Episode 187
On today’s episode, we are joined by Jani Kaminski. Jani was a guest back in 2021 and this ended up being one of our most downloaded episodes. Jani has been involved in all different areas of e-commerce and we’re super excited to have him as a guest on the show. Now can we just got done recording this podcast and a ton of knowledge from.
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00;00;24;03 – 00;00;48;11
Speaker 2
Welcome, everyone, to the Firing the Man podcast. On today’s episode, we are joined by Jani Kaminski. Jani was a guest back in 2021 and this ended up being one of our most downloaded episodes. Jani has been involved in all different areas of e-commerce and we’re super excited to have him as a guest on the show. Now can we just got done recording this podcast and a ton of knowledge from.
00;00;48;13 – 00;00;49;06
Speaker 2
What did you think?
00;00;49;09 – 00;01;16;02
Speaker 3
Yeah, it was dynamite. You know, some of the stuff that, you know, a lot of the businesses that Jani is working on, he’s got multi serial entrepreneur to the core galore tons of businesses that he’s working on growing and facilitating. And one thing that we went over is his new business venture, new ish South Pole, and they’re kind of partnering with brands and bringing in all of their knowledge and operations, product marketing everything and kind of building out a blueprint of an exit and partnering with an operator.
00;01;16;03 – 00;01;31;09
Speaker 3
So very unique strategy. Haven’t seen it. We talk a lot about it. Jani has a downloadable. He kind of presented What’s this look like? They come in and they analyze everything and build out a 24 month exit blueprint, and it’s very detailed. So excited to share what the with the audience.
00;01;31;13 – 00;01;48;22
Speaker 2
Absolutely. Whether you are building a business to sell, thinking about selling, maybe in conversations with a potential buyer, this is an episode you are not going to want to miss. Welcome everyone to the Fire You The Man Podcast. We’ve got Jonny Cosmic Ski coming back for the second time on the episode. Welcome, Jani.
00;01;48;23 – 00;01;52;22
Speaker 4
David, Ken and thank you both for having me. It is an absolute honor to be back.
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Sinek, Simon (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
00;01;52;22 – 00;02;06;27
Speaker 2
Absolutely. So we’ve been chatting a little bit on email and glad to get you back on the pod. You’ve been busy the last couple of years and we’d like to hear what you’ve been up to and what’s going on with some of your existing ventures in some of the new ventures that you’ve been on.
00;02;06;28 – 00;02;26;03
Speaker 4
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I’ll try to break through this bit as quickly as possible so as not to bore the audience, But just to give you guys a little bit of context so we can build into a meaningful, hopefully learning experience. My name is Jonny Kaminsky. I am Australian as my accent still comes through, but I spent the last ten years in the US and and now Tel Aviv.
00;02;26;04 – 00;02;52;15
Speaker 4
Through this journey I’ve been heavily involved in e-commerce, creative advertising, digital marketing. I started a company with my co-founder Lippi about four years ago called Multiply Me, which is an executive search recruitment company into the Philippines. Finding high level talent will placement businesses. And then we’ll help with payroll and health care and those those types of solutions, but really focus on the e-commerce space and helping businesses grow affordably or as we like to call it, scale.
00;02;52;15 – 00;03;15;17
Speaker 4
That’s Multipli May A Scala is a process improvement management consultancy. So that’s just a really fancy way of saying we help actually declutter or help you get clarity on what’s happening inside of your operation design. The processes and systems build out all your SOPs training videos, documentation, your org chart, accountability chart, and and effectively help you again scale the operation.
00;03;15;17 – 00;03;36;25
Speaker 4
So that’s multiply me in a scala and at the end of last year we as a Scala, I got together with global wired advisors who were formerly known as Google. Our advisors, now GW partners, they’re an investment bank in a space that’s done well over $1,000,000,000 in transaction value, and they sell e-commerce and DTC brands. That’s that’s one one of the three joint venture partners.
