Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - Amar Patel: Creating a Supplement Brand - 101

Episode Date: June 1, 2019

Amar Patel - the supplement genius - has helped build 12 successful supplement brands. On this episode of Inside Look, Amar stopped by and dropped his knowledge of brand building in the supplement industry. Watch now to discover what you should and shouldn’t do while building your very own supplement company - or any brand for that matter!   “The Devil’s in the details” “Protect your empire” - Bedros Keuilian   Here’s what you’ll discover: 1:26 - What supplements mean to Amar, and how he used his passion to create his empire 4:15 - What to do - and not to do - while launching a supplement brand 14:53 - How you can grow your supplement brand on different platforms 19:30 - How important influencers can be for any brand’s success 33:00 - How Amar learned and grew in the supplement industry   “It takes 90 days to launch a brand” “You need insurance. Period.” “If people don’t know who you are as a brand, you won’t be successful” “Pay up front” -Amar Patel

Even though you have a thousand locations, you're still not, you have more errors to make than somebody that doesn't. If you make the wrong errors and price, sales that you run, it could be really big. Distribution, delivery, yeah. It could be a really big problem. So you have a lot more to worry about than somebody that's just starting off. But you have a vision, you have a plan, and you're going to execute on it. It's the only way that you can figure out if it's going to do well or not.

Hey, friends, welcome to another episode of The Empire Show, an inside look. And today we've got someone very special, a guy who has built over. 12 supplement company brands to the tune of eight figures and he's here to teach us and tell us what it takes to build a supplement brand and sell it online today. Mr. Amar Patel, welcome, buddy. Thank you for having me here today. Yes, sir. Now Amar is also someone who's been kind enough to help guide us here at Fit Body Boot Camp in our supplement brand that we're launching across all, well, by the time we're ready, it'll be about a thousand locations worldwide and of course online so you've been a massive help to us you've got tremendous experience in the

supplement company and branding and even using influencers to sell this stuff so let's dive right in first and foremost how did you even find yourself working with supplements so it started when I was 16 so I've been in the health and fitness industry since I started working out in high school yeah so plain and simple I got beat up when I was 15 years old started working out and then I got a job because I actually had a pastor for and I loved what I did. So I started, I got my first job in the gym and realized I love of working with people. And since then, until 11 years to date, I mean, never left the industry.

Always found different avenues inside the industry to make money and also help people at the same time. Good for you. And I know your story pretty well. In fact, the way I learned about you several years ago was through a podcast I was listening to. Unfortunately, I don't remember the name of the podcast. I think it was addicted to success. Addicted to success. Yes, exactly. And I was just fascinated by this guy who's so young, who's so driven, who can articulate so well about supplements.

And of course, right around then is when I was thinking, all right, when we hit about 800 locations with Fit Body Boot Camp, I want to launch our supplement line, because then we'd be in a position where we would have overnight 800 supplement stores across the country. And, of course, we'd have 800 websites that we'd be selling our supplements through, and all of our Fit Body locations have hundreds of clients. And so we have built-in clients for the supplement brand. knew that we'd be launching an overnight multi-million dollar business what I didn't know was anything about the supplement industry so after hearing that episode of you on Addicted to Success I was like I got to reach out to this guy

and meet him and you've been kind enough to consult us and I thought it'd be great to have you on the show because I get DMs all the time from people who go hey man I want to start a supplement brand I want to start my own nutrition supplement company do I need a big following do I need to use influencers should I buy traffic what's a good name for it how do I find the right manufacturer I don't know this stuff because I'm in the process of learning it so I figured who else to have on the show than someone who's built an empire with supplements launched a dozen brands and has been massively successful and if I remember correctly

you've even sold a brand or two right one one brand yeah so you've kind of gone the whole gamut and are you under 30 years old I'm 27 you're 27 years old so you're very young motivated driven and I think are our viewers and listeners need to hear from you on this. So you got into the fitness space because you were getting beat up and was it high school? That was 105 pounds. 105 easy enough to beat up. I was the opposite. I was overweight and getting beat up and bullied. So it's like on either end of the spectrum, you get fucked with, right? And so you obviously get into the fitness industry and you're in great shape now. You and I have worked out together, BK Strength. But you chose supplements as your

path. And I know where supplements are concerned, and I've seen the movie bigger, faster, stronger. There could be some shady stuff that happens in the supplement industry. Why don't we start there before we talk about how to make money with supplements? What kind of shady things take place? Well, I mean, there's so many different things. Like when you start a brand and you have a vision and passion and you're excited about it, there's a lot of manufacturer plants out there that just look at you as that one person that's coming to the table with 50 grand. How can I maximize and get as much money from you as a brand owner? Because I know you're going to fail. a high failure rate? Yes. There is a high failure rate just because you're never going to know

until you get into it. But the thing is the same exact time, if you spend too much money and all of your money on inventory, which is what they're going to want you to do, and you have no money left for marketing, I made that same mistake with my first brand. So let me guess. I had to spend all of my money into the brand as far as the packaging, the supplements, the order and quantities that came to the warehouse. I mean, we probably had five grand left to put into marketing which is the kiss of death so typically what happens since there's a high failure rate someone says hey I've got 10,000 or 15,000 or 50,000 and the manufacturer knows there's a high failure rate so they're going to try and

