Pitch Product Value Lessons Learned from The Pitch Queen Michelle Weinstein

Protect your brand, product or invention from the hazards of consumer product launching and go from idea to product to big brand. With guidance from retail product design and development experts Tracy and Tom Hazard. Get the insider secrets to put the right things in the right order with the right resources so you can out design, outsource and out profit your way to retail success.

Hey, everybody. I am here at product launch hazards going to interview the pitch queen, Michelle Weinstein. And I am so excited because, I mean, you have some killer background and I love talking to women with killer backgrounds.

Thank you.

Yeah, you have some experience in mass market retail and all levels of selling products and services. And it is just so interesting that you have been able to dive in and get so much accomplished. So you, you've been in Costco, the vitamin shop. You've been on Shark Tank.

Yes. You just never saw me. But that's a different story.

Yeah, that's a whole different story. And I love you. Write it in your bio as you were brutally rejected. So we're definitely going to talk about that.

I was.

And you started a company called Fitzy Foods, which is what got you onto Shark Tank and all those places. And so we're going to definitely talk about your trials and tribulations starting products. You have found your own teaching other people and helping motivate other people to pitch their value. So that's what I really want to talk today because we dive so often into in the product world, we get all caught up in our features and functions and we forget about our value. Right. None of that matters. I'm so glad you said it. So tell me a little bit about how you got started, because I read your bio, but I just want people to hear your story.

Oh, man. We're going to be here all day, but I'll give you the shortened version so we can talk about all the other fun stuff.

That sounds wonderful.

I have a degree in finance from the University of Arizona. I got a job at an accounting firm at Moss Adams right out of college. And the cubicle life was not for me. So after three years of sitting in a cubicle and my parents telling me that I had the best job ever.

Oh, I'm so proud of you.

I'm like, I don't know about this. I think I was making like 30 or 40,000. I had a 401k. The 401k actually did come into use. I had a borrow against it with Fitzy Foods. So that's another story. But I knew it wasn't for me. I had a part Time job at Nordstrom in downtown Seattle at the time. I love people. I love numbers. And I was like, you know, I got to get out of cubicle, and I moved back to Arizona, where I grew up, and I got hired on the spot at a mortgage company. I'll never forget. It was with Ray Sanderson, who are still friends today, and Lamar Towns. If you're watching this or listening or following me, but those two guys literally hired me on the spot and said, you're going to be awesome. I said, okay. So I sat next to Lamar every single day learning about this mortgage business. And I was like, you know what? I can do math with my eyes closed. I have a nickname, and my nickname is spreadsheet. I love Excel. I learned Excel at that job in the cubicle at Moss Adams. So thank you, Moss Adams, for making me really great at spreadsheeting. And, you know, I just learned that talking to people and helping them get to the root cause of their problems, which back then was lower interest rates on their mortgages, was really what I was good at. I was in the top 3% of the company within a couple months, and they offered me a job in California. So I moved out here. That's how I ended up in San Diego.

And that's where you are right now.

I live in San Diego, yes. And it's beautiful. I go to Arizona every once in a while, but I don't even love it anymore. Like, I used to think it was paradise, but now this is paradise. 70, 80 degrees most of the time lately with global warming, even though no one thinks that's happening, it's really hot here. It got to like.

It's really hot.

Yeah, it never was 100 degrees here 10 years ago. So that's totally not in October or.

November, if that's your show.

It was literally 85 degrees last week. So with that being said, I. And my background of being an analyst, I reviewed the financial statements when they offered me a job as a branch manager out here in San Diego. And I said, there is no way this company is going to survive. Not possible. I said, I give it 18 months. It's going bankrupt. So I fulfilled my year contract. I also got my real estate license on the side because I knew I was going to quit. I went in with a box on the last day, and on the last day, they also had a box for me. And I said, well, I'm glad we're on the same page. So I got fired and I quit all at once. That wasn't the first job I Got fired from. I was the cocktail waitress in college and was fired from that job too. But that was probably for different reasons. I was senior and why not hire freshmen? They're gonna be here for four years.

So how did you leap from being this like real estate analyst accounting to products like that? Seems like a far leap.

I did not know what I was getting myself into. I ate a lot of burritos. So if anyone's been in San Diego, we have the best burrito shops. Ok. They were better than Arizona burrito shops. And I ate a lot of burritos. I was about 10 pounds heavier and I was looking for a personal chef in a package. I was looking for healthy meals to be made for me. And really nothing at the time existed. This was 2006, 2007. Ish. Can't even remember the years. That was 10 years of my life. That is now in my past. I go back to teach lessons learned for each of you. And with that being said, I mean, it was really an interesting time because I did not know what I was getting myself into. But with real estate and mortgages, I was sort of bored. I mean, it was the same routine, same thing. I wasn't in love with it. And I said, hey, you know what? There's this opportunity. I think I can do it better. Let me try. And so I talked to friends, family, and raised a little bit of money, gave it a whirl, and 10 years later, I end up having to close the company. But through those 10 years, a lot happens. And I call it my personal MBA program. It was a really expensive MBA program. I don't think anyone's been to this program before.

You'd be surprised how many.

Yeah, I know they've been through their own program, but through my MBA program, I learned about contracts, legalities, product manufacturing, food manufacturing, lawsuits up the yin yang, investment money, pitching to top investors in the country. I did it all. And there actually is really no price you could pay for the experience that I received. So.

So. And I've been working in this industry for 27 years. So that's what I know is that you cannot learn it in school, you cannot learn it anywhere else. You can only learn it from the hard knocks of doing it and more so from doing it wrong.

And I made a ton of mistakes. And when I had to close the company, March 27, 2017, I'll never forget that date, I was like, I don't know what I'm going to do. But I always had in the back of my mind, I'm going to do a podcast. One of my friends was John Lee Dumas. He has a really successful podcast, Entrepreneur on Fire. I was the guest on there, like, you know what, interviewing people and learning about their stories. Now that sounds fun. I love talking to people. I'm a really good listener. What if I just do that? So I spent about a month really trying to figure out, like, okay, what is the message I want to convey? And for each of you listening, here it goes. I hear time and time again that you're scared to do this. You're scared to pitch this. You don't know which buyer to talk to, how to find that buyer, what to say to them, what to pitch to them. What am I going to do if they tell me no? The fear that's rolling in your head. And so I created my podcast, Success Unfiltered, to help you overcome all of that. So I share with you my personal stories, but I also share with you and what I learned from this is none of us are alone. There are a ton of other entrepreneurs that are willing to share vulnerably the raw, unfiltered stories and how they overcame it to get to their success. Like Justin from Justin's Peanut Butter, talks about his board of advisors and how he had to go get a board of advisors in order to get the round of funding that they needed. I've learned so many amazing stories. You're just gonna have to learn and. Or not learn. Listen to Success Unfiltered and you'll know what I'm talking about. I talk about the raw, unfiltered stories. There's even some interviews I've done with people where I knew they weren't telling me the truth or it just wasn't raw and real enough. They never go live. Because one thing I want each of you to learn is the stuff that's not in Barnes and Nobles. They're not teaching it in MBA programs. You're not going to hear a case study on it. This is like the real in life kind of situation.

Yeah. So here's what. Here's my rule is that if they're teaching you a course, it's different when they're consulting and advising. But if they're teaching you a course that is, like, all in a little box, no longer works. Because if it works, they'd keep doing it right. And so, yeah, so. Because they skipped all the good stuff, all the important stuff. So I love it. You say it's real stuff, and I love that.

Yeah, it's raw and it's real. And, you know, if I save you some time by not starting a business, then that helps you too, because at least you won't waste a lot of money.

Yeah, you know, entrepreneurship that I think you would. You would probably have a good perspective on. There really aren't a lot of groups either that you can join. Like if you join an inventors group or an Amazon sellers group, they're all holding back or they're all at the same place or below where you are, and you're not getting those stories either.

