Asking 3 young millionaires how they make $1.8M, $5M, & $12M/year

All right. Today we're playing Shoot Your Shot, where we let founders come in, sit in the hot seat, and pitch us their business. We got founders that have million-dollar businesses all the way up to $100 million businesses. They get 15 minutes, and in it they start by telling us the one big number. Give us the pitch and, uh, and shoot their shot. They get to ask any questions that they want.

Yeah. We've done this in New York City. This time it's in San Francisco. Whether you're listening on Spotify or YouTube, if you're working out right now, whatever you're doing right now, you need to stop and go to Spotify or go to YouTube. Look us up on My First Million. And let us know in the comments which city you want us to go to next.

All right, let's do it.

I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off on the road. Let's travel, never look.

All right, you want to bring the first guy out? Who do we got?

What's up?

How's it going, Nick? What's good? Hit us with the big number.

All right, so I'm running a backup generator company in California.

we're doing about $12 million in ARR right now. Wow. And we've got line of sight to $14 million this year and contracted to go out to around $25 million.

Okay, so the big number is $12 million in revenue and you're, what are you providing for people? You

provide— Backup generator sales and service.

So what does that mean? Like I'm a house, I'm a homeowner out here.

That's right, yeah.

I would just buy a unit, I rent a unit, or you sell to power companies?

We'll sell generators. Like a Generac. We'll sell service generators. We typically do higher-end units. Our clientele are typically the, like high-end estate properties as well as large, more regulated facilities. So every telecom tower, every nursing home, every police station, fire station, every data center.

So it's B2B?

Mostly B2B. We will— and the product that the high-end estate properties get, that's a— it's an industrial product.

So there's all these businesses that as soon as somebody says them, I'm like, oh, of course. Yet they've been a complete blind spot to me my entire life. I've never thought about it once. And I always wonder, How did that guy start thinking about this? So how did you realize this is a business I could go be a part of?

So I started my career in management consulting where you dabble around a bunch of different industries. At one point I landed in a corporate job at NRG, large power company in the US, was doing innovation projects there, strategy. And one of the areas we had the hardest time finding good expertise in was backup generators.

And a backup generator is if your power goes down for 1 minute or 12 hours because of a storm or an earthquake or something, This thing kicks on, you're good to go.

You do not want the power to go out when you're on the surgery table unless there's a backup generator there to cover.

Great.

And so every surgery center, every hospital, they've all got them.

When did you start the company?

So I acquired the first one. And so this has been an acquisition venture. It started with a thesis, went around looking, trying to find a service provider to buy. We bought our first one in January 2024 and then bought a second one about 5 to 6 months later.

And describe the industry. So is this a bunch of mom-and-pop companies, a few large players? Like, what does the industry

even look like? So very barbeld. So you've got, we go head to head up against big, big industrial names like Caterpillar and Cummins and Generac on the direct side where we're competing for the business of, you know, marquee names, big counties, big state, state contracts and things like that. We also go head to head against the small mom-and-pop players, but really the lion's share of the market is owned by the bigger platforms.

So you did a search, you quit your job and did a search, you searched on the side, what'd you do?

So this was actually, this is my 3rd search venture. Um, I had done, my first one was an office plant company.

A what?

An office plant company.

Plants?

Yep.

Like?

Yep. Probably, possibly those.

How'd that go?

Uh, that, that's, still own it. Um,

you own it?

Bought it in 2017. Um, we've done 14 acquisitions on that platform.

Uh, hold on. Uh, how much revenue does that do?

Uh, that's around $10 million.

What? You own it outright?

Uh, me and my partner. Yeah. Okay.

How much EBITDA?

A little over 2.

Was that a thesis or that was— I stumbled into a guy who owned a plant.

You had a venture company that failed.

Yeah.

And so you were like a management consultant, but you were like a management consultant nerd. You're just like an academic Totally.

Like, ivory tower, here's your board deck.

Yeah. You're like, all right, now I need to get after it. So this company, it failed. Now we're going to get into plants.

Yeah. Okay.

I'm going to buy something.

Bought it with an SBA loan. It was like the polar opposite of what I had been doing throughout my career, which was a mix of like management consulting, boardroom, Fortune 500 type of stuff and venture-backed startups. And I guess there's a third leg to that, which is kind of small business world.

You did plants, then what?

We carved out a portfolio of commercial landscaping contracts in that plant business and sold that to private equity.

How much did you sell for?

Just a little over $1 million.

Okay, so that was—

But it was, it was 20% of my cash flow and like 80% of my headaches. And that freed me up because I was like the biz dev guy. I was finding the plant acquisitions. I— that business, I built it. I did the first acquisition, I did 4 after that, and then I kind of handed it off to my partner to run.

You like doing the search? the business, and then you like doing the M&A. You have a partner who does operations, or—

Yeah, that's right.

How much did you raise for this third business? So what's it called? It's called OnPoint.

OnPoint. Yeah. So this is the first time we've raised outside money because we felt that given where the macros were in terms of electricity demand booming, data center market booming, you know, electrical contractors booming, we felt like to meet the opportunity where, where it was going to be, like we needed to raise some outside capital. So we brought in $6.5 million We did a significant chunk of it, but there's, you know, about $5 million of outside investment in this one.

And how big is this going to get?

I don't know yet. I think this business can get really, really big.

Hundreds of millions?

Hundreds of millions. I think we can get to where the question will be, it's really revenue throughput. Do we have the technicians to pull off the work? I've got the work contracted. It's pure— it's purely an execution game at this point.

And so describe— you said you go up against Caterpillar and these other larