Zero To $10M In 18 Months Case Study With Lori Taylor

Foreigners. Ryan, Daniel Moran here. Welcome to Freedom Fast Lane. Today I'm going to be joined by my friend Lori Taylor. Lori recently took a business from 0 to between 7 and 8 million in about 14 months. She's now on track to hit about $10 million later this year. So really we're going through how she went from 010 million in about a year and a half. Now Lori has physical products that she sells and they are listed on Amazon.com but she focuses all of her marketing off of Amazon. So she drives cold traffic to video sales letters and she's in a very, very competitive market. So Lori comes on and she deconstructs her model for how she gets a boatload of customers, how she acquired a business to promote one of her new businesses and what the scale up plan to go from her first 50,000amonth to then several hundred thousand dollars a month and beyond. This is a really interesting case study because Lori has a different background than many of you who listen to Freedom Fast Lane. So she incorporates some old school marketing tactics into her physical products business and that's how she's been able to scale up so quickly. She also just got a TV show deal with Kevin Harrington from Shark Tank. It's going to be airing on CNBC later this year and she talks a little bit about her show here on this episode. You're really going to enjoy this one if you are starting a business or scaling a business and you want to go bigger and grow faster. So enjoy this chat with Lori Taylor.

Lori Taylor, welcome to Freedom Fast Lane.

Hey Ryan, I'm so excited to finally be on here. I love what you're doing. This show's amazing. I knew you'd do it. I knew you'd do it.

I appreciate it. Lori knew me before I was a, you know, a mediocre somebody.

Before you slept your way to the middle. I'm just kidding. You're doing so great, Ryan.

Well, thanks, Lori.

Of how we met, by the way. I don't know if you want me to share it, but I do love the way that you came into the war room and you were just honest with, hey, I don't know that this is what I want to do. And I could just see that white light coming from you. I always call you one of the white lighters. That was like, man, he's going to take this business, this digital marketing that was like what, seven years ago or six years ago and he's actually going to use it for good. Like he's going to use the power he hasn't quite figured out how yet, but this kid, and you were a kid to me, I'm like, he's gonna do this.

Well, I was like 13 at the time, so I was still in elementary school at the time. Yeah, you knew me when I was still kind of finding my way. But I've got to send congratulations to you on the new show on cnbc. Congratulations.

Thank you. I'm super excited. It's show with Kevin Harrington, who, as you might, you know, is one of the. There was the first shark on Shark Tank and he was the inventor of the infomercial. And he's you older than me, but close to my age. And we speak the same language of how to monetize the message and direct response. So it's kind of fun doing new school with an old school guy. I love it.

We'll go into the show a little bit later, but first, I kind of want to deconstruct your business and your business model because you sell a physical product and you do it differently than my audience is familiar with. And you went into a super competitive space, a really big industry. You didn't try to niche it down and you went, you know, straight for the gusto, if you will. And I want to break that down. So would you tell us a little bit about your business, how it got started, and really how you've become a player in the industry, in a big industry.

Yeah, I will. So, as you know, Ryan, I'm a massive animal lover. So super passionate. I have six horses, three dogs, three cats. You know, I mean, it goes on and on.

And like 10 kids.

I'm 18. If you add up the four legged animals, you know, it's crazy.

Your house is a zoo.

It is, it is. And the animals are the easiest. The four legged ones are the easiest. But no, it's something I'm super passionate about. And it was one of those things where, you know, I show jump, my daughter show jumps. We just are really hyper focused on animal nutrition because we are, you know, on animals that are taking us to three and four foot fences and saying, hey, can you make sure that you get us over the fence? So we've always been hypersensitive to nutrition. But what happened was, is that my Great Dane love of my life, Truman, just the love of my life. When my husband and I got divorced, I literally had to give him a bulletin board off the wall. I swore I wouldn't fight over anything, but when it came to Truman, I looked at him and he looked me in the eye and he was like, yeah, that's your dog. I'm like, yeah, that's my dog. There was no splitting the dog. So he was with me through. And one day he woke up with a limp, like, literally. I thought nothing of it. He was young. I took him to the vet. Long story short, he had a carcinoma in his leg. Unfortunately, it was on his front leg. And interestingly enough, 80% of Great Danes carry their weight on their front legs. So the vet basically gave me the option of killing him slowly with chemo, which basically is what he said. This will prolong his life. He'll just be really sick like you would, or removing his front leg. So we decided to go ahead, remove his front leg and try it. I was working with an animal communicator, which I won't go into, but it worked for me. And in constant communication with how he was doing. And lo and behold, this magnificent animal figured out how to. I mean, it was a Great Dane on three legs. Yeah, I wish I had YouTube and a video back then when that was going on, but I don't have enough video of him then. I didn't have an iPhone, but he was on. We called him a tripod because he'd be running at you. And he just didn't have really good breaks, but he could really get around. And he ended up getting a bone spur and passing away six months later. So he didn't die of the cancer. We got lucky because it didn't spread to the rest of his body. But here's the thing, Ryan. When I found out he had cancer, I had never thought about canine cancer before because I'd never experienced it. What I found is more and more people are talking about it now, but then it wasn't a big top of conversation message out there. It just wasn't. And what I looked into is I found out. And the reason I'm telling you this right now, and I'm asking your listeners to hear this part of this is because story sells the soap. So when we get to the number part of what I did, and they're going to be like, how did that happen? Because the story I'm telling you right now to my quote unquote avatar, Grandma Jo, she has a name, absolutely matters. This story matters. And if you've ever lost a dog to cancer, you are on every one of my words right now because you've been there and you did it right. So what happened was I found out that. And this is super short.

Most people don't know this, but I Don't know if you do. Did you know that your dog's four more times likely to die breast cancer than you are? 8 times more likely to die of bone cancer than you are. And the one that really got me, that opened my eyes and actually pissed me off, Hope I can say that on here. Pissed me off.

Is that we've had Grant Cardone on the show. You can say whatever you want.

Oh, good. I know someone said Gary Vee on the F word, and I took great exception to that. I mean, I would like to take Gary Vee on. On an F bomb. Appropriate conversation.

You can say whatever you want, Lori.

So, you know, it really pissed me off when I found out that your dog is 35 times more likely to die of skin cancer than you are. They have fur, they don't smoke, they don't drink, they don't do all the things that they accuse us of doing of causing cancer. Right. They don't do any of it. So I really dug into that. And what it boils down to is your skin is the first part of your body to break down when you're being poisoned by chemicals, et cetera. And I'm not going to go into the science of any of this. Just know that there are tons of statistics and tons of science to back up the fact that the food in your dog's commercial dog food, no matter how expensive it is in the grocery store, literally has very little to no nutritional value for your dog at all. In fact, it was pretty much created because all the human companies that were producing food and everything as a byproduct, they took. They were having to throw stuff away. So they said, hey, let's create kibble. And I won't go into it, but just know there's a huge story there. And that's what I did. I told a story to people that wanted to hear about that story.

So from my business model perspective was I went out and did all the research and then found a easy way to take important little pieces like, say, premium dog food and crappy dog food don't have to be any different by FDA regulations. It literally says that they can be the same. They literally say that the FDA literally has on their site that rat poison can be in your dog's food. It goes on and on, right? This stuff. And people just didn't know because who wanted to tell that message? No one that had any money. I mean, all these huge advertisers have $50 million a year to spend on advertising. So why are they going to open the kimono to this. Right? So I did. I said, you know what? I'm going to leverage the power of social media. How I know how to do it. And I'm going to be disruptive by using ads and I'm going to ask people questions. Because maybe I was the only one that didn't know. Maybe I was the only moron. I didn't think so. Pretty smart girl, but I thought. So I started asking questions through ads. Is your dog's breath killing him? You know, And I went into a solution of dental products and dental diseases. And we can talk about why I did that. Because I started with dog food. I started with the conversation was, is your dog's food killing him? Ryan? I had a 42 minute video. You're on Facebook, minding your own business. An ad pops up. You click from the ad and you watch a 42 minute video. Not highly produced, black and white. People watched it.

Old school video, sales letter. But people actually watched it.

People actually watched it. Now we had a bunch of people, whiny baby, saying it was too long. It was funny, was other people jumped on them and said, well, if you're not willing to invest 42 minutes into your dog's life, you shouldn't be watching this. And I love watching that happen. Right?

Amazing.

Yeah, yeah. But let me tell you, the problem with, and this is what's really important for people listening right now is I really was passionate about the food. It's a raw dog food. It does kind of niche into the space a bit because it is more expensive. Only certain sized dogs, blah, blah, blah. Right. What happened was, and I'm going to really give Perry Belcher credit for this, is it was getting there like I was doing my first month. I did like $50,000 in dog foods just from Facebook ads. I don't think anyone would think that's embarrassing. But at the end of the day, I was just, I did 60,000 the next month. Do you see what I'm saying? Because it was a little bit more of an invasive thing to do. Hey, Ryan, I know you don't know me. And you just clicked on an ad and now you're in this ugly limelight funnel because I don't want you to get distracted at my pretty sight. So, yeah, start feeding your precious baby my food. And you don't have any idea who I am. Right. People are like, oh, so, you know, we had to do retargeting and things like that to make that happen. But what we did was we also had another product that I thought was equally important, that had more mass appeal. And that's what I want everyone to hear me, is my avatar's the same. But the product which attracted. I was using to attract them was a very specific product. And you could have come to my video and watched it, Ryan, but if you had three Great Dane dogs, I'm pretty much asking you to spend fifteen hundred dollars a month on your dog's food, right? That's a big ask. So I thought I got to be able to have the same conversation, help dogs and not make it just for the quote unquote rich big dog people or small dog people. Right? So we opened up our offering. And one more thing. The other thing that was happening is people were, like, getting really upset, like I was scaring them, right. I didn't mean to. They were like, oh, my gosh. They wanted to do the solution, and they couldn't afford it. And that made me sick to my stomach. So, you know me, I'm a giver. So I was like, okay, I've got to be able to give these guys some other choices. So what I did was I flipped the message around, and that's what everyone needs to hear, is just. Because what you're starting with, it's getting somewhere, but you've got to be able to be dynamic and change and evolve with what's happening. Right? So I offered the dental spray, and my headline was very simple. Is your dog's bad breath killing them? Because the truth is, it is. The number one sign of gum disease is bad breath. Three out of four dogs have gum disease by age 3. By age 8, it's irreversible. And every vet in America says the number one way to help prevent dental disease is to do daily dental care, period. So we came up with a dental spray. We worked with some human formulators, put it together. You actually could use it on your teeth, although I didn't say that out loud. Fda. But it is all human. It's all that homeopathic. And, Ryan, I'm telling you, it changed my business. And Perry Belcher is a big part of it. He said, you need to have a product that solves more people's problems that can afford it. I opened this up, and all of a sudden we went from doing 50, $60,000 a month to now we're at a run rate at $7.2 million, you know, and get. And slowly getting up. We'll be at $10 million next month.