00;03;36;25 – 00;03;57;18
Speaker 4
We have sellers, Fei, who will formally sell as funding. They are, you know, one of the large non-dilutive capital lenders in the space think I can say this, I’m pretty sure they’ve got to be careful. They’ve got a lot of money outlets. Let’s put a lot of money out in loans in the hundreds of millions of dollars. And, you know, they are really helping ecommerce businesses again, scale.
00;03;57;18 – 00;04;28;01
Speaker 4
There’s a little bit of a theme going on here and together the three of us have brought to Life South Call, which is effectively an exit accelerator for eCommerce brands, where what we’re doing is we’re investing in founders. So we’re looking to inject 1000000 to $5 million in capital into these businesses, help them grow over a two year period, give them that advice, building that growth and exit roadmap, and then effectively selling the business through what CWA do and through obviously the funding component from Stella’s PHI.
00;04;28;01 – 00;04;54;18
Speaker 4
And then we as a Scala actually got operational and hold founders effectively accountable, almost like an accountability partner in the business, but so much more. We like to think ourselves as smart money really coming in and not just saying here, do your thing, it’s here. Absolutely. You’re the owner of the majority equity owner in the business. We are here to support you and guide you through these areas that you might not have otherwise seen or gone through yourselves.
00;04;54;18 – 00;05;17;18
Speaker 4
And I’m sure we’ll get into it in the episode that we had a thesis around what was going on in the ecommerce aggregator space, and we saw some potential gaps and holes and opportunities to take a different approach. And that’s how we really came up with Southcoast. So I think that’s a little bit much about May. Let’s pass it back over to you guys so we can start to add some values.
00;05;17;20 – 00;05;46;20
Speaker 3
So Yani, thanks for sharing all those. Yes. As we’re talking before the show, you’re a very busy boy, which is great. Lots of projects and lots of synergy, it sounds like, between those. And so you’ve kind of rolled that into a new venture where I’d like to dive into a little bit more. We have a lot of Amazon sellers, Walmart sellers, a lot of ecommerce sellers listening to the podcast, and they’re probably like, Well, that’s interesting because aggregators, you know, we’ve had a few people on the show in the last few months that we’ve talked about the aggregator space and how it’s kind of I don’t say crumbled, but it kind of went south, right?
00;05;46;20 – 00;06;02;24
Speaker 3
And aggregators raised a ton of money, a lot of a bunch of brands, operational piece of it kind of just fail. They didn’t it didn’t really like to get into that too much and execute well. I think one of the pieces I believe is they didn’t bring the operators along. They just took the assets and they didn’t bring the operators.
00;06;02;24 – 00;06;25;12
Speaker 3
And so what you had described was south is kind of like you’re not only funding, which is crucial for growth in e-commerce, everybody knows that cash flow is is a pain in the ass. And then also ESOPs processes and a roadmap. Right. And kind of blending all that together sounds like a really, really unique path. Can you dive a little bit more into like, what does that look like?
00;06;25;12 – 00;06;42;28
Speaker 3
And so, you know, you mentioned like an incubator, a two year period. And so where you’re right, you’re partnering with brands with that and you keep the operator on and you just support the operator. And then after two years and you kind of walk through what what it what it looks like, if I was an operator listening to this, I’m like, maybe this sounds like a good fit to me.
00;06;42;28 – 00;06;44;25
Speaker 3
And they could reach out and do that and connect.
00;06;44;25 – 00;07;12;11
Speaker 4
Absolutely. Absolutely. I would love to start, though, before I dive into that, to some of the points that you rushed over, very maybe not cautiously, but you brushed over around the aggregators, because I just want to share sort of part of the thesis that we had. And one of the things that we witnessed, you know, happening throughout the course of a four year period, and I’m going to use the example of Thrasher just sort of talking through what we saw, what happened, where, where it all sits.
00;07;12;11 – 00;07;34;07
Speaker 4
And I think that this is the representation of what’s happened to the most of the aggregators, not all of them. I think there are still some strong aggregators. There was always going to be, you know, the cream that rose to the top and were able to actually make this make sense. And I believe that we will see that, you know, we just saw Celebrex and Celebrex and elevate that just managed, I’m pretty sure it was the two of them.
- Walter, Daniel (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 132 Pages - 04/08/2020 (Publication Date) - Independently published (Publisher)
00;07;34;07 – 00;07;53;08
Speaker 4
So, yeah, So, you know, now there are enormous I mean, I’m sure they weren’t intentionally looking to to merge when they went into this. But ultimately now that’s a you know, that’s a serious we were always going to say that consolidation, but going back some probably close to five years now, a little known company called Dresser at the time started buying up Amazon FBA businesses probably 2017, 18.
00;07;53;08 – 00;08;16;05
Speaker 4
I can’t remember exactly when it started. And ultimately, you know, they were buying them at know one point to 1.5 X multiples of the stock and no one had any idea what they were doing and, and it was going really well. They actually were the fastest profitable unicorn in, in history. Took them 18 months after they’d raised, I think $1,000,000,000 to actually get unicorn status and profitable unicorn status.
00;08;16;05 – 00;08;35;06
Speaker 4
They went on to acquire about 260 brands in total from, you know, plus minus what I’ve heard and were hiring. They grew from a team of four when they started to 2000, and they did that all in the space of about three years. And what we actually found, I think it was late last year, that’s a let go about 20% of their workforce.
00;08;35;06 – 00;09;02;04
Speaker 4
You know, there were there were moments when they were hiring about 100 new startups in a way, you where a process improvement management consultancy all we do all day is deploy our management consultants into businesses and look to scale them. And for we’ve we been saying it’s going to going to and it’s just not it’s not feasible like we grew from 4 to 120 in a couple of years and we have a process improvement consultancy as one of our businesses and even for us was break.
00;09;02;09 – 00;09;26;20
Speaker 4
And so I think what we saw and what we realized is that to your point where you sort of started off here is that you have these incredibly passionate and very motivated. Did operators that have fallen in love with the idea of a product they wanted to bring to market, which is the typical story, rain or shine? It doesn’t matter if it’s 3 a.m. in the morning, you are getting up and if your listing is suppressed, your stock goes down.
00;09;26;20 – 00;09;46;18
Speaker 4
Like you will literally go through an EL in high water to make sure that that’s up. When you switch that up for, you know, a Wharton Princeton MBA, you know, goes out drinking on the weekend and sees this so that the stock go down on a Friday night that’s you know that’s that’s legal’s problem on Monday or Tuesday because maybe I took a sick day Monday because I went to hot over the weekend.
00;09;46;18 – 00;10;08;13
Speaker 4
So I think that that was probably you know that was one of the gaps that was missed inside of it, that it’s not just a bunch of spreadsheets and numbers, but in reality it’s about the nitty gritty operators. And to take it from that and professionalize that, it takes time. And, you know, I’ve had loads of conversations with a lot of people about the current state of the market in the last 12 months and the challenges that exist.
00;10;08;13 – 00;10;37;29
Speaker 4
And, you know, it’s not been a kind market, you know, where been talking about recession or recession, all this stuff for for a while now and it’s been challenging. So I think all of these things have lighted up. Coming back to the question now and I just think it’s a really important insight into like why we even thought of this idea and why we brought it to market and why we felt that it was really important that someone plugged this hole and why obviously we thought that we were the right fit is because for a lot of these founders, especially ones that maybe haven’t gone through an exit before, you know, you were always pitted
00;10;37;29 – 00;10;54;27
Speaker 4
against the aggregator or the acquirer. I would say for anyone going work with an investment bank or a broker, if you’re going to sell your business, you wouldn’t sell your house without a realtor who has that experience. I wouldn’t sell my business without one. I think that’s a really high value step when you’re making such big decisions about your future, your financial security and all of that.
