Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - We're Totally Turned On By This Aphrodisiac Chocolate Business - Acquisitions Anonymous 184

Episode Date: April 14, 2023

Michael Girdley (@Girdley) and Bill D’Alessandro (@BillDA) unpack why Girdley is claustrophobic and also a business that's for sale. _____Thanks to our sponsor!This episode is sponsored by Acquisition Lab. Acquisition Lab, created by Walker Deibel author of Buy Then Build: How to Outsmart the Startup Game, is an accelerator with a highly vetted cohort-based educational and support community for people serious about buying a business. After going through the Lab's month-long intensive, you have ongoing access to almost daily Q&A sessions with advisors, regular live deal review forums with Walker, hand-picked vendors for your deal team, and a very active Slack group with other searchers on this path. Our team personally understands how to buy a business and will help navigate all the complexities of the process, as well as provide a trusted framework, tools, and resources to support you from search to close. The Acquisition Lab recently celebrated its 70th business being acquired and well over $100m in aggregate transaction value. The Lab is there to stand by your side, so you can take the right action (at the right time) and avoid wasting countless hours trying to "go it alone".For more information, check out acquisitionlab.com or email the Lab's director Chelsea Wood, [e-mail] to weekly our Newsletter and get curated deals in your inboxAdvertise with us by clicking here Do you love Acquanon and want to see our smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. Do you enjoy our content? Rate our show! Follow us on Twitter @acquanon Learnings about small business acquisitions and operations. For inquiries or suggestions, email us at [e-mail]

Hey, Michael here. Welcome to Acquisitions Anonymous. Internet's number one podcast about small businesses for sale, for operating them, and for buying and selling them. Bill and I had a great time today. It was a beautiful Friday. And we talked about an aphrodisiac chocolate business for sale. And it was super interesting, super interesting. And also, Bill couldn't get his camera to work, so it looked like he was stuck in a cave the whole time. So we spent time talking about how I'm claustrophobic. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this episode.

of cool places. This is one that I think as a mindbender in terms of how you think about business and how you think about opportunities and the right type of strategy and people doing a specific one. So anyway, who would have guessed Aphrodisiac chocolate would have gotten us there. So with no further ado, here's the episode. This episode is sponsored by Acquisition Lab. Acquisition Lab created by Walker Debel, author of Buy Then Build, How to Outsmart the Startup Game, is an accelerator with a highly vetted cohort-based educational and support community for people serious about buying a business. After going through the lab's month-long intensive, you have ongoing access to almost daily Q&A sessions with advisors, regular live deal review

forums with Walker, handpick vendors for your deal team, and a very active Slack group with other searchers on this path. Our team personally understands how to buy a business and will help navigate all the complexities of the process, as well as provide a trusted framework, tools and resources to support you from search to close. The Acquisition Lab recently celebrated its 70th business being acquired and well over $100 million in aggregate transaction value. The lab is here to stand by your side so you can take the right action at the right time and avoid wasting countless hours trying to go it alone. For more information, check out AcquisitionLab.com.

Link is in our show notes or email the labs director, Chelseawood, at chelsea at buy-then-build.com. Okay, so Bill, welcome to the episode. Also, I'm sorry that you're stuck in a dark cave and we can't see you. So you want to tell everybody why your video's not working? I'm squelonking today and I'm recording this episode in the Pish Black Dark, so I'm a black square. By the way, as a large person, I think about things that are most terrifying to me and number one is being like trapped in a cave and being unable to be. Are you claustrophobic? Oh, yeah.

