Episode 235: Be a Specialist Who Uses Other Specialists to Get Big with Multi-Million Dollar Earn...

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weddell. And before we get started, if you want to know exactly how to win again and again, go to Wydell on winning.com webinar now to watch something I've put together for you. Now let's get going into this episode of Million Dollar Mastermind.

I am back with Bill and Judy Edwards of Squatty Potty from. Is it Ogden, Utah?

St. George, Utah.

St. George, Utah. Why do I have Ogden in my head? But it's. That's a beautiful part of the country, isn't it?

It is. We love it down here. It's.

Did you move, did you move there or did you just. Are you just natives?

We moved here about 30 years ago when it was just a little town of about 12,000. Now it's a town of almost 90,000, I believe.

We are both originally from Utah, but different, a different part of Utah. And we always love the southern part because it's kind of like it's really has mild winters and we just wanted to get out of snow.

Had enough of the snow. And so as you guys, let's talk about how the Squatty Potty idea went and how did you find or who. Where'd you get the idea of going in Shark Tank? And what kind of difference did that make? What did you expect that experience to do for you and then what did it do for you?

Well, we were actually approached by one of the producers of Shark Tank. We just had so many doors open. I don't know. It was, she had, she owned a Squatty potty and loved it and invited us to try out. But it was the very tail end of being able to put all your information in. And we scrambled and it was just, you know, we didn't quite know what to do and how to put it together. And we didn't actually make it that year. She invited us, but then we didn't make it. So the next year we thought, well, we'd already tried out. We didn't. I thought, why don't you try it out? You know, once you're out, one strike, you're out. But she called us again towards the end of the tryouts again, and she says, aren't you going to reapply? And we go, oh, we didn't know we could. And she says, yeah, but this time I'm going to help you through it. So she really gave us a detail of what things that they were looking for and the video that they would want and stuff like that. It really helped walk us through it. And that's when we finally, we did make it that year.

For people who are wanting some behind the scenes information, what did they say they were looking for?

Well, I don't. They just wanted a good video, a good presentation. And we did find out that one of the producers the year before did not want to have a product on national TV that was about pooping. And she, when she called, she, that producer is not there anymore. She says, this time I know you'll get through.

Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, you know, that's just, you know, that's just one of the things you run into. But now when you went through that process, one good thing about being in that, that process and some of the other opportunities, the Dr. Oz and other opportunities, doors that open when you go through, you meet other people, they ask you questions and that's one, one of the ways you learn about, oh, I should be thinking about this. I need to get organized on that. I hadn't even thought about this before. And you come through the process getting educated and improving as you go. How did you find the process of going through the Shark tank and the Dr. Oz stages? How beneficial was that for you personally in terms of how you thought about your business?

Well, the first time we on Dr. Oz, we weren't actually on. He just wanted a stool. He just wanted to talk about the stool and the purpose of the stools so we didn't have to be on the show. It was just a little segment that they were just showing the proper way to go the bathroom and they used the squatty potty. But with Shark Tank boy, you never know what you're going to get there. And the producer warned us. She says we have no idea how the sharks are going to react. You know, they can be very brutal. I started watching Shark Tank when we decided it was going to be me and my son that were going to be on. And for some reason, Bill. Well, we escaped that.

Well, just look at the picture. You know, you can see, you can look at Judy and Bobby and me. You know, two's company and three's a crowd and I'm definitely the ugliest one. So I thought it would be better with just those two.

No, that's not true. I really wanted him beyond, but they felt like it'd be better if just two of us on there. So anyway, that was probably one of the scariest things that I have ever done in my life because they can be pretty brutal on that national TV. I've seen Mr. Wonderful Gosh slaughter people. And with a product like ours, it would be easy to make fun of and slaughter.

Yeah.

So I think the only reason they took us serious because we had come on with $2 million in sales that year so far in the spring. We were expecting 7 million that year, and we had already had a million and a half the year before. So they started, you know, money talks, and they realized then that this might be a serious product. And so, you know, they were willing to listen. And, you know, then we end up cutting a deal with Lori.

And what was that like for you, working with Laurie?

Lori is just exactly like she. She's exactly the way she comes over on tv. She's really a very sweet person to work with. She has a lot of marketing experience. I really think, though, the big thing is just the fact that you have an appearance on Shark Tank. We had an audience of 30 million that we could educate. And Squatty Potty is a product that needs education. If we had gone to the stores and just started trying to sell Squatty Potties in stores, you'd walk by that product and not have a clue what it is.

Yeah.

Prior to Shark Tank, we actually had gotten ourselves into Bed, Bath and Beyond. But the problem with that is they were selling but not great. And they were back in the corner, in a dark corner, on the top shelf or the bottom. Shel. You really had to look for them to find them. Lori had a lot of experience with Bed, Bath and Beyond. And after we made the deal, then we became. We were all of a sudden out front, you know, right where everybody could see them. And of course, the recognition you get from Shark Tank, you just can't buy. You just can't buy.

