people and a lot of people wouldn't move. So we decided to start a virtual company. But yes, we luckily went with manufacturers, top tier manufacturers, and we said, if this is a success, can we quickly turn on the spigot, so to speak, and start replicating our product in mass production? And we already had that planned out prior to launch. If we did, we would have been in big trouble with raw materials. So we had all those lined up, but basically with a skeleton crew. I always say in entrepreneurship you should test before you invest. I've seen so many entrepreneurs go out there and spend their life savings before they even know if they can sell a product. So we tested on a smaller level. It took off. I immediately went to work knowing that we had to hire an amazing team. And my number one tip for hiring your team as you grow is you always have to hire people who have already done what you want to do. So I'll say that again because it's the most important hiring tip. In the past, I would hire people that I thought to get us there. I'd never done it before, maybe I could teach them. And I was doing it all wrong. You have to hire people who have already done what you want to do.

Would you give me an example there of who you would hire that had done the result that you wanted? Like, in what aspect is that relevant?

Sure. So we wanted to build a very large company that would have a big impact on the world and would help us do our charitable missions and supply all natural, healthy products to people. So I went out. Prime example is.

I went on LinkedIn and we needed help with formulations of our products. We needed a chief science officer who could formulate these amazing products for us. Through the news, I had seen that Diamond Ties is a protein company, the big 300 million dollar supplement company that sells protein powders. They were acquired by Post, who makes Post Raisin brands, a multi billion dollar food company. Whenever there's disruption at a company, I always know that there's a lot going on and it's the prime time to try to recruit some of their top talent. And so Sean, our chief science officer, Sean Wells is an amazing formulator, probably the best in the industry. The most credentials, just an amazing guy, hard worker. He lives in Dallas. I contacted him through LinkedIn and said, hey, we've got a tiger by the tail. This company has just started off, you know, We've already done $30 million our first quarter.

And I wrote him basically a mini sales letter on why he should leave his company and come to work for BioTrust. And the thing that a lot of young entrepreneurs don't realize is that you have a valuable asset, even if you don't have a lot of cash, and that's equity in your company. And so what we decided to do is that we would give 10% of the equity in BioTrust to our top executive team to recruit them. To recruit them. And so when you go out and someone's working at a big corporation. Oh, and here's the key with Sean, I don't think he minds me sharing this. I said, when Diamond Ties sold the Post for three or four hundred million dollars, you created a lot of these products. How much money did you get? And Sean just looked at me and smiled because he knew where I was going with this. He had no equity in the company. Company. They gave him a pat on the back. He had slaved away and created these amazing products. The entrepreneurs made a fortune and Sean got a pat on the back. So after that, I gave him some equity in the company to come over, gave him a nice salary. But I proceeded to replicate that for each position in the company. Finding the best people in the industry, showing them that we were taking off in sales and doing amazing things in our charitable mission. A lot of people in corporate America feel taken advantage of. They feel like they're not appreciated. And if you talk to someone and appreciate them, give them equity in your company. Again, 10% we distributed among the top executives. And it has to vest over time. It's a four year vesting schedule, which just means you get a portion of that equity every year for four years until you hit 100% to keep people motivated and with your company before you just give them equity. And that's how I did it through LinkedIn networking, finding the best people in the industry. And I spent the first six months to a year when I knew BioTrust was taking off. Where Joel was focusing on marketing, I was focusing on building the executive team. And what I learned with executives, that when you hire a great person in the interview process. I would say, okay, we bring you in at the top of your department. Let's just say product development. Who do you need below you to run the company? And who in your mind would be great people in the industry that meet our ethics, have our same culture fit, and that's who you would want to bring in. And so once you hire a top executive in a department, usually if you hire well, they have a Rolodex of people that they can come in and instantly fill in all the positions within their department. If they can't. I learned that some people during the interview process didn't have that skill set or didn't have that network. We wouldn't hire them. So I hired Sean for product formulation. I hired a guy named Bert who was our COO and he was in charge of North American operations for Amazon. So imagine this a few years ago, I'm selling ebooks with three employees. Fast forward a few years and I'm hiring the COO for North American operations who used to work for Amazon. And the reason was, is because he had left Amazon, went to another company.

And in his particular situation he has children and Amazon was having him run all over the country and never got to spend time with his family. So I offered him about a quarter of the salary he was making, but I gave him equity in the company. Joel and I did. And he was willing to leave a super high paying job because lifestyle was more important to him.

So I want to ask you something, Josh, because yeah, it sounds like you're getting some real rock stars to come work for you and you're doing it pretty early. Why were you doing it so aggressively and what type of capital did it require? Or was it coming out of the profits that were already coming from the sales that were coming in?

We did it so aggressively because we knew, keep saying the phrase, we had a tiger by the tail. We knew that this was taking off and we knew we'd only scratch the surface on scaling. And so I knew we had to get in top talent because I knew we were going to over $100 million in revenue. And the writing was on the wall. We took to hire these amazing people, these A players. We already had profitability in the company. So one of the mistakes I made earlier in my career was that whenever I was profitable, I tried to do too much work and I didn't want to hire people and I was, I was being cheap on hiring. It's much better. Let's just say if you're making $300,000 a year, and you want to scale a company, and that's your profits, it's much better to make 100,000 and use 200,000 of that to hire amazing talent that can grow your company, because you can't do it all. And in the old days, I tried to do it all. I was working 80 hours a week, and I was my own worst enemy. I kept smashing my head against the ceiling because there was not enough hours in the day. So what you do is you take profits from the company, and instead of taking them for yourself, you live a more modest lifestyle and you invest in your idea and your talent.

Your idea and your team. Once that idea has been tested and shown that, it's going to take off.

So I got to ask this because so many entrepreneurs that I know are really just cash flow flow entrepreneurs, and that's fine, but as a result, they never make that big transition. Was it hard for you to do that coming from a world where you were used to taking lots of profits off the table, but now you have overhead, you've got inventory, you've got a bunch of customer service people. Before, you had an ebook business with three employees doing a few million bucks. So was that a challenge for you to make that type of a. Of piece pivot and to make. To not take profits off the table and instead just put it back into more overhead? I know for a lot of entrepreneurs, that creates sleepless nights and less freedom and that scares them from doing something truly sustainable and scalable.

Yes. And I did that. I didn't do that for 10 years. And I finally. I'm a slow learner. I finally just looked at myself and said, I'm working 80 hours a week. I'm making a really good salary, but I'm not making the impact on the world that I could. So to give you an example, recently I had my CPA. I said, take the last 15 years of my life, if you would, and show the income that I made each year personally and put it on a graph. And my CPA did that. And each couple years, would there be a large jump in the amount of profit that I was making as an entrepreneur individually? It's because I learned a key lesson. And the biggest jump on that whole grid was when I learned how to hire people and invest in talent instead of trying to do it on my own. And sure, you're going to have a dip in your income for a period of time, but if you do it the right way, then.

What am I trying to say?

Exponentially.

Exponentially grows. And that's what happened with BioTrust. We could have been a small, we could have maintained a very small company, a few million dollars a year. But I knew that there was that exponential growth potential and I had to. Joe and I both had to sacrifice, not take the profits and reinvest into the company and top talent. And that's what we did. We just plowed all profits into the company instead of taking it for ourselves for quite a bit of time. But in the end, you end up with.

A platform, with a company that can truly grow.

It seems to me that the first skill that you really had to master was the copy piece, the marketing piece, the creating the sales message piece. And then the second one was developing that rockstar team. And that was probably a new set of skills that you had to learn. So my, my first question is, would you agree that those were your, your top two skills? And number two, how do you go about learning the hiring piece? Because that sounds like an even more expensive lesson to learn than. It's obviously more expensive than learning copy. You can't just throw things at people and give them equity and expect it to go well. So how did you develop that muscle?

Most people, most entrepreneurs I don't think are good. They should not be recruiting and hiring. Maybe they should be recruiting, but not necessarily hiring. Because I think a lot of entrepreneurs have blinders on and they don't necessarily know how to hire. And I spend a great deal of time reading books and consulting with hiring experts. Some entrepreneurs just don't have the time or the desire to do that. And they should hire great recruiters and HR staff to hire. I read a book called Top Grading by Brad Smart. It's an amazing book. And I also read the book by his son, last name Smart, and I forget his first name, but it's even a better book. And I really got into.

How to spot talent, how to recruit talent, how to hire them.

Really just some quick tips on hiring. You've got to spend some time on it. But one of the most important aspects to hiring, I used to find people who had done some cool things and think, man, this individual has a lot of talent and I think I can help mold them into a rock star. But what I learned is that the best indicator of future success is past performance. So I started hiring only people who had done amazing things and were rock stars at what they've done in the past. No matter what it was, they were just the best at that. They were overachievers and they were self Motivated. So when you get into books like Top Grading by Brad Smart, the underlying message that he has you go through is to go through someone's history and you kind of map it out. And if they have.

If they have a story of being successful at everything they do, and maybe not initially, but they work their way into success, those are the types of people that you want to hire. And it seems so simple, but it really takes a skill to spot those people. And someone who's hiring should have a good BS meter because unfortunately, some people are great talkers when you interview them, but they're not great doers. And the other tip I would give for hiring, more important than what the person says that you're interviewing is what other people say about them that have worked with them and for them in the past. So instead of interviewing my COO only, I would actually interview people that he has reported to in the past, employees that had worked alongside of him and not only the ones that he gives as referrals. I mean, this was important to me. I was networking. I would ask about people and do my detective work behind the scenes. And what people say about someone and their work ethic and their abilities is so much more important than the actual hire. So a lot of people spend 10, 20, 30 hours interviewing an individual and never really talk to the other people that work with them and alongside them. And I think that is key. And so I was able to find out a lot of information and weed out the stars from the talkers.

So I want to just go right for the jugular on this one. Josh, you did $100 million your first 12 months. What was the overall business strategy for getting there? Meaning where was your traffic coming from? How were you making those numbers make sense? I mean, that is an unfathomable amount of sales for most people. I can hear $100 million in three years or five years, but how in the world do you scale to 100 million? What was the overall strategy in those first 12 months?

Well.

It'S a big question, but the overall strategy is to.

We have these built in channel with all of our affiliates that trusted us and knew us and thankfully promoted our products. Then when you get those customers, you treat them like gold and you build a relationship with them and you do what you say you're going to do and you provide a great product or a great service and then you offer those people more products, that complementary companion products. So we had a lot of new customers coming in the door and we quickly went to work developing other products for Example, someone buys a protein powder. Well, we also came out with protein packed cookies. We also came out with protein packed nutrition bars. We came out with a top quality fish oil product because. Because a lot of fish oils have heavy metal contamination that people don't realize in the industry. And so we came out with a pure form and were able to educate our customers on why it's the best. And we sold a fish oil and then we came out with a probiotic because most people don't even realize what a probiotic is and why it's important. So through education, through our daily newsletter and health tips and our video sales letters, we're able to show people why a lot of products out there are cutting corners and taking advantage of consumers and why we do it the right way. So the short answer is we made available more high quality products to the customers coming in. That increases the lifetime value of the customer. And once you build that trust, they don't want to just buy their protein powder from you. They want to buy their fish oil, their probiotics, their vitamins, minerals. They want to buy more of these products. And so trust is really important to build with your audience, your customers. And that's why we put the name, the word trust in the name of the company. Right from the beginning, that was our objective. So to build a company, you've got to open up new distribution channels. So we had to go outside of our affiliate pool, which is somewhat limited after a period of time. And we had to go out and we started buying media on Google, for example, and we're starting to do more of that now on Facebook. And so once you have a proven formula in one channel, you just take that same formula and you go into other channels. Affiliates is the easiest one to start with. And then you move into the Facebooks and the Googles and buying ads and sponsoring newsletters and various other online marketing channels.

So, Josh, you have made 0 to 100 million sound really, really easy. And once again, you come across as very calculated and calm, which is actually a trait that I see among some of my most successful mentors and contacts and mastermind partners. So let's flip this on his head for a second. What was the most expensive mistake that you made on your way, way to the top of taking BioTrust to a leader in the industry.

Most expensive mistake? I would.

Well, a lot of the mistakes. Now, I don't want this to sound easy. Building a $100 million plus company is like taking years off your life.

It's stressful. Thankfully, I made a Lot of these mistakes before biotransmitters. So one of the big mistakes I made in the past is I scaled a company.

In the beginning. I was a beginning entrepreneur and it started to scale. Not like BioTrust, but it started to take off and I didn't have the customer service in place. So instead of having maybe 30 reps, I only had 10. And.

Customers would call in and it would say something like the recording would say something like you have a two hour wait time. And that caused a lot of problems and it was hard to ramp up. So right in the middle, when you're scaling, if you don't have an infrastructure in place with customer service and operations and shipping, you're in a lot of trouble. So that caused a large amount of challenges. Back in the early days and the early 2000s, those are the biggest mistakes I made is just not having the infrastructure in place, not knowing how to hire and not knowing how to scale. And then when something takes off, you're in a world of hurt. And that was sleepless nights. That was losses of lots of money. That was very painful years pre BioTrust. With BioTrust, I think the best advice I can give to anyone is the technology platform that you start off on is critically important because if you don't start a company with great technology platform in the online world, you will soon outgrow it and then the wheels will start coming off the wagon and you'll have to over hire in your technology staff. You'll have to do a platform transition while your company is growing and trying to expand on sales is very challenging and expensive and you have to slow growth. So for any entrepreneur out there that has something that's really starting to take off or they even want to start any type of company online, you've got to spend a lot of time researching a technology platform that's easy and nimble, where you can change it and the code is solid and it's not super expensive to maintain because that will just kill you later on.

I want to ask you briefly about the team you had on the ebook company. I know you said that it was a small team, like a three person team. What did that look like? Who were the important people that you needed there to get to that multimillion dollar point in that first business?

Okay, so I did all the marketing, then I sent out the newsletters, I wrote all the copy, I did work with lawyers, I developed the actual products. That's when I was working 80 plus hours a week and about ready to pull my hair out and quite frankly, there's times in my entrepreneurial career when I was having anxiety attacks and couldn't sleep at night and.

I went to one of the top brain doctors in the country because I was having trouble focusing and they did brain scans and he said my brain looked like someone who just got back from the Iraq war.

So entrepreneurship over time can be a grind and it can be bruised and that's why I'm so excited to share my screw ups and the lessons I've learned with other entrepreneurs because it can be very challenging and I want to save that brain damage to people. Luckily, since then I'm healthy, I'm back on track. But a lot of entrepreneurs who've gone through heavy growth cycles know that it takes its toll on your health and mental well being at times. But to answer your question.

I did all the marketing. I had an operations person who handled all the operations, I had a tech person who handled all the tech and.

The website building and then I outsourced everything else. Shipping was outsourced, accounting was outsourced. I did have a couple customer service reps.

That worked for me. So it was basically a few customer service reps, a technology person and an operations person and me. That was. That was it.

Final question for you. You made the decision to grow BioTrust virtually and to have a virtual company. It seems.

Well, it seems like quite a feat to grow a virtual company to the level that you've grown. How have you been able to do that? And how would you say that you've had to do it different, differently than someone who's working with an office? Because that is a challenge. A question that I've never heard anyone deal with before of I want to have a multinational corporation, but I want to do it virtually while protecting my freedom. So how did you go about doing that?

Well, I've had offices in the past and I had all of my team members.

Under the same roof and it's very advantageous as you grow to be able to look people in the eyes and have team meetings with everyone. And this time around it just didn't work because the executives that I hired, we all didn't want to relocate to the same place, so we had to be virtual out of necessity. I don't necessarily think when you're scaling a large company, it's the best plan of action. We just did it because my business partner Joel didn't want to move, I didn't want to move, our COO didn't want to move, you know, etc, etc right down the line. So I Wouldn't necessarily recommend it. For smaller companies, lifestyle companies, it's fine. For larger companies, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. So at this point in time, we've half of our team members are in Golden, Colorado, actually like 50ft from where I first started, next to the EAS building. Funny enough, we have a building right next, so it goes four circle. And the other half of our employees are virtual. It's caused some problems. Just to be straightforward, it's not having everyone together in one place. We do a lot of gotomeetings, we do a lot of FaceTime chats. We have to have our project management software keyed in, and it takes a lot of logistics. The good thing about a virtual company is you can't be fooled that sort of someone's getting something done. Because in a virtual company, we track everything and we can really see if people are making progress or not. In my old companies, let's just say I had a team member named Bob. Bob would always be running around. He always looked busy. And then you find out later, Bob really hasn't got anything done. In a virtual company, if you're tracking it correctly, you can really track what everyone's doing.

That's really interesting.