Clostrophobic, heights. Yeah, like I'm anti all of those things. All of those things. But if you're interested in a freaky corner of YouTube, I don't know if you've ever been. into it, but there's this freaky corner of YouTube, or they basically do breakdowns of caving, like, spulunking disasters. So people who go and, like, take a wrong turn and get stuck. So, like, go in and, like, just spend, if you want to kind of freak yourself out for one weekend, go watch a couple of YouTube videos where it's like, there's one called the Nutty Puddy Cave

in, outside of Salt Lake City that is so dangerous that they've had to, like, concrete it over because people would go get stuck in this cave. And there was a story of like a teenage guy who went in there with his buddy. And they thought they were going into this one section that's pretty well explored, but they took a wrong turn. And they went to a section where basically

the guy got himself trapped at like an 80 degree angle like face down in this dark cave. And they couldn't get him out. And he died after getting stuck there for like 40 hours. Like they brought in all kinds of stuff, massive splunkers, like some other guy tried to save him and almost got stuck. Like that is the worst way to die for me.

That's terrible. That's terrible. So you would have really hated this. When I was a kid, I was in Boy Scouts and we went camping in a cave. So we took all of our camping stuff and we splunk down, you know, through like the small part of the cave and then it opened up in this huge like football field size cavern at the bottom was freaking awesome. And so we didn't eat tents.

wasn't going to rain on us. So we slept on the ground, like on our sleeping pads, and then we took all these side trips. And the guide took us into this way back. And it's pitch dark. And he goes, OK, I want you to turn off all of your lights. We turn off all of our lights. And he goes, it is so dark in here.

There are literally zero photons that if you were in here for, I think he said, for two years, you would go completely blind from your eyes straining to find some light. wow just like the strain of that you would eventually lose your eyesight because it was so dark which is weird weird it was so cool though i've i've totally freaked out by close spaces and i agree spolunking is not like a regular hobby mine who was awesome to do uh like with a guide in it in a safe way yeah in a safe way is pretty cool all right okay so i got here we can play choose your own adventure today bill since you're you're in a cave um we can do deal number one which is an Aphrodisiac chocolate business with a weird with a pretty I would say like an A minus teaser that we can

dig into or there is a cemetery plot brokerage which has maybe a C plus level teaser that we can talk through. I love both of these though. I have to go sexual chocolate because I know it's a it's an e-commerce one also. I think I know the broker. I've not signed an NDA but I got to do sexual chocolate. Let's do it. All right. So let's talk sexual chocolate. Let me pull it up here. By the way, I'm so excited when this one came through because all I did was start sitting around coming to America memes to our group chat. So if you're if you if I'm entering the age by the way, dear listener who, because I'm 48, I keep talking about memes from when I was a kid like 15, 25, 35 years old. And now Bill, I think you probably go through this too. I'm working with younger people.

And I'm like, have you seen the big Lebowski? And they're like, what's that? Have you seen Top Gun? And they're like, what's that? Like, because they have a whole different set of formative media things that are part of their culture. And they look at me like I'm a crazy person. I know. Well, what's weird is, like, memes haven't been around forever.

I mean, like memes in the classic internet and the new type of internet sense. We used to call them, you know, like movie quotes. You know, people say you're quoting a movie, but like now you're sending around a meme from the movie. And I am now old enough that there are real internet memes, like internet style memes. that I know that other people don't know. You know, internet memes have been around that long. It really weirds me out. If I say chocolate rain, do you know what I'm talking about?

I do know what you're talking about, yeah. These youngsters, they don't know what I'm talking about. Yep. As an elder millennial, I bridge the gap. I know all of the good pop culture, but I'm still technologically savvy. Thank you. Thank you for keeping me attached to the younger generation. This is why I'm hip and say things like, I got you, fam.

I say that to my teenage kids. They're like, dude, seriously. Dad, that was so four years ago. Grow up, Dad. Okay. Aphrodisiac Chocolate Bill, I will read this just because I want to say the word aphrodisiac as much as possible.

Yes. Aphrodisiac Chocolate Biz with massive growth and huge margins selling due to co-founder falling out. They have done revenue 3.8 million, income of 1.7 million, and they're selling for a multiple of three. So the asking price is $5.3 million plus inventory. This business has 44% net margins, and they want a 3x multiple.