What was the time frame on that?

14 months.

That's awesome. So I Just want to decompress the model. So I understand it. So you were sending Facebook ads to a video sales letter that was selling a really expensive dog food, but it was an educational video. So Facebook was cool with it. And you realized that that was cool. You guys were growing. You're doing 50, 60,000, but you weren't having that hockey stick growth that you wanted. So you took a page out of Perry Belcher's book and you released kind of a more mass market product, which was the tooth product, the dental care product. And then you sold that via retargeting to the people who couldn't necessarily afford the first product. And that's when you really started to explode.

And it is. And the thing I wanted to offer out is that we really came up with the dental spray kind of as a quote unquote trip wire. Now it was a. You know, we sold it for as little as $9.99. But the way we did it was when they started in there, you. Because we couldn't get it at 7, but we got it to 999. And then we did the upsell funnels. Right. Because that's so important. More of the same. And we ended up with an average order value of $68.

Good.

So just so people know that really that tripwire model with a physical product can really work if it makes sense for where you're going. Right. If it's high. I mean, just selling a dog collar may not get me a health conscious person. Does that make sense? But a dental spray, Absolutely. Think what it did. Someone who cared enough about their dog in the middle of a Facebook exchange of looking at people's baby photos or whatever Grandma Jo's doing on there, it's not what you and I are doing. Right. Something totally different. That I interrupted her day and she was willing despite. Despite all the voices in her head saying this is a scam, they're gonna get you go ahead and buy it. Because it was that important to her to help her dog. And then we treated her. Right. We send it in branded boxes. We do letters, we. We do old school. We do phone calls. We treat her. And her preferred method of communication, which by the way, is not email. And that's one more thing, if you don't mind if I add, is that if you go do what I'm doing right now, this is the most important thing, I'll say this whole podcast, I know it is. If you're listening right now and you think, oh my gosh, I'm an idiot. I need to do what she did. I'm an idiot. I'm going to go run Facebook ads tomorrow, which I hope someone does, right? I hope someone just takes action. Know this, just because you brought someone on from Facebook has nothing to do with email. Nothing. I have over a hundred thousand customers now. I have over a 30% open rate on my emails and I still do a healthy. I wish I had that exact stat for you. I hate that I don't. 60% of my business is done over the phone. They call in and they want to talk to one of my happiness concierge to place their orders.

It kind of reminds me of when one of our students comes to us and it's like, I really want to sell this product on Amazon.com and I'm like, dude, this is a fantastic product. You have no business being on Amazon.com or doing all this marketing stuff that you would normally do on Amazon. It's just not going to apply to you. And if you were to just change the model to the audience that is already comfortable buying in another medium, you'd.

Probably do great, right? So it's like when people acquire people from ads, they think, oh, well, they were online. They love email. I don't know about you, Ryan. I know a lot of people that would never buy from an email. Like, they won't even read the emails. They just don't open them or they delete them, or they open them and delete, you know, all of that stuff. And we could talk about email list hygiene and bore ourselves to tears. We won't do that. But I'm just telling people, when you start doing email marketing and you have that is not how you acquired your customer. You know, when a JV email drop or solo email drop, you need to pay attention. Which customers were acquired via email, which ones required via an ad, which one was acquired to your point, via Amazon even, right? Because again, because a lot of people say, oh, I can't get my email to work. Your email is never going to work because Grandma Jo doesn't buy from emails. She will let you communicate with her in an email, but she is not going to buy in a large, vast number from just emails. And that's why people have to have these integrated marketing strategies. Have to have them.

Praise the Lord, Lori. Praise the lorry. We say.

Let'S switch gears here a second because once you were acquiring the customers via the ad and the video sales letter, were you then moving over to any other channels or to this day, do you still acquire most of your Customers through that same marketing channel.

Such a great question. We definitely went over to Amazon because we quickly figured out that a lot of our customers, how we knew that was on our store. We put an Amazon Buy button where they can click on it and use their Amazon account to buy. People were jumping all over that. Then we saw everyone jump on PayPal. We knew we had an older audience already. It just got really confirmed by some of these other things. We went ahead and went over to Amazon and completely immersed ourselves in all of Ezra's stuff. Ezra Firestone. I don't mind telling people I always go to whoever I think is doing the best in the market. I go do exactly what they're doing and then I go do it the way I need to do it. But I start with what they say works. I went with William Patet. He's going to be at the event I told you about the other day. But he is my Amazon guy and he helped me optimize my listings. We tell a story in there. Amazon's great for us. And here's the last part. You don't even know about this, Ryan. I saved this for my hip pocket to wow you. I won Wicked Smart finally at War Room. And I won it because there was. We started killing it in dental. And this is what happens, Ryan. And I bet you're guilty of this, or no, people have been. So you think about, okay, now I figured out how to acquire customers, right? I'm acquiring them for 15, $20. I'm getting average order value 68, lifetime value 200, whatever. All the numbers work. But you know what? Numbers work even better if you could go out and find a company that has a whole bunch of customers that would fit your model perfectly and you go buy their company. Like, it's amazing how that works. So we went out to a company. A friend of mine contacted me and said, hey, this company, Orapup. Now, if you heard of Orabrush, the human tongue cleaner thing, well, they spun off Ora Pup and they had. We had about 35,000 customers at the time. They had 100,000 customers. We did have some overlap. And they're dental. It's a dental product that you lick on the gravy off the brush to clean the dog's tongue, which helps clean their breath and clean their teeth as well. And we bought them. Here's the cool part. This transaction took place in 10 days.

From day one to me being in market on Black Friday. So over Thanksgiving, basically, I got this transaction paid for, done, uploaded and advertising emails Everything out to Orapup. People cross selling our products, selling their product, the Orapup, to our audience. And in our first month, we paid for half of what, you know, it was crazy.

That's awesome.

This is a cool part of our story. And they have this cool part they have. And so that was actually a roundabout way of answering the last part of your question was Facebook, Amazon. And I know I needed to be on YouTube. I know I'm missing the boat on YouTube, right? But I really believe, and I hope everyone hears me. Until you really get Facebook maxed out, going over to YouTube is where I think people get distracted because then they get spread a little thin. So we were really getting our make money while you sleep going thing on at Facebook, doing lots of testing there. And believe me, Facebook's a lot trickier. When you start going up to a couple hundred thousand dollars a month in spend, it gets really tricky over there because your CPAs spike around and that's a whole other show. But with YouTube, they had 30, 25 million views on their YouTube channel. They are the number one YouTube channel on the pet channel. Bigger than Preen and bigger than everything.

Now, I hate to interrupt, but I gotta ask. My guess is that this company was very poorly monetizing that audience. And you saw that as white space that you could close. And that's why you were able to pay for half the company in the first month.

That's exactly. Okay. So yes, I did a creative deal because it was a warm friend that connected me. These guys actually cared about. What happened was. And I want to say this because it's really cool, they actually were. They were ex Procter and Gamble guys. As you know, Brian, back in my history, back in my day, that was a big client of mine. And they're ex Procter and Gamble guys. They're multi billion dollar brand guys. They built up Aura brush, sold over 750,000 units, sold it to Dentac, a big company, which was their goal. But Dentac didn't want Orapup, so they hung on to Orapup as their orphan child. And this is the important part, guys. Sometimes someone else's trash is your treasure. So for them, they are the guys, the molio behind Poo Pourri. Like they did the Poo Pourri. If you've seen those ads and stuff. So they really. These are these multi billion dollar brand guys that were left with this brand that to them was three to six million dollars a year, which was not that much to them. Okay? Because it wasn't going to get any bigger because of its niche. And so what they really wanted to do was get it with the right company that could grow it and have it be great because it was kind of their baby, but it was a real distraction away from their current business. So they still were getting about 175% return on their money at YouTube, but they didn't have any bandwidth to keep it going and they were kind of just kind of letting it languish a bit. So, yeah, you hit on. Exactly. But it wasn't dying its own death. It was just kind of on an oxygen tank, you know what I mean?

It was kind of neglected. It was neglected because it wasn't a priority to the owners. Absolutely fit your business model perfectly and it could be a priority to you so you could resurrect it. So it made sense on both ends.

Yes, we stole it from a really big company that was taking a really long. One of the biggest players in the dog market, 40 billion dollar company was trying to buy them, but they were taking so long to do it that we came in and said, we'll cut you a check for this. We'll give you back in on this for this long. And you have a little bit of upside. Boom. The deal was done in 10 days and we stole it right out from underneath it. And the other company is bad, but they. But we just. You know what? We had a better story and story sells us soap every time, every situation.

Yeah. Amen. I read that. The reason that is is because stories bypass the reptilian part of the brain and basically bypass your BS meter. But we could geek out on that for another day. So you, you scaled up with Facebook ads, then you acquired a company, you rolled out a few different products to get more. More customers so you could market to those customers what else were kind of the major. The major pivot points that added a lot to the bottom line and contributed to the growth of the company.

Great question. So, I mean, all your questions are great. So I don't want to keep saying that. I feel like I'm. I love tremendous. I could use tremendous.

It's all right. I love attention and compliments, so it's okay.

Great question. You're a genius, Ryan.

So brilliant and so handsome.

Well, you are very handsome.

I appreciate it.

I just said that as if you weren't smart. You're both. You're both. That's why I'm on your show. So this is great. So this is important. I knew in my heart, I knew instantly we were outsourcing Right. Listen up, people. We were outsourcing our customer service.