get their arms around that 50,000 or 10,000 one time because they don't think you're coming back yeah because you're a one-time pop for them it's very rare that someone's going to actually succeed and so they want you to buy as many and this is probably why they go hey look when you buy in bulk you save per per unit and this is how people end up and so how are you going to know right that's thing so you end up with a bedroom full of supplements or a basement full of supplements which is how most people end up right wondering well they happen to the greed of the person as well

so it's not just the manufacturer it's the brand owner that's thinking greedy when you have a brand start with one to five skews thousand units right instead of doing five thousand each like oh let me get the best rate that I can so I can make the most pennies on this sale you don't want to do that you want to make you test the market on a test if it's working don't put all of your money into

exactly what you know is going to fail. You know it's going to fail because you're trying to launch a brand without knowing that your consumer is going to buy it. So what I'm hearing you say is if I've got $50,000,000, and that number could be $10,000, $15,000, $20,000. I'm one of those shady manufacturers. You've got $50,000. You're going to give it to me.

I'm going to get to the product. I'll tell you whatever you want to hear in the beginning. Oh, I'll get it to you in two weeks. You don't know shit about the industry, right? So you're like, OK, whatever. Once you get into bed with them, they've had your money. They're not. They're giving 50% down, 50% when you get it.

50% of that money is gone if you don't continue with them. So they take 10 weeks. 50% of money is gone, they do whatever they want. If they don't want to put you in next line to the production, they can wait another two weeks because you only spent 50 grand, somebody else spent 200 grand. So how do I protect myself from not falling for that? How fast they try to get you to launch,

if they try to take your money as soon as possible? It should take a reason of my time. 90 days to launch a brand. If somebody's trying to get it done in two weeks, it's impossible. impossible. So if they're making you a promise like hey in two or three weeks we can have you launched they're full of shit. Well it takes 90 days for you as the owner to know the name of your company the trademarks the packaging the direction you get to build that as you're getting the formulations made

the ingredients everything that's being done needs to be done simultaneously but if they try to say hey give me your money up front I'm trying to get this product for you as soon as possible you're not even ready to take that product third-party fulfillment or if you have a wrong warehouse you don't know where it's going. You don't know if it's going to come too soon or come too late. They don't really care. They're going to take your money and in 10 weeks if you call them up and say, hey, it's a thing it's eight weeks overdue. I need my product so I can start selling it. They're going to say, oh, it'll be done next week. You'll call them back next week. Oh, it'll be done in a couple

days. And by the time you look at, I've seen some brands go to 16 weeks without getting product. And when you're a brand that's launched and live, think about 16 weeks of no inventory, payroll, rent, warehouse space. influencers that could destroy your business overnight. So my mind says then if I've got 50 G's and this manufacturer wants half now and half upon delivery, I'm going to say well here's half but let's sign an agreement that says if you don't deliver by when you say you're going to deliver you owe me my money back. Would that be a fair way to go? Is to sign a contract? Like how do I protect myself? You can but when you're a small brand like that you're not thinking that. Right. Well

this is why we're going to we're going to teach people on the show. Yeah, that's something that you can do. You can get a manufacturer's agreement, standard agreement that would say, I need the product by this date from the time I get to the labels, because you need the labels first to run the bottles. What manufacturers used to do back in the day, they used to make the products, and then I'd have five flavors. How am I supposed to know if all these bottles are black, which one goes where, what flavors? You've had some products that come in that I opened the bottle to cherry limeate on it, and it's like blueberry. because you need the labels first in order to manufacture it. So it all starts from when you get the labels done to when they get to the facility because they got to put the labels on first and then the product gets mixed and dumped into it.

Machines won't take it any other way otherwise you'll just ruin perfectly good product. Gotcha. That makes sense. So manufacturer's agreement is going to say what? It's going to say a delivery date? It's going to say delivery date, where it's going, how you're going to receive the product, what's included with the products of the bottle, the labeling, application of it, and all the materials inside, every other price that would be in there included. So any late fees, like if you don't bring the labels in by certain time,

they're going to charge you a late fee as the brand. There's a lot of things that they're going to try to sneak into that. That contract's not small. It's going to be about four or five pages that they sent to you. But if you want to be on the safe side, look it over, revise it, and then have it sent back to them. And what could I add into that contract to process? protect myself and my money.

Well, the delivery date and the quality of products. Everybody has to have insurance. So insurance is not the problem. You need to have brand insurance, period. That's just how it works. What does brand insurance do? So like supplement insurance, it'll cover you for any other liabilities that you have. So if you're in the supplements itself.

So if I'm a customer, I take it, something happens to me. Unless it's the manufacturer's fault, it's like something was in it that, like a piece of hair or something else was in there like a rock. It's not your fault, it's manufacturer's fault. But if somebody, you formulated a product and you sold it to somebody, and they happen to just get hurt from it, let's just say they take too much of it, and you don't put a disclaimer, that insurance will cover you. But some insurance coverage is only for certain ingredients.

So you have a list from your supplement insurance provider, hey, these are the ingredients that you cannot have in your product. So run through this whole list, and this is exactly what you can't have. If this is in your product and somebody takes it, you have no liability. your insurance coverage is gone. Which means now your ass is on the line. Yes, you're fully exposed. What percentage of people who create a supplement brand have supplement insurance?