Yeah. Sexual chocolate. Okay. I'm paying attention. Keep it rolling. By the way, the sexual chocolate meme, for those of you have a see, you got to go on YouTube. It's Eddie Murphy's, perhaps Eddie Murphy's best movie ever because he played like six characters. He played everybody from like a barber to a barber to.

like an African prince coming to America looking for love to a lounge singer whose band name was sexual chocolate. And that's why the sexual chocolate stuff comes up that you got to totally check out. But it's some of Eddie Murphy's best work. I mean, maybe the clumps, you know, you're walking over, but you're limping back

so that stuff is there. But it's like that was Eddie Murphy's bread and butter, right? Where he just played all the characters in the movie during that time? Why higher actors? You just play every scene. He did white face as part of it. He was like a Jewish guy hanging out of this black barbershop.

It's just like, what are you doing? Oh, like the clumps, you know, he gained like, give him in a fat suit. Like, he didn't care. He's like, this doesn't look like me. Like, we will use the makeup artist to poorly make me look like the right character. Go. Herculees. Herculees.

All right. Okay, so 3.8 million of revenue, 1.8 million income, selling for three times, 5.3 million Plus inventory. Launched just over a year ago. This is a truly unique e-commerce brand built by two unique entrepreneurs. Again, copywriting. Don't use the same word twice in the same sentence if you want to sound sophisticated. Okay, the founders have created a sensation and sales have exploded going from zero to over $500,000 per month. The brand has been featured on the popular My First Million podcast gone viral countless times on TikTok and been featured in the press on outlets like Vice and TMZ. While the business has grown tremendously,

the fact that two busy college students confounded that leaves it multiple levers to pull on future growth and optimization. I think, isn't this guy, these guys are on Twitter? I think I've seen these guys on Twitter. These guys are on Twitter. They are. Because I remember seeing it being like,

that's a dope business. Like, it's going to be a flash in the fan. Well, it looks like it's a $5 million flash in the pan. Let's go. The underlying product was formed via the insight that the massive sexual supplement market was taboo and outdated, in turn, the founders created a winning product that spoke to the younger generation.

They marketed the product where the younger generation consumes content online, namely TikTok. A material portion of sales come from TikTok, but not as a result of one or two viral videos. Instead, the owners have built a repeatable and sustainable sales process evidenced by the systems they have put in place and the impressive sales figures that have been achieved in recent months. Strong sales come from numerous other channels beyond TikTok, including subscriptions, Google ads, email and SMS marketing, and more.

The founders wish to sell the business as they've had a falling out and no longer have fun working together. That is like the most Gen Z sentence ever. We're not liking the vibes of this business. The vibes are all wrong. This business no longer has the vibes. I wish it said that. Although the personal relationship is sour,

the health of the business is as strong as it's ever been. February 2023 closes the highest revenue month in company history. Both co-founders are bullish on the future of the brand and would be open to staying on in some capacity or rolling equity. And represented by a broker who looks like, a Gen Z. Paul Anderson here, a serial entrepreneur who has built several million dollar online businesses, not wearing a hat, looks trustworthy. We should totally learn more about Paul. And that's what we know about this one. So, um, sexual chocolate. What do you think?

Yep. So I'm, I'm interested. So there's, there's some things I like. There's some things I don't like. Um, I'll just say at the front, I would totally get the, the teaser for this or the same for this. Like, this is interesting. There's a lot that could, you could really like. let's just kind of take the elephant in the room right up front, which is that the founders are no longer feeling the vibes of the business. Right. So they don't longer want to work together. I assume one of them wants to keep doing it.

One of them wants out. And so they probably just decided to liquidate the whole thing, you know, to get to resolve the situation. On one hand, this is a great reason to sell a business because it's a real reason. You know, it's not like, oh, founder, it wants to. sell to pursue other interests, aka, I want you to be the bagholder. You know, so I mean, like, this sounds terrible, but the best reasons for selling a business is some sort of forced sale or distress, you know, like a health issue or a disagreement

between the founders or, you know, some non-business reason that is forcing their hand. And that, assuming we'll take them the face value here that that's what's actually going on, that is a good reason because it doesn't necessarily implicate the quality of the business or the health of the business. So I do like that. That interests me as an opportunity to maybe get in on a deal, a business that might not otherwise be sold at this juncture. Sure.