00;10;55;04 – 00;11;20;19
Speaker 4
Coming back to it, we wanted to keep founders in play. We understood that they were the highest value commodity that lived inside of the business. And what we were looking to do is to actually accelerate that and say, we have this brilliant founder who loves their product is really good at a couple of things. Usually product development, sourcing, the products, feeling for the material attached, the evolution of the brand, all the things that most founders honestly are really passionate about, the things that they want to do more and more of.
00;11;20;20 – 00;11;44;20
Speaker 4
And so our idea was, let’s help them professionalize, let’s come in, let’s document all their processes, let’s actually outsource to third parties like agencies and three buyers and logistics providers and all the best professionals in the space. Let’s actually invest in them with the money that we’re putting into the business, or rather have them do it and guide them and let them be freed up to focus on the things that are actually going to increase that multiple.
00;11;44;20 – 00;12;01;12
Speaker 4
And so that’s that’s the logic behind South Hall and how it actually operates and how we approach it. Like the model is this I’ll say as well. Like just to be totally candid here, you know, our only really starting to talk to brands that are at about 4 million in revenue at a minimum and operating at about a 20% margin for us.
00;12;01;12 – 00;12;19;01
Speaker 4
And I think this is really important for people to know as well. If you are the investment bank or the broker, the amount of work that you’re going to ultimately end up doing for a $50 million business and a $5 million business is going to be more or less the same just from a, you know, the preparation of the marketing docs and how they’re actually going to bring it to market in all these things.
00;12;19;01 – 00;12;37;08
Speaker 4
And so for us, you know, we’re here to double, triple, quadruple the business. That’s why we’re looking to be selective in who we invest in. But there has to be sort of a you know, if we’re doubling, tripling, quadrupling $1,000,000 business and the multiples aren’t super favorable today, we feel like big going a shift in that in the coming year or two, which is great.
00;12;37;08 – 00;13;10;05
Speaker 4
But ultimately, you know, it’s got to make sense for everyone and we’re only rewarded for upside impact. So let’s start there. So what we’re doing is we’re obviously assessing the brand. We’re looking to understand, you know, is the founder made of the right stuff? And what I mean by that and this is the huge difference between sort of a process that you would typically go through if you had sold to an aggregator or an investor or a strategic or a fan, maybe a little bit more closely aligned with IP or strategic because they often bring the team in and have them operate for the coming years or potentially remain and stay in play.
- Audible Audiobook
- Lewis Howes (Author) - Lewis Howes (Narrator)
- English (Publication Language)
00;13;10;05 – 00;13;25;13
Speaker 4
But with the aggregators it was, let’s buy the business, let’s get you the money in 30 days and see you later. You know, we’ll ask you questions if we had them, but we’re not really interested. What we’re looking to do is we’re saying we’re getting married for the next two years, you know, until exit do us part and we are committed to investing in you.
00;13;25;13 – 00;13;39;05
Speaker 4
But if you do not have if you believe that you have all of the answers and that just give me the money. And if I go and, you know, thank you very much, it’s probably not the right fit, because what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to say we can actually help you. If you listen, you still make all the decisions.
00;13;39;05 – 00;13;56;16
Speaker 4
You are still the majority owner of your business. You are in control. But we’re looking for a partner essentially. So we’ll go through the diligence process, will look to truly understand what is happening from their perspective, What is the upside potential of this brand and what are the things that we need to do. So we’re looking for people to come and say, I have an idea.
00;13;56;16 – 00;14;15;07
Speaker 4
I have a direction, I understand where it’s going. I don’t have all the answers. But but I you know, I’m motivated, really, and have an idea of what they’re going to look like or I stand it in just my operating costs quite significantly. But I just need to hit this volume, whatever it is, whatever the strategic direction is, we’re looking for the founders to have a degree of an idea.
00;14;15;07 – 00;14;39;03
Speaker 4
We can obviously will obviously help build on that. But this is not a situation remembering that where our minority upside position is not a situation where we can we, we run the business tomorrow where sitting with founders every week. So part of our sort of agreement here is that one of the founding partners, as five of us will actually sit with you for 30 minutes a week, help with any aspect that you need annuals to sit with our management consultants every week.