Maybe 30%, maybe 30%. And that's, you're being generous by saying that. Yeah, I'd say probably like 20%. Because when you're in the beginning, you don't know. When I first started, I didn't know. And it is from a lack of ignorance, not from a lack of I don't want to get insurance and I'm going to be negligent. It's from a lack of I don't know any better. When you're building your brand, you're doing so many things.

You don't have employees in the beginning. You have you and maybe your business partner. You're trying to do so many things that obviously some things are going to slip past you. Like, my first brand slipped past the trademark, and that screwed the entire company in the long run. I had pointed it out my business partner at the time just didn't feel that it was necessary. After doing enough volume online where we could have done it, we ended up getting a lawsuit for trademark infringement from three different companies. that... Really?

Three different companies that are doing at least $10 to $20 billion a year. So it wasn't small companies that were coming after us. So there was no way to really fight them at that point? They would have milked us dry over the five years. They pay a legal staff, you know, $10 million a year on the staff to just go. They don't have any reason to. Yeah, and this is what I want you, you viewers and listeners to really pay attention to. It's the devil's in the details.

If you're going to launch a successful brand, you've got to know that there's got to be liability insurance, number one, because if you're successful and someone claims to get hurt, notice I didn't say they got hurt. Someone claims to get hurt or sick or have an epileptic seizure from your supplements and they sue you. They could milk you financially dry just through the court process, never mind actually winning, right? Because you might... Well, the faster you grow, the more people are going to take your products so the higher chances are that somebody's going to have a problem. Exactly. Just how it works. Just because some kind of companies have bad reviews doesn't mean that they're a bad company.

They just had a shit ton more people take it. And not everybody's the same, like supplements, you might not like a flavor I might like. And that might be the bad review. Or you know you're not supposed to be taking this product and you took it anyway, and then you had a headache. There's always little areas that people miss. Just because there's a brand that has three star review, four stars, I mean they're bad. You have to look into the details of, is it bad because, hey, I got the product and there's nothing in it. That's the area of concern, is that sometimes some products will get to you and it's half full,

quarter of the way full. That's the stuff that you need to look at that makes your brand bad, not the badder views of flavors and stuff like that. Because I know that I would like stuff that you wouldn't like. Sure, it's just human nature. And so the other thing that could really be the kiss of death for a business is, and this was for you, was a trademarking issue. Yeah, trademark, I mean, it's $1,500, something like that, right? But the reason most people don't do it, it's just not.

sexy like who has time to go there to go to trademarking it's not even that it's not even part of being sexy it's just like when you're working at that pace and you scale you're not looking at what did I forget a year ago yeah those are things that come to bite you in the ass eventually yeah but those are things you should jot down as you're going hey it should get this done by this date at the rate that I'm going and then jot down open up that book at the end of the year and make sure that you've covered everything if you have the funds don't spend it on cars and other stuff, spend that money towards where you need to go.

Fancy dinners are cool, but you won't be doing that for very long if you don't have a company. Right. Protect your empire, right? So you want to trademark, you want to get, make sure you have a manufacturer's agreement with the manufacturer that says date and timeline and expectations and of course you want to have supplement insurance. So let's say you've covered those three bases, the trademark, the manufacturing agreement, and you've got the supplement insurance. Okay, I'm good to go and I have about 10 to 20,000 in marketing dollars and I've got an Instagram following and maybe a YouTube following that's small. How do I grow my supplement line from there?

Well, first of, we need the content. So there's always areas that you need to cover before you can get the supplements. Do I have a video guy? Do I have somebody that can take care of my graphics, my content, my website, my marketing, my Google AdWords, my Facebook ads? That's the base barebone of your entire brand. Not one person is going to be successful without having those things because if you don't have the proper images you don't have high quality pictures and videos of how to portray what this brand means there's no way you're going to sell the product you can have the best packaging but if people don't know who you are as a brand nowadays maybe five years ago might have worked but people are getting

smarter they want to know what's in their products they want to do the research they want you to answer it back to them that's the one thing that brands don't do is I have a question I could send them a DM or whatever it is and nobody's managing and Nobody's answering my concern before I buy this product. You're losing a customer when you're trying to grow a brand. It's the worst you could do. It's just pushing customers away. You want those customers to be with you,

so spend the extra time to send those direct messages to the people that actually care about buying your product. They've made it into a direct message or they've commented on your photo. They will 90% of the time purchase if you answer the questions they're asking. That's huge. That's huge.

And on the flip side, by the way, we've seen people who, and I actually saw a tattoo artist, who's pretty successful and popular, apparently someone sent him a DM and he didn't reply back for days. The person sent another DM. He or anyone from his staff didn't reply for days again. The person took a screenshot,

and ironically, I followed the person because it's a celebrity. The celebrity is a quasi-celebrity. They took a screenshot of their DM empty, no response from the tattoo artist or his team, and said, hey, look, I was thinking of getting a tattoo from this guy. I'm no longer going to get it. And this is a person of influence. So it works with tattoos, it works with fitness franchises, it works with supplements.

Yeah, right? Just business ethic one-on-one. If you're going to be in the Instagram game or you're going to be in the social media game, use the tools that are provided for you. Or those tools will work against you. It's not like somebody's bashing your door for money. You got a free app, you got a phone, everybody has a phone, use every single area of your phone.

Text messages, emails, direct messages, the new email. If you don't open your direct messages, you're your direct messages, you're a phone. You're going to direct messages, you're failing miserably because people want to buy product from you and they're probably reaching out there. Exactly. There's always different ways. People, wherever the people are, you can do email marketing campaign that are opt-in, or you can just get fresh, organic leads of people that are coming in.

You funnel them through the Instagram DM so that you can answer their questions, provide them the quality, send them to the website with the code that will help them make that purchase. Now what's the benefit of the code? The code is specific. You don't have to put it up anywhere. The code is, hey, you know what, you might be concerned about taking the products for this, this, and this reason. But you know what, for your first-end purchase, here's a 40% off code. Everybody else is getting 20. But you don't have to market it.

You can just say, hey, you're a new customer. Here's 40%. Now, there's two benefits to that code, by the way. Everyone watching and listening to this, you need to understand. See, this happened in the infomercial world years ago, and some of the audience here was like infomercial. Yeah, if you remember, there was Guthrie Ranker and other companies like that that were creating workout machines, right, and selling it on TV late at night on different channels. How do they know what channels sent the traffic?

Because the 800 numbers were different on the proactive or the abdominizer or the Bowflex, whatever the product was, depending on the network it was showing on, the 800 number that you would call was different. And that was the equivalent of a code. And so what Amara is saying here is you can do two things with a code. You can say, look, everyone's getting 20% off, but since this is your first time purchasing from me, here's a code that'll get you 40% off. So one, you're increasing the likelihood of a purchase. Number two, if you say this is the only code I'm going to use through people who come through my DM, now when you look at your shopping card at the end of the month, you can go, holy cow, I answered a thousand DM questions and we got 122 people from

DMs who use the code. So you can track where the traffic's coming from. And it's no different than that different 800 number. And so that's really important note. So now that we know that, how do we use that code method to scale traffic through influencers? So you're talking about the code for the people that are reaching out to the brand? Or you're talking about?

Well, let's say now you're gonna get influencers. How would I get influencers for my supplement brand? And then would I give every influencer a different code? Well, every influence is going to have its own URL. So it's just a click, say like their name at the end, but it'll go to their website. So anytime the person goes on, it's just going direct. Or you can get a code that is signed up through a back end, like a refursion or something like that,

that you can track the sales that come in from that specific person's code. So if they make a post, they're supposed to put the code in the post. And if people go to click the link in the bio, it doesn't matter. As long as they use the code at time of checkout, that's the only thing that matters. Or if there is no code, they can just send them direct to the website with a link with their URL. A very specific link. URL, if you are good on your end, as far as a website and everything,

you'll upsell that person. You're just going to try to get the traffic. Yeah. And you're going to do the job of converting, which means you'll probably pay less in commission. Makes sense. Make sense. And so where the codes like that are concerned,

you might see influencers putting out a code and saying, hey, look, I use this particular creatine, and it gives me these results. By the way, if you want to save 10%, go to the thing. Just go really far away from the whole. you want to save 10% this is what I take because I genuinely take it

do you want to buy it this is the perk you want to buy it because you follow me and you see my results and I post consistently and I've been taking this product nobody's going to make that one-time purchase like hey you just made one post it's going to take the person that's your follower

at least one month to realize that you can represent the brand because you just pop up out of nowhere saying hey I got promoted and I got sponsored by this brand all of a sudden the next day, for some reason, all your results in one day came from one fucking product. Right.

Not likely. It's not. You have to slowly just start with the review. I got this product today. I started working with this company. This product has helped me through my workout today because I took a pre-workout. I'll reach back out and make a post in a week or so once I see the effects of the other products. You cannot say this made me shredded in one day.

Right. You have to say, honest truth is being honest. Honest to yourselves right now more than anything because everybody tried to play the fake game before saying, hey, I take this product, but hey, by the way, I just got sponsored by two other brands. I take this one and this one and this one. And people are just diluting all of their follower base because they're seeing so many different brands with one person that they're a sales machine. They're not a human being anymore.

Well, we actually talked about some shady practices that supplement companies make. But let's talk about the shady practices that used to happen. and who knows, maybe still happens, that people who were being sponsored by these supplement companies, like I remember a couple of people specifically photoshopping their images and implying that the supplements they used grew their muscles bigger and leaner. Well, if you think about 30% or at least 40% of this industry does it,

there was just a few that needed to take the blame for it. It's not that these companies weren't doing it. Right. They tried to be that person that said, oh, we don't do it because somebody got the spotlight. So if you knew you were doing something wrong, you either fixed it or you tried to hide behind somebody else that was getting the spotlight and all the attention saying, you guys are pieces of shit, you guys are scamming your customers. Even though they were doing it too. They were also doing it as well.

What a shit. The thing is, there was a blanket. So when that happened, there's a lot of people that blanket underneath it and said, hey, I'm just going to ride on the radar and make a shit ton of money the same way. I'm not going to say anything. There's a lot of people that did that. That's unfortunate. And it still goes on today. Photoshop may have gotten so much better.

I've scrolled on my phone and my newsfeed and I've seen apps that I can give you abs. Literally makes you look like you have a full six-pack. What am I doing trying to eat clean, fellas? What the fuck I'm doing around here? Someone download that app on my phone right now. You wouldn't even be able to tell. That's the crazy part about it. Yeah.

I meet you, right? But how many people are going to actually meet you? Right. Right. Social media is a way to meet somebody, but are you going to stand toe to toe to with somebody? You're standing next to that person and actually see if that's legit.