You agree, Michael? Yeah, yeah. It's a much better reason than others. Yeah, selling to spend more time with family or pursue other interests or even retirement oftentimes to be BS. But like for sale for an external reason is great. So I do like that. The margins are finessexed.

nominal. It has 44% net margins. The size is good. It's 1.7 million and they only want three times. Now, the fact that they only want three times, on one hand you go, wow, like what a deal, except it also sort of freaks me out a little bit. Like I happen to know the broker here, the Quietly guys, and they are one of the best, if not the best broker for e-commerce businesses, super high integrity, super high quality. They know where the market is. So if these guys have priced it it three times, something's wrong with it. You know, if you had a rocket ship $1.7 million, EBITDA sexual chocolate business,

these, the Quiet-Light guys would have priced it higher than 3x if it was just sort of vanilla. So there's some reason it's not priced at four or four and a half. I don't know what that is yet, but there's something. I suspect it might be that it's only a year old. Huh. Because they said, it said somewhere, in the description, right, Michael, that they founded it about a year ago.

Yep. They've gone from zero to 500K per month in a year, which on one hand, you're like, woo, rocket ship, like, cool. On the other hand, that is not Lindy, right? Like, this could very well be a fat. This thing could drop by 50% next year. So that is potentially a reason why I think it's, it might be marked down a little bit. I think it's called this thing called tabs.

I just Googled Aphrodisiac chocolate, Vice, and it came up as this. And it still kind of blows my mind that people use these words in, like, journalism. And I guess... Are you going to read them? Folks, here's a line from the Vice article. Folks meet the chocolate confections of tabs.

A company makes treats designed to be consumed before, and I'm going to say intercourse, so you can intercourse even more fervently. Like, so I'm going to say that phrase. But like, how could you, like, yeah. The first paragraph is even more explicit. I mean, I guess this is vice, so they don't give a shit. Yeah, they do not care.

Anyway, I mean, this is like, this, actually, let's take a small detour here, Michael, into vice-based businesses, not vice, the media outlet, but vice as in virtue and vice. So these are, you know, your sex toys, your sex chocolate, you know, all that stuff on the internet. I mean, regardless of whether or not you personally would be interested in this niche, you know, what are you think some of the pros and cons of vice-based businesses that you've seen?

I mean, I'll include firearms. I'll include drugs. I'll include, you know, sex, like all this type of stuff. Yeah. I mean, I think there's two interesting ones. I mean, there's the obvious one of being in a vice business where it's like, okay, well, like, it reduces. the percentage of people that are going to come in and compete with you, right? Like, for example,

like, I think you and I both know you can make a ton of money running gentlemen's clubs. Are you going to run a gentleman's club? Hell no, right? Like, I'm just not going to do it. And I'm not going to get involved in. I'm not going to have any part of that kind of stuff. So I think that's kind of the obvious one. It's like, oh, like, your competition's going to be much less sophisticated just because nobody wants to be like, what do you do at a party? Oh, well, I own, you know, perfect Chen's gentleman club and what does that entail? Well, women take off their clothes there and then sometimes boundaries get crossed. Like, that's not going to happen. I mean, the other thing about it is because it's, this is a more nuanced thing about vice businesses is because it's a relatively like gray area

thing. Sometimes, you know, vice gets treated by the law differently. So you end up with like this weird hodgepodge of like learning how, you know, you can have regulatory modes basically. And so the one I, like, think about that's really interesting is like, the way the alcohol like distribution works, right? That is a vice business, albeit one that's getting more and more kind of mainstream each year.

But there are huge like fortunes in the state of Texas, for example, because people understand the nuances of that law, right? And like while my ancestors were selling explosives, which is also a vice business, fireworks on the side of the road, I know people who their ancestors

went and decided to become liquor distributors or get the Budweiser dealership, right, in the state of Texas. And those were probably looked at about the same. back in the 50s when we were both considering what businesses to be in, and now they fly in private jets, you know, and I still sell explosives. So it's like, it's one of those things where it also creates a moat around you

understanding this kind of niche business and potentially having some kind of legal capture, a regulatory capture that's going to enable you to create, you know, profit over time. Yep. I know several people who have made absolute killings selling sex toys on the internet. And it's interesting because when you're in these vice businesses, as you said, the competition is not as sophisticated. There's a whole bunch of, you know, left and right coast marketers that are just not going to touch it. So if you're a really good marketer, you're swimming in the kitty pool to some degree. And you can really, really crush it.

But you have in e-commerce, especially, for example, you have limited options. Like you cannot run Facebook ads because Facebook doesn't want ads for explicit stuff in their newsfeed, right? So you end up, the tactics get different. So not only Michael, as you sort of mentioned, is there's sometimes a regulatory mode. There can also be sort of an operational mode because there's sort of these bizarro world, you know, mirror world type of tactics that are not really the best tactics in vanilla stuff, but are the tactics you must use. And I'm not saying they're black hat or anything, but like SEO is way more important in vice businesses.

YouTube and content marketing is way more important because, you can't do paid paid ad distribution. You can't do Google ad distribution. So you've got to rank organically. Like you can't cheat. So actually a lot of these guys end up being really good marketers because they can't buy any of the distribution. They have to earn it with really good content.

So it's just interesting, you know, when I see vice businesses, I'm especially intrigued in how they go to market knowing that a lot of doors are closed. Yeah. So it's an interesting question. I pulled up tabschococlet.com, which is I think the business. We figured it out. And these guys have done a great job, like, building a pretty compelling site here. The thing that I like the most, which is, like, really funny is, like, they have the,

they have this section that's like C tabs in action. And I guess it sounds like underneath the hood, they have some sort of program where they're paying women on TikTok to make TikToks about tabs. That's what it looks like is going on here. For sure. And they kind of hinted about it in the listing. But, like, the third section in this website, which is totally fascinating, is like, we are going to get women talking about wanting to get freaky by eating tabs and then, you know,

tabs the chocolate marine, the business. And then, uh, and then we're going to record them. And then we're going to put those listings on the website and target a certain, a certain demographic of people who, uh, you know, are, are interested in, and seeing women talk about that kind of stuff. So, I mean, you have to, like, if you guys are listening, go to tabschalky.com. This website is a masterclass in e-commerce marketing. Yeah. I I mean, it is a 12 out of 10. They have done an amazing job. The homepage tells you everything you need to know.

They've got 30-day satisfaction guarantee, free shipping over a certain threshold. They got review counts, five-star counts. As Michael mentioned, they got user-generated content all front and center. They've got all of the trust stuff, safe and effective ingredients, FDA-approved, made in the USA, discrete shipping, like all the video. This is almost perfect. I mean, I absolutely have to hand it to these guys. Phenomenal e-commerce marketing. Dude, some 19-year-olds did this?

Apparently. I'm 49. I don't think I could do this. Like, this is some rigid. It's super good. I mean, like, you really got to hand it to these guys. Now, the thing, though, that's like, I look at all this and I go, great. Like, here's what I like about this.

It's all direct. It's all on their dot com. I assume, right? It's probably not much on Amazon. It's probably almost all organic traffic. right, if they've gone viral a couple times. Yeah. And they're probably smart enough to be taking that organic viral content and then repackaging

it into ads to boost their distribution. So I think, I think this is probably very well executed. They probably got a lot of great backlinks from all of the, all the viral exposure they've had, which is going to make their domain authority really high to help them rank for other products if they launch them under the tabs brand. So like I really, there's a lot to like here. The thing that worries me, though, is it's only a year old, and it's driven by it's a little fad-based. And I don't know what's protectable here except the name.

