He Makes $600,000,000/Yr Selling Bacon

$600 million a year in meat. That's how much Mike Salguero, the founder and CEO of ButcherBox, sends out every single year. And we had him fly out here to Vegas so that we could bring this to you, breaking it down into the tactics of what he did to start and continue to scale, and things that any business owner can use today to scale their businesses.

Enjoy. Before you had ButcherBox, you had another, uh, business. Do you want to do a quick, like, how we got here and some of the lessons you learned from that business, the failure, because I love, I love hearing about failures.

Yeah. So, I mean, I could talk about a tremendous amount of failure in between college and my first business if we want to go there. But my first business was a company called custommade.com and my best friend Seth and I bought the company. We had approached a guy to sell us custommade.com for $140,000. We didn't have any money at the time, so we gave him a check for $2,500 for a deposit. And then it had 90 days of due diligence, which is where you're supposed to figure out what happens at the company. And we took all that time to go raise money. And so we raised $500 grand and the whole—

Oh, damn, okay.

Yeah, the whole thing was we were both working in real estate and we called it a shack in Manhattan. So this is 2008. Custommade.com got a ton of inbound traffic.

Yeah, it's a great domain.

From people typing in custom made. Yeah. And it was filled with woodworkers who had their projects and stuff on there. And when you talk to these woodworkers that are like, I get all my money from custommade.com and I pay $35 a year for my subscription. And they had to like email the owner to like upload their content. So we were like, this is like a shack in Manhattan. We're just going to buy it. We're going to like overhaul it, turn it into, they can log in and manage their own content and jack up the rents. Um, so people, you know, thought that was a good idea and gave us also a great narrative for raising money.

Just even though like it's a shack in Manhattan, like everyone's like, okay, Yeah, yeah.

Of course, this was 2008 and in Boston in real estate and everyone had just lost their money because Bernie Madoff just ran off with everyone's money.

Did something happen in 2008?

Yeah.

Oh, no way. Okay, crazy.

Yeah. So Bernie Madoff ran off with everyone's money. We heard a lot of nos, but we cobbled together a round and then we got going and things were working and we raised another $500,000.

Okay. And then things were working. What did you mean? So like you were starting to make more, like you were able to grow the revenue?

Yeah, we, so we had pivoted the website. You could now log in. We made a ton of mistakes, but we built a sales team. We had people calling to get makers to sign up for like an annual subscription or a monthly subscription. We hit about $60,000 in revenue a month.

And what was it doing prior?

Uh, $35,000 a year.

Oh geez.

Okay.

So you, I mean, you did an amazing job. Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, but we were still losing a little bit of money and, yeah, and whatnot.

Also, a great frame for me was listening to this is the, um, the idea that, like, um, I had a mentor say this. He's like, right before you go to take your business to market, he's like, switch sides of the table and then try and say, like, you just bought your business today, what are all the things you fix about it? It's like, well, maybe just do those first. And so I think it's just a great, like, perspective on any businesses. Like, if I bought everything today, how would I— it's like a different lens, at least. Anyways, for me, it's been helpful, but please continue.

Yeah, so at the time, it was like 2010, 2011, everybody in tech was raising money. And so we were looking at TechCrunch and looking at all this stuff. And at that time, there weren't like all these accelerator programs and all these things that now exist to help people. And so my co-founder and I looked at each other, we're like, we have a good business, why don't we raise money? And so we ran around town again, raising money, this time trying to raise from VCs. And we got first round capital, which is a very well-known VC in New York. And then we got Google Ventures to invest in our company at a— it was a— we raised $1.9 million at like a $7 million pre-money. Sure. That's where things started like falling apart. So actually, most people told us no. We went to raise money and people are like, woodworker? Listing site, like, hell no. And I was in, uh, I was in a meeting, um, and at this VC benchmark, and I said, um, I was like, we built this, this function, this function where somebody could post a project and makers could see them coming in and then they could bid on them. And I was like, pull up the job board. And this thing was like live action. We wanted to make it exciting. And they're like, these jobs rolling in. Custom coffee table, custom I was like, all we have to do is stand in between these transactions and we'll be the largest marketplace for custom stuff. It was 2011. As soon as I said the word marketplace, everyone wanted an interview. We went from no, no, no, no, no to like marketplace, you could be the next Airbnb. And we're like, yeah, you bet. Sure, we could be whatever you want. Just give us some money. And so we raised the money on the premise that we were going to create a marketplace and stand in between a custom transaction. Which wasn't the best premise, but people loved it. Yeah, we raised $1.9. 6 months later, there was one VC that we left out of the first deal. Okay. We're like, we don't want to raise more than $1.9, so you can't participate. 6 months later, they're like, we'll give you $4 on $16. We're like, okay, we'll take more money. So we took $4 and then we did an 18.

So now you've diluted because now you're at— because you had the $1.9 on 7. So you're— that was 21 or 22%, something like that, right?

Yeah.

I don't know the math somewhere in there.

Yeah.

And then you did another quarter. So 25%.

Yeah.

With the second round. So you're— you guys are sitting a little bit above 50. Yep. At that point, just from the two rounds. Yeah.

And then we're giving out equity to all of our employees and all that stuff too.

I'm highlighting this because I know.

Yeah, yeah.

Some perspective on where you go.

There's a different— there's a different path. Yeah. So, and then a few years later, we did a $10 million round of $30 million. It was actually $18 million. It was 10 of equity, 4 of debt, and 4 of secondary.

Okay.

So, you got some money off the table.

So, we got some money off the table.

You were like reading the tea leaves and you're like, you know, there's no way we're going to make anything.

Yeah. We got all of our— all of our original investors got 3x their money if they wanted it. Many cashed out. My mother did not. Interesting. She's like, I believe in you.

Yeah.

I think you should cash out, Mom, but okay.

She's like, I took secondary, don't worry.

Yeah, like I sold. So, by the end of it, I mean, what really happened at the company, the big lesson I learned is, so Google, they have like incredible services for entrepreneurs. So, if you're an entrepreneur and they invest in you, they can help you with a whole bunch of stuff. Cool. Manage your AdWords account, it's like, go talk to the people that run AdWords. And by the way, here are some gift cards. And like, they do all sorts of stuff to help you. Yeah. They're like, do you want us to come and look at your website and like get under the hood of your technology? And we're like, yeah, of course, Google, come on in. And I mean, literally the guy did this like week-long deep dive, came out and was like, that's the worst website I've ever seen. He's like, I can't believe we invested in this. So our investors are like, how does this even make money? How is this like? And these guys like, yeah. And so what ended up happening over the course— so immediately we're like, we have the wrong tech team. Our investors were like, you have the wrong tech team. You have to get rid of them. So we got rid of our tech team. And then it was like, you have the wrong product people. And then you have to get rid of the product people. You have the wrong marketing people. And what ended up happening over the course of about a year is I took all of the people who helped me build this company to help me like hack through the jungle to get to like the road and we fired all of them. Yeah.

And as one does.

And I was left with a company of new hires, new hires, people that didn't fit the culture. I hadn't written down the cultural values.

Yeah.

And I just have this vivid memory of sitting in my car in the parking lot being like, I can't go in. Like, I can't.

Yeah.

I don't even want to go to work.

Yeah.

And I had a good salary, but by that point, with all the dilution, I owned like 8% of the thing, which I could go get a CEO job doing something. It was just like this, like, what have I done?

Yeah.

And I let go of all my friends. It was, it was bad.

Yeah. How many years was this?

8 years of working on it. 8 years? Yeah, 2015 or sorry, 2008 through 2015.

Yeah. So we just, we covered 8 years in a pretty short, short, short little window. Just for anyone who's listening. And I bring this up just because like, I feel like when you hear the stories or you watch the literally the 60-second short about someone's career, you know, you see the highlights and the lowlights, but a lot of it is just kind of like the mundane middle of just dealing with the stress of every day. There's always fires and there's a permeating level of baseline stress that doesn't really go away.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, I mean, one big lesson was like, don't listen to investors when when I started ButcherBox, which we'll get into, I didn't want to take investment. There was also like, I lost myself. I lost my team and I lost myself. And when I looked at the shambles that happened, I was like, I don't want to—

Did you shut it down?

Yeah, so we actually foreclosed on it because we had some venture debt. There was a little bit of debt. Our bank account got below what we owed. And they were like, we're taking it. So we actually did what's called a friendly foreclosure. They took it over. My co-founder stayed and is still running it.

Oh, it's still going.

Yeah.

And is it doing okay?

It's now a jewelry company and it's just— they just do everything. There's no maker. There's no, like, no marketplace. The big problem that we had was you can't like these custom— if you want a custom coffee table or a custom piece of jewelry, there's like 60 back and forths.

So yeah, there's about every detail. Like, yeah, right.

And we had to stand in between that in order to get our fee, which was like 10%, which is a nightmare. It was a bad business. Yeah, but we, because we sold everyone on marketplace. Yeah. When we were like, this isn't going to work, people are like, well, that's what I invested in.

So yeah, you need to keep going. So doing the other version of— so because I think about this sometimes is like the path not taken. So if you had, if you had not raised really any of the money besides the amount that you needed to kind of acquire the business. So at that point, what did you raise? The 5— you raised the $500,000 when you did that. You didn't go through the due diligence that period. We raised the 500. What was the What was the— or how much equity did you give away for that?

It was a convertible, so it converted into the next round, like a safe round. Yeah.

Oh, great. Okay. So that ended up being like 5 or 6%. I mean, well, a little more than that. So like 7% of the business. Yeah. Which would have been pretty— a pretty good— a pretty good move for sure.

Yeah.

And if that business at the time said it was doing $60,000 a month, right? So $720,000 a year-ish in terms of run rate. If you had stuck with the original model and just been like, I'm not— I don't have to pursue this, not as an insult, but like cockamamie business model, basically Billy or bust business model is what I mean to say. It probably could have just been a very profitable, I mean, going from $35,000 a year to $60,000 a month in like 12 months is great growth. And was it profitable at that point?

It was almost profitable.

Okay. Like you could have made it if you wanted to.

We could have been profitable. And that's one of the reasons why like I want to be here today and I like talking to people like you who talk to entrepreneurs about a different path. Raising a bunch of money, diluting yourself, having people who tell you what to do and losing your culture in the meantime and losing yourself.

Every business I've had has been bootstrapped. Yeah. I mean, so I get it.

Yeah. So when I started ButcherBox, so I took the, we closed the business. We let go of 50 people, shut the doors. I literally closed the gate and put the lock on.

And then your partner's like, I'm still here though. And we're still going to keep, we're going to make something.

Yeah. They like spun it out.

Are you guys still friends?

Yeah.

We are. Oh, good. That's cool.

Yeah, it was a little rocky for a couple of years, but yeah, we're good friends. I took the weekend off. It was Memorial Day weekend, so it was a long weekend. And then I started ButcherBox on Tuesday and I had known in the final year at Customade, it was very clear to me that we were going to hit a wall and there was like no stopping it. My co-founder had become CEO in that last year because there was— he just like loved the distressed. Yeah, he wanted to be the—

what was revenue then?

Uh, so we, we would only talk about GMV because, because it was platform. So our GMV, I think, got to like $3 or $4 million a month. Okay. Uh, but, you know, then we took a, like, a 10%, but actually because of— I forget all the reasons— it was like 7%.

Yeah.

Um, so like $200,000, $200,000 a month. Uh, we at our height were burning $500,000 a month. That is, yeah, healthy burn. Yeah, just like never say anything like it.

Yeah, like, yeah, there's a, there's a road quote from Reid Hoffman. I think he was talking to Elon or Peter Thiel or something, and he, they were on this, the roof of, of the building that they were at for PayPal, and he said, if we were one at a time lighting $100 bills and pulling them off the building, he said it wouldn't be as fast as we're actually burning money in this company. And I like, I just saw there's such a visual of like I could burn $100 bills slower than we're actually burning the money in this business, which I thought was hilarious.

Yeah, you know, it's wild. I mean, you start adding a bunch of people and then you add managers to manage those people and then you do a bunch of marketing and all of a sudden you're just like losing, losing money. And when you raise, especially when you raise something like an $18 million round, they want you to spend the money as fast as possible. And the thing that they don't talk about with venture is venture capitalists get paid when they put money out on the street. They take a management fee. And so they have— everyone around the table has the incentive to like put as much money as humanly possible into these deals. And so you really, when you go, like people are like, how do I figure out what my valuation is? It's like, no, no, no. Just tell them how much money you can spend over the next 18 to 24 months and just argue for a bigger number. We're like, we can blow through $10 million. They're like, great, here's a check. So yeah, it was just counter to how like business works.

Yeah. So just so it's interesting because you're actually— it's, it's the collision of two different business models and the one who has the voting rights is the one who wins. But like their business model is deployment of capital and management fees by and large. Obviously there's carries and things like that, but there's that component. And then there's the business model of the actual business. But the person who actually calls the shots is the largest business. The person who makes the most money from the business prevails in terms of who has leverage in the conversation.

Yeah. And we had all the rights. So we negotiated really, really well. We had all the rights in our documents. My co-founder Seth was just like a phenom at that. So they couldn't overthrow us. They didn't have any management decisions, et cetera. But it doesn't matter. Like at the end of the day when they're like, you're going to be blackballed if you don't.

Yeah. Like the pressure. Yeah.

You know, so at the end it was like, we're going to sell the company, we're going to bring in a different CEO, we're going to do all these things, none of which worked. Yeah. I knew the writing was on the wall. And so I've been playing around with like, what am I going to do next? And I had a few ideas. I had a billboard company I was really interested in starting. I had a bond company I was really interested in starting. And I had this like shipping meat in the mail. And the quick backstory, my wife has an autoimmune disorder. We were following these elimination diets to, like, clean up our diet. We were trying to find grass-fed beef, couldn't find it. And I just got obsessed with, like, where do you find grass-fed beef? Yeah.

And why is this a hard thing to find?

Yeah, why is this hard to find? And I ended up, like, meeting a farmer in a parking lot and buying trash bags full of meat and being like, this is weird. And I started selling steaks to my buddies because it was like too much meat.

Yeah.

And one of my buddies was like, this would be so much easier if it was delivered to my house.

Yeah. I don't want to, like, meet you at your house to pick up the meat.

It's like, just ship it to my house. And so I was like, okay, how do you ship meat in the mail? Yeah, I couldn't figure it out. This is all while I was like still at Custom Made. And then I met—

this is while you were at Custom Made?

Well, it was like at the tail end.

You were having an affair.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Things were closing down. Then I reached out to the former head of operations of Omaha Steaks, which at the time was like the big meat mail company. And he's like, yeah, like my non-compete's over.

Oh, great.

I can help you.

That's amazing.

And so he made all these introductions.

Yeah. Pro tip right here, just for everyone listening. Find the person who has built the business already. Like, It's, you know, from an entrepreneur's perspective, I think the beginning is always about how, like, oh, you know, you're very tactic obsessed. And obviously I talk a lot, a lot about tactic stuff on this channel. But I'd say beyond a certain point, it just becomes a lot about who, because the leverage is in not having to live the 15 or 20 years or however long this guy had been in the steak business. You're like, you can either like relive his life and then be 20 years older. It's like, or you can just find that guy and then he doesn't have to live your life either. And then you combine and Everybody wins. And so I think in the earlier stages of my career, I thought way more what and how than who. Yeah.

Also the way that I structured it, so I had a whiteboard, I had the 3 ideas and I had like the kill shot, like the thing that if I didn't figure out this week or this month, like you don't have a business. So for the bomb thing, it was like a legal thing. And for ButcherBox, it was like, how do you ship this?

Yeah.

And so I actually like every time I went to the bathroom, I'd be like, all right, how do you ship me now? Like reaching out to people, trying to get somebody to to help. He finally said yes. And so fast forward to close the doors at ButcherBox, or sorry, at Custom Made, and it was pretty clear that like, why don't I just like spend the summer messing around with this idea? So my intention was to build a hobby business. Like I was very enamored by like Tim Ferriss' 4-Hour Workweek, like, you know, build something that runs in the background and then you can go live your life. Passive income. And that was like, I thought if we had 1,000 subscribers and we made a $20 profit on each subscriber, it's $20,000. So, if you customer service, if you outsource that, and if you build tech easy, like you could have like $10,000 a month. And so, I built, it was like WordPress on top of Stripe. Which nowadays there's Shopify, which is incredible. But like WordPress on top of Stripe, which we basically ran with until last year when we moved to Shopify and then we outsourced everything. And it was like, okay, this is going to be a hobby business. Yeah. And the first thing I did, so I had, I had an intern start with me on like—

I want to pause on something because I think it's such an important thing. So like I have, I have had such a similar experience to, I think, what you just walked through from a narrative perspective, which is that every time I've tried to like build a business, it doesn't work for me. It hasn't. And I've failed a bunch of times on businesses that I was like, I'm building a business. When I was like, how do I make some money that doesn't take a ton of my time? I end up building a really good business. Yeah. And so it's just like an— again, it's these like these, these frames of questions. And I think this at any level you could ask it from a product line perspective or new division perspective. But it's, it's like I have, I've had these like romantic ideas of like this big thing that I want to have happen rather than like, you know, I just, I just want to make some money in a really easy way. And then when, what's interesting though is that you're basically, so I call it solving for zero, which is like, how do I solve for like no time and profit? But when you solve that problem, when you have no time and profit, it also scales a lot easier because you already started with the premise of how do I have it put no time, not be as risky and be profitable. That's right. Sorry. Pick back up.

Yeah, no, that's right. If you build something to be a hobby, it can remain a hobby.

Yeah.

And I could all talk about our backbone now, but yeah, it's, it's very similar. Everything is third party. We have really tight specs on everything, but we took the perspective that I started, I started with I want a hobby. And nowadays I took the perspective of like, we're not going to learn how to ship boxes better than a company that's been in the business for 75 years. Like, why bother trying to do that? So anyway, we started with an intern, uh, and we decided that we were going to do a Kickstarter campaign. All right, or is Kickstarter or Indiegogo at the time? Yeah, this is 2015.

Also different way of raising money, by the way, for everyone who's listening.

Presales. Yeah, so it's not raising money, you're just selling your product and you're seeing if there's a market and you're getting money up front.

Every one of my— so my first gym, I saved all my money to start as soon as I— and I wanted to start the gym as fast as possible because I thought if I started the gym really quickly, then I could start making money. Every gym after that gym, I had multi-month presales that would pay for the— that would finance the entirety of the gym off of people pre-buying memberships and pre-buying weight loss challenges and things. And so like, this is definitely like a 101 to 201 entrepreneur move. Like the first one, you know, you're taking the outside capital. You're like, you know, I'll bet you I could just get my customers Yep. To just pay on different payment terms and just get, and then it's also, also a great product market fit test, right? If no one wants to buy your presale, then thank God you didn't like raise money for it or something like that. It's like we actually know people want to buy it and they're willing to pay for it and wait.

Yep, exactly. That's the great thing about Kickstarter is people are used to waiting a really long time to get their products. And, and, you know, we basically started, we had, we hadn't launched yet, but we went out and showed our page to people. And the first thing that we learned was people were like, I don't eat that much beef. We only had grass-fed beef. We're trying to sell people 8 to 10 pounds of grass-fed beef for $129. People are like, I don't eat that much beef. I would never buy this. And we're like, well, what if we put in chicken and pork as well? They're like, oh, totally. Can you make it at the same standard? Like, can you find chicken that's like raised better and pork that's raised better? And we're like, yeah. So we started with a box, beef, chicken, or pork. And launched our Kickstarter. And I think one of the, you know, one of the things that we've done well as a company is found arbitrage opportunities. And so the first arbitrage opportunity was with Kickstarter. So back in 2015, Kickstarter had this verified badge. Like if it would be like Kickstarter verified. And so what we did is we watched these campaigns to see like which campaigns got the verified badge and then tried to reverse engineer like how did they get the verified badge? And it was one part early momentum, you know, sales coming in. I tried to reach out to all the founders and be like, oh, we're doing this thing. I did whatever it took. And so we went out to raise $25,000 in sales.

Yeah, pre-seed, right? Yeah, right.

And we ended up raising, we ended up selling $40,000 in boxes in the first day.

Oh geez.

And then we got the Kickstarter verified badge. And then we ended up doing $210,000 in pre-sales. Which was 1,100 boxes of meat going, you know, the first, the beauty of Kickstarter is if you get that verified badge, it's no longer, you're no longer just asking your friends and your audience to shop. It like goes to everyone.

They'll push it out, yeah.

And so it was a lot of random people we didn't know. So, and my whole idea, because I wanted a hobby business and I didn't want to raise money.

What benefit? Just, I want to double-click on the offer real quick. Offers part of what we talk about. So what ancillary benefits or bonuses did you give to people beyond just the box? I mean, was there anything else that they got for being, you know, early participant?

Yeah, good one. Uh, so, uh, we offered— the, the way that you do with Kickstarter is, um, you try to activate the people who have bought to like go be your ambassadors. So we said if we hit $100,000 in sales, we'll get give everyone free bacon in their first box.

Okay.

Yeah.

And that, like, people went crazy. They're like, I want the bacon, you know, and started like promoting it, putting it on their Facebook pages, all of that.

Okay.

That was it though. That was the offer. Our product—

She had a referral bonus. Yeah. Really interesting.

Our product was really hard, is still really hard to find.

Yeah.

So we're dealing with people who like want to eat healthier, feel guilty about the meat that they're eating, and we give them an answer to that. And so there was, it was really clear that we had struck a nerve really quickly. Yeah. And so then during the Kickstarter campaign, so we'd signed up like 1,100 people during the Kickstarter campaign. The most interesting thing that happened was there was a, we were like writing on Twitter to anyone who did Kickstarter, like anyone who talked about grass-fed beef to get them to talk about us. And this one nutritionist.

And so you're like, you're reaching out to them.

Yeah. So just like, hey, we're launching this thing.

This is warm outreach, or sorry, this is cold outreach. To affiliates fundamentally that you'd either pay for through sponsorships with money or free stuff or both. And then I don't know if you gave them affiliate links or it was just like, hey, just talk about our thing.

At this point it was just talk about it.

So like, I'll send you a free box of meat if you just talk about it kind of thing. Yeah. A great way to get started early from a, from a capital perspective. So it's like both of the examples that Mike talked about first is like, okay, if there's platforms that'll give you free reach, figure out what you have, you know, reverse engineer what free reach looks like and they're just getting you customers for free. And I think some people, especially this is weird, but like a lot of small business owners will like obsess about like they charge 10%. It's like they charge a commission on customers they get you for free.

Right.

We're like, totally. What are we talking about? You know? And then with the affiliates and influencers that, that you reach out to, another way to basically like if you, if you factor in the cost, it's like literally just the hard cost of the box of meat is your advertising costs and everything above that. Is basically freebie, right? And so both of these are super low capital ways early on to get those initial sales going.

Sorry.

Yeah.

So this nutritionist in California, this guy Chris Kresser, tweeted like, this is an interesting, you know, I've told you to eat grass-fed beef. This is an interesting place to get it. That's all he did. And we saw a flurry of activity from that. And by flurry, I mean there was like 7 people who signed up. But at the time that was like, holy crap. Like, what, what just happened?

Yeah.

And then we were like, you know, to what you were just talking about, we're like, we need to do more of that.

Yeah.

Like we're, we need to go find every influencer who's ever talked about grass-fed beef and get them to promote, promote us.

So if you're paying careful attention, Mike is at the third step in the scaling roadmap, which is advertise.

He's single person, he's the doer, and he's got a bunch of freelancers, right?

The biggest issue he's dealing with is inconsistent lead flow and he doesn't have enough money for tech.. And so that's the problems of this stage.

And so if he wants to solve them, which he obviously did, uh, you just go over to the graduate column and do those actions.

But the cool thing is that no matter where your business is at, you will be at one of these stages of scaling. And if you would like my team to personalize a roadmap specifically for you so that we can identify once you enter some information, which stage you're at and send you the exact solutions of where you are to get to where you want to go. So all you gotta do is go to acquisition.com/roadmap, plug in information, and then we'll send it right out to you. It's one of the most valuable things I can, I can give you.

So enjoy.

So we finished the Kickstarter and then we immediately—

and that was the CTA. So when you're pushing out to them saying, hey, promote our Kickstarter basically, and they could send their traffic to your Kickstarter to, to, you know, the 7 buyers that came in from that.

Yeah.

And the guy who did— is that how— that's how the money came in?

Yeah. Well, so Kickstarter will tell you like where, like where did this come from?

Okay.

So it came from Twitter. So we're like, okay.

But that was— but you were still in presale mode for this whole thing? Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Great. Okay, so I'm going back to an earlier point because we wanted to be capital efficient. The whole idea was we're going to send you the butcher's selections. Okay. So I didn't want to hold inventory because I don't know how many ribeyes we're going to sell. And this is really expensive inventory. So the idea was we'll sell a bunch of stuff and then we'll just decide what to put in the box. Yeah. So we sold a bunch of stuff and then it was like, okay, we have 1,100 boxes. We talked to the place that we were working with. They created, you know, these different—

Do they have all types of meat? Meet the one place they went to?

They did.

So we— Wow, that was fortunate.

Yeah, we started working with this company in Wisconsin that did, they had a cutting facility and a pick-pack-ship facility.

Amazing.

It was like they did everything.

So they just had it and they had no marketing basically. Yeah.

Great.

Yeah.

Okay. And so we shipped out all these boxes.

Yeah.

And then called every, we shipped them out really quickly. It was like a week.

But they were thrilled for Kickstarter. Yeah.

They're like, wow, I got my box already. And then we called them, hey, how are things going? Do you need any recipes? Yeah. Would you like to become a subscriber? Yeah. And signed up like 40% of the people. Amazing. So right away we had like, you know—

Well, you didn't just send an email to 1,100 people. Wouldn't that have been easier?

Nope. We had a guy, Nicky Graham, who picked up the phone and just like pounded the phone and he was like $10 an hour plus like a $5 spiff.

I just want to—

I just want to hit on this just because like what's nice is that you're hitting all these really clear milestones that I feel like are just forgotten, which is like just the elbow grease of what I'll consider like unscalable work or unscalable effort is like a lot of times early on everyone's looking for like, I don't know if that scales. Yeah. It's like, well, I mean, you know, we, we handwrote, you know, 1,100 cards and we manually reached out to every single person and we had conversations with them and we asked them if they knew anybody else would be interested. Just like the basics. Everyone's like, oh, I'm sure that would work. It's like, right, but it would just be work. Yeah. And you did it and obviously it worked.

Yeah. Well, and one thing that I think is important is I knew that I couldn't do that. Yeah. Like if you put me in a room with a phone and said, call 1,100 people, no way. Like the business wouldn't have gone anywhere. And so it's good to know what you're good at and what you're not good at, what you're willing to do, what you're not willing to do, and invest in the areas that you're not willing to do. Because if you believe in the business, there's a guy who for $10 an hour is just like, okay, just— yeah, he's thrilled. And he was good at it. And like, then I didn't have to do it. But I think too often entrepreneurs take the approach of like they need to do everything. Yeah. And like, I mean, the business would not exist if we hadn't made those phone calls. But if it was up to me, I would never make those phone calls.

Was there an offer that you gave them for the subscription, the 40% besides like, hey, want to sign up? I don't remember. Like, get your next box, $10 off your next box, or you get the— you get bacon for free in your next box if you subscribe.

There must have been, but I don't actually remember. But what did happen was we launched butcherbox.com. So in the background, we signed up these people and we, we realized affiliates was a thing. So we, you know, started working on that. We launched butcherbox.com to the world and there were many people who were trying to get in on the Kickstarter and they let you put up a link. So they were coming to our website and they were buying. So right away we signed up like 5 subscribers, 10 subscribers, like on the first day.

Yeah.

And what happened was we had a little tech issue. So when those new subscribers signed up, they got free bacon in their first box because we built the tech to be like, bacon's going in every first box. And 2 weeks in, I get a call from the tech guys. They're like, we have a really bad problem on our hands. I was like, what's going on? They're like, we've been sending bacon to everybody. And I was like, oh my God, this is bad. And then my marketing guy was like, why don't we just tell people sign up and get free bacon?

Yeah.

And it was like, oh, well, we can't shut it off anyway. Yeah, let's do that.

Things broken.

Yeah, it's broken. Like, we can't fix it. So we're just going to— that became the— that became the—

because I know that one. And like, I knew that before I even like heard or met you or heard the story from Harley and whatnot. So I, again, like Grand Slam offers, like, and, you know, the free box of bacon, like, I, I've heard of that.

Yeah. And so it started with bacon in your box. And then 2 years in, we created this bacon for life offer. Yes. And that really took off. That was like, that was a ripper. Yeah.

So you just one-upped an already really good offer and said, not only do you get it in the first box, you'll get it in every box as long as you stay subscribed.

As long as you stay a subscriber. Right. And, you know, ultimately the bacon costs $4 and the box, you know, you're making your profit off of. So it's like you're it's not that big of a deal.

And you definitely acquire customers for less than 4— like, the arbitrage on CAC or, you know, cost CPA, depending on what industry you're in. Yeah. Cost to acquire customers significantly higher by— basically, said differently, if you add bacon for life in, your cost to acquire customer drops by more than the cost of the bacon.

More importantly, they stayed longer. Really? Yeah. Oh, because now you have your free bacon. You don't want to get rid of your free bacon.

And so, they can't come back.

Well, they— now you can't. If you quit, you lose your for life offers. But we have— we've built a whole thing around these for life offers. Our top people have been with us from the beginning, have like 6 or 7 for life offers that they get every month. They're like, why would I ever go anywhere else to buy my meat? Like, I have all these for life.

Okay, talk to me more about this because it's really interesting. So how can they stack multiple for life offers? Like, if I'm one of the 40%, right? So I signed up on my subscription. And I still have the tech malfunction, so I get free bacon every month. Okay, how am I getting these other ones?

Well, so pretty soon after, I mean, this is several years in, this was like, you know, we're fast forwarding like 5 or 6 years. We started offering like, okay, free bacon for life is kind of getting overused. Let's try ground beef for life. Okay. And then people were signing up on ground beef for life. But then our customers, our current customers are like, what the hell? Like, I want ground beef for life. So then we just started selling ground beef for life to our customers. So we're like, okay, for $50, we'll sell you one time ground. Yeah, ground beef for life. So we just stacked all of these like offers on top of each other. Very few people.

So your gross margins went down on some of those people, but like they know they're just, they're just the base that just like never—

And we've gotten smarter at being like, it's for a year.

It's for life.

And it's like we've gotten a lot smarter and you lose them if you leave and like, but yeah, bacon, bacon really built this. We built this business on bacon. So the, the, there's one, one channel. Well, I'll just say, yeah, there's the influencer channel, which we'll, we can talk about. The other thing that, so it went Kickstarter arbitrage, influencer arbitrage, and then Facebook video arbitrage.

Okay. Because I want to talk about, I'm guessing paid ads became the next like— Yes. Big thing. After influencer.

Yeah.

So how long did you do influencer? So, okay, I'm going to retrace the steps real quick. So we had Kickstarter and then, then you officially opened the site. Kickstarter had a backlink to you so that people would go to the Kickstarter because they've got SEO and good rankings, whatever. And so then they'd find you. You started getting sales every day. You have your mess up on bacon, but you're like, you know what, screw it. Let's give everybody bacon. And so the influencer strategy worked well for the Kickstarter. So you kind of double down on that and say, how do we get every influencer on the planet to talk about ButcherBox?

Yes.

That was— so did you go like Instagram, Twitter, like you just went across the different channels for influencers?

No. So what we did was we figured out that there's a company, Thrive Market. They're a big like online— Thrive had done this, had done this thing where they, they had all these influencers and they, they gave a lot of them equity in the company to actively promote. They were like kind of the first ones to unlock influencers. Okay. And so first we reached out to like everyone who mentioned grass-fed beef. Sure. And then we realized that there's like a lot more people in health and wellness. Mm-hmm. And so we like Thrive Market's URL was like /partner/1. Okay. And then /2, /3. Yeah. And so we just like concatenated all the URLs and just like took every single person and then found their website and their contact information.

Oh, so you didn't go to Thrive, you just reverse engineered Thrive.

We reverse engineered all their influencers, got a, got a lead list of 400 people. And then I think you'll like this part, like, because I like that for the offer. That's a good one. That's a good way to get your warm leads.

Well, how I got my first leads for Gym Launch was paid a VA to go to CrossFit's website. Sorry, CrossFit. And literally look up every single affiliate, the affiliate box that they had. Yep. And so because— and gym owners usually put their personal cell phone numbers, their personal email as their actual like thing on the, on the CrossFit site. But they wanted to get listed because they're paying $3,000 a year to get the listing of saying I'm an official CrossFit. Right. But for me, I got like at the time, this is super early, you know, we had like 1,600 names on this list, but it was enough for Facebook to make a lookalike audience off of that. And that single lookalike audience is like what built Gym Launch. Like I didn't call— like I tried to hit all these different audiences and nothing worked. And as soon as I hit the ads to that audience, it was like Ding, ding, ding. I was like, oh my God, this just works.

And it's amazing.

So, so you reverse engineered your list. Also elbow grease for both of these, right? Like you just looked at the site, looked at the directories and manually like paste this stuff over.

Yeah. But again, you know, like you use a VA. Yeah. I use a VA as well. I use somebody in the Philippines who for like 20 cents a record is just like, here you go. And you sleep and it's like there the next day. Yeah, exactly. So the way that we reached out to these influencers, I thought was pretty genius. So we have this box, right? We're shipping a box of meat. And at the time there was like Blue Apron and HelloFresh and all these companies and they all—

even though Blue Apron's gone, right?

Or they're— 2015, they were hot.

Yeah, I remember that.

Yeah. Blue Apron is now— was purchased by Marc Lore, who did Jet.com, and they're trying to like make it something.

And then HelloFresh was a darling a little later than that.

Yes. And HelloFresh is still around.

They are. Okay.

Yeah. I'm not right up on them. So at the time, Blue Apron and HelloFresh would include a recipe in the box. And our customers were like, this is really great, but I'd love a recipe. And so what we did is we reached out to these influencers and we're like, hey, we started this company on grass-fed beef because we believed in like eating grass-fed beef. And you've talked about grass-fed beef, but we didn't see a source of where to buy it. So we'd like to be that source. And by the way, We're shipping out all these boxes and we don't have any recipes. And what we'd like to do is include your recipe on, and the VA would like, you know, find Taco Bowl, steak, whatever. And we'd love to include that in our box. And so these influencers who like trade on influence are like, of course, yeah, use my recipe. No problem. Are you going to like link to my website and all that stuff? We're like, yeah, yeah. They're like, by the way, what's ButcherBox? And we're like, perfect. Let's talk. So that was like, that was like we called it the Trojan horse.