Because when the company started, we figured that would just be Grandma Jo. Didn't get her shipment, didn't get her things. We were outsourcing fulfillment like so many people do. I am not suggesting you don't outsource your fulfillment. I'm suggesting you make sure you have a great fulfillment source. I am telling you that very few companies who do fulfillment do well at customer service too. So I'm telling you that there are two different companies. 99% of the time you have to have them. You can outsource customer service. You can outsource fulfillment. Nine times out of 10, they are not the same company. So you will have two vendors. We made the choice to go with one vendor. Even though I knew better. I had to do what I had to do. And their price was right for me to even test this model. Okay? We stayed with them about three or four months too long. That's on us, not on them. And what the problem was what I told you, people were calling in and when they called in, they needed someone who answered the phone to love their baby, not their dog. To love their baby who was a dog as much as Grandma Jo did. And I didn't have that. So a huge pivot point for me was December of this last year when we brought all of our customer service in house. And believe me when I tell you, I wanted to rip my hair out. It was scary. It was hard. I was double paying expenses to do the transition. We brought all of our fulfillment in house and we went to branded packages. And I want everyone to hear me on this. Okay, here's the thing, Ryan. Most entrepreneurs don't have any clue how to build a brand. Even you. If I said, Ryan, where did you learn how to build a brand? Did you go to brand class in college? Did you work with major brands for 15, 20 years? I know how old you are. I know you didn't do any of those things. Right? I know it just evolved for you and you are your own brand and it works because it just does. Okay? But I know there's not a team of scientists around you and user focus groups making this. I know it's you figuring out because you're a super smart guy for real, right? But when you're building these e commerce businesses like Ezra and team talk about a lot, people don't get what it really takes to build a brand. And it has nothing to do with tactics. It just doesn't. And it has nothing to do with just Your logo. Although let me tell you, the logo matters a hell of a lot more than people think it does. But what really matters is that everything is really.

Connected. And another pivot point for us was, and this sounds so stupid, that's why I want people to do it, was just spending that little bit of extra money to have branded boxes. I know, right? You guys are waiting for me to give you some big reveal. But the good news is most of the things I'm going to tell you, they're not big reveals because I'm not selling a class right now. Right. I'm just trying to tell people just do these simple things. So we went out, we branded our boxes. It says true dog on the sides and on the, on the other side, it says dedicated to the dogs. May their legacy be the light that changes the world. Right? Because that's what I believe. I believe through dogs we will find a cure for cancer. Their DNA is just like ours. See, people don't know about my biggest why I lost my adopted mom to leukemia. And I almost, I could cry. Almost lost my birth mom to breast cancer. So cancer is a very up close and personal thing for me. And I know that the FDA is in the way between us and a cure. I know this. You know it. We all know it. I'm sorry. We all know it. And I believe with dogs because they're property. Sorry, but it's true, they're considered property. I believe that if we could start proving a lot of the science with the food and supplements that we could actually get find a cure for cancer through canines that could end up being a cancer for your child one day. And so that's why I focus on nutrition so much. And that message that I just told you now gets transferred in every box someone opens. So maybe they just found me on Facebook and they went into my limelight funnel, not to my website yet. And now we're doing these boxes and here's the last piece. Every time I send a box out, guys, I have a letter in there that is saying it doesn't cost you anything. Come back and spend. Here's $20 gift card. Thanks for doing business. If someone spends $200 with me, you know what I do? I have Billy Bob, go throw a $3 bag of treats in with the bag. Do much new business I've gotten because people were so excited that a dog company did that.

Yeah, absolutely. And I want to highlight something you just said which is so many people miss their why in business. If you are guilty of this, a Great book on this is Start with why by Simon Sinek where he talks about we buy companies reason why, we don't buy their what. They don't buy Lori's food grade dog food. They don't buy that. They buy the big why. They don't buy the, the dental spray. Forgive me for butchering your products here, Lori, but they don't, they don't, they don't buy the dog spray. They buy the fact that the dog spray creates a longer life and she gets the connection that dog owners have with their dogs and she works on that and that long why of how this is going to lead to everyone living longer lives, us solving diseases. That's what people buy. They don't buy the what, they don't buy the how, they buy the why.

And you know what, Ryan, I love you for saying that, bringing this up because I love that I'm going to. I haven't read that book, but that's a third person that's mentioned it me. So I hear you got them going to read the book. A book I just read, which you've probably read, but scaling up. Great book, right? Well, I watched him speak at Traffic and Conversion. Vern Gary Verne, I think his name, and I'm terrible with names, but he said something to me and there I was, a master brander by anyone's sakes. You know, I've raised almost $4 billion, $5 at a time for disabled American veterans. We haven't even talked about how cool I am. Launched the Kroger loyalty card program. All of us in my prior branding life, okay, fine, worked on Crest, all these big brands, IMs even. But here's the thing. As an, as someone who I have over 20 years experience in real life, Fortune 50 branding programs. Okay, everyone hear me. I didn't have three. One thing answered about my own company. He said up there on stage that every single person should know in their space that what two or three words they own. So when someone thinks of trudog, they think boom, boom, boom. And I sat there and when he said it on stage, I went to write down what my words were. I didn't know what my words were. Ryan didn't know what my words were. And it took me and it bothered me and I thought if I don't know, my customers don't know. And it's not necessarily living longer or dogs, healthy dogs, because there's too many other companies that also live that right. So I came up with for me, it came down. I told and I love you said the why. That's what made me think of it. I couldn't come up with the words until I asked myself one question and I took a piece of paper out and I wrote why trudog? And everyone should do this why, Ryan Moran, you should just write why at the top of the paper. And then what's the three word sentence maximum? For me it was it's better. Because if you said to me why true dog? And I said it's better, you by nature, human nature, have to say, why is it better? Like, now you want to know why I think that. And I went on and this is why I say, because your dog gives everything he has to give. He has nothing in return. And all you have to do is give him the best food, the best nutrition out there that you know that can be offered. And that's true dog. And that's why Trudog, because your dog deserves better. So my words were not just it's better, it was dogs deserve better. And true dog's better. And all dogs, they do, they deserve the very best you have to offer. And right now, not everyone can afford the best. So that's why I chose better.