And now you can say that about almost any consumer product under the sun. But I would expect that there are already a number, a shitload, I would say, of knock-offs. Right. So I don't know how protectable this is. Right now, this is a one-skew brand. If I'm them, I'm trying to rapidly make the leap from branded product to brand with 10 products, right? And build that equity value into the brand, not just the product. So I Google Aphrodisiac chocolate, and there is now, I mean, these guys show up a ton, but you're starting to see more and more.

There's even some on Amazon here, gourmet, aphrodisiac chocolate bar. Yeah, and this is this is how e-commerce works. Like you have a ounce of success and the copycats flood in. Like it is it is very, it's actually a very scary thing to blow up very fast in e-commerce, especially virally and not have like a whole strategy built out to capture it and make sure that you stay ahead of the market because it just attracts competition like bees to honey. And it just flow, like, you want to, like, the best e-commerce businesses, like, sell a ton without going viral.

So no one knows about them. You know, when you go viral, like, you're on Joe Rogan, you're on, you know, you're on, you're all over TikTok, you're, you know, wherever, your good morning America, whatever, like light the fuse rush of competitors within a couple months. It's, you know, this, and I think that's the worry here. It looks like they're, their number one and number two, like traffic source have been going viral. which is hard to replicate. It happens once, right?

Because people hear it and they don't come back. I mean, my first million isn't going to talk about it again. And then, or maybe they do, but not in a good sense. And then you have TikToks, right? And like the TikTok, the TikTok thing seems very kind of ephemeral, right? Like, it's great that these folks are given, you know, testimonials, but that's somebody else can do that just as well, you know? So maybe that's why this thing is price so cheap.

Maybe. I mean, it's like, I don't think this is, I don't think they're dead in the water here, but I think if you bought this from these guys, and maybe they already have this, they haven't executed it, but they need very quickly to fan this brand out to be a real brand and not just a single product that is going viral. Right. Because, I mean, you've got to be very careful not to buy the viral thing at the top of the viral peak.

Yeah, I mean, it looks like here definitely use this customer list. I mean, they have 100,000 customers. They should be selling them other, you know, optimization products. Oh, yeah. Anyway, I'm trying to figure out how, like, explicit I should be. Let's just say other other other other other kinds of sex adjacent products, all kinds of, you know, virility enhancing products, all kinds. I mean, like you could, there's obviously a supplements play here. there's obviously other types of candies.

There's probably a CBD or a relaxation type. I mean, the brand is good, tabs, which I think has a little bit of a druggy connotation here. But there's all kinds of things you could do with this. Gummies of all kinds. I mean, there's a lot here, but they need to be doing it. Like, they need to be running quickly from just being a sexual chocolate brand. Yeah.

Well, and then also, like, try to convert as much. many of these 100,000 people as you can from apparently one-time buyers to recurring or repeat buyers. I'd be really interested in what they're doing to try to make that happen from a, from a standpoint of like, okay, like, let's get you on the monthly chocolate subscription or we'll send you chocolate plus one, you know, with some sort of gift box type thing added into it. Well, that's why they need more products, right? Because yes, this is consumable chocolate, but like the fraction of people that are going to like buy this every month and keep it in their bedside table is much lower than the fraction of people who are going to buy this one time because

they saw it on TikTok. Right. Like it's just like this, the sexual chocolate, this is not like athletic greens or like something that's becoming part of your morning routine. Like this is this is not that kind of product. So they've, in order to resell to all these people who maybe bought once after seeing a great TikTok, maybe they used the product, maybe they had a great time. But like, you got to give them something new.

You know, you've got to put your hooks into other areas of their life pretty quick. Yeah. Well, and then I think watching the athletic greens people has been wildly impressive. You know, like, and that's one of the things I like about, you know, Twitter and the Internet so much is, like, I watch these people do things and I'm like, holy crap, that was, that's really, really good. Like, that's so cool to watch. Like, you know, I think like Sam Pars, like, and those guys launching Hampton,

their peer group this week, like, that was a master class. and like, holy cow, this is how you, like, own Twitter for the day. But then Athletic Greens has taken it beyond Twitter. It's like all these platforms where they just have, like, I mean, let's be frank about it. They're selling a, you know, a green smoothie thing that has been around forever, but they've packaged it super well. And then they have this, like, high margin repeatable strategy where they just spend the money to get influencers to recommend their product.

And like, it's just genius. And, like, I think that's the playbook to when you buy this business. You run the same thing. You just go for a different niche. Like, athletic greens is like health and performance. This is like, get you some. We're going to own that niche. We'll get you some or like, you know, like a little bit alternative performance enhancing, you know, like maybe some of like these weird Asian herbs.

Yeah. All that stuff. But, you know, Athletic Greens actually, though, is I think like the exception to the rule. They did everything you described. And I agree they're phenomenal marketers. They just have one skew. It's the AG1 green powder. It's incredible to me that they have not really branched out.

like, yes, they have a vitamin D, they give you for free, et cetera. But really, they have one skew. I think the difference, though, between athletic greens and these guys is the green smoothie is part of your everyday routine. Your LTVs are probably really high. There's a kind of routine factor to it that I think the sexual childhood probably does not have. By the way, I just want to be transparent.

There's been like 18 times during this podcast that I would make a normal gurdly bro joke if we were recording this. And that was just one of those moments. I was like, oh, I can't say that. This is not a family podcast, but we try not to totally offend everyone's sensibilities. It's like, oh, I can't tell that. Yeah, I can't do that.

So, it's so perfect. Look, I think there's something really interesting here. Like if, I think if you were the right kind of buyer that had this, we've talked about like some of this stuff, like the betting one where like the PE guys would come in and lose their shirt. this is one where I like if I was like in a growth e-commerce fund and I wanted to come in and try to do a relatively high risk play to turn this from a five million to a $20 million business and flip it like I think there's something to it like I think this is the right buyer for

this because you got to kind of run a high high risk invest some playbook like you need to you know buy it for five and put another million or two in it and then turn that into 20 or 25 or even more if you kind of get the level of athletic green success there. So anyway, I am sure this will sell if it hasn't already sold. I mean, there's a ton of guys like that that know how to scale an e-commerce brand and look at this. And it's kind of, you know, it's an MVP. That's a minimum viable brand, I guess, MVP. And it's like it's working.

Like they can run pay traffic to it. Like the site is really good. And the opportunity, as I said, is more products and continue to scale the marketing. and also make sure the operations doesn't break, this, like a guy like Jesse Poogee would crush it with this. You know, there's a ton of, there's a ton of Jesse Pugis out there. There's only one Jesse Pooge, but there are other guys who could do great with this too. But back to your original point, like, this is a counter to his brand.

Like, he wouldn't sign up for this. Great point. Also that, yes. But there are a ton of guys who you've not heard of. Yeah. To me, that would smell like opportunity. So, yeah. And look, I wouldn't do this.

This is counter to my brand. Like, I'm not going to go sell you some. We haven't even really talked about the fact that this stuff doesn't work. It's all placebo. I would think so. I mean, I have no ideas. I'm not aware of what's even in it, but likely yes. They have ingredients here.

I'm going to click on it. My suspicion is it has a very high caffeine content. And most of these people are getting hit with a caffeine high. It's like drinking a cup of coffee and be like, well, I'm energetic. What do you want to do? Let's go. Probably. Oh, it's a sugar, it's a sugar, fat caffeine high. Like, yeah, like, I'm hypes now. What would you like to do? Well, let's, let's go from there. So it is what it is. Yep.

Cool. This is a good one. This is a good one. Okay. Cool. We'll wrap it up there unless you have anything. Oh, I've had to the two 19-year-olds who started this, a masterclass in digital marketing. Killers. Well, I think the interesting thing for me would be, okay, there's probably one of those kids is the rock star. And if they've had a falling out, I bet you there's one of those kids who was just like ridiculously talented to put all this together. And I would want to figure out who that kid is in bed on his next thing. Well, or actually, geez, I'm so glad you said that. Right. So there's two founders.

As you said, probably one of them is the horse, right? Yeah. And oftentimes the founder disagreement comes from the horse is bitter at the free rider. Yep. Right? Who owns 40% of the company isn't pulling his weight. This is the opportunity. Don't buy the whole thing.

Buy out the free rider. right buy out the free rider let the guy who is the horse stay in place continue to own 60% of it or whatever create some structure where you can earn into another 5% of it or something if he really kicks ass or 10% and just right like you don't need a bet on his next thing but in his current thing this is it you know just buy out the one founder who wants out i like it cool all right let's wrap it up here uh if you've listened this far the content is free but here is the ask. We ask you to just tell one friend, take this episode or take your favorite episode and send it to one friend who you think should be a subscriber and ask them to subscribe. That's our,

that's our ask for today. And I hope you guys would consider doing that. We just, Bill, I don't know if you saw it. We just broke 750,000 a month run rate again. Yeah, baby. Or 750,000 a year run rate. So we're well on our way to a million. And we're only 180 episodes in. So YOLO. All right, let's do it, man. Million downloads, here we come. It's the next big thing. I heard after you get to a million, the podcast people send you

like one of those little YouTube triangles so you can put it in your background. Yeah, well, I know, Michael, that's why you wanted to start syndicating the podcast to YouTube so that one day we can get these little loose sites from YouTube. That would be cool.

That would be cool. I mean, I think, you know, I'm working on hiring this new person to come in to kind of own all the media stuff and strategy for us, But, like, you know, we are doing a good job, I think, of playing the Twitter game for the podcast. We're doing a good job of playing the audio-only game, and that's where most of our listeners still are. But, like, there's a lot of the YouTube game.

We're just not playing because none of us have the bandwidth to do it and really dig in and make it happen. So, you know, I think that'll be the next frontier for us next year is, you know, how do you take and make this kind of, for example, you, you know, there's editing a podcast like this to make it more interesting to watch on YouTube, rather than us just sitting here. That's all part of the thing. But there's a strategy to that. There's tactics. I think I shared with you that video of the guy who he tweeted, he's a video explaining how editing can keep people's brains engaged

and there's an art to it. Did I send that to you? No, but I'm familiar. Like the quick cuts, the orienting response. It's really fascinating. Well, and then he was talking about like this stuff called Foley, which I guess is relatively a new concept to me. It's where you do the video and like you,

create illusions of reality. So, for example, he was doing his video, and he, like, takes his glasses off, and then he puts him back on. And the Foley is adding a sound to that to make it more visceral for the watcher, even though there was no sound in the recording. Oh, yeah. It's just, like, all the sound artist guys, like, you know, thumping pillows and, you know, breaking paint cans and stuff.

Swishing of clothes. Like, for example, like, if you're doing a scene and you want to make it really seem like somebody walking away from you is like mad. Like you replace their normal sound with like the sound of shoes going down like an empty long hallway at a high school. Right. And reverberating and all that kind of stuff. So that's kind of the art of sound.

Exactly that. And that's part of that plus the visual is how you kind of keep people engaged and stick to your content. And like Mr. Beast is, yeah, the classic, classic example of that at the highest level. So stay tuned to our YouTube. Because we're getting some help on the media side, right? We're hopefully recruiting a cool all-star employee that will help us with some of this stuff. Stay tuned to the YouTube.

Acquisition Anonymous is about to get fun. Just imagine the sexual chocolate episode with Foley on YouTube. And that's where we're going. Oh, man. All right, man. Catch you next week. All right.