506: Insider Details About Our Recent Company Exit With Mike Jackness

00:00
You’re listening to the My Wife, Quit or Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and delve deeply into what strategies are working and what strategies are not with their businesses. today I have my good friend Mike Jackness back on the show, and Mike is the founder of EcomCrew and he owns many e-commerce brands. But one of these brands Mike and I own together and we recently had an exit. So in this episode, we’re gonna talk about this brand and the painful details of the exit.

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But before we begin, want to let you know that tickets for the 2024 Seller Summit are now on sale over at SellersSummit.com. The Seller Summit is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. And unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level BS, mine is a curriculum-based conference where you will lead with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their e-commerce business

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entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods, and not some high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. Now, I personally hate large events, so the Seller Summit is always small and intimate. Every year, we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets sell out fast, and we’ve sold out every single year for the past eight years. If you’re an e-commerce entrepreneur making over $250k or $1 million per year, we also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers.

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The Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 14th to May 16th, and right now, this is the cheapest the tickets will ever be, and prices will be going up after the holidays. Also, if you haven’t picked up my Wall Street Journal bestselling book, The Family First Entrepreneur yet, it’s actually available on Amazon at 38 % off right now. My book will teach you how to achieve financial freedom by starting a business that does not require you to work yourself to death. Plus, you can still grab my free bonus workshop on how to sell print on demand

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and how to make passive income with blogging, YouTube and podcasting when you grab the book over at mywifequitterjob.com slash book. So go over to mywifequitterjob.com slash book, fill out the form and I’ll send you the bonuses right away. Now onto the show.

02:14
Welcome to the My Wife, Quit Her Job podcast. Today, I’m thrilled to have a regular back on the show, Mike Jackness. Mike and I, we’ve been good friends for a very long time. He’s spoken at Seller Summit practically every year. I think he’s only missed one year. He’s been on the podcast many times, and we were even investors together in an e-commerce company which recently had an exit. And in today’s episode, we’re actually going to talk about this company that we recently sold and more importantly,

02:42
What’s in store for Mike going forward because he recently sold a number of his brands, laid off some members of his team. We’re going to talk about the future of e-commerce and AI. What’s up, Mike? I don’t know, man. I had some of that sweet, sweet Steve Chu money for a while and I had to give it back. So I’m a little sad over here. Yeah. Well, see what the people listening do not know is that you’ve had a really rough life these past couple of years.

03:12
trying to sell this company. Relatively, right? mean, like I’m not digging ditches and not living life for poverty, but yeah, it’s been, it’s been really stressful. mean, uh, and nobody wants to hear about it. So you got to kind of like, you you keep it to yourself and, and fight through it. I think this is what we sign up for as entrepreneurs. Like, uh, it’s, it’s not a straight line up until the right. It’s a roller coaster. Um, and yeah, I mean, the last year and a half particularly was, was really tough on me. I mean, it just, uh, you know, things happen.

03:43
one thing happens after another. just we got in this situation that especially from a business life standpoint, things were kind of like an all time low. I would say over the last 20 years, I quit my job 20 years ago, almost exactly now it’s kind of crazy. My anniversary for 20 years is coming up in January in 2024. And so, you know, look back at the last 20 years and yeah, I this was one of the one of the harder ones for sure. Yeah, because I was thinking to myself, it’s all about timing.

04:13
Right. If this had happened or we wanted to sell just a year before we were being golden. I mean, really just a couple of months, which is crazy. Yeah. So, uh, you know, without being a elusive, we can kind of talk a little bit about exactly what happened, but, uh, you know, you and I, like you mentioned, kind of, bought a business, um, with a bunch of other people. it was, guess we can kind of talk about the people that were involved, but Andrew Darien over at e-commerce fuel, he had put together like an investment group.

04:40
And we knew a mutual person that was selling a business and I was looking for something to do with the time. And so we all agreed on was I would run the thing for one year and then put in a new CEO to kind of run out the clock. We had a three year timeline. So the idea was like, I would go in there, do some discovery, kind of put together a plan, work on some initial stuff, put together a playbook for a young hungry kind of CEO person and mentor them. And then I would move on to another thing and they would

05:10
uh, take the baton and run it for the rest of the time. Uh, when it was happening was after the year was before you go on, when I heard about all this stuff, how you’re going to be running it and transitioning. I didn’t, I didn’t tell you this, but I knew that that wasn’t going to happen. Right. That was like way too optimistic. mean, looking back, or, know, it’s tough, right? Cause we, we, uh, made a decision to sell it and not even try real.

05:38
not really even try to find somebody else. I we started trying to find somebody else and then very quickly thereafter decided to go ahead and sell it. And I was like, well, if we’re going to sell it, like I’ll stick around. so it’s hard to say what would have happened. Yeah. I mean, it’s probably, you know, realistically, probably optimistic to find somebody that’s going to do as good of a job, you know, for a salary or whatever. Yeah. I don’t know. Like it’s, you know, if you were to ask me the question point blank, would I ever do something like this again? The answer is just.

06:06
No, absolutely not. And so, you maybe that means in my heart of hearts, I feel like it would have been tough. yeah, regardless, you know, after that first year, we were like maybe 14 months into it, we had just put the job posting up, we were kind of exploring that. And then we had our little board meeting and we started talking about things. basically, what ended up happening was we were like, look,

06:31
We have already increased this business so much in this last year, increased the enterprise value of this business that we can sell it right now for what we were hoping to sell it for in year three. And the conversation basically was like, look, we’ve all been in business for long enough to know, like never look a gift horse in the mouth. There’s investors involved in this thing. There was a SBA note involved as well. Why not take the win? Book the win. Go back to all the investors, like cheering and celebrate.