I'm glad you said that because I was wondering where you were going on better because. And I asked, I say that because better is not like a usp. It's not a unique marketing position. Well, we're just better than the competition. But when you frame it as dogs deserve better, now there's a why behind it, right? Just saying my product is better is a terrible, unique selling proposition. And that's what most people do. They focus on we're lower priced and we're better and you're about to go out of business. That's what those two things mean. But when you position it as dogs deserve better, now there's a why and a reason and a story behind it. So I'm glad you framed that.

Well, no, and on that, and I know you want to move on, but I just, I do want to say people, because I started with it's better, but then I knew and I skipped that part. You just filled in the gap for me. And I was like, but, yeah, but that's not it. And it was like, dogs deserve better. And then we tied it in. So it became a marketing mantra for us was know better. It's like true dog know better. Because that's what true dog is about. It's about just giving you the information so you can know more for your dog's nutrition than you know. Right? Now. And you know what, Ryan? Not everyone can afford the best. And that was my mistake of saying, well, true dogs are the best. And people are like, well, I can't afford the best. I don't have the best anything. So I was like, well, fine. Well, you can do better, though. You don't have to feed the crappiest dog food. Can't you feed a better dog food? Didn't have to be mine, but can't you do better now that you know? And most people can, Ryan. Most people can do better than they're doing right now. I know that if I worked out like Drew Canole and I just drank juices and went to the gym every day, I know what my body would look like by 5 kids, 9 million animals, a big life. So I do better than I used to do. But my best to give my best, there's an opportunity cost for that that I'm not willing to do because it takes away time from other things I want to do. Does that make sense? So, you know, that's where I ended up. But the important part is just people knowing what is your two and three words. And to your point, it's not necessarily your usp, because that's a different thing. But, like, when they think of Ryan Moran, like, what do you want them to think of? And it may not be your usp.

Right.

You know, I mean, that's just the interview. It's a really cool thing. They said, I have a pig, and he just woke up. So if everyone here is honking, sorry, but I have a pig.

By that, do you mean Steve, your husband?

Yeah, I have a live pig. That the farm animal that lives in my house and sleeps in my bed. And he's just noisy when he wakes up.

This podcast just got weird. But what I want to hear next, Lori, is. So you went from 0 to 7 million on your on pace to do 10 million in 14 months. At what point did the show come up and I asked the kind of selfishly, I've been on the brink of getting on shows several different times, has never panned out on all the major networks, and you're launching your own show. And I want to hear the story of. When did they come to you and say, we're ready to do a show for you on cnbc?

Well, I wanted to tell. It's great. I wanted to tell this story to entrepreneurs, this true dog thing. I wanted people. And I also wanted people to know how hard it was. Right. Because we're not talking about how much inventory I have to carry and all this stuff because people, oh, I want to sell $10 million on Amazon like everybody else. And I'm like, really? Do you guys know that John Gill carries $600,000 a month in inventory? And people just stare at me and start blinking because I'm like, when you're selling products, there's a lot of cost to go to it. That's what happened. And I mentioned that because I had to really figure that part of the business out. My growth was outstripping my inventory. We had to get certain terms. We have to pay 50% up front. I mean, it's very complicated when you're not selling B2B. I don'. Want to go down that rabbit hole because again, that's another show. Right? But I mean, there is something to be said for that. I went to Kevin Harrington, who is, like I said, been a product guy and everything. And we started talking about this challenge that I felt. A lot of entrepreneurs, especially inventors that have to go get their products produced in China, et cetera, were having a lot of problems with not going under just simply from their inventory constraint. And as Kevin and I started talking, this is what happened. Kevin and I have a mutual friend named Greg Reed who introduced me, Kevin. And we really hit it off. Kevin's from Cincinnati. That's where I'm at and that's where he's from. And we just hit it off. And in talking, Kevin revealed something to me super important. He was really impressed by the success of my company. He's been doing some stuff in the pet space, so he's really interested in ora pup and that. And so we were having a business conversation. And then something came up from Kevin which he won't mind me sharing.

When he was on Shark Tank, he was the first shark on Shark Tank. And when he was on there, one of the things that Kevin hated, not hated, was really. I want to use the right word that bothered him. It bothered him was that people would come on the show and it was just too early. Do you know what I mean? Like they just weren't quite ready for a shark.

I know exactly what you mean. I see it all the time.

Yeah, it was almost like they had. They couldn't think of any other way to do it. You know what I mean? I had $150,000, and that's a lot of money, a lot of people. But for what I wanted to do, it was I turned $150,000 into an almost eight figure business. But I did it one ad at a time. Most people don't know how to do that.

What happened was that Kevin said in the Shark Tank environment, great show, great format, everything, loved all that was easy. He knew that these people, there were some that walked out with a great idea, great team, great business, just too early. They didn't want to smartly didn't want to give up 75% of their company for 50 grand or whatever. That's what happens. I don't know. You watch the show, it's just like, like, God, that guy just gave up so much for so little. Right? Because they're desperate. So what Ryan, what Kevin didn't like is that he kind of felt a little heartbroken because he knew that these people, a lot of them would just fold up shop. Brian they went on Shark Tank, believe it or not. And that was their last hope. They worked hard to get on there. They get on there, they're just sure they're going to get the big hit. They don't and they fold up shop. And it's simply because they were too early. And what Kevin believed was if there was any way he could take a certain group of people that fit a certain criteria, some of the businesses should have folded up shop. That's the other thing people don't realize. Sometimes passion and purpose isn't enough. If your product and service just can't be delivered at a price in a format that people want it.

Not every business is a good business. But he said that he wished he could just put these people in a room, lock them in a room for two days, ideally three, but two days and literally just show them. Look, pull up your computer, open up Facebook. Let's come up with a headline, a USP. Let's go over here to Vidsee.com let's answer the questions, hit a button, have your video up, and let's drive traffic and let's see what people think about your product. That's just an example, right? So what Kevin want to do? And I said, kevin, we could do that. He says, what do you mean we could do that? I said, well, you've been on the Shark Tank. You've done all these things.

We could have this event. And as we were talking about this event, we started talking about how, you know, how many pet products there were, right? All these different things. And that's when he said, I said, you know, you could have a whole show based on the pet business. Because what I hate about Shark Tank and this is how Frisky Business came up. Our show for cnbc and Kevin is The one that got the show done. And he asked me to be on it. I mean, really. And one of the reasons he asked me to get on it was, and I know you've seen it in action, Ryan, is my ability on the fly to fix just about anybody's his business. I mean, I can. You sat in a room with me. And he likes that. He liked the way that I was even solution oriented. And so he said we could use that on the show. And what I told him was, what I didn't like about Shark Tank was that we didn't see. We really never. I don't know if you know this, but the episodes are about two hours long or three hours and then they just cut it down. But we don't get to see all the back and forth about why they really don't like the product, what they really would do to fix it, all those things. And what I thought would be really helpful for entrepreneurs is I'd love to watch a show where they watched me. Hugh Perry, Ryan Roland. Right. Names of people you and I know all sit around and really talk about why products not moving, what's wrong with it, what the people are doing wrong. Because I think people listen to that. 8, 9, 10 episodes of that. I think people could start fixing their own business.

Amen.

I mean, I do, I think they, they just don't know what we do to fix things so they just walk around with something crappy.

So is Frisky Business about seeing these businesses, fixing them and then deciding if you're going to invest in them or not?

Yeah. So it'll be like two companies come in and you don't really know what we're going to do. We're going to take them into like a. It's a boardroom like setting. We're going to talk about the ideas, we're going to argue. You know, I'm going to like something. I'm sure Kevin will hate it. Harrison Forbes, he's a big pet guy. He's got his own opinion. We got Jimmy on there that has these, I don't know, sold $80 million worth of these magnet glasses. He's a super smart guy and I know we'll all have a difference of opinions. And you're going to get to see that. You're going to get to why we picked a product over another product and you're going to hear about what we think is wrong with it and how to fix it. And you're going to watch us kind of fix it. It's going to be Really, a really cool mix between the restaurant and Shark Tank is a really small part of what it is. I mean, the bigger part for me was if I don't want to be on a show that doesn't tell people the truth about how hard it really is to launch a product, and that doesn't show the failures as well as the wins, I just don't want to be a part of anything that acts like. Like even my thing, right? 14 months to $10 million. But I was working on that project, doing the research, trying to raise money for a year and a half before that. Do you know what I mean? So it's like, you know, I could see me selling my company next year for $50 million, which I already have some suitors looking to do this, and me going on stage and acting like, you know, my four years to my overnight success, you know.

No one knows about all the times I was spending face planted, literally praying for answer for money, for whatever, to be able to buy more inventory to keep my business going.

Can you share when the show airs?

We're going to start filming the show in May, and then it's supposed to air in the fall, and you know how these things go. But we are going to start filming end of April, may have our sizzle reel done and have that up and going for promotion. And we're super psyched about it. It's gonna be a great show.

And I know you and Kevin are doing an event coming up together, but I don't think that has anything to do with this show. Correct.