Yeah, it's really interesting you say this, because here's an example of what I did today. There's a person, we'll just call him Larry. Larry has an amazing podcast. And I knew there was something unique and different about Larry. And I was like, okay, who's coaching Larry? Because I want to find it out. And anyway, I figured it out. I found out. I got his phone number, I called him, I said, look, the point of the story is you need to find someone who's at a higher level than you in whatever you're doing. So if it's me for my podcast, then I'm doing that. If it's you and you want to get into Target, you should find a mentor that has already gotten into Target. Or if you want to get into a retail store and do a store within a store concept and pitch a CEO, hey, I've done that. Right. So you always need to find people that, A, are in alignment with you on your values and what you want in life. And B, they've already done it and they've done it better than you and see who helped and supported them, because those are the people that will help. There's no group that's going to. People are in a group because they're trying to figure it out, too.

Yeah, that's right. I call that been there, done that again and again rule. And so it's one of my hazard rules of hiring consultants, marketing experts, whoever you might need to hire in the business. And it is that idea that you really want someone who has actually done and walked that road, because otherwise you're going to step in all the single Z hazards of whatever it is you might go into. And so you have a lot of.

I'll give you another example. So there's a company. Her food is super good. It's delicious. I can't remember the name, but we'll just call it Vegan R Us. It's vegan meals. They deliver to your door. They are doing a lot of money in Revenue. And she said, michelle, we really want to get into corporate. We want to get into corporate catering. We were in scripts, we did a lot of corporate accounts. And I said like, okay, that was one red flag of a mistake that I made. So if you're in the prepared food business, ears up, you know, I said, where does 80% of your revenue come from right now? And she said, direct to consumer. Okay, if you just focus on that 80% and don't worry about the corporate stuff, imagine what could happen. What if you got your packaging a little bit better, you're shipping more in line. Like, they could have made a few improvements I saw, but they reached out because they knew I already did it. And a bunch of other companies who I was friends with, our competitors that also aren't in business anymore tried it too. We've already failed for you, so let me just save you time and money. Okay?

Right. Well, you know, that's a really good point because what you're talking about is that sort of 80, 20 rule, right? And so if you've got this 80% of your business coming from a single area or a single direction, channel, whatever you want to call that, in this case, maybe direct to sales, then you start trying to tap in and trying to build the other ones. You're distracting your business. And when it's in growth mode, it's a failure formula.

It is. I was so distracted. We were doing direct to consumer. We did retail. We got into Costco with protein bars. I was trying to work a deal with the vitamin shop. I was all over the place trying to make it happen. That model doesn't work that well. So especially if you have a product, you're spreading yourself too thin and your team too thin. My team was spread way too thin. We were like peanut butter, the thick good one. We were like the oily one that was slithering all over the place. It was not good. And now I can see it. But then I was like, oh, well, we need to diversify our revenue. We need to do that. But at the end of the day, if we just did, we had a pick and choose. Do we want to do retail and online? It was the hardest decision because I understand when you're doing. We were about a million in revenue. It's hard to let go of something because you have a fixed overhead. And so for a lot of your product based businesses, another thing I would think about is do you want to make your own product or do you want to outsource the manufacturing? Not only were we a sales and marketing company, but we were also the manufacturers of the product. It adds another layer of complexity, complexity and challenges to the table. So one of the things I would do different.

Such a good point.

Yeah. Do you want to be a manufacturer as well for your product for food? I get the challenge. It is hard. We did get an east coast co packer but if I look at the companies that I think did really well, one of them in Chicago in particular, they started from the get go having an outsourced manufacturing. So even when they got to scale and had a scale, you didn't deal with one of the challenges we had. Well, your meals taste like X when you make them and then when your co packer makes them, they taste like Y.

That's right.

Yeah. It's different when you grow really big and if that's in your growth plan and your business plan, it's definitely something to think about in the beginning stages.