Oh, it's amazing.

It's like not only do you get the recipes for free, but you also get, you know, you get in contact with all these, you get them to reply to you. As soon as they replied to us, then it was like, let's talk about ButcherBox.

So I want to double-click on that real quick. So if you're dealing with influencers, you have to think about the currency they care about most. And a lot of influencers care more about fame than they do about money. And so you were able to deal in the currency they preferred. That's right. So just as like for any, any businesses, like, is there a way that we can do this that's, that's realistic, that like actually provides real value to them in the way that they want to get value, which I think is actually like a really brilliant, like, little nugget.

Yeah. Okay. So this is 2016. So this is a long time ago. Yeah. At the time, the influencers, especially in the health and wellness space, like, didn't really know their value. Yeah. And so we were able to go to those influencers and say, look, like, we don't have any money. We can't pay you upfront. I'm not paying you like $5,000 to send an email. What we can do is we'll pay you $10 or $15 per subscriber for every month that they remain a subscriber.

So for life? Yeah, that's great.

Bacon for life.

Yeah.

Commissions for life. Commissions for life. And people said yes. They started to go, yeah, I'll do that. I'll do that. And so we figured out that, you know, tweets didn't work. Facebook posts didn't work. The thing that worked was a dedicated email blast. Where they would be like, here's ButcherBox, let me introduce this to you. And then ideally with a last chance, like a last chance thing. And there was always an offer, $20 off, free bacon, whatever it was. And because we were only paying these influencers $10 or $15 a month, we could do all of this and be box one profitable, meaning we still made money because we started with a $20 profit. We still made money on that first box. Or at least it was like we made a penny.

Is the— is the— so let's talk about now that we're here, let's talk about the box economics. Yeah. So you're profitable on box one, which if we're juxtaposing this with custom made. Yeah, right. I always find like there are some— it's basically I think there are significantly fewer businesses that actually rely on outside capital to, to work than people like if you want to build rockets, it's probably tough. Right? Like you probably have to do that. But so I see a lot of businesses that like even that, that hit me up and they're like, hey, you know, I'm raising capital for my insert normal business. And I'm like, have you considered just making money?

Right.

No, but like, right. It's like the perspective, right? And so box when you're profitable. So walk me through like with the, the standard box like that most people, you know, what the cost is and, and all the costs associated. I know you're really obsessed about the box.

Yeah. Yeah. So the Omaha Steaks guy who introduced us to the place in Wisconsin that we worked with, which massive, by the way, the one nugget. Yeah. So they've opened the whole business. That's why I was like, I need to start now. The one nugget he left me with, he's like, listen, all we care about at Omaha Steaks is dollars per box. Okay. What does that mean? He means everyone at the company knows when a box comes off the line, how much money are we making off the box? And so that's how I built the business. I started the business, right? So we were charging $129. We were trying to make a $20 profit. We were only shipping from Wisconsin, which is a nightmare for California. But it was like, so we were losing money on California, but we're like, whatever, it averages out to $20 and it kept our focus. So like when I— and when I talk about $20 a box, I mean like all in because we put all the costs associated with it in.

Yeah. So you like fully loaded the box in terms of cost. So it was $20 net profit rather than gross profit per box. Were you saying gross profit?

Gross profit.

Okay, got it.

Because we, again, it was hobby business. So like it wasn't our labor, it wasn't our service. So this is pick-pack. So like putting all the stuff in from our distribution center into a box, the cost of the meat, the cost of the box, the cost to ship the box, the cost of the dry ice that goes in the box, the credit card processing fees, the tape that goes on the box, like all of those things. And because we just became doggedly focused on dollars per box. And what I love about this business, even to this day, is that we get to focus on like, you know, the minutia, like negotiating the price of tape and the super creative, like how are we going to get our next, you know, 500,000 customers? And we get to do both. But we just started with a DNA of like, we're going to negotiate every single line item in this box.

So what is the gross margin percentage for box currently? Or that? Yeah. Oh, well, both.

Sure. Like 30% is a healthy gross margin.

Okay.

Yeah, we definitely want to be around or above 30%. Got it. One of the challenges that we have as a business is that at least currently, so we're looking at pricing model change. Currently you pay $169 and you choose 6 items in the box. Okay. And so it's kind of an inflationary disaster because the prices of meat fluctuate all the time. So if you stack it with ribeyes, you're way less than a 30% gross margin. If you stack it with really cheap stuff, you're way more than a 30% gross margin. That's an area where I feel like we're in, like, not in alignment with our customer. So I want to change that over time. But yeah, currently we're looking at a 30% So what are net margins?

They're like 6%. Okay. Yeah. Got it.

Got it. We did like 6.5% last year. No, certainly not a content business.

Very different. Yeah. Yeah. Different. Yeah. Wait, 6.5% what? Million? Oh yeah. I was like, that is okay. That was, that was, that's making sure. And you did.

And the big, the big line item. So these businesses, like I've seen so many of them, 30% gross margin.

Yeah.

You got 10% to operate the place. That's salaries, technology.

So, a third goes to ops of your gross margin.

Yeah. And then you got 20% left over for marketing and EBITDA, like, or in profit. Right. And so these businesses at scale, what they do, what you do is you market, market, market, market, market for years, build your name, and then just try to collapse your marketing and take it all in and hopefully get enough word of mouth.

Yeah. You know, from, from those customers that it can at least stave off churn.

Yeah. That's the like the CPG playbook. Yeah. And that's what a lot of these software companies are doing.

It's a tough business. It is a tough business. Like, I mean, it's so, it's interesting because in so many ways it's like software. Yeah. With the exception of like rather than dealing with development, you're dealing with supply chain. That's your big like, as like, I'm sure, I know there's more fires, but like if I had to, if I had to simplify it into like the big buckets, most of the time I feel like that's where Well, why don't you tell me?

That's— Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, so, you know, that was Blue Apron's whole thing. They raised a whole bunch of money and it was all like, we should be valued at a software multiple. Nowadays, box subscription companies are not valued as software multiple because there's like actual physical product being sold.

And I don't think the stick is as high as like a, I don't know, well, a consumer tech company like Shopify, for example, they have 60% annual retention for like new, new customers, right? I would imagine that if, if that in the consumables business, that that would be unbelievably good. Yeah.

Yeah.

What's your retention on like a year one customer?

Gosh, it's not how we look at it.

Okay.

Interesting. Yeah. It's probably around 60%.

Okay. Yeah. And that's like best. I mean, that's, those are like best in class numbers. I mean, there's a reason that you're doing.

Yeah.

Yeah. Is it 600 now that you guys are doing?

Yeah, well, it's like $550 million. Okay. Yeah, the $600 million has been out there, but it's really $550 million. So yeah, we're $550 million profitable since day one.

And you own 70%?

Yeah, so I gave equity to most employees early on.

Like a software company?

Yeah, like a software company. Like a venture-backed one. I was like, oh, this is what you do. You give out equity, which—

Are you happy about that?

In many ways, yes. Like the people who helped me build this business, the people who helped me hack through the jungle are all millionaires. And, you know, that's cool. That's like really neat. But also we have it. If you don't want to raise money, which I don't, and you don't want to go public, which I don't, and you don't want to sell, which I don't. It's like, how do you cash people out? Yeah, right. That has been— that is a concern of mine all the time. Yeah. It's like, so every year we've actually done a— we've taken profits and repurchased shares so that people have—

for anybody who wants it. Yeah. And so then you basically set the valuation every year. Yep.

Okay. Yeah, actually we do. Yeah, we— there's a— there's a 409A value. Somebody comes in and does a valuation. Yeah. We also have done this thing, which is I've I don't know if your listeners are interested, but we've done this this year, which is a reverse Dutch auction. Okay. So we're like, we're going to allocate this much money to buy shares and then we— people can say what they're willing to sell at. And then we bought them that way, which is pretty interesting.

That's awesome. Yeah. That's very interesting.

Yeah, it's a really— it's actually more common now and it's a really great way to get like what the actual market value is. Because when you do evaluation, it's like not—

it's like, dude, who makes it up?

Who knows? Yeah. So during COVID COVID was— we grew the business tremendously and we almost shut off marketing. So I mean, we just made so much profit and then we bought all these shares and we just started buying and buying and buying. But then inflation took over. And so our inflationary disaster, like our margins just got super compressed. We went from like a 30% gross margin to a 25% gross margin. After doing 2 price increases. After, geez. So, it was like there was no money. Yeah. And we never like ran out of money, but we're all looking around being like, dude, we just like did a share buyback like for $20 or $30 million over the past like 3 years. Yeah. I'd really love that money right now.