So we're in a stage now where we're trying to consolidate more. And I would recommend people to consolidate more. Even if you're doing virtually, if you can do everyone virtual in the same town. Because at some point in the growth phase, probably going to have to bring people together more often.

Well, Josh, this has been immensely valuable. The idea of taking an Internet company to 100 million, making that transition from cash flow to enormous business, building the team that changes lives and contributes to the world. I, I man, you are just, I think, a golden example of, of what I think entrepreneurs need to think about and what they need to focus on, of solving problems, of reinvesting into causes bigger than themselves, and that is how they're rewarded. Much bigger than, you know, they could ever dream or expect. So thank you for sharing your knowledge with us and thanks for hanging out with us here on the show.

You bet. You bet. Ryan. One other thing, if I could leave on a parting note, something I didn't mention is right from the beginning, we started a charitable mission with BioTrust. And I think it's made all the difference in the world with hiring people. People want to work for a company that does good in the world. They want to buy from a company that does good in the world. And right from the beginning on our order page at BioTrust, we said do you want to donate one, five or ten dollars to the Make a Wish Foundation? And through all the and we'll match whatever contribution you give. That increased our order conversions, our sales conversions on all of our order pages by 5%. When you're dealing with big numbers, that's a huge impact.

Yeah.

And by matching that over the last three and a half years in business at BioTrust we've raised and donated over a million dollars to the Make a Wish Foundation. And just last week we did a wish here in Austin where a boy with cancer who's wheelchair bounded. His wish was to get a wheelchair accessible tree House. So BioTrust built that for him and it was on the news here. And it's great for the team, it's great for the kids. And so getting a charitable mission involved right from the beginning is really important because then you're not only doing it for yourself, but you're doing it for something bigger than yourself. And it can help with the self sabotage that a lot of entrepreneurs tend to have. When you grow up a poor kid in Iowa like I did.

You start making decent revenue, you start sometimes to have guilt about it for some strange reason, but it's true. And so if you can help people along the way, it really helps everyone. It's a win win. And we also feed a hungry child for every meal or for every order that's placed in the biotrust through no Kid Hungry our partners. And we've done over 1.8 million meals for kids in the US as well. So parting point is when you start these companies, tie it in to do something great, your employees will love it, your customers will love it, charities will benefit and you're not just in it for yourself. And it's a really cool thing to do.

Yeah, I have dealt with that guilt that comes with success. And it wasn't until I got out of just trying to extract as much as possible and trying to create more value to make the pie bigger, to give back out of abundance that I really felt fulfilled and really felt like I could grow. So thank you for making that point. Josh. This has been a pleasure. I learned a lot. I know the fast laners are really going to get out of this. Thanks so much for sharing this. Keep on changing the world and I really appreciate you.

I appreciate what you're doing, Ryan. It's awesome. So keep it up.

Hey, I hope you enjoyed today's show with Josh Bazzoni. It was enlightening for me. I've grown a company to 10 million. I've never gotten to 100 million. I'm on my way though. So that's the next level for me. I would love to hear your thoughts on today's show. If you go over to freedomfastlane.com leave us a comment in the show notes for this episode. It would really help me out because I know this is really high level stuff. If you are just starting out or you haven't yet crossed the million dollar mark, if you're still looking for that first million dollar business, that's my sweet spot. I can help you with that process. At freedomfastlane.com million we do a free training. We'll show you my process of what I have done and what a lot of my students have done in order to build million dollar business businesses. This is repeatable. It's a proven model. I have done it several times. My students have done it hundreds of times. I'd highly encourage you to go over to freedomfastlane.com million and sign up for one of our free trainings where we can show you the process and the outline to build one of these businesses. I'm no Josh Bazzoni. I've never gotten to $100 million, but I can show and I have shown thousands of people how to go from zero to a million dollars within 12 months. How to have your first million dollar business. Because at the million dollar point, you have a proven sales process, you have a proven product, you have a sellable business and that's where all the real action starts. So I can show you how to do that again. I'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show. If you go over and leave a comment at the show notes page@freedomfastlane.com it really helped me out because this was really, really fun for me. And if you want more of this kind of stuff, I want to hear about it. As always, I appreciate you. I appreciate you listening to Freedom Fast Lane and subscribing on itunes and I will see you on the next episode.