So I don't usually do food or fashion because the. Well, food is so difficult as I know and I know I don't specialize in it and fashion is just too trendy and so you have too many hits and misses and I don't like the odds.

Yeah. You have a lot of inventory sitting around. I didn't have inventory sitting around. It went bad in about five days.

You had to get rid of it fast.

Yeah. I mean if you're doing a food based business, you really want to think really hard about your margins and what you're going to start at and who's going to make it. Because especially with us, I mean we were dealing with fresh produce and meats and you have food waste on the kitchen side and you had food waste on the retail side. So it's.

You really took on a challenge for your first product.

I was like the Cirque du Soleil of entrepreneurs. I was doing all sorts of craziness upside down and sideways. But literally the food business is like Cirque du Soleil for your eyes. You don't know what you're looking at at any moment.

So let's talk about your. I love it. You call it the Shark Tank vet crew. Like you get a lot of shark tankers on and I've worked with some who are my clients. So I have some insights like you do that it's not always a good deal. There's lots of stuff you don't hear about. There are people like you who never make it to the screen. Right.

It was still the best experience of my life. Okay, so Shark Tank still, if you have A product based business or some really cool invention, I say go for it because the whole process is like boot camp. It's like, it's either if you're like military mindset, my guess is it's going to be like boot camp for the military or if you're like me, I love the Olympics. It's like going to the Olympic trials and getting to at least run your race in the hundred yard dash. Is that a dash or hundred yard run?

One hundred yard dash. No, that's right, yeah.

Hundred yard dash for entrepreneurship. So for me to pitch in front of Damon and Mark and Kevin and Robert and Barbara, that was the opportunity to go to the Olympics for an entrepreneur. Now some of them get a gold medal, silver or bronze. And others of us, nothing ever happens, but the experience is still there. And we learn from our experiences and we learn our lessons from our experiences and that's what makes us stronger. It helps build confidence. And literally everything after that was Costco and Vitamin Shop and scripts and doing all these deals that I literally had no business getting. But I had the confidence to even ask for it. I had the confidence to pitch it. The brutal. I think I applied in June or July. It was like season four. They tape or no, I applied in April or May, they taped in July and then you had to wait until October to see if even aired. Imagine being in the unknown for about six months. You get really good in entrepreneurship or if you have a product and everything else, you're in the unknown every day. You never know what's going to happen. In San Diego one summer, the power went out, so I lost all the food in our store. I lost all the food in the kitchen. I went to the kitchen one day and there was. It looked like the frickin Hurricane Katrina came in. A pipe burst in front of the kitchen and it was like just water everywhere. I mean every single day there was like, okay, well what's going to happen today?

Super adventurous, huh?

There you go. And now you're sitting there waiting, going, do I scale up my entire business to be able to handle the influx of orders? Because I'm here on Shark Tank or don't I see. That to me is so risky.

Yeah, A lot of them have. Yeah. And you never know if you're going to err. So not only is it, do you have to figure out if you're going to have enough inventory, but what about your website crashing or. I was at this thing the other day and Tara, one of the girls, I think she had a million dollars in sales the night her episode aired.

Wow. You know.

And they had to put a banner ad on the website and they had to delay orders for a few months because to manufacture the product it took about three months. So there's all of these challenges that make it super exciting. It's like being on a human roller coaster ride of business. And you can learn a lot of lessons. But what's really cool about my podcast is that every month I have a Shark Tank veteran. And the Shark Tank veterans share the real raw stories of Shark Tank. So if you want to get a glimpse of what really goes on, there are some amazing episodes. So you can go to Success Unfiltered on your podcasting app or just go to my website, thepitchqueen.com go to success unfiltered and you can see every 4ish weeks there's a Shark Tank vet. And my goal is to also. I also interview investors. And so Kevin Harrington was the first shark that I've interviewed and Damon's going to be next. And then over the next few years, I'll have each of them because it's really interesting to hear. Also their perspective. And some people have amazing deals and relationships with their investors, but there's a ton of stuff that you never see.