Yeah. That'd be nice. So, hey, can I—

Yeah. Yeah. And no Indian give her a check. Do you want some shares?

Yeah. All right. Well, did you— So, this is a great follow-up question. So, Do you take regular distributions from the company or have you just been like kind of like you took once or twice and that's like my, you know, my family set and now everything's still like— Me personally?

Yeah, yeah. I take a salary and a bonus. And then very early on, because we started as an LLC, I owned all of the technology and employed everybody. And the company bought that from me. And so there's been distributions for that.

And you control both companies. So you got to pick what that was valued at.

That had to be third-party.

Oh, was it? Okay.

Well, got to be fair to the shareholders.

But I mean, it's not all you, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

So, so when you've been doing the buybacks, were you at like 50/50 and then over time you've kind of like bought your way back to 70/30 or—

Yeah, I think, I think, yeah, I think it was like 60 and now it's Well, originally, the Omaha Steaks guy, and there was also a brand guy. My biggest mistake when I started the company after failing at Custom Made was I valued the company at a stupidly low rate. And so I had just raised $10 million on a $30 million valuation. I started this and I'm like, it's going to be a hobby. This isn't going to be anything. So the Omaha Steaks guy is like, I can make all these connections. I can do all this stuff. And it's $75,000 worth of work. And I'm like, well, I don't have that, so I'll give you equity. And he's like, okay, great. How much is the company worth? I was like, $750 grand. So he took 10% of the company.

So he's a 10% stakeholder?

Not anymore. I bought him out. And then there was a brand guy, which was the same thing, 10% of the company. And as we got going, I was like, that's like way too much. And they're not doing anything.

Right. Yeah. They did one-time work.

It's like one-time work. Right. And so we bought them out. We bought them out when the valuation was $48 million.

Well, I'm sure they were thrilled.

And it was, yeah, they got $200,000 a month for 2 years.

Okay. I'm sure he was still thrilled. Yeah, right. Probably more than he made at Omaha.

Totally. Yeah, way more.

One good phone call for him. Yep. Right. A little bit of work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Set for life. Interesting. So, okay, so, man, there's so many directions I want to go, but to put a button on, on, on the story. And then I want to go back and kind of unpack some numbers and things like that. Where do you want to— so where do you want to— if you're not going to IPO and you're not going to sell the company and the CPG playbook is that at some point you turn off the marketing, when is that? Yeah, not anytime soon. Okay. So you just want— you want to keep growing for a minute?

Yeah.

So you have a goal like a billion a year in sales or—

I mean, a billion. I'm very goal-oriented, so I do have a billion on my whiteboard, but I recognize that before that I had a million and before that I had $10 million and then $100 million.

So, it's just like— A billion will be enough for sure.

Yeah, totally. Then it'll be enough. Yeah. Then I'll just lay down my arms and walk away.

And then you'll be happy. You know, I'm just messing around.

Yep, exactly. Yeah, I would like— I think running this to a billion in revenue would be a lot of fun. I don't know how fast that's going to be. We've definitely learned that it's gotten a lot harder. Like, as you grow, you just lose more people, and, you know, it's just harder.

Yeah, 1% on how many customers do you have right now?

Like 430,000.

Yeah, so 1% on 430,000, it's like, oh, all of a sudden that's just, you know, 4,300 customers that we just have if we lose 1%. It's like, okay, that's a decent amount of customers. And you're like, well, if it's 10% churn annually, and you said, I think you were keeping, well, 60 of your one or something.

No, I mean, our churn is like 3% a month, right?

Yeah, so that's 30-ish% or whatever.

It means you have to sign up 12,000 people a month before you stop treading water just to chill. Just— yeah, yeah.

So it's like, it's those numbers just get— it's 400 a day. Yes. Yeah, right, 400 a day. That— so while we're talking right now, people are signing up.

They're leaving, they're leaving, they're leaving.

Yeah, they're falling out, right?

Don't leave, people. We have a great product.

Dude, you have bacon for life.

What are we talking about? Yeah, you're losing your for life offer.

Yeah.

Like, I really do love the lifetime offers.

Yeah.

I have a book that's coming out that talks about this particular offer structure.

So, yeah, a lot of fun. Yeah, lifetime offer. People getting a box of meat seemed really magical. Like, it was like, wait, this is going to show up. It's going to be frozen. Like, I don't trust it. So money back guarantee, like, no questions asked. We'll just We'll just refund you.

Let me, let me talk to some of the fears of business owners around money-back guarantees, because I talk about them a lot too. What percentage of customers do you get who ask for refunds on like a monthly basis?

Oh gosh, I don't even like— so small, I don't even know the number.

Right.

And the conversion increase is certainly worth having. For sure.

For sure. Also, like, you know, one of our core values is being customer obsessed. Yeah. Like, we actually want to deliver you an amazing product.

Right.

And so if we fail at that, you should get your money back. Yeah. That's like, and it's like, well, I'm worried about that. Well, fix your product. Right. Make your product better. Yeah. Spend time obsessing over your product. And you'll do very well with money back.

It's like dollar per box and then also like happiness per box. Like on the customer side, like your delight per box.

Totally. Yeah. I mean, it's all about your, well, the metric that is commonly uses the Net Promoter Score. So it's all about your satisfaction with the— and we're constantly asking, what's your NPS right now? It's like a 63.

That's great. Yeah, yeah, we're pretty happy with that.

So, but there's room for improvement. I mean, we, we know our issues.

We want to—

yeah, we, we want a perfect experience every time. Yeah. And when you're shipping multiple species, you know, you had 12 to 15— do you fish now? Yeah, we do seafood.

How did that— how did you get— was that just a whole nother— have to find another supplier.

Yeah, I mean, we don't use any of that. Um, so basically we got going— we'll go all the way back— we, we got going, we're shipping out boxes, we're making $20 a box, the influencer thing is working, we get to about 6,000 subscribers, right? And it was clear to me that we had no idea what we were doing. It was like, okay, we've been faking it, that's great, but like, we need somebody who knows how to buy an adult here. We need an adult right there. And so again, I went to LinkedIn, usually while on the toilet, and I reached out to this guy who lived in Boston and ran meat and seafood at one of these big grocery chains. But he had retired. And so I was like, interesting background. Let's talk. Pulled him out of retirement and he came and started purchasing meat and seafood for us. Meat and then seafood. Yeah. And I mean, the saving— my whole thing was, okay, we're shipping 60,000 pounds of meat. I've got— all I have to believe is that somebody can save me like $0.25 a pound and this is like worth it. Yeah. So he came in and just— he's like, you guys are paying— this is like second day. He's like, you guys are paying enough in chicken breasts that you could send people 3 pounds instead of 1 pound. Do you want me to do that?

And I'm like, Yeah, yeah, that'd be great. That'd be good. Yeah, 25 cents was the target, and he was like, I can give you a buck and a half.

Yeah, you're like, totally. I mean, multiples of his, of his salary back. Um, and you know, I think it's really important that you hire experts in certain areas at the right time, but in certain areas—

well, I want it— so I want to hit on, on the, the meta part of this, which is like, all right, like the big, the big turning points, because I like, I like, like, what are those, those inflection points in the business? So it's like All right. You switch from raising money to pre-selling. That's probably— I feel like that's like setting yourself up on the right path. Okay. So that was number 1. Number 2 is you realize this influencer thing has some legs to it and then you go hardcore on getting influencers. You also reverse engineer somebody else's database, which I highly recommend if you're trying to reach out to people to find the high— like I call them HVTs, but high value targets. Like how do we, how do we find the HVTs and then, and then grab them? Okay. So you do that. You have a happy accident with free bacon that ends up being a core component of the offer. And then later you turn on the lifetime version of that and then you do that across kind of horizontally across the box. You obsess about gross margin per box. So whatever your unit economics are of the business, you got super dialed on that and just want to make every single penny count because, you know, you're on the same side of the table figuratively as the customer. You got experts in at the right times, the branding person up front, the Omaha Steaks guy, later the meat purchasing guy that all came in at key points to unlock levels of profitability and growth. What are some of the other ones that might have been skipped over?

And then— Jeez, man, that's good. Just like boil it down in a good way. I think working like— so our backbone today, we still don't own our backbone. So distribution we don't do. We don't own our own farms.

We don't own our own processing.

No.

Okay.

I was thinking because we believe that it's better to work with partners. It's kind of like the Toyota approach. Work with partners, hold them, hold their feet to the fire, hold them to a tight spec, have them do things they're not doing for anyone else, but trust that they know better than me. Yeah, I don't know anything about farming. I don't know anything about slaughterhouses. Like, that's a bad place for me to spend my time. The only piece of our entire backbone that we control is dry ice. We have two dry ice plants. Okay.. And that's because if you don't have drives, you can't ship a box. Yeah. And so we were like, we should— it's like a great insurance policy.