07:00
And then maybe move on to the next thing. Maybe there’s another, another deal on the horizon. And so like getting an early win was important to all of us. And it made a lot of sense. And for me, was like, yeah, this is, this is great. We can, uh, you know, sell this thing now. It was a really good meal. The timing basically was you put it up in, in February of 2022. And so coming off, uh, you know, we had, we didn’t have any COVID let downs or, it wasn’t any, you know, issues with that. So we put the thing up for sale and, uh, and I thought I’d be done.

07:29
by the summertime of 2022 is kind of what, that looking back at it, I would still believe because normally that’s what happens, right? But we just ended up going through just a really crazy chain of events that I don’t think will ever happen in my life again. I mean, it was just really hard to predict. And so what ended up happening was we ended up getting under LOI with a strategic investor was kind of the dream, right? It was a strategic investor. They offered us above market value.

07:59
The only downsides really was that A, we knew the due diligence process was going to be very difficult because they hired four separate companies to do due diligence because it was a private equity firm that has rules whenever buying a business, no matter how big or small. We were like a little aunt to them, but they had to still do the same due diligence process as if it was a $100 million or a quarter billion company. So we went through that kind of due diligence. We knew that was going to be difficult and they weren’t.

08:27
willing to waive that process no matter what. So that was like a downside. The other downside was they wanted me to come work for them for a period of time after closing the deal. But for the amount of money they were offering, I was willing to do it. I mean, I was like, you when I signed up for this thing, you kind of take other people’s money and you’re taking on some responsibility of having to be fluid and things in life, right? Like, it’s just like, if it was just me, I’d be like, hell no, I’m not going to go do that. But like, when you have a bunch of other people

08:56
that you’re trying to produce returns for. was worth it for me to go do it under those circumstances. And it was going to be financially rewarding as well. Like it wasn’t like I was going to take $5 to go work for them. were offering a good package and I was willing to go do it. I was like, this is awesome. I’m going to make a bunch of money. Investors are going to make a bunch of money. You know, I’ll have to go do this for a period of time, six months to a year afterwards. And I was good with that. But what I’m happening was the economy started taking a dump. Yeah. Like right in the middle of all this.

09:25
So we did the due diligence, get to the end. They signed off on everything. They’re like, we accepted the due diligence, but we’re not putting any money to work anymore. know, interest rates are up, stock market’s gone down 40%. A lot of our money’s in the stock market. We’re freezing all investments. And basically too bad on all the effort you put into it to this point. So, you know, it’s tough. It’s a tough spot to be in. And for me personally, the thing, this is where like the year kind of

09:54
timeline of things getting just kind of dark for me personally. Um, you know, first of all, going through due diligence sucks. was the one that had to go do it all. Um, you know, you think you like mentally you’re like checking out of this business. You’re already thinking about like, are you going to spend the money on? You it’s like, it’s just, these are all like human nature things. Like I’m going to go do this or that the other, next business I’m going to do whatever it is. And, uh, and the investors we’ve already communicated to all of them, like this was about to happen. And then you got to go like back and be like, Oh, sorry, the deal didn’t happen.

10:24
you know, and retrace all your steps. And it was just, it sucked. mean, so we put the business back up for sale and now it was like, okay, now I’m like, now what do I do? mean, now I’m six months further into this thing than I was supposed to be. And just in a bad, you know, in a bad spot, like I didn’t want to walk away, leave everybody in a bad spot. And so was like, well, just put it back up for sale. Like the next person’s going to buy it. So we went back to the same buyer poll. They were an SBA buyer. got under LOI relatively quickly.

10:53
got through due diligence, got all the SBA deal approved and the, you can’t make stuff up category. The SBA bank that was funding the loan got acquired the week that we were supposed to close and they couldn’t close in the deal. So they passed it off to another bank and it was like, it was all done. So was like, it was just going to be a week or two. We got to like get through the paperwork and the other bank will fund it in a week or two. It’s like, okay, whatever. I’ll be done with this thing by the end of October, beginning of November.

11:22
The guy that was buying the business was super frustrated, went out for a hike, got bit by a tick, got Lyme disease, ended up in hospital, really, really ill, couldn’t close on the deal. How random is that? Right? How random is that? Like all of it’s so random, right? Like the bank getting bought at that exact moment, him getting bit by a tick, getting that sick. Cause I mean, Lyme disease obviously comes in a variety of different, you know, levels of sicknesses and stuff. And he was just in really bad shape. Yeah. I mean, it, it sucked. Cause like now.

11:51
Now it’s November. I’ve been through due diligence twice. There’s things I wanted to do in other parts of my business, which we’ll talk about here in a little bit. was starting to get frustrated with some other things. I wanted to make other moves in my business. But the danger of having commingled resources is that now you’ve tangled things up and that’s kind of what happened. Even though they were completely separate, they weren’t really commingled. They were working out of the same office building.

12:19
you know, and they knew each other. And when I went to the Philippines, the visit, which I did usually about once a year, we’d all kind of hang out together because you’re only there so often. And, you know, I look back at that and look at what a mistake that was because, you know, it made things more sticky for me personally. do mean by that actually sticky? Well, just well, I mean, again, if you have people talking, let’s just say like, you have something going really bad in one part of the business. So you want to fire a bunch of people or make a change with like benefits or do

12:48
anything, they’re all going to talk to each other. And so it’s just like, whatever one set of people does might affect the other set of people. And the other set of people that you have, the people that were working for the business that, that we own together were actually my favorite people. They, they did a great job. Um, you know, and, uh, I liked working with them and also, you know, I had on my back and, know, the, things to think through for people out there listening. You, don’t think through all these things, but, um,

13:18
I was always just really worried that something that I did on some other part of my team could affect this other team and cause people to quit and cause a riff over there. And it was an extra stress point that I certainly didn’t need to put myself into. just to be clear for everyone listening, Mike runs a bunch of his own e-commerce companies. And then this one that we bought together had its own team, but they were all living under the same roof.

13:44
Is that record? Okay. mean, they were physically living under the same roof. We weren’t sharing, know, they were, used the employer of record to hire everybody. So we were a registered company. So they were hired under a separate contract. They paid separate rent. know, they had all their separate, everything was paid separately. There was nothing completely coming, but they physically worked in the same building because it actually just made things a lot easier. We already negotiated a lease and you know, all these different types of things. so,

14:13
Yeah, I mean, I guess the problem is the thing that’s like really tough, you know, when I, cause I do like to look back at things and learn lessons. Um, you know, if not for my existing team, I don’t think that this deal that we did would have worked out as well. Cause the way that it started is I put my best team members like on this thing on day one, right? Like, Oh, I have the luxury of having this other team that already exists. I’m going to have my best three people.

14:38
start on this business with the intention of within three to six months, getting them off of that, right? It was basically, we don’t have any employees yet. We’re going to hire some people. We’re going to have my existing employees train them and kind of supervise the whole thing, do some work in the beginning so we can hit the ground running really quickly, which we did. It worked out great. And then eventually I’m to take all these people back and by the time we sell, like there’ll be a, it’ll be a distant memory that we did that, which it was, and we’ll have our own team. And so we had what seven people that had been

15:08
working just for this business when we sold it, that we’re separate. But again, they all talk to each other, like they all knew each other. And that’s where, and that’s where things got complicated, you know, and, and, know, I don’t know how I would fix that moving forward. just would never do it again. mean, period, but, uh, it was something that I just didn’t quite think through. And I didn’t think that this, uh, circumstances was going to come up either. It was kind of a weird light. You know, I thought, Hey, after a year, I’m going to be out of this thing. The new CEO will be.

15:37
talking to them will separate it even more like Mike won’t even be involved anymore. And that like never materialized. And so yeah, it definitely it definitely made things a little complicated. then the final offer that went through was that the one that was wrapped through the Lyme disease guy. So we ended up that thing fell apart in November, like late mid late November. And we’re like, well, we’re not going to put this thing back up for sale now in December. mean, right, talk about an awful month to put it up for sale.

16:05
We’ll just put it back up in January. So January of this year, 23, we ended up actually listening it in 20 or February 23, got under LOI again, went through due diligence again, and that buyer fell out as well. don’t even know if I had- By the way, in case any of guys are listening, I didn’t do any work. was just a passive investor. Man, it’s pretty much typical Steve Chil. Didn’t do any work.

16:31
driving his kids around the volleyball, playing pickleball, playing tennis, going to the gym. And I’m skinny and fat or, know, skinny arms and fat belly and he’s got skinny belly and big arms because he lifts every day. Yeah, so I was just like, listening to all this on the sidelines. And, you know, just cheering you on basically. So I didn’t realize there was another deal that fell through. Yeah, yeah. And it’s, know, I mean, this is kind of like where things obviously start to turn better, but

17:00
Uh, got through due diligence. Um, and the buyer just basically was like, this business is too complicated for me. Like I, he was wanting to buy it because he was located in the same state as the business, like just close proximity, but you know, this was like the perfect e-commerce business for him to get into. He had already been in e-commerce before and sold it and wanting to get back into e-commerce and thought this was like a perfect, uh, like real estate plus business play. Cause he wanted to also try to buy the, uh, the warehouse, which the landlord was, was willing to talk about.

17:30
And so, but at the end of the day, he was just like, it’s too many skews. It’s too many moving parts. This is just too much for me and I’m backing out. then like three days, within the next couple of days, it like, where things like turned the corner really, really quickly. We got super lucky. The SBA banker for the deal was like, look, I already put a ton of work into this thing. Like this business is a great business. Like instead of being 20 % down, which is what we originally thought I was going to be, he’s like, I can do

17:59
guaranteed we can do 15%. Most likely we can do 10 depending on the buyer. So we now open up to a bigger poll of people. Again, super strong financials, lots of long history, great solid business. It was never a problem with the business. was always just like, again, that’s what’s front. It’s one thing if you got a bucket of bolts and you know it, and you’re going through this because you know what’s gonna be hard. It’s another thing we have a really solid business and this is happening, which is what our case was, which is just truly bad luck.

18:28
And the banker was like, look, I know somebody that I think that will buy this business. Like I sold him another business. He’s looking for another one right now. And this meets like all the criteria that he’s looking for. And he referred this guy and this was like March now of 23 by Tommy. Maybe it was even April. And we closed shortly after seller summit. We almost closed, but actually, think we actually signed the paperwork at the final talk. As you were talking about you being on the New York times best seller.

18:58
I was doing the docu-sign to sign the paperwork and we closed officially a couple of days after that. Dude, that’s nuts. That’s like the fastest close ever. It was really quick. Right? It was really quick. mean, for an SBA deal, it was super quick. But again, remember, due diligence was already completed. He accepted the due diligence of the other buyer because it was already done. It had just been done and it was by a reputable due diligence company that we all know and have used in the past. So he’s like, I’ll just use that report.

19:26
Like I don’t need to go do due diligence again. I mean, it’s three days old. And he had some other questions and things that he wanted to follow up on obviously, but like the due diligence process was days, not weeks, not months. The banker had already done all the paperwork. He had already gone through the financials and got the, you know, all the whole packet done for the bank and to get qualified for SBA. So we were able to just basically hand off the baton. You know, we lost a couple of weeks as the buyer had to do all his paperwork and

19:56
Um, you know, so that it did take some additional time, but yeah, I mean, it closed really, really quickly from there. And, know, finally it was like just this gigantic breath of fresh air. Cause the guy is like, awesome. Like, I mean, I hope to continue to remain friends with them. Um, you know, would run in the middle of traffic for him and do anything I could to help him out. And he just, uh, his, his fall through on every promise done a really great job. He’s kept all of our employees. seem to enjoy working with him, which was important to me. Yeah.

20:24
Again, he bought a really solid business and I think he’s going to do very, very well with it. Like I think, you know, we, had our set of circumstances while we wanted to sell it, but it didn’t mean that it wasn’t, we weren’t looking to sell it because we’re like, Oh my God, like this business is about to fall apart and it’s a bucket of bolts and trash. And like, we need to sell it before anybody figures it out. It had nothing to do with that. It was, it was a solid business. We had bought it as an investment. We met our objectives and it was time to move on. Like I wanted to move on. You know, it’s who knows what you’re going to get an unknown quantity of

20:53
a quantity of another CEO to put in place. And it was just like, it was time and it ended up working out finally in the end, you the disadvantage for me and why I would probably not do something like this again, unless it was like the only thing I was working on. Cause like, I will talk about that. I’m kind of like getting to that point in my life now, but you know, it really stuck me in a bad spot of like not being able to start something new.

21:20
Cause I knew I wanted to go do something new, like, you know, I wasn’t making any extra money out of the deal by staying on for extra time. So it was kind of like, I’m getting diminishing returns on my time, which, you know, as you get to be closer to 50 is kind of a terrifying prospect. And there was other things I wanted to do on my other businesses, like desperately wanted to like make some big changes over there and felt kind of tied up and not able to do that. so,

21:45
But in the end, I’ve had some time to reflect. We closed on June 2nd. We’re recording this at the end of August. It’ll probably go out in September or something. I’m really thankful. Again, 20 years of being in the business, this could have worked out way worse. It could have been like, our Amazon account got suspended in middle of all this, or things started having a huge downturn.

22:11
We, we couldn’t even return investors money or we had to return partial investor money, like at a loss or, who knows? Like there’s all kinds, or we could have got, you know, I could have gotten in a big fight with like Bill and Andrew or something and just like, you know, whatever that would have happened. I mean, you just never know. Right. I mean, there’s a whole bunch of unknowns, right? You think you know somebody, but like, there’s been, there’s been times in my past where you think you know someone and they steal a million dollars from you. So, I mean, it does happen. Right. And so, you know, I think.

22:40
you all in all, like I’m super thankful that, and I, I’m glad I did it. Like, you know, if I had to pick, you know, God, I was a mess and I really wish I never did this thing or, you know, I’m happy in the end, you know, I can only pick one of those two things. Yeah. You know, it’s weird to say like, I would never do something like this again and also be happy with the outcome. Cause, you know, it’s exactly where I’m at. Cause I think, you know, without

23:08
experiencing some of this stuff firsthand, it’s hard to ever make decisions moving forward. And I think we’ve developed some good friendships and other things. never, you never know where things go in life from here. Right. And, we did okay. Like, I mean, we actually still returned above. was happy with the exit as someone who’s put so much time into the, to the deal. Right. All that hard work. And it was during a time where the S &P 500 was like 2 % return over that time. Right. mean, annualized. And so we, did,

23:38
you well in it well in the double digits returns. So yeah, I mean, I don’t know, like, again, I’m happy the way things worked out in the end, I know it could have been way worse. And, you know, move on to the next thing. Let’s talk about the aftermath, because you end up laying off your entire team practically almost in the Philippines, and then you sold all of your e commerce brands except for one right? Yep, that you’re holding up. What’s going on in your mind with that move?

24:10
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24:39
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24:50
Yeah, I mean, it’s a bunch of things, man. I mean, it wasn’t any one thing. It was kind of like just stacking things, right? And so, you know, I think in general, you know, I’ve learned a lot about e-commerce over 10 years and the types of products and brands and things I’m going to be running. And the ones that I had were not, they didn’t really meet any of those criteria. you I made some decisions in years past to buy things or start things.

25:21
with the best of intentions and actually got lucky. mean, all of those brands did well and made money over those years and I sold them for good money. But not what I want to be doing moving forward. I love the old like Wayne Gretzky quote of like, should be skating to where the puck is going, not where it is. And so I think in terms of what, so what does that mean? Like what’s going to change in e-commerce? Well, like, you know, I think that these me too products, like the things you just find off of Alibaba or the Canton fair and sell them on Amazon, I think that

25:50
like the walls are closing in on that like relatively quickly. If you don’t have some sort of moat or defensibility. And so like you look at what you’re doing, like this is perfect example. Like you have moat and defensibility, like you have the equipment and the manufacturing like they’re like locally, you can make things on demands, I think that that’s a great business, right? I mean, like something that I would want to get into and do the business that we sold actually, I think is another great business. had its own warehouse and facility doing some light assembly and final assembly stuff to get it into Amazon.

26:19
really builds a mode around the business prevents other people around the world from doing the same business. Even though it was kind of commoditized products, having that final assembly point and being nimble is really what made the business very successful. The other types of products, the businesses I sold and the things I’m looking to sell, I think that you look at what my mode’s been to this point, why are those businesses been successful and being able to sell millions of dollars with the products over the years? Well, mean like,

26:48
we were first to market or close to first to market that helps. So we have like a review note. We put up really awesome listings. Like we take really great photography. We write really good copy. I optimize the listings really well. And that that’s actually been a really big differentiator for, for multiple years. But then you look at AI and you know, it’s not that I like it, but again, I, I, I, another book I love is who moved my cheese. And so like, think

27:16
you know, the reality is as things are changing, people in China or Pakistan or India that don’t take really great photography and don’t have the ability to write really great copy are going to be able to do that now as good or better than me with these AI tools, right? And so the note that I currently have is there’s dump trucks just doing backfill every day and slowly filling that thing in, right? And so what can I be doing moving forward that

27:43
that just pure listing, copying, imagery alone, you know, doesn’t give me that advantage. So I gotta be thinking about other things like intellectual property or some, again, manufacturing or things that you and I have talked about a couple of things that I’m really interested in doing moving forward. And so, you know, that’s also been coupled with the idea and just realization, you I think, again, you see patterns in life. I mean, the reality is, that the same pattern happened in the poker space. I did online poker affiliate marketing.

28:12
You know, as when I first quit my job, that’s what I was doing in 2004. And so, you know, I did the same thing then that I did in e-commerce. I started a site. I was the only person doing all the work. It started taking off. I hired a few people. We ran that for a couple of years and had immense success and started, you know, having a mid to high, even low seven, mid to high, six figure, low seven figure incomes for those years. You know, and I think that, you know, the success is, can, you know, can be also

28:41
your enemy because like then you think you can just repeat this really easily. so we went out and started a bunch of other things and bought other things and ended up with this conglomerate. And, we were successful kind of in spite of ourselves. Like, I mean, it was one of these things where there was so much money to be had and it was such a lucrative industry. And we were at the right place at the right time. All these things that I didn’t really take any, you know, give any credit to at the time. Now I look back and I’ve really realized that that was such an important factor. Same thing happened in e-commerce, by the way, years later.

29:11
But now you have all these different things and it’s like, can’t manage all of them at the same level that you did just the one thing that you had to start with, with the same passion and focus. Now you’re managing people instead of doing the work and the things that made the business successful to begin with, you’re no longer doing and relying on other people to do. And it becomes like just your job is can you manage a team and people? And some people are really good at that. I’ve kind of just realized, I think over the years that

29:38
It’s really not my specialty. you’re pretty good at it, but it does take a lot of and it takes a lot out of me. It takes a lot out of me. You know, it’s, it’s, um, cause I am a people person and I’m always thinking everybody else first and trying to make them happy. And that’s getting harder and harder to deal with employees. mean, it’s, know, one of the things that kind of led me where I’m at. So anyway, I got to have seen the same thing happen in e-commerce. You know, I started a site, started doing very well, bought another one, started another one, sold a couple. Like we’ve had a lot of success and still same thing in spite of ourselves. We’ve been.

30:08
able to be successful, but like the margin for error is much smaller in e-commerce, right? The profit margin’s much lower. And, you know, the, the, the gravy train times are gone. You know, that the times where you could just list anything on Amazon and not even try, know, 2015 and be successful that that’s gone, right? You got to excel at what you’re doing. And even then that might not be enough because there’s so much competition. And so, you know, it just really got me.

30:37
you know, rethinking things like, you know, I should kind of just mention these employees and just, I mean, and, you know, I’m kind of just burnt out. Like the, all the stuff I’d mentioned before with trying to sell this business and run all this stuff and keep everything, you know, the wheels on the bus, um, through all this, uh, was just, was just really taxing on me. And so it just really kind of came down to, am ready to make some massive changes. And it came down to getting rid of everybody. I know I just like, I don’t want to be in meetings every day anymore. I don’t want to be begging people to come to work and do their job.

31:07
Um, you know, hear about how, you know, you know, they’re, they’re relatives having a problem. They need money or just all these different things you got to deal with every single day, how they’re out of vacation time or, you know, don’t blog, their keystrokes or they find them doing a second job or, know, all these, just like all these things that just happen like nonstop. I just didn’t want to be hearing about any longer, um, and being in meetings for, and, um, and so we sold all the brands except from one. I would have sold them all quite frankly, uh, just the one brand that’s left.

31:37
is still worth quite a bit of money. And I think I can leverage my time over the next year to make it worth significantly more than it is right now. so unless somebody comes along in the middle and wants that and will buy it in an environment where like my trailing 12 months isn’t as strong or I don’t really have a good tax return or it’s not SBA qualified yet.

32:02
You know, it’s possible that could happen, but like my goal is to basically make my trillion 12 months the year of 2024. Um, put together a really good tax return that I can hand over for SBA financing, um, as a sell, uh, in, early 25 and sell it hopefully for your multiple seven figures is the goal. If you look back on all the companies you’ve started, would you say that color it, which was your coloring book company? You think that one had the greatest moat? I do.

32:30
Absolutely. Which is why I want to do something similar to that moving forward. It won’t be coloring books, by the way. So if the new owner that’s listening, don’t worry about that. the properties of that business is what I liked. It’s it’s a consumable business. So anytime people are using my product, they got to then buy more. It had really defensible intellectual property. Artwork and drawings is very copyrightable in the United States. And so if anybody tried to copy that, which some people tried,

32:59
You can shut them down really, really easily. We had a moat on the manufacturing process and there was actually several moats built in that business that still exist to this day. And the new owner has been very successful with it. so, yeah, mean, that definitely is what’s on top of mind for sure. I’m just curious why you sold that business first. Yeah, I I had that partner. He was my cousin.

33:25
Okay, so there are other issues. wasn’t the yeah, we’ll just kind of leave it at that. So I mean, okay, sure. Um, you know, they had full time jobs and just didn’t really have the time and they also, you know, I think at the end of the day, they needed the money. And so like, it was, we were at this kind of inflection point of like, the business wasn’t paying us anything because we were growing so darn fast that we actually had to keep on borrowing more money. Not only not only we were able to pay ourselves anything or

33:52
distribute any money out of business, but we’re having to borrow more money because we were growing at more than 2X per year. so, is nuts. When you’re in that space or position in e-commerce, you’re buying more inventory ahead of future sales that you haven’t made the money for yet. Right. And so like you’re constantly behind the eight ball in terms of getting more, your hands on more cash. And so really the only, the only way to meet the objectives of everybody was to sell it.

34:21
and get the cash out and we sold it for seven figures. there was, you know, a decent truck of change for everybody to, to, be happy. Um, although, you know, just from a pure selfish, uh, vacuum. Yeah. I would have preferred to have kept that, that business and got rid of everything else except that one. Right. All right. So a lot of time has passed at this point and we’re looking back on this. Uh, what would you have done differently these past several years? I mean, you mentioned a couple of those things already. Yeah.

34:50
Yeah, that’s interesting. I wasn’t really prepared for that particular question. as you said, I mean, it’s probably just rehashing what we’ve already talked about. mean, I think I’ve really just kind of, think everyone learns in their own way, right? I mean, some people do really well by being coached. Some people do really well reading. Some people have to do it themselves to learn. Some people have to make the same mistake more than once before they learn.

35:19
I’m kind of in that group. I’m the dummy, right? Like I don’t listen to people very well. Someone tells me I can’t do something, then it makes me want to just go do it more. A lot of times that’s helped me be very successful actually. I so that is a good trait in some ways, but a bad one in others. But the thing that I’ve seen over 20 years, realistically, I will see, this will be a good podcast to come back to and reference, but I feel like just doing one thing is like kind of the thing now, right? Like I really just kind of my lesson.

35:49
And it’s been a combination of making the same mistake myself more than once, reading books like The One Thing, reading books like Essentialism, but probably more importantly, besides just making the mistakes myself. And again, being lucky in terms of being successful in spite of all that, but I do know that, or, you know, there’s no way to know for sure, but I suspect that my success would have been even bigger if just sticking with any of the one, any of those things and just doing one of them.

36:16
Cause you’re just focused on that one thing. And you think about, you know, people in our lives that we know, like all the, all the ones that have had the 50, a hundred million dollar, whatever exits, they have one thing that they were working on, right? They aren’t the people that are, that are scattered, that like come into the masterminds at seller summit that I host and have like 17 things going on are usually people that were in a similar position to me, where it it becomes very difficult to juggle all those things.

36:45
And one of my favorite stories, you know, Spencer from Solstoke, who was a speaker at the Selerson, but this year he tells that exact same story, right? Of how he had seven or eight of these different Amazon brands and they were all kind of chugging along. They were making money. They were doing okay, but they finally decided like, got to get rid of all of these except one. We’re going to focus on this one. And that’s now a publicly traded company worth. I mean, those other brands that he ditched were making millions of dollars. Right. So it’s, you know, I’m in a similar spot, right? I mean, like it isn’t like.

37:14
These are brands that are doing nothing. mean, some of these are seven figure brands, but it just comes down to you have to focus on one of them. The theory that I had, right? So if anyone’s listening, will tell you ahead of time exactly what you’re thinking as you’re getting ready to go start the second thing. I’ve already done it once. I’m really good at it. I’ve learned it’ll be easy to just go start a second Amazon account, start that second website, whatever. It’ll be super easy. I’ll just cookie cutter the process.

37:44
twice as easy, 10 times easier the second time around than it was the first. But what actually happens is it’s like literally the exact opposite of that. It’s like twice as hard or five times harder because the first time you’re doing it, it’s new and exciting and you have like this motivation behind it. And you pay, I think a much keener attention to detail as you’re setting up that first Amazon account, doing these things that become.

38:08
very like an annoyance in business. You it’s like something new and exciting. So you set up the newest Amazon account. got to get a new insurance policy. I got to open another bank account. got to get another, yeah, I got to file another tax return. I got to get more credit cards. What do I do with this employee that, you know, and so like, got to make more social media accounts. got to, you know, create. And as you’re doing now, you got to like post twice as much stuff on social media. And then you got to like send out twice as many emails. And, and now instead of putting sending out twice as many emails from one brand, you’re sending out half as many as you really could be doing because there’s only so much time.

38:38
And you’re probably not, the end result is, you know, for me, I don’t want to cast dispersion on everybody else, but like for me, and I think the luck of experience, the same thing is eventually over time, one of the brands starts to do better. God forbid you end up a spot like I did with like five of them. So now you have one that’s doing better, maybe two that doing okay. Now you have like your bottom two and the middle one, like those other three get like almost no attention, right? Cause like you’re focusing on the other thing and even

39:03
The thing that you are focusing on isn’t getting anywhere near the attention that it should, so it’s not even doing as good as it could be. And so, yeah, we were successful making money doing good and everybody’s like, oh my God, you’re doing all these things. I think in the end, the end result, to just really look back at it, is that if it was, I could pick any of the brands, think just picking one of them and focusing on just one of them, whether it was Colored or Ice Wraps or the thing that we bought, it doesn’t matter which one it was, because they were all.

39:31
successful in their own right and could have done better. And what I tell people now is like, as an entrepreneur, you look at things through a different set of glasses, right? Like I look at my desk and there’s glasses, you know, that I’m drinking out of, there’s pens, I’m holding a pen right now, just filled in and fiddling with it, a mouse pad, this riser stand for my, my computer. Somebody made money off of everything. One of these things that I purchased, right? There’s, plenty of opportunity to make money. Anywhere you look, you can own a franchise. can, mean, whatever there’s zillion different ways, but you can.

40:01
drown yourself in opportunity, right? If you focus just on any one of those things, your chances of success are probably going to be significantly higher. It’s funny. I don’t know if you get this question a lot running e-comm crew, but I often get asked, Hey, why don’t you just start a bunch of other brands and e-commerce? Cause you know what you’re doing. You didn’t ask that before. Yeah. And here’s why I’m telling you why it shouldn’t do it. Well, yes, I do. mean,

40:26
Yeah, or just consult for them or go work, you know, do whatever invest in them and you know, whatever it is, it’s a it’s a fractioning of your focus, right? And that’s why you shouldn’t do it. I mean, the answer I always give is why would I want to do another brand? I’d much rather just maybe even launch a new product with the existing brand. 100 % to do that. Yeah, because now you’re not doing you’re not building another email list. You’re not making, like I said, like new social media accounts, you’re not having to like set up new ad accounts, you know,

40:56
a new store, whatever, blah, blah, Like all you gotta do now is create one more listing and market that to your existing pool of customers. Now that makes a lot of sense. mean, launching your products, of course, you want to do that to the point where, you eventually you’ll exhaust the catalog depending on what bit, like we’re kind of at this problem with ice raps right now. There’s only so many things we can really launch, but you know, we still have room. We actually are about to launch a new product here next month in September, which I’m excited about. But yeah, I mean, I think that

41:25
you know, if you had to answer that question of what I change, that would be it. And that’s my my North Star moving forward. It’s just so hard because you get bored of what you’re working on. Yep. You know, and then you want to go off. I mean, that’s why I started my wife quit her job. I don’t regret it at any point. But I guess if I just focused all of my efforts on Bumblebee, or all of my efforts on my wife, okay.

41:52
Conceivably, they’d be a lot bigger now, but I don’t regret the decision. Yeah. I mean, you’re absolutely right. It’s so funny that entrepreneurs have this exact issue of getting bored. You get bored of the thing that’s making you all this money. It’s so ridiculous. And you want to go start something else that’s going to probably take that good money and throw it after bad without a second thought. It’s wild, but yes, that’s exactly what happens. That’s exactly what’s happened to me because like,

42:23
Once it’s already figured out, that’s just my personality. I like to figure things out. I like the excitement of the new thing and taking something from zero and making something out of it, whatever it is, all through my life. doesn’t matter whether it’s an e-commerce or affiliate marketing. did a computer consulting business beforehand. I did other stuff as a kid. It was just anything that was new and exciting and I had to go figure it out against the odds just is really lights my fire.

42:50
And then once it’s all figured out and it’s just turning along and making money, I’ve already figured that out. I’ve already had that win and proven that I can happen. just, for some reason, I mean, it sounds stupid saying, oh, wow, but it is the truth. It becomes boring.

43:10
All right, so what’s in the future for Mike? So you’re probably going to sell ice wraps, it sounds like. That’s the hope. mean, hopefully by 2025. So I’m kind of committed to the next year, you know, kind of seeing this through. Maybe, you know, maybe it’s six to nine months to where like I have a transition period because there is a new thing that I want to get into. if like once, you know, I feel like the ice wraps is on autopilot and, know, it’s just kind of like, I know what’s going to sell in

43:38
three, six, whatever more months, there’s nothing left to do except let the trailing 12 months clock run out. Then I’ll go maybe start transitioning that other, whatever that next thing is. But yeah, I mean, for right now I am steadfast in that I’m not going to think about starting anything new, buy anything new, you whatever it is. I might invest in something new that I would my past investor in like, like you’ve been, but that I think is perfectly acceptable. But like the things I’m spending my time on will be.

44:07
ice wraps for the next many, many months. And then after ice wraps, you’re going to start another e commerce type of business with a huge deal. Okay, yes. I that’s the thing that I’m definitely working on. Like you and I have talked about it. mean, I’m not really ready to talk about that on a podcast. Yeah, of course. You know, other people can go off and do that. And, you know, but once it has started and I have some some traction and I will be talking about that just like everything else. Cool. Well, I look forward to that because I know it’s gonna do well.

44:36
I think so. think, I mean, I’m pretty excited about it. That’s, that’s the thing, but I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s a good coaching thing for myself right now to like, be excited. I’ll be thinking about a little bit, but not do it. You know, I’m trying to like actually have some discipline and it’s tough. It was like, I want to go buy the machinery to go do it and go lease the building like right now. Like I would love to go do it tomorrow, but you know, I have responsibility right now and I’m committed to, you know, living this life and experiencing what it feels like to just do this, this one thing. And.

45:06
I feel like a completely different person. It’s only been a couple of months, but it’s just the feeling is just night and day. Like the feeling of like being tugged in a million different different directions and you’re having my life run me instead of me running my life or you can replace life with business as well is kind of gone. Like it’s taking some time because like there’s still some trickle out stuff that that’s happening. Got to wrap up some loose ends here and there of other things. But you know, it’s just I wake up and

45:32
And I’m doing the work and focusing just on this one thing. And I’m not thinking about the brand that you and I were in. I’m not thinking about while baby, which I just saw, I’m not thinking about tactical or the other thing that Dave and I just got started. And so I think about some e-comm crew stuff cause I’m still doing that, which I’ll continue to do. Um, and then, you know, in ice rubs. How much of this, uh, de-stress do you think is attributed to not having the large team anymore versus just having one brand to worry about? I think it’s probably.

46:01
two factors, it’s the team and then the investors. I don’t have a sense of if something goes wrong, there’s going be a lot of people really disappointed in me. Even though I know realistically, these are all adults, they’re all business people themselves, they all trust me, otherwise they wouldn’t have invested to begin with. And most likely if something went wrong, it wouldn’t have been something that was my fault.

46:29
Amazon suspends the account or like some manufacturer discontinues selling to us or the economy crashes or you know, one of these things are just like legitimately like out of my control. I know that everybody’s they’re all big boys and and we forgive that and wouldn’t like I would have never talked to you again, but except for you obviously, but which would be good. I mean if that’s all I had to do to make this happen, I should have I should have pulled the plug a long time ago.

46:58
I only knew it was that easy. Well, cool, Mike. Yeah. I mean, I’ve never wanted a team. I don’t like talking to people, managing people, and it is much easier to just do one thing or just a small number of things. So a focus, Mike Jack is going to be scary though. Yeah, it could be. I was just going to say like it is, it is one thing that’s actually disappointing to because I actually do like the team, right? Like I do like working with people. Um, and I think back to like,

47:26
yesteryears, now it’s like grandpa Mike when I was a kid, people, but it’s true. I mean, I’ve had long periods of my life working with other business partners and or employees that were really good at what they did, never complained and were fun to work with. And for me, I would much rather work in that environment than just kind of wing it on my own.

47:53
You know, either, either again, it’s another series of really bad luck or they’re legitimately as a very big cultural shift, which I actually think is, is really where we’re at of, you know, it’s just, it’s just a different dynamic. People aren’t held accountable in the same way that they were 20 years ago. Like, I mean, quite literally there have been employees that have said something to me or done something in their job that, employees of mine and an e-commerce business that if I did that,

48:23
back in my old corporate job in the 90s, I think I literally would have been hit, like physically hit. And it would have been like completely, you know, acceptable in that day and age to just open hand bitch slap somebody across the face for like saying or doing something like that, right? And, and get the hell out of here. And without any repercussions to that. And now it’s like, you have to apologize to the person for, you know.

48:50
And that same situation, things have had a big shift. so it is very difficult for me to work in that new environment. And I’m not sure how to deal with it. Cause I do hope that this new business that I start at some point will need to hire somebody. you know, if we’re producing at some point X number of units per month or per year or whatever, I’m going to need some help. Right. And I hope to get to that point, like, what do I do? Like, how do I go higher in this new environment?

49:20
It’s, I don’t know, but I’ll deal with that when the time comes and hopefully by then I’ll be mentally refreshed. Right. think that that, that will help as well. I think the landscape is going to change also, um, just given where the economy is going to where people are going to be more appreciative of their existing jobs. Yeah, I hope so. It’ll happen soon. I’m pretty sure. I hope, I hope you’re right. Cause like, I mean, I look back again at the corporate gig I had, I worked in a job for seven years.

49:49
for the man, know, whatever, I wore a suit and time went to work every day. Was super appreciative of that job. Like I worked my ass off, you know, I was in all these just like, was appreciative. Someone took a chance, gave me the job, you know, paid me a salary. And I never had an attitude like this isn’t my job. Like I was just like, I’ll do whatever is needed here. If I see something dirty, I’ll go clean it. Like that’s not my job. I’ll go clean the freaking.

50:18
sink. don’t care. mean, take out the trash. there was nothing, like it didn’t matter. And I think it is one of the reasons why I excelled in that job and did very well and kind of rose up to executive level. wasn’t like everybody was like that in that position, but I was very, very thankful for that job. And it’s why, and when I did leave, I ended up giving them like four months notice. I didn’t want it be that long. It kind of got a little bit carried away, but like I wanted them to be left in a good spot. It was like, know, the seven years up to that point,

50:48
Again, I was just very appreciative of having the position. And not the other way around. Like I didn’t feel like I was entitled and like I was God’s gift and like they should be lucky to have me, which is like think how a lot of people are these days, which is just really bizarre to me. don’t know. It’s the pandemic that did it really. I think so. But that’s a topic for another another discussion. Mike, where can people find more about this? I know you did an extended episode on the Ecom Crew podcast about all this, right?

51:18
Yep. mean, very similar actually what we just talked about, but there are other episodes, but yeah, EcomCrew, ECOM, CREW. Yep. On the podcast, ecomcrew.com, EcomCrew on all the socials. Support it, ecomcrew.com if you want to email me. Yeah. If you want to know what Mike’s up to, you’ll be the first to know if you listen to the pod or follow his blog. Or you can just keep on listening to my wife put her job podcast and every six months or so I come do an update with you. Thanks a lot for coming on Mike. Appreciate it.

51:47
Be good, Matt.

51:51
Hope you enjoy that episode and it’s just a reminder that things rarely come easy and timing can often play an important role in your success. More information about this episode, go to mywifecluderjob.com slash episode 506. And once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2024 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. If you want to hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like-minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton, then come to my event. Go to sellersummit.com.

52:19
And if you are interested in starting your own eCommerce store, head on over to myyprocutorjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.