I've interviewed Kevin Harrington a couple of times for Ink articles over the time, and we always had this big chat about how many don't make it. And there's so many that don't make it. And it's for a whole ton of reasons that are really valid. Yeah, but 90% of them have nothing to do with the product.

Yeah. It's about the person. People buy people, guys. So if you're pitching for whatever you're doing, like lately I've been working with a few songwriters, singers, amazing voices, and they're pitching themselves to labels and managers. Like, guys, they're buying you, you and you solving this massive problem or inspiring a lot of people, at the end of the day, they will bank their investment. Right. Because for every 10 companies, I don't know how many go out of business nowadays, but I'm sure it's more. More like the 9 department. And one makes it. And I tried everything. I tried everything on earth. And even one of the biggest investors, we still have a great relationship today because he knows not every single investment is going to make it. And these are accredited investors. They know what they're doing and they know that they're taking a gamble. First on you and then obviously timing of the product and the product and Making sure all that goes well.

Right. And most investors think that product is also harder. Like it's a harder one to get investors who are even interested doing product companies. And, and there's a lot of reasons for that, but most of it is a channel problem right now because the channels are a mess. Like the retailers are a mess. And there's just so much risk there that has nothing to do with you or your product.

So there's a lot of that that kind of hesitates them just from the get go. But this is really where I'm curious to know is, are you going to ever do another product company again?

Not right now. I don't have a great product.

Too gun shy right now.

Literally, after Fitzy Foods, everything seems extremely calm and chill and easy. And I was talking to one of the other Shark Tank gals and she has the products. Super cool product. Her name's Cindy. She has the silicone pad and you put it underneath your glass Tupperware and when you put in the microwave, you can take it out without burning your hands. And I mean, just talking to her on all the things she's got going on. She was doing customer service when we were out at dinner.

It never stops. Yeah. It's an overwhelming business and you're like.

It is a little easier. I'm not the best inventor on the planet. She's a good inventor. So if there's any inventors out there that want a partner partner, then I would be open to that. To do a product based business again, it has to be a really good product. I was just showing Alejandra, one of the pitch queen interns here. One of my favorite Shark Tank products that I bought for my whole family was the Drop Stop. It was like that black foamy thing that you put in between your seat and your center console of your car. So you don't. Your cell phone doesn't drop every time in food and it saved a lot of lives. And that's a product that's not going to go bad. Cars aren't going extinct anytime soon. So, like, if the Drop Stop guys reached out to me, I would be super interested. So, number one, I have to love your product. Number two, I have to think that the whole world needs it. And I do think all cars need to not have that gap in between the seat and the center console for safety and for food purposes and for dropping your cell phone. So there are some parameters and I call those your boundaries. It's like, who will you work with and who you will not? And I Think when investors are looking at you and your company or giving you money to do a record album, whatever it may be, they're thinking about that, like, what's my roi? How many people is this going to help? I think it's really important. Now, if you ask me if I'm going to do a food product again, the answer is no.

Oh, I'm so glad you're so honest about it. I love that about you.

I'm pretty blunt, honest and to the point. Yeah.

So let's do we always do this as we sort of, sort of get towards the end, but before we do our all our positives, we hit all the hazards. And so I'd love to either have you kind of recap some of the biggest risks and biggest hazards that you came across in running your business or that, you know, you've come from perspective from the people you've interviewed and just, you know, give us a short list of some that just really?

Yeah.

A short list of ones that you seem are the biggest ones, but the most common ones people fall into.