Yeah. Everything else— if you lose that, revenue goes to zero.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's everything else. It's like not— I don't think it's worth us taking. And so, and I think that's like one common mistake in box subscription companies, in overfunded companies, and just with entrepreneurs in general is vertically integrated.

Yeah.

You need to, you need to like own everything. You need to control all of it. And, So that has been a huge— it's actually been a huge part of our success.

Well, then let's— so because I'm sure you've had partnerships that didn't go well. Yep. And you've obviously been really good at building these relationships. So to the greatest degree possible, do you have any kind of test for how you judge a partner's ability to fulfill on their promises before you've started working with them? Because obviously, you know, you're bringing a huge amount of business. Significant risk that you take on by having a partner do something bad? There's obviously with food, there's huge liabilities of a whole, you know, a whole state has rotten meat. It's like, I mean, it's a PR— it's more of a PR nightmare.

It took Chipotle years to live down the salmonella issue that they had as a micro example. Yeah. So I mean, on the meat side, we do robust safety audits and you like, we're not working with you unless we've done a whole bunch of audits. On the other partner side, we're generally trying to work with the best, best people, like best in class.

So you just look at an industry and say, okay, we want to find— okay, so of all the different farms in the US that are grass-fed, who's the biggest and the best? And you're just trying to do a deal with them?

Yeah. I mean, you try to balance like helping small farmers, right? And working with big farmers because a small farmer might have 50 head and we might need like 100,000 head. Right. So we can't work with 2,000 small farmers. We work with— we generally work with collectives that then work with the farmers. So we're working with that collective saying, this is what we want, this is our spec, this is how we want it raised. And then they go and find the farmers. And again, it's like, we don't want to be on the ground. You know, I love meeting with farmers and doing all that, but like, that can't be what we do. Inspecting hooves is probably better. So it's like really important to know what you're good at and what you're not good at. And anything that you're not good at, including including picking up the phone 1,100 times. Yeah, like, just don't do— try to get someone else to do it because you can't— I don't think you can build a business unless you're feeling that flow and you're feeling like really engaged. And that can only be done in the, the work that you're really good at.

You've been really good at picking those people though. So like, what, what's your— obviously there's the reputation of the company. Yeah, right. But like, also you're really good at picking like the Omaha Steaks guy and the branding guy that you picked out, and even Nick who did those first, you know, 1,100 calls. Like What do you, what do you, cause it's, it's an uncanny trait. Like you've been really good at it. Just, I'm just like listening to the story. I have, you haven't mentioned, I'm sure there were some horror stories, but like, um, it seems like you've had a huge amount of success. And I feel like if I had had a different entrepreneur in the chair, I would have, I could, I could totally hear the total other side of the story. I went to a couple of partners early. What I learned is you got to control everything if you want, you know, like, you know what I mean? Like I've heard that side. And so, You're obviously better at picking partners than most people. So like, what do you think about in trying to isolate like, this person will work?

Yeah, I mean, so early on when you're talking about your first employees, I have this analogy. I think I stole it from someone, but like building a company is like hacking through the jungle with machetes. And so you're just like, there's— you're just dropped in the middle of the jungle. You have a machete. You're like, I don't know where we're going. Yeah. At that point, you need people who are just going to hack day and night with you. Like, you just— and it's grit. Yeah. So I'm looking for athletes. I'm looking for people who have failed at something. I'm looking for people with a chip on their shoulder, you know, daddy issues, all of that, because I've got all that.

So, like, you know, I, I want to, you know, as all great men do.

No, yeah, I, uh, that's the type of person I want. And then as you grow, uh, you realize that, like, okay, we need some experience here, and how do we get experience? One thing— this doesn't totally answer your question, but one thing that we did that was like, I think pretty— I thought was pretty smart is I call it the barbell strategy. We hired people like out of retirement. Okay. Because they were so far along in their career. Yeah. And we found that the middle, like, so really young and really old worked incredibly well.

I would say personally, I've had a lot of experience with that too.

Yeah. And the middle is like they're super busy. They've got kids, they've got all these commitments. They want this to be like the one mark on their career.

The one career, the career, like career tourists rather than people who want to do the work. Hunger. Hunger. Yeah. It's interesting because the people at the very beginning want to work all the time because they want to learn a lot. The people at the end want to work because they have nothing else to do and they want to in some ways like give, have their experience be used. Like they want to be useful.

Legacy.

Right. And that both of those are actually concentrated on the work itself rather than the label ascribed to the work. Totally. And everyone, a lot of times people in the middle are, it's like you're 3 years on my resume and I want to, you know, just leverage this brand name.

I need to go from director to VP and then I need this and I need this. And yeah, we just found that people on the ends were just like so grateful.

And so like my meat guy— Title obsession. Yeah.

Yeah, I hate it. My meat guy, I just remember this dinner I was at and it's like my meat guy and Blue Apron's meat guy was there. And Blue Apron's meat guy is like 32 years old in like skinny jeans and a nice vest. And my meat guy is this like grizzled, like 65-year-old. It's like, who do you think is buying chicken for cheaper? Yeah.

Like, yeah, like my guy looks like me.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, yeah. I mean, so, um, that has been, uh, and, and that is, uh, I don't really like, I don't really know what's happened here. Like I like to say like the, the business wanted to be something way bigger than I expected. Interesting. And I just honor that as like some of these people just kind of fell into my lap. Um, but I, I definitely, my first company, I knew people were off culture and I hired them anyway. And this time around we wrote down our core values and we're like, okay, this is what we're hiring for. One of our core values is relentless improvement. And to your question about partners, any partner you work with, there's going to be problems. And we're just not afraid to talk about them. We do quarterly business reviews. We're like auditing. We're doing a whole bunch of stuff and telling you what you're doing wrong so you can fix it. Because most partners don't want to like just—

they want to fire the relationship or not talk to you. It's like, no, let's just keep getting—

yeah, like, let's just get better. Like, we want to lock arms with you and get you better. And so we're also, because we're trying to build a long-term thing, like, we're just locking arms with partners and trying to just move forward with them.

Talk to me. So given the growth rate that you had, so it was like— was it— it was like $5 million was the first, like, or second year, I think, of business, right?

Yeah. So we started in September of 2015 and we did like 200 in the Kickstarter. We did like $500 grand. Yeah. And then we did $5 million. Yeah. And then $33 million. And then $105 million. $220. Then COVID hit.

We went to $450. Yeah. And then you had what, like $500 and then $500-ish the next year?

$450, $550, $550, $570. Yeah. And then last, uh, 2 years ago, so 2023, we went down for the first year. Okay. Which was pretty heartbreaking for a team that prides ourselves on growth.

So talk to me.

So, and then last year we started growing again.

Okay, that's good. So I have two follow-ups. So first one is talk to me about rush, rushing. Like, what's your— because like you grew really fast. Yep. And then you, and then you were essentially flat for like basically 4 years. Yeah. So what's— so what's How does your perspective on where you want to take the company affect how you run the company with regards to growth rate? Yeah. And like rush around goals. Yeah. I like talking about rush a lot because I think it's where all mistakes happen and you grow really fast without the intention of growing really fast. Yeah. Which I find has happened to me multiple times.

Yeah. You know, I think that we— so we grew, obviously we grew incredibly quickly. Um, the biggest mistake that we made, the biggest rush that we made was we, um, the wheels kind of felt like they were falling off the bus.

Yeah.

At like 450. Okay. And we decided to bring in a whole bunch of people to help like fix the wheels. We need bodies. We need bodies and we need managers.

Managers. Yeah, we need people in the middle. The middle, right? Yeah. Who's headcount? Just so I have context, what was headcount at that—

at like— I mean, going into COVID, we were 85 people.

Uh, so doing 200 going into COVID with a headcount of 80?

Yeah, that's great. And then, uh, coming like, uh, end of '21, we were at like 2— like what, maybe 160? And then we got to a height of 240. Yeah. Uh, with designs on, you know, we're gonna be like 300 people. Yeah. And now I'm like, you know what, like 150 sounds really good.

Right.

Yeah. So, um, yeah, we currently have, we have 25 associates in our dry ice facility and then like 170 people outside of that. Um, and so the rush was we hired a lot of people and what, what happens to companies, and apparently I've learned now that this is a classic $500 million traffic So you can add a book to your thing later. The $500 million trap is something bad happens. You hire a bunch of people because you don't know enough and everyone starts saying no.

Yeah.

And you go from capital E entrepreneurship, like a bunch of pirates, like very little process. We're just going and growing and like to like, oh, we need, we need process. Like we need capital P process and entrepreneurship needs to come way down here. And that's what happened.

You guys are a bunch of kids.

We are. You're a bunch of kids. Like you, Mike, are like, you know, have all these ideas and like, we need to come after you and— Yeah. Hey guys.