You're not going to. And that's when it started to come out. When social media started growing, people would see it. Then, hey, you're going to do an appearance. You're going to come. You're going to come to my event. Then you're going to really see what's going on. And that's what starts it,

is when you try to make your own image a different way online as opposed to in person. Larger than life, basically. And people are going to catch on. It's not because you didn't work out today. Like, you just didn't work out for six months. Right, right. You use the fucking app is what you did.

Yeah. Yeah. So let me ask you this. If I'm creating a supplement brand and I want to get sponsored athletes, basically influencers to promote it, what is my step-by-step process to do that? Well, the thing is you need the content.

You need to send free product, free product to the influencer so they can try it. But wait a minute. Let's start here. How do I know who's a good influencer? There's a ton of websites that will actually give you a platform to spend money on for influencers that they've collected over time. What are these websites called? I can have a list in the thing.

Right, so we'll put that in the show notes for you guys here. There's probably 10 or 15 of those that you can use a platform as a payment acceptor, a payment holding company where you'd hold the payments before the influencer is able to, but you can search information. influencers on that platform. You can search by beauty, fashion, fitness, whatever your niches, and they've already done the vetting of that person's followers. Got it. So they don't have any followers, how responsive those people are, et cetera. So they've already done it based on the engagement level, where it's coming from, how many ghost followers they have, they've done all that. So when you do promote with somebody, it's not even that much. Do you say how many ghost followers they have?

So ghost followers are people that just don't do anything. Got it. So someone might have a million followers. They could have 600,000 or ghosts that don't do anything. But it's also because of algorithm also stops some people from seeing stuff unless it's seen three times or more on their screen and then they keep going sure it's like when you post I comment on it because it comes up first because I've commented on it three times and I never swiped past it right but when people start to swipe past your post three times Instagram believes that you no longer are interested in this person so I'm never

going to show them to you again got it so we do another update is no longer relevant to you until we do another update I'll see if if it's worth there people can still compete with it okay so we go to these sides we find the right sponsors, at least who we think is the right sponsors. What do we offer them? Is there a competitive percentage? Well, they have a price. They have a price per post or you can do a commission or you can sign them. What do you recommend? What's the smartest way to go? In the beginning per post, find out and test before you sign somebody because you could sign somebody for a year that will never convert the dollar value you're trying to pay them. If you're paying them, you know,

five grand a month and you just sign off because she looks good. Or she got a really, really big following or five million people but you don't know if somebody's going to buy. Oh, we start off with the test. Pay more up front than signing a contract that's going to cost you the long term. Even if the girls ask for 500 bucks, it's worth it. It's worth it. Pay her. When you pay her, you're going to find out if she's capitalizing that thousand and then take your numbers and figure out if she's worth this amount of money every month. People just jump into it, hey, I got this great celebrity. I know for a fact the only people that really sell product and sell out of product are people like the rock.

Put up one exclusive product and they're sold out. Right. They could put anything on there, anything, and he'll sell out of it. But that's different. Now there's influencers that are fitness celebrities. That's a totally different ballgame

as opposed to a celebrity celebrity. Right. So celebrity celebrity would be someone like the rock, Oprah Winfrey, right? And then a fitness. Somebody that has huge influence that people are basically going to say, okay, you know what, this guy's representing it.

It's 100% working. Yeah. And then there's people that, I follow so many fitness people just because it's fitness, but I don't really buy any of their stuff. So I'm one of those people that don't really buy. I mean, I don't need to because you manufacture a product. The thing is, I don't need to buy it, but if I was a customer, I wouldn't buy it because I would have so many people just competing for that space.

I got 500,000 followers, I'm a influencer in the fitness. And then I got 10 other people that do the same thing for different brands. Who do I trust? So then what do you do to make sure that you get the right influencer? Look into their page. Look into their page. See if they're a genuine person. See if they're actually representing a brand that you know other people have represented.

So the thing is, if you're looking for an influencer, if they've represented other brands in the past, look at who they've represented and see how well they've done with those brands. How can you see that? You can see how well they're done with those brands if they do their own content. Because all the time you're not going to have somebody like a photographer or anybody else is going to be able to do all of these athletes the same time. They're not going to go shoot them. If people do their own photo shoots, they're putting in extra work. They're putting in the time that you would have spent money on because they have a passion for it.

And you can tell by the videos that are recorded by themselves as opposed to videos that. Sure. Somebody else shot and edited. But those people are the ones that convert the most because they have a genuine story. They actually believe in the product. They have a passion for it. and they create good content. They're basically holding up a review video

of take this product because it actually works, not because I'm being sold it to make a lot of money. So I'll shift gears here for a moment. You've created a dozen different brands. We manufacture for a dozen brands. You manufacture for a dozen different brands. Good point. How do you find certain niche markets doing?

Like, are there brands that cater to just guys and dudes versus women versus vegans? And is there a specific niche market that does better? No, the thing is, whatever you have a passion for. I know some people that would never put bad ingredients in their products, and they want to clean organic wine. And that's their preference because they believe in it. If you're going to start a brand, you're going to make sure you're going to start a brand

because you actually believe in it. You believe in the packaging. You believe in the quality of ingredients because you yourself will take it. If you yourself cannot take your own products, there's a problem. Good point. Right? Yeah. Most people, they're just, it's a business for them, but then there's a lot of people that

actually believe in their products and will take them every day. And they'll post reviews as the owners of the company's taking their products and that actually builds more of an engaged follower base because they believe in the person that's taking the products. If it's the owner of the company, they're not taking crappy products. They will never take anything crappy for themselves. Good point. Good point.