All right, well, one big hazard that I think each person, I haven't talked about this one a ton, but I think each person should know. So if you're doing an agreement, a contract, I would have two attorneys review your work and review your contracts. Number one. Because every single issue stems from these contracts. And if you have a terrible contract in the beginning, you're going to have problems at the end. So I would have two attorneys review your contracts. The other thing, I would never have a three way party agreement ever again on my life, entire history while I live. And I hope each of you never does it. Let me explain what that is. So our prepared meals were inside Scripps, which is huge hospital and medical chain in San Diego. We were working with their employee wellness program. Great program. They were subsidizing the meals for their employees. We got super creative thought outside the box and partnered with a vending company. The vending company, us and the hospital were all on one agreement. Who would have ever known that almost four years later they would have come back to us and say, hey, the vending company is not responding. We believe they owe us two hundred and something thousand dollars. And because they're not around and you sign the agreement, guess what, you're liable for it. I was like, you have got to be kidding me. That mistake did put us out of business because I said, I will not go through another lawsuit. This is not of interest to me. My investors are not going to do that either. I am done. So that was the icing on the cake that ended broke the business. One thing like that can break your business. Another thing that can break your business is you need to have good quality control. I'm going to share this of one of my competitors. He's actually a really good friend. But they also ship food all across the country. Imagine this mistake, it's happened to us, but not as large of scale. Whoever is shipping your product and it doesn't matter where you're actually. Cindy had the same problem. I've heard this from multiple people now. The wrong shipping label date got put on all of your product boxes out the door. Which means that when the UPS guy shows up, they go to scan it. It doesn't scan because it's all dated wrong. Which means that your products sit there until you get it right. Well, the staff is gone, everyone's gone for the day. You show up the next day, nothing's correct. Well, you also had all this food that never made it to customers. Actually, I think they did get it picked up. It just never went anywhere. And then by the time they received the boxes of food back, I'm not sure on the details, so don't quote me. Anyway, talk about a massive mistake that can literally put you out of business if you're shipping almost a thousand boxes of meals with the wrong labels on it.

So this happened to me personally on a smaller scale. We lost the food product that was in that box. We lost the labor cost on that food. We had to reship the product, so we paid double shipping. We had to remake the food and.

Do the labor and appease a bunch of customers. So you had a customer service time.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I can't tell you your relationship with your fulfillment center. If you have a fulfillment center for your product is crucial. Your relationship with your packaging company is crucial. I had another friend. You can learn from all my friends, the expiration dates on their product were wrong. Imagine a food product and then it should be good for about six months. And the date on the all the packaging was wrong. Actually this happened to me with our Fitzy bars. Yeah, for one of the flavors, the expiration date was wrong. I can go on and on, but to double check your work and I don't think people used to say, wow, Michelle, you're really cynical. I'm like, no, I'm a realist. Okay? One mistake with a product based business, it can really ruin you. And my goal.

There's not a lot of forgiveness here. And that's what I Think people don't understand. And you haven't built brand value for a long period of time. You haven't built that rapport with the consumer. They gave you a shot and then you screwed it up.

In their minds, you get one shot. That is true. But there's ways that you can really implement good quality control. We did not have great quality control. It's one of the things that I think almost like investing in two attorneys invest in two QC people, because the amount of money you would have paid for 2 QC people will be cheaper than the amount of money you pay in a mistake. Some mistakes, like what we experienced went out of business. That's an expensive mistake. That was like a few million dollars and over a little over 100,000 in personal credit card debt in my name mistake. Yeah. If I would have had two attorneys review that, would that have been less expensive? And I know it's hard in the beginning when you're like, well, we don't have a really. A lot of resources. I would just go back to the drawing board and figure it out. Because then if you don't have the resources yet, it's not worth it to even keep going.

Yeah. So right here at Product launch hazards, we believe and we talk about the right things in the right order with the right resources, and that's the way you. So what are some of those right things that you would recommend to someone now that you've had the hard experiences? What are some of the things that you would do again, that are so valuable and so important that you felt like this was a success factor to us getting where we got?

I did have good investors that did believe in me, so that was helpful because we wouldn't have accomplished anything if it wasn't for them. My investors were great. Also that when I was pitching on Shark Tank, we did practice Shark Tank pitches. So I do think your investors are important. But one area that we did not have was an advisory board, a good one, like finding someone who was in the food space or a couple people. I didn't have a food background. I have, like a finance and sales background. I could do all the selling all day long. But when it came to the food department, I was like, I hope this happens.

I have a good friend who started a baby products company, diapers and wipes and stuff. And I was like, the first time I met her and talked to her, I was like, all expecting to just go like, oh, God, there's going to be so many mistakes here. I was just expecting that when she told me the guy who's one of her advisors and the experience he had, I was like, she's actually in really good hands. She has a shot at it. That is so true. Advisors with really great and deep experience in an industry is so important.

And investors in your exact industry. If I look at some of the most successful companies that I've interviewed, they had found a partner that had done what they were doing already before. Be it in the beverage space, the healthcare or the beauty product space. If I would have found. But see, the thing is, when I started, there weren't a whole lot of people doing this business. It was so new. I did reach out to our competitors to try to partner up, but no one was interested in that game plan at the time. So I would say I would even get a couple attorneys on your advisory board maybe if you don't have a lot of funds in the beginning or you're not really prepared financially. Man, having a good attorney or two, actually you have to have two. You need to. That's for sure. I love it. Especially if you're getting investments on and you're doing convertible notes or you're just doing equity investments, whatever it may be. Having multiple attorneys help you actually really helped us too. Well, sort of. Some of them was good, some of it was good and some of it wasn't. I love that.

Well, Michelle, there is going to be all kinds of links to you at the Pitch Queen and how they can find you and to your podcast, which is brilliant. I have, I personally listened to it. And guys, this is worth it. I mean there's how to podcasts, there's podcasts like what we do here, which are teaching lessons and then introducing you to really interesting people who can take you further in, deeper, dive into it. And Michelle is one of those people. So you really do need to know what you don't know. And she has got that all in spades for you. So you'll be able to find her at the blog post@productlaunchhazards.com and you will absolutely be able to connect with her straight from there and you'll see her great bio and some more photos and information on her there at the blog post. So Michelle, any last words for our audience? Any last pieces and nuggets? You've given us tons of advice, but any last words to the audience here?

Last words. I could be here for another hour, but let's go with this. I say you all have a product based business or you're selling on Amazon, right? If you don't Try it. You're never gonna know. If you actually give it a try. There's a 50, 50 chance at least you know that it was gonna go really well or it didn't work. And what I say is just don't let fear and the I don't know get in your way. Because if you allow it in your way and stop you in your tracks, that's 100% a no, right? Or 100% a failure or 100% zero sales. But what if you did something right and the opportunity turned out to be a million 5, 10 million dollar idea? But a lot of us stop because of, oh, what if they say no? Oh, they're not going to respond to my email. Target's never going to want this product. I mean, I really want to reach out to that buyer. But yeah, wait until next week. So that's my mission for each of you, because I know what's possible. I've done it. I stayed a little too long with my business. I'm not going to lie. I'm going to start a whole series about close your business.com eventually. So how to close your business. Because no one talks about that.

And I want to go on with you with how to get out of your product. Because when to get out of your product, they wait too long.

Yeah, it's the same thing. Like, timing is so key. It's like real estate, right? Real estate market changes every seven to 10 years. I think I did that my past life. Well, so does our businesses. And sometimes it's how do you get out of your product or how do you change it to meet the demand of the marketplace. What's really difficult, though, is when you are in it, you can't even see. Which is why it's important to have a board of advisors, have a mastermind group, have a coach. Like, hopefully I'm going to have this coach. Not hopefully, I will have this coach by my birthday in March of 2019. I talked to him today. But you have to set yourself up in order to have these wins. But if you don't try, you are 100% a no. So why not flip, flip it right, heads or tails and give it a try? Because you have nothing to lose, only something to gain and people to help.

Wonderful. Well, thank you, Michelle. I'm so glad you joined us on the show today and I really appreciate your time.

Well, thank you so much for having me.

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