No, it's millions and millions of dollars in advertising.

Yeah. But also the Howard Stern.

Oh, yeah, that was huge, too.

You know, that would be millions of dollars.

That was a real huge increase. Shark Tank. After we appeared on shark tank, within 24 hours, we had sold over a million dollars in stools. They had told us to have about 20,000 units on hand. We blew through those within the first 12 hours of after airing, and it took us from November to February to catch up on our orders.

Yeah, I guess you can't just run over to China and pick up another 2,000.

Yeah, well, by then, we actually had those molds in Utah. Yeah. So we had two companies producing them or making them, or they were running 247 just to keep up. Wow. If we'd still been in China, we'd be dead in the water.

What I Was wondering about how do you measure, how did you measure your growth from year to year to year? How do you keep up with it? Units sold, sales volume, how did that increase? And how do you keep up with that?

Hey, listen, there's a lot of information online, but there aren't a lot of people who have actually done something. In my case, I've actually built a successful business, has accrued over $5 billion.

In assets under management, and has done.

Well even during trying times. Now, if you want to know exactly how I've done this, go to Whiteellumwinning.com webinar Now, I've compressed a decade of learning into five short weeks. Just for those of you who want to give yourself an incredible advantage and are tired of waiting and watching others move up.

Well, you know, Larry, we started off just simply because we had no money. We started making them out of wood. And we had a friend that had a, had a cabinet shop and he had a CNC machine and he was cutting them out for us and then we had to. And he was cutting them and painting them. Then we had to assemble them ourselves and ship them all. And we soon found, as Judy mentioned, we soon found that wasn't going to work too well. So we did go to China and get a mold, one mold built and actually two molds built. One for a seven inch tool and one for a nine inch stool and had those shipped. And thank goodness we did have the foresight to have those molds, those two molds moved to Utah. Soon as we could, we found a local guy right here in St. George that could build those for us. And actually by the time you had shipping everything, we were getting them built cheaper here than we were in China. After Shark Tank, we, well, just before Shark Tank, we had ordered some more molds and thank goodness we did because they didn't. We had to actually fly. We had those molds built in China, but we had them flown here. We had to fly them here. It cost us, we, it cost us like $25,000 to get, I think three molds shipped to Utah Air Freight Utah. But boy, it was worth it because we were in the middle of Shark Tank. And once we got those here, then we were able to, you know, finally get caught up.

You know, I think early on when we were first had the moles made in China, we made a lot of mistakes, but we also made some very good choices. We had the foresight to see that if you're stuck to a Chinese company, you have to order three months ahead and Then what do you know, you know, if you're going to sell or not. We saw that we could be very strapped very easily. And so thank goodness we had those molds shipped over here.

You know, as you go along it gets way easier. You know, instead of dealing us, dealing with getting a mold built. For instance, when we first the molds, we first, our very first molds, it took probably almost a minute and a half to make a squatty potty, you know, in a injection molding machine. In working with our injection molders, letting them design the mold and you know, they knew shortcuts and tricks and what they needed to do to make things fast work faster. They designed the molds to their machines and we're actually, we can do a 7 inch stool now in 40 seconds or less. And in China that's not so important. But if you're manufacturing in the U.S. boy, every second is money.

Every. Yeah, everything's cost.

And so those are the, you know, those are the things you learn as you go along. You learn who you can work with and who's looking out for you and what works and what doesn't work.

So are you up over what year are you over? How many do you sell in a year now?

Well, our, you know, we're both retired.

We retired three years ago.

Oh, okay.

We, you know, we, we still on.

The board of directors, but I bet you are.

We, we what we peek out at. We, we peaked out at about, I.

Think we peaked out around 28 million in sales one year. And that would have been in within.

Your, that would be within your first 10 years, right?

Yes. Yeah, that was just one year. That was our top year. Since year did, I mean since 2010 we've sold over $200 million worth in squatty potties at this point. That, that's probably around how many units? Probably 4 million units or so. 5 million units.

I'd have to do the, we'd have.

To do the math.

But, but our, we did in what, 2017. I think we, we had, we sold part of the business and, and actually some other, the, the, the partners that came in began to, they, they appointed the CEO and they took over the day to day operations of the business. And even though ourselves have not grown, they've actually cut back a little bit. But our bottom line has just been terrific. We're actually making more money selling $20 million worth of stools than we ever did, you know, 28 million or whatever. And now volume is starting to pick back up a little bit. But they've really, you know, streamlined the business.

So your jobs. How many people did you have? In the beginning, it was just you. How many people? When you guys were up to that peak of 28 million, how many people were employed in. On your end?

Well, we never did, you know, we. All we ever done was sales and marketing and the bookkeeping. So we never did any manufacturing. We did do a little fulfillment at the first, but we soon realized that that was more than we wanted to handle.

We didn't want to be shippers, so.

We tried all of that. We tried it and done it. And we spent two Christmases without any rest for about two months during the Christmas season and realized that, you know, we needed to get out of that. So without. Without doing any. Any manufacturing ourselves or any. Any fulfillment, we peaked out at about 20 employees. And that has actually gone down a little bit now. But it's much more efficient than it was. Well, that's.

That's the thing they said about. I used to say, you know, 30, 40 years ago, they say about Heinz ketchup, you know, out of Pittsburgh, the whole Heinz ketchup empire is like one office with a few people ended up in Pittsburgh. But they had like, 30 factories around the country. I'm sure they got more now, but just in The United States, 30 factories that they had contracted out to do, you know, in this kind of glass container, these kind of labels. This is the mixture you put in there. And they just let the factories make them and distribute them and all of that. It was just, you know, they ran an office.

We found that out. We found, you know, they know so much more about plastic congestion, molding, like you say, about what kind of plastics to use, what kind of, you know, how much silica to use, you know, what to blend and how to make these molds so that they. They're efficient and quick. And so we were fortunate enough to get some really good manufacturers. We have two good manufacturers here in Utah. We still use one in Canada. We do have a set of molds in China that we use, but we don't bring any of those plastic stools here. They all stay overseas. And then we do make our bamboo stools, and some of our specialty stools are made in China. But. But the biggest, vast majority of our stools are made right here in the usa.

You know, Larry, there are a lot of companies that even people we know that, you know, are selling a product, and they get to that point where they warehouse it, they fulfill it, they have their own company to make it. And they decided you know, they want to do it all. And we decided that we didn't want to do it all. So I think at some point you have to make that decision in your business. And we decided not to do it. We decided. We just were. We just want to market.

Yeah. And the thing is, even if you are manufacturing everything yourself, then, you know, you're not going to form your own trucking company just to exactly ship it around the country, you know, so you're, you know, the thing is, the concept here is, you know, the faster, you know, once you create something, people are looking. I've got this idea. You're going to go through a phase where you are the jack of all trades and you're running around and you're broke and, you know, you have no time and no money and, you know, you're straining, but you're not going to stay that way. If you have something worthwhile, you're going to transition to where you become more and more of a specialist and you're using specialists more and more. And the big, the great thing about getting big is that you can justify having like the best T shirt manufacturer of the United States working for you if you're doing T shirts, you know, or the best. Whatever the best shipping you get. And you can get the best deals, you know, and the people that are real specialists want high volume. That's how they are, specialists. And they're looking for people who can put them to work. And so the better you get at offloading these, you know, you have to go through the transition. But the end of the rainbow, if you want to get unlimited big is you're going to be using specialists and you're going to be the person who is at the center of the nuclear reactor, holding the whole thing together, holding the values, holding the standards and, you know, the brand identity. You know, you're going to hang on to the reins there, but you're going to offload as much of the other product creation, you know, our manufacturing and fulfillment and marketing as possible. And, you know, so basically you start off a jack of all trades, but the more successful you are, the goal in unlimited growth is becoming a specialist and using other specialists. And that was kind of the process you went through. And, you know, it depends on what kind of product you have, how that process will play out. But that's something to keep in mind for those of y' all that are listening. You don't have to be thinking about it. You're going to have to do all this stuff yourself. The rest of Your life.

That's exactly right. We were. I mentioned, you know, after. After Dr. Oz and Howard Stern, our Christmas, you know, squatty potty became a really unique gift. And Christmas time was just crazy. And we. I remember we were literally up 18, 20 hours a day just shipping, you know, just boxing boxes. We hired kit. We hired high school kids, anybody that could almost fog a mirror, and anybody. Anybody that had a pulse, you know, And I remember that we probably shipped out, I don't know, 10 or 15 packages over that Christmas season. Empty. The boxes went out empty.

They shipped them out empty.

They were all labeled.

We had these kids working, and they were shipping boxes, trying to ship them so fast, they actually shipped out. What? Yeah. 10 or 15 boxes empty.

That's hilarious. Yeah.

And that's when we got thinking, you know, man, I think we could. I think this could be, you know, experts could do this a little better than we could do it. And our life, you know, the quality of our life got so much better.

Absolutely. Thanks so much for sharing lots of great information about developing your business, dealing with the bigger volumes, and then moving forward. I want to talk to you next time about the values that you've learned from this and what you tell other. I'm sure you've got plenty of people looking to you for advice and counsel just from your own family, but in your community, I'm sure you're incredibly well known there and around the country. And so people are reaching out. And I just want to take a minute when we come back and get a couple of the highlights that you try and pass along as. As difference makers for those kind of people. So we're going to be back here in a few minutes, but thank you so much for this part. It's been great.

All right. Thank you, Larry.

Thank you.

If you enjoyed what you've heard and are dead serious about finding out for yourself exactly how this works in the real world. I've taken the most valuable business lessons I've learned over 40 years, put them into something for you to watch. Go to whiteellawinning.com webinar now in order to move up as fast as possible. I'm Larry Wydell, and I run the Million Dollar Mastermind. Go, go, go.