So it's funny that you say that because as we're creating the supplement line for FitBody Boot Camp here, we've done taste tests many different times. And truth of the matter is when you use artificial ingredients, stuff does taste better. It tastes better, but that's what you get with. Right. Because we're in a place right now where we want everything to be organic, chemical free, hormone free, no artificial sweeteners. We're using monk fruit, as you know, you're helping us with this process.

And every time we go back and forth, the flavors keep getting better. But I'm shocked how much better supplements that are making. manufactured with... sucralose. Yeah, artificial sweeteners and fillers and dyes and lechon. They taste so much better. Yet we're getting close to that flavor and obviously we use better ingredients, better higher quality, hormone free, non-GMO, etc.

And we're going to be selling at a higher price point. Now we've got a contained market. In other words, we've got almost 1,000 Fit Body Boot Camp locations. All of them have 200 to 400 clients who already trust the brand and pay about $150 a month. And so when we give them a better product than what they can buy at a supplement store, they're going to pay a premium because they trust our brand. Exactly. How does someone who doesn't have the ecosystem like we've created create a premium supplement line that's more expensive?

How do they market that against everyone out there who's got a lower priced product? You believe in your products. First things first is always... I know at least 15 people that do not believe in themselves before they even try to start anything. You can't do anything if you don't even believe in yourself to actually do it.

So you get to believe in yourself and then actually figure out what you want to do. If you don't know what you want to do, figure it out and then start. Don't just dive in because you think that everybody's doing it so I need to do it and I need to get in before I miss out.

You're starting later than everybody else. But you're going to do 100 times better than everybody else because you have a set plan. You're planning things out as you go. Even though you have a thousand locations, you're still not, you have more errors to make than somebody that doesn't. If you make the wrong errors and price,

sales that you run, it could be really big. Distribution, delivery, yeah. It could be a really big problem. So you have a lot more to worry about than somebody that's just starting off. But you have a vision, you have a plan, and you're going to execute on it. It's the only way that you can figure out

if it's going to do well or not. And then you slowly figure it out yourself as you do podcasts, and you start reading them, start reading books. You'll find everything you need to. Right now, you can go on your phone, you can find anything you want about anything. Just plain and simple.

How much of what you did to become successful and to learn about supplements was just self-taught, self-learned research? Everything. Everything was, it's like... So you have no degree in this? You didn't go to college. You didn't go to them. I actually dropped out of college

because I was making good money, selling personal training at the time. I didn't feel there was a need to. Put myself in $200,000 with a debt, and I could have put that into anything else. Like, as I'm growing, I'm spending money, and I'm learning my lessons of people stealing it for me, people scamming for me.

I've learned my way around it because I've invested that $200,000 I would have spent on school into myself. As I fall, I get back up. If I fall, I know I need to stand back up. But when people get out of school, they just fall and, like, they don't know how to stand back up, like they have no legs.

So the thing is, it's just to keep pushing and pushing and pushing. to figure it out yourself. If you go through yourself, you can teach anybody else how to go through it. But I've seen so many people online that try to deal with everybody else's problems. But they've never had those problems. So how are you supposed to help somebody if you haven't even dealt with the problems yourself? Right, right. Hence the imposter syndrome. They feel like impostors. They're hypocrites and they're not able to deliver it. You can't tell somebody, hey, this is the solution to your problem when you haven't even had that problem in your life. Everybody has their own problems. I just realized I need to fix my problem. problems first before I can help anybody else.

Makes sense. So let's talk about a problem, speaking of a problem, that has come up several times on the Empire show, and that is about bad partnerships or bad business deals. I want to wrap up this episode with that, bad partnerships and bad business deals, because they exist everywhere, from franchising to real estate to supplements. And you've had some experience there, and since this whole episode is about creating a supplement line, supplement brand, what kind of partnership? tragedies have you had that you can help our viewers and listeners bypass?

Just don't jump into it too fast, the wrong person. It's like getting in bed with the wrong person and then you realize, uh, no. The thing is, once your, once a business relationship is literally the same as your personal relationship. If you have tons of breakups in your personal relationship, I promise you when you go into business, there's no sense of loyalty or anything that you're going to bring with you. If you're a loyal person in real life, a real-size-old person, of business is going to work for you. But there's some people that the chances are if your relationships working every time we're

not going to work out. Same chances in business. You just have to take the chance. But there's certain things you can look at, like who are doing business with, where they've come from, what they've done. I've went into business relationships with people that had no fucking experience whatsoever, but pitched a good game. And I got fooled.

So my first company, I only took, I went online and I basically found the company on Instagram that I saw potential and reached out to the owner, ended up being somebody that I worked out with before. Didn't even know, it's four years later. It's going through some problems, personal problems, whatever it was. It stands still on the company, didn't do anything. So I came in and we redid the entire product line.