00;14;39;03 – 00;15;02;18
Speaker 4
And through that process, we’re actually making sure that if there are any things that you need, anything that’s not going to plan where that is support and where that it guide you. And as we’re meeting new providers, new solutions, we’re always feeding that back in. And I think that’s the big difference even compared to like a typical they say is that we’re actually a lot more hands on and invested from a from a time and materials protective than you would typically say.
00;15;02;18 – 00;15;19;02
Speaker 4
So the first component of it, once we say, right, we like you, you like us, we see the upside potential. We believe in you, we believe in the vision. Then what we’re going to do is we go in to what we call the first 90 days of the accelerate phase. And in that we’re doing a lot of the stuff that we do on a typical a scholar engagement.
00;15;19;02 – 00;15;37;28
Speaker 4
So I like to say it’s like having a therapist for your business because we’ll come in, will interview you. Shadow Look at any of the documentation, understand operationally what’s happening and not just you. Let’s say your team is ten, 20, 30 people. We’re interviewing all the key people inside of the business and we’re looking to understand Operation, see what’s happening, where are the gaps, where are the problems, what’s going on?
00;15;37;28 – 00;16;01;09
Speaker 4
Once we’ve gone through that process, we’re working with you to build a 24 month exit roadmap where every single three months we have key objectives that we’re looking to hit and we’re looking to time it so that when we’re looking at, you know, the trailing 12 months, which is typically how you would value a business and when you would how you would sell it, we’re looking to frontload a lot of the work so that we’re really intentional about what it’s going to look like.
00;16;01;11 – 00;16;17;24
Speaker 4
Fortunately, we have a great investment bank attached to us and I think they have some pretty interesting ways to maybe look at the forward 12 month revenue and not the trailing 12. But that’s that’s a conversation for for another day at a later stage, probably a little bit about my pay grade as well that ultimately we go through that process.
00;16;17;24 – 00;16;37;13
Speaker 4
We’re holding your hand every step of the way. We’re getting you the access to the capital and we’ll package out the business, start, you know, a whisper campaign. I think one of that great value add series when we get to work with someone for an extended period of time and not just, you know, put a bit of lipstick on a pig and say you go three months later or two months later and try and sell an asset.
00;16;37;13 – 00;16;59;24
Speaker 4
Ultimately, we’re letting people know like, Hey, we’ve got this brand. We invested at three and a half million. It’s doing ten now. We’re not even two years in like, would this be of interest to you? So we’ll actually market the brand. Obviously, GW partners have thousands of connections into that PE and strategic space and you know, they know the 80 aggregators that exist and the ones you know that so few are that are still buying at the minute.
00;16;59;26 – 00;17;08;10
Speaker 4
But, but ultimately that’s the model. That’s the model. I know I’ve just been speaking for a very long time, so I’m going to take a breath and a sip and yeah, let you guys do, I think.
00;17;08;11 – 00;17;40;19
Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. No, I really, really like that approach and think that that difference between the aggregators and what South Call’s doing is it really does address a big gap. And so I remember it was really the Wild West. I’ll go back to like the seller Con two years ago where they were giving away a Tesla. If you refer somebody on a deal that they ended up closing on and it was a wild time, I got to ask, what is the next 24 to 36 months look like were the aggregator market?
00;17;40;20 – 00;17;54;13
Speaker 2
Because they really had a big impact on multiples. They had a big impact on just the overall space. And it’s interesting now that they’ve gobbled up a lot of these brands, what happened, what happens as they start to fail, as well? What are your thoughts there?
- Jan Lehman (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 192 Pages - 02/07/2023 (Publication Date) - Wise Ink Creative Publishing (Publisher)
00;17;54;14 – 00;18;13;25
Speaker 4
Yeah, I’m sitting here smirking because, yeah, I remember that gimmick about the Tesla. They were giving away the jokes on whoever took the Tesla because the referral agreements they typically have might see you make half million dollars on a transaction big enough. So you take the car or, you know, buying a house. Come on. But, but, but it worked.