Right. It doesn't. It was a kind of a birth, but that's kind of how this all evolved because I started talking about this, and then, you know, he's like, well, I'm already kind of doing this show, and I like what you're saying, and I think we could incorporate it. So one of the things that we came out of it was I was like, you know, circling back, you know, rewind back to the original conversation with Kevin where this all got birthed, the show and everything. I said, like, kevin, the show is one thing, right? But we can't start filming to May. We got to edit it. We got to get it up there. Why don't we just do it? Why don't we put in some ads on Facebook? Ask entrepreneurs who are facing challenges right now, who need to scale, who need to want to learn how to do direct mail, want to learn how to do some social media. Real stuff, real simple that you could actually learn in two days, make you commit to doing one of them. And we brought him in the room. Let them pitch you, right? So he's looking to invest in companies right now. Every day Kevin wants to invest in a company. That's how he's made all his money, is investing in companies. And so he's. I said, and we'll do a deal where people come, they're gonna put their applications in, maybe you'll pick them for an investment. And then let's get my. My guys like you, you know, let's get my guys. Let's get a team of four coaches, two coaches per team. And let's do like a voice, you know, like the TV show, the singing competition, the Voice meets a shark tank. So kind of like where people pitch the ideas. And then like Vinny and Bebek, two of my friends, you know, Vinny, he's built three companies to $100 million. Babak took Beachbody from 500 million to a billion. Let's put them on a team. Let's let them pick a business and watch them do it for a year. Just watch what they do. Watch the connections they pull. Watch the things they do. Listen every month as they win, as the people fail. And then let's get three other teams of equally impressive people, friends of ours, you know, and that you know, too. Let's pull them together and let's do a contest on who can build a better brand. And let's launch an event and let's make sure that everybody that comes gets something. So they either get picked to be one of the coached by one of the coaches or lucky people will businesses, one person at least will be invested in by Kevin, if not multiple people. And everybody else who was great enough to get in the room and is great enough to listen and is great enough to listen every month as we reveal everything that's going on and play along and contribute and let's build better business, better brands, and let's do this together. Like, let's just have this event. Like 50, 75 people. We're not looking to have 5,000 people in a room because that's not going to do what I want to do. I can't touch 5,000 people, right? But you give me 50 people in a room, I can help those people over a course of a year. And so that's why we decided to do this event called Zoic. And the reason we picked Zoic, which I think you'll appreciate, because I know you. You're kind of. Of people know this well, people watching, listening do. But you got a Lot of science. Like you like actual left brain stuff as much as you do right brain. And Zoic is really zero order correlation comes from that. Where at zero order correlation, it's where you have an idea but like nothing can impact it because you and I are just talking. Like you and I right now, just start talking about some weird brush we could do for horses. Nothing can impact it. We're just talking about it. So it's like where you have that right brain idea percolating and then the IQ is the left brain. So we start taking this idea you have at the zero order point and then you start adding this framework and the intelligence and the science and then the art and the science kind of evolved together and it becomes Zoic. And that's why we called it zoic, which is Z O I Q. And it's a cool event we're having in Florida. It's coming up the 10th and 11th. I asked Kevin if we could give out at least 10 more seats to your audience. If anyone heard this interview and thought, man, this is my break. This is the one I've been wanting, I needed to hear this, sign me up and we could do a really cool promotion, Ryan vip. And that's how they get access to get past the firewall to get in there and take a look at the event. We have room for 10 more people if they want to come. I invite people to take me up on this because.

What did you say the code was? Ryan vip.

Yep. Ryan vip.

All one word.

Yep, all one word.

So where do they go to enter that in?

Zoicz O I Q.com Ryan VIP. And you know, Ryan, because it's late in the game and people might have to get airfare, I'm willing to do save 500 for these 10 tickets. So if they at checkout enter, save $500, they get in for like next to nothing and that should cover their airfare to get there.

Cool. So Ryan VIP gets them past the firewall so that they can actually come to the event and then save 500 is the discount code.

Yep. And we are not doing that for many people. So I know some people are going to hear this and probably call me. I want my. It's late in the game and I just really. I know you have great people listening to the show and.

We really just want great people in the room. You know, I just want people that are there. This is a different kind of event where, hey, you've got to show up. I ask for one thing, they have to make a commitment that you come with something to offer that you're willing to give whatever it is you have to give, whether it's someone you know or somebody blueprint you have and that you come with the intent to give knowing that you're going to receive everything it is that you need to do because there's 75 other people that came to give. Do you see what I'm saying? And that's the state of mind we're going to be in where you know what, you guys, we're in this together. We can do this together. And that's the kind of event I want it to be.

Well, Lori, congratulations on the success of trudog. Congratulations on frisky business. I can't wait to see you on tv. I'll be jealous but also rooting for you and thank you for hanging out with us at freedom fast lane. This was a fascinating case study so it was really good to hang out with you.

Thanks for having me. And you know, I'm gonna put you on as a guest on that show. So you've got my commitment to bring you in as a guest expert on frisky business because I appreciate you.

Please do. And if you meet Mark Burnett along the way, tell him that my survivor application needs to be looked at a little more closely.

Oh, dude, you could win that.

Thank you very much. Let him know for me.

Hope you enjoyed that case study with Lori. My favorite piece of that is that she scaled up with cold traffic and with old school marketing tactics that we tend to forget in the physical products world. What Lori described as a process of sitting down with an entrepreneur. Identifying their whole possibly investing in their company and helping them scale is exactly what we do inside of the tribe. We help people build businesses from scratch. We look at existing businesses, find their holes and then help patch them so that they can scale. Sometimes we invest in their companies, sometimes we partner them with other investors who want to invest in their company. And then we meet at a yearly party that we call the tribe summit. If you've got a business and you need to scale it into the multi millions, if you're just starting a business and you want to do it the right way, I'd like to invite you to join the tribe. You can get all the information that you need over@freedomfastlane.com tribe. Sometimes we close the doors in order to focus on developing our systems and making sure that everybody is served. But if there's openings, we'd love to have you inside the tribe. I hope you enjoyed this case study with Lori as always, I appreciate you. And I believe that entrepreneurs are the key to facilitating all the change that we want to see in the world. So keep on changing the world, and I'll see you on the next episode.