Had no products before, it was just clothing. We added all supplements, new apparel, new logos, new everything. I gave them like a new life. And I only took 35% of that company. What it should have done is take 51%. Not because I'm a greedy person, but because at the end of the day,

if there was a decision that needs to be made, it was made by him, not by the person that actually revived the company. Control. So the thing was, things that had a hand, he was spending too much, blah, blah, blah, blah. It just ended up being, we didn't have enough money for inventory

when we were growing so fast, because you can spend $1,100 on a dinner, but we can't get a trademark for $1,500, which I've already implied that from the start. So that was the one problem that I had was getting it across, but I'd be making that decision to do it. I didn't have that authority in that company. Even if I owned 49% I still had no authority.

Even if 50, 50, we could have went to court for it. But 51% of his ownership is going to be his ownership. Yeah, especially with all the work you did. So that's a great lesson is obviously if you're going to come in and make all the big moves and breathe life into a dying supplement company, you better ask for 51% because you better ask for 51% because that person is better off taking 49% of something than 60, 70% of that.

This industry is not easy, but it's easier to get to that goal of 10, 15, 20 million because it's supplements. People are gonna buy. If you find your rhythm, you'll sell a lot of it, but you're not ready to absorb that money. Like you haven't, it's like saying, you get into a Ferrari and you're worried about fucking scratching the rims.

If you own a Ferrari, you don't give a shit about the rims but it's somebody that stretched too thin that gets into a Ferrari that is now worried about every pothole and every scrape and every scratch right because they're literally living by the penny now exactly that's exactly how the supplement companies run they try to milk all the money out of it get as much they can out of it close the company down well nobody has ever said hey let me just sell this company it's always like they're doing something shady as hell inside the company where they can't so let's finish off

You've had the good fortune at building and selling a supplement company. How did that process look? The process was probably one of the longest process because you have to, I had no employees in the beginning, not one person. It was just me and one of my partners, and we would just do everything day in and day out. And I learned everything about the business as I went. When we first started, the manufacturer, I didn't know anything about manufacturing. I went to a manufacturer. They tried to milk me for money.

We said, this is our budget. We should have told them it was the last. somehow they got us to come down to the plant and then convinced us to buy $30,000 of the product. We only had $35,000 to spend. So of the $35,000 that you had total, you spent $30,000 in product. Yeah. That's a great lesson to learn here. So now we get the product and we're looking at it and we're like, all right, we only $5,000.

What are we going to do with it? Once we run through the $5,000, like, we're going to have to go door to door and sell this stuff because there's no more money coming in. And we just do hustle door to door. And I knew a lot of people from my hometown where they knew a lot of supplement stores. So we'd go into supplement stores and I would just walk in, here's the product, try it out, reach back out to me in a week, and start to sell the product that way. But I mean, with our social media following, we had 300,000 followers five years ago on that

specific business. So it was like every single time I made a post, we gained 2,000, 3,000 people or 5,000 people or 10,000 people because the algorithm wasn't kicking in where it was suppressing the post it was just if you posted every hour in the hour you would see it because you open your phone every hour got you so you post 24 times a day so you went from zero employees to how did you get to the point of selling it there was only 10 at the end of it and then once we got to the 10 we didn't know what to do next like we didn't know how to scale to the next level so we had

went ahead and just sold it off so the thing was we didn't know exactly what to do and that's how every company is like you're going to get to a certain point where you're growing and growing and you get to 5,000 locations and you're like okay this guy's coming in here is going to say okay how am I to take this to 10,000 you're not thinking 10,000 you're thinking 5,200, 500, 500 somebody else with more knowledge than you is going to come in with more money is going to say okay I'm going to buy you because I know how to take it from 5 to 15 to 20 and that's what happened in your supplement business yes did you find that person or Did they find you?

They found us. They found you. Yeah. So they saw that you guys were growing at a good speed, probably in a space that was... Not really touched because it was Instagram. It wasn't retail. And so they knew that by buying you,

they could dive into the Instagram world. Yeah. So look at every other brand, like MuscleTech, MHP, all these retail brands that are really big. Yeah. They're making maybe $2 to $3 a unit. Online. You're talking if you can make $40 to $50 a unit.

if you price it correctly. So you're really, for everything that a retail store is doing, you're doing 15 times more online. And these guys never got out of the retail space because they're doing $100 million year in retail, $200 million in retail. That's just a number. When you look at the broad scheme of things,

yeah, they have a lot of customers, but their transition from retail to online is very hard because you have to abide by the retail laws, otherwise they're not going to buy your product anymore. And to get somebody from, that used to go to a store to now go online to buy your product for more money, it's going to be hard. So if you start online, you can always work your way into retail. If you start in retail and you try to work way up, it's just a difficult process.

So they had a vested interest in buying you. Now you said you had 10 employees. You went from zero employees to 10 employees, and then you're like, hey, I don't know how to grow this any further. This company comes along and says, hey, I might want to buy you out. And so you sell them. What did those 10 employees do? It was as far as some graphic design. wholesale department, basically wholesaling out,

distributors that we worked with, we had to keep up relationships with distributors, we had the influencer marketing manager, we had warehouse employees, was about three, wasn't a big warehouse, there was about three employees at the warehouse, and then a project manager that managed over all of it. Did you have any salespeople?

Well, the wholesale department, so wholesale salespeople was two people. That's what they did. That's interesting, that's a pretty cool model. But we would never get on the phone, like we're not always calling. You go straight to the store. Back then, you don't really, when you're starting, you don't really know what is going to happen next. You kind of have to just go with the flow and you have to figure out how this person can be a value to me. Like, everybody has your own X on their employees, right?