00;18;13;25 – 00;18;34;13
Speaker 4
They got in a lot of trouble for that stunt because they did it. They were like soliciting at Prosper and they weren’t actually sponsoring it was like a whole thing, this whole thing. But that very different time. Very, very different time. I remember going to one of the Axios parties where I think they invest about $1,000 a head, and it was like a 12 person event or something like crazy.
00;18;34;13 – 00;18;54;00
Speaker 4
Like it was just crazy. It was insane. And even going back to Prosper this year, very, very different scale to balance out. Then there were still events that are still parties. It was more on the agency and service provider side that was that was sponsoring it and that and carbon six and just interesting reflection thinking back from, you know not that long ago to where we sit today.
00;18;54;00 – 00;19;13;11
Speaker 4
But in terms of the next 24, 36 months when we talk about aggregators, I mean, I’d be lying if I said I have all the answers. I’d be putting bets down on on things if I was so, so sure of myself. But I would say just in general, I mean, anyone who’s telling you that, you know, and I speak with Jason and Chris of GW Partners all the time, it’s a bad market.
00;19;13;11 – 00;19;32;15
Speaker 4
It’s it’s a buyer’s market right now. That’s that’s the that’s the hard reality of it. You’re not getting the multiples that you were saying last year and the year before. Definitely not. And and that’s not going to change for a little bit. And there’s a lot of factors attached to that. It’s not just the fact that, I mean, we’re going through one of the toughest markets globally.
00;19;32;15 – 00;19;50;27
Speaker 4
People are very reluctant to buy anything right now, like it’s not just isolated in the e-commerce space. It’s also in just general acquisition of businesses. And people are very reluctant to buy houses now. I mean, when you look at the interest rate, so there’s a lot of macroeconomic factors that play into this. But, you know, like all of this, it’s cyclical.
00;19;50;28 – 00;20;11;15
Speaker 4
There’s no way that we sit in a reality where for the next three, five, ten years, we’re sitting on this downward slump. It just that’s not how that’s not how global markets work. And that’s not going to be the reality. So, you know, we’re optimistic that, you know, 12 to 18 months from now, we’ll start to see sort of the shift happen and start to see multiples come up.
00;20;11;15 – 00;20;29;15
Speaker 4
I mean, we’re also seeing like a real we’re in a moment in time where there’s a serious evolution in in this space and what’s happening. It’s becoming a lot more professional. And so those that will succeed, there’s aggregators and, you know, you’re probably going to see maybe 20% of them succeed would be my my bet. You know, it’s it’s going to happen.
00;20;29;15 – 00;20;48;18
Speaker 4
There are some really slick operators. You know, I’m fortunate to know that, you know, we work with a lot of aggregators. So I’ve seen a lot of the CEOs, a lot of the heavy operators. And, you know, I’m very, very impressed by, you know, by it by a lot of the ones that I come in contact with. So there’s an awful lot of people, the people who have a clear idea and have a track record.
00;20;48;18 – 00;21;06;08
Speaker 4
So lots of stuff that’s I’m confident that, you know, a handful of these aggregators are going to get it right. And I think that’s where it starts to heat up again when you start to see these consolidation talk corrects and elevate, I mean, take a job now, I think that’s a formidable force when it comes to that number of brands that they’re managing.
00;21;06;08 – 00;21;24;06
Speaker 4
And if they can get that operation right and the, you know, the GM and etc., guys like me, then that slick, I can tell you they are slick operate. It is I believe that it will shift. You know there’s no way I would be getting involved in a business like south call we didn’t believe that you know multiples would would go to something that made a lot more sense.
00;21;24;06 – 00;21;53;06
Speaker 4
What I will say, though, is for brands that are starting to hit 10 million in revenue and to 2.5 in EBITDA, once you start to get some some real size attached to the whole landscape, changes like one in general, the facts multiples go up as the business increases. And so if you can get it to a ten plus million dollar position and you have the profitability builds in a strategic group, buy is going to buy for, you know, a broad number, a broad number of reasons.