So if you're paying careful attention, let me read what the stage of scaling roadmap Mike was at when he was telling the stories about going from 80 to 180+ employees. Does it sound like recruiters are holding inconsistent standards and the culture suffered? Would you say that there were so many new and existing employees' performance suffers? Compliance issues and complaints skyrocket. Would you say that you're still paying retail for everything, right? And he's getting overcharged. Cash is unprotected and not getting good returns. Would you say that was pretty indicative of exactly what he was going through? Well, that's because he was at the stage of specialize, right? And so the crazy thing is that businesses behave in patterns. And so if you'd like to know what stage of scaling you're at, you can go to acquisition.com/roadmap. It's absolutely free.

It's our gift to you.

We put a ton of time and effort in this. It's probably the biggest gift I can give you. And like I said, it's free. So go there, check it out. It'll tell you exactly what you need to do to get to the next level and enjoy.

And that's what happened. And at the meantime, I broke my arm. Like, my— like, everything in my life kind of fell apart at the same time. And it was— it was a slog. And I'm really proud. Like, last year we grew like 6%. And I'm like, fuck yeah. Like, we'll take it. And, you know, so sometime along the journey, I went from like, this is a hobby into I'm going to just flip this thing. Like, let me build this up and sell it for $100 million. And I went on a couple of meetings and I was like, it just doesn't feel right. Interesting. And then I just— it just kind of over time came to me of the meat industry is broken. Yeah. Animals are not being treated well in this country. And that's like hurting the health of like people who are eating it. And it's like, I just wish there was a company that like wasn't funded, had no one breathing down their neck who could just take the play the long ball. Yeah. And just like this might take 25 years, it might take 100 years, but who cares? Like we're in it for the long run. And then after a while it was like after pointing out everyone else who should be doing that, it's like, oh, maybe that's me. Yeah. And so I have no idea if this is what's going to happen. The plan is to build a multi-generational long-term hold. If you look at food companies in the US, many of them are family-controlled, multi-generational, long-term holds. And so that's kind of like, that's how I've built since the past few years.

Yeah.

While reinserting myself and becoming a pirate organization again. Does it feel better? Yes. Yeah. I mean, we did a lot of work in the middle layer. Like a lot of directors, a lot of— Yeah, yeah. At our, at our height, we had 230 people and 85 managers. Managers, managers, managers, managers. I just equate it to the 85 managers. So like the average person had like one person underneath them. Yeah, I just equate it to like the restaurant worker where the receipt comes out and they grab it and they're like, where's the chicken parm?

Yeah, yeah.

On their phone, like chicken parm, you know, it's like Dude, what do you do all day? Yeah. And so we've done a lot of work in like retasking people and just making sure that people are in the right seats. Doing things. Doing things. And it feels much better. We're moving much quicker.

We're growing. We're— yeah. So you're losing 12,000 customers a month? Yeah, something like that. Yeah. How do you have any idea what the split is of new customers per month in terms of where the sources of customers come from? And is there an acquisition channel that you have not mentioned so far that has—

that majorly contributes to that? Yeah. So right now we're heavily on referral and heavily on Meta.

Those are like the two ads and referrals.

What's the split? We're like 30% referral. Okay. And then I don't know what meta is because it's, you know, there's also organic and Google and whatnot. Say 30% meta and 20% organic affiliate, all the other channels. Influencers are 10 or whatever it is. Yeah. Referral's been really interesting. We now, if you're a member, you can refer a friend for a trial box and it costs $20. And we've just seen that work really well.

Does the refer—

what does the referrer get? Nothing. Okay. Yeah, we tried a whole bunch of different things that you get $50, you get this, you get that. What they, what they like the most is giving their friends a box that's almost free.

They just pay for shipping and handling. Oh, so like a free plus shipping, basically.

Yeah.

So it's like box is free. It's $20 for shipping and handling kind of thing. Exactly.

Interesting. So that's another offer. Yep. And that's worked really well. Like, you obviously get a lot of people who just take get one box. They're like, sweet, free meat, and then they cancel. But, you know, executed well, you see a lot of people stay and then they just become great customers.

And yeah, referrals are better customers.

Yeah. If you like, a referred customer is a better customer. And so we've really leaned into that as a program because it compounds at scale, which is why it's so great. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

We've shipped a box to 1.7 million, 1.75 million households in this country. And so at a certain point you're like, how do we inspire those people to do the sales on our behalf rather than us trying to like, you know, retarget people on Facebook.

Yeah. So, um, there's, there's two, two things that I wanted to get into. So one is the ad strategy and second is, if I'm not mistaken, you guys did a media play, correct? Recently. Yeah. Yep.

Yeah.

I wanna talk about that.

Okay.

So I think that's really cool. So let's do media play first. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. We bought a company called Truffle Shuffle. Okay. It's these two guys. One's actually in Vegas. We're gonna see 'em tonight for dinner. And they raised money on Shark Tank. And during COVID they decided that they were gonna sell truffles direct to consumer. These little mushrooms that are hard to get. And then once they started selling truffles, they realized that no one knows how to cook 'em. And so they started doing these instructional videos.

Yeah. You got my DiGiorno and I'm putting my truffle on top.

Exactly. People are like, how do I, what do I do with this? Yeah. And that took off. And this is like COVID where everybody's at home trying to, all these corporations are trying to like, you know, treat their staff well and stuff and whatnot. So, yeah, so they, they ran a pretty interesting business for a while. Great content, thousands of classes where they're teaching people how to cook and live or recorded live. Also recorded, but live. Yeah. And they just like that. They're experts at hosting a live class to cook.

Yeah.

And how virtual? Virtual. Yeah. Our biggest challenge as a company, if you look at our churn, the people who are leaving, our biggest challenge as a company is how do I inspire you to take the meat out of your freezer? Yeah.

They put it in there and then they're, oh, I've got 2 months worth.

Like I don't need any. Right. And people think of their freezer as like a savings account rather than a, like, and so when you say what's for dinner, you open your fridge. Yeah. And look inside or you look on your phone and order something. So how are we gonna like inspire you? Well, one way to do that is if we do cooking classes.

Mm-hmm.

So we, you know, really liked the founders, Jason and Tyler, and just decided that it was a good fit. We got it for a, you know, like a good price. Yeah. Which I don't think I could talk about, but it is. And we ended up Yeah. Ingesting them. And so now we're doing cooking classes for our members.

We're doing— And that's included in the subscription.

Yep.

Included in the subscription. Do you do, so how much of it is public and like available for people who are not buyers?

We're trying to figure that out.

Okay.

Um, cause I'm so like, yeah, cause I don't know how big of a media company in terms of like, you know, impressions they do, but like it, like, cause my whole, my, my whole, my whole business model around content is just demonstration, right? It's just like show, don't sell. And then the selling will occur. And so like whenever you have the opportunity, in my opinion, that's the most elegant way of selling. And so like these high-end chefs having these really engaged high-end, you know what I mean?

Obviously they are really— Yeah, right.

They're high-end.

Yeah. Because on one level there's the retention piece, But I have this theory around the idea that, so I think this is, this, I don't have a double-blind placebo test here, but this is Alex's opinion. I think that you retain customers that pay for a subscription with free content that's available for everyone for a couple reasons. Number one, a lot of people don't log in to stuff. It's just like, you're not like, oh, I'm going to go log in. What's my password? And then it started, you're already like gone. It does, it's not going to happen. So the reason that I have like all my courses on my site are all free and also available with no login is for that purpose. And it's certainly been a significantly better thing than me trying to hide it behind even an opt-in wall just to collect people's emails. You can watch them and then at the halfway point or whatever, it just says, hey, you can opt in if you want. You can also not opt in and keep watching the video. And it's been exceptional for lead generation. And so the thing one is that I don't think a lot of people, I think the utilization is not as high as I would like it to be. Even when you make these really high-end things. The second is that it certainly doesn't drive, I think that you will drive more, not you, but like one, anybody can drive more sales with making the media available to everyone. It also makes it more shareable. And I think that spins the referral machine. You get the media machine from platforms. And then that will drive top of funnel sales and awareness. And I think that maybe you put a handful of them behind a paywall if you want to as a membership benefit. I'd be curious to know if, because if we're thinking about like, how do we solve the problem? Sorry, this is me like, no, this is great. Like, how do we solve the problem of the customers I have bank too much meat and don't cook it because they're not inspired enough to cook. So it's like, okay, so we want, we're trying to maximize on consumption in two ways, consumption of meat But consumption of meat cooking so that it leads to consumption of meat. Right. And so if you were to pre-educate, right, where people watch some show about some truffle meat dish and then purchase, they're purchasing with intention to make a specific dish. And I think it's almost like it, it like colors them a different type of customer because their consumption experience was pre-framed with recipes versus