Why would you pay somebody 15 grand a month as opposed to three? The amount of level of work that they do. It's also the level of value that they bring. So in order to afford an employee at $5,000 a month for 12 months, $60,000 a year, I as the owner need to be making like $300,000 a year on that person in order to afford that person. People don't look at that. People are looking at, okay, I have 100 employees.

I would never want to come up with 100 employees or maybe 200 employees. It's just way too much of, too much overhead unless you figure out every department has its own duties. Sometimes along the line, it's better to have 20 people that you can maximize, give them raises, and do other things that would actually help them push your brand better. Sure, become more productive and efficient. That's how I look at things. A lot of people might look at it that they want to run a thousand employee company. I'm not interested in that.

Well, here's how I've always learned. Having lots of employees and always talking about revenue is great for the ego. Yeah. Having less employees that you can pay better. And more profit margin is. And higher profits. That's what you take. home and that's what you have peace of mind with but that's what you can do

other things with you can help other people with it you can donate it you can do whatever you want with that money when it's overhead and its cost it's got to be absorbed by the business it has to go back into the business it's plain and simple so what is a question that I should have asked you that I haven't asked you about the supplement industry yet well I mean I guess you're looking at the health of a plant so how to gauge if a manufacturing facility is healthy so there's two ways to look at it you can look at it as hey these guys have a lot of clients or these guys have little clients, they have 10 or 20.

You don't know the difference between the two. They're price cutting, which they're most likely are. Everybody's trying to fight for everybody else's business. And if I'm looking at fighting for everybody else's business, I have to drop my prices to the point where if you order 100,000 units, I might as well start a new brand that's going to order 10,000 units because I'm going to make more money on that. And I believe in the people that are going to come to me that want to launch your brand.

These other guys, they're just fighting for that same person. How many time can you cut something? over and over and they bounce back and forth, bounce back and forth, bounce back and forth. And an undercapitalized plant, people, in this industry, nobody looks at fucking numbers. They don't care. They care about revenue.

They care about what's coming in this month. Not looking at 10 years down the road if this is going to sustain the growth because you have to buy machines to expand warehouse operations. You have to expand employees. Because for every brand you bring on, you have to set cost.

Okay, if this is going to be a big client, it's going to need three employees to manage this project. And nobody looks at that. They're always like, all right, bring a new business. It doesn't matter what you do. Just price cuts the shit out of everybody else. And then bring them in and close the deal. Nobody ever gives a shit and it says, hey, I want this client to be happy. I want this client to actually be successful. So in order for them to be successful, the plant needs to survive. So price cutting and making a couple of dimes on each unit is not worth it. You actually, you could have a thousand clients. I'd rather have a plant with 50 clients that are solid that I know are going to do well. A thousand clients. way too much managed you're going to need to 300,000 square feet so there's a thousand if a if a manufacturing plant has a thousand clients odds are I'm just one of many people not getting the high service that I expect exactly I'm one of 50 people I'm probably getting but as you price cut the quality goes down of the

product sure the quality of service delivering on time I always this whole year everybody that I've worked with has always over promised and under delivered every single time. And I always under promise and over deliver. And I've always worked with that for the last seven and a half years, eight years, since I realized how this industry actually works. I didn't really dive deep into into four years ago until I realized I can actually help brands launch, manufacture their products. But on the broad scheme of things, if you look at a manufacturing plan's health, you're, as a manufacturer, it's your job to blanket every single company in your in your bracket. You're supposed to protect them. You're not supposed to jeopardize their business because that feeds a lot of people and their family and so on. Then there's manufacturers that don't give a shit. The manufacturers that price cut, price cut, price cut, price cut, are running in such thin margin that they're barely making it themselves.

If you give me 150 grand tomorrow knowing that I'm going to give you product in six weeks and it doesn't show up because the plant went out of business, you're not getting that money back for at least 10 years. And there's some plants that will take the money because they need to pay payroll. whatever it is and to say, okay, we're going bankrupt, chapter seven, okay, seven years from that you come after me if you want. But look at the other side of the table as the brand. If you're sitting there and you're actually getting screwed by this company, you put all of your money back in the inventory that you're never going to get. Think about it. If the brand says, okay, we're doing really well, here's 400 grand. I need this product in eight weeks. You're

excited. You're growing fast. One fucking mistake. You won't have any money left and you have to close your doors at the same time they are. Four hundred grand is. a lot of money, but if you don't have a product to sell to your customers, you're never going to be able to make money. Lots of great lessons here. So if someone wants to find out more about you or learn about you, connect with you, where do they go? Write to my Instagram. I answer all my direct messages. What's your Instagram? Amar's underscore Way. Amars underscore Way. Amar's underscore Way on Instagram. Amar, thank you so much for coming on the show. Appreciate you. Friends, thank you so much for watching and listening to this episode of The Empire Show and

inside look. If you like this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, tell your friends, take a screenshot and share it on social media. We'll see you later. Hey, thanks so much for being here for today's Empire Podcast Show. We would love for you to do a quick little favor for us. Just go to iTunes and give us a five-star rating, leave a comment, share it with your friends. And if you're interested in growing your business faster, go to bedroskoulian.com forward slash empire. Fill out the application to see if you're a good fit for our Empire Mastermind Group. Thank you.