00;21;53;06 – 00;22;18;06
Speaker 4
Like for example, you could have a situation where you have a really strong Amazon and e-commerce presence and we have a situation where a retailer has none of that expertise, looks to acquire you and then go the other way and starts actually slug it on online. I mean, it’s interesting to say, I think I read about it just yesterday, Bed Bath and Beyond was acquired by Overstock.com for something like 21 million and that’s a really interesting play.
00;22;18;06 – 00;22;36;20
Speaker 4
They’re rebranding as Bed, Bath and Beyond and getting rid of the Overstock.com and leveraging those assets. So they’ve gone from e-commerce to now having a physical presence, and I think you’ll see a lot go the other way. Right? So my point in all of this is that growth and building and growing through this time is what is going to make a whole lot of sense.
00;22;36;20 – 00;22;53;08
Speaker 4
And if you can get to a meaningful number, all of these things sort of start to fade away and become a lot more irrelevant and concerning. The real challenge, though, for sellers in the current state, in the market and just in general, it’s a very different journey from 0 to 1000000, 1000000 to 5, 5 to 10 and ten and beyond.
00;22;53;08 – 00;23;25;09
Speaker 4
And so it’s about really understanding how do I actually how do I actually get there? How do I actually take those incremental steps to take it to a meaningful number to make it makes sense from, you know, a life changing exit and and that F-you money that we’re all looking for. Right? So so that’s, you know that’s that’s South Cal that’s the that’s the point in although when I started saying about the $4 million position when not trying to sell a brand on the $10 million right And if we’re taking a 20 odd percent stake in the business, it’s got to be a real number for it to make sense to us to invest two
00;23;25;09 – 00;23;47;28
Speaker 4
years worth of sweat equity into the business where paying for GW partners time throughout that journey comes off in the equity based on the exit upon the success. You’re not paying for a scale off eight years worth of consulting work and going through that process, candidly, you are paying a very interest only debt component for the funding. That was the only way that we could work it in the current state.
00;23;47;28 – 00;23;58;19
Speaker 4
So it’s a two year interest only loan where the idea is that we sell the brand before it amortized and and ultimately the founders got some access to some very, you know, relatively cheap cash.
00;23;58;19 – 00;24;25;29
Speaker 3
Excellent. So a couple of follow up questions. One is like, you know, it’s it’s David in my job to like extract all the information we can from you you to share with all the audience. And so as as you’re sharing this well knowledge South Coast sounds amazing. I think you guys you know, I think you guys have a blueprint for success now to dive into that a little bit more, especially the FBA space over the last, you know, 6 to 12 months, 18 months, we’re seeing a lot of margin compression come into the to the market.
00;24;25;29 – 00;24;48;12
Speaker 3
We’re seeing what we call the COVID hangover for sales. Kind of like sales are soft. We’re seeing all of these issues come in. And so as you as you guys are like looking at brands to partner with, partnering with the brands like and you share with the audience maybe the top, you know, two or three things, 3 to 5 things that you guys are focusing on while you’re developing that plan that that to your exit plan saying, okay, hey guys, we see this.
00;24;48;12 – 00;24;56;21
Speaker 3
We can improve here, we can improve here, we can prepare, let’s build out this plan. And these are the things that we’re going to go after. Can you share with the audience some of those things that you guys are working on?
00;24;56;22 – 00;25;07;18
Speaker 4
Absolutely. Absolutely. Tell me, because I mean, it would take me a second to pull it up, but what I would pull up and share with you guys is, is how we actually build at a very high level the exit roadmap.
00;25;07;23 – 00;25;25;08
Speaker 2
Thanks, everyone, for tuning in to this week’s podcast. We had a awesome conversation with Johnny and we could not stop at 30 minute mark and so we are going to do a part two of this episode next week. Thanks to everyone for tuning in and we’ll see you then.
- Hardcover Book
- Coyle, Daniel (Author)
- English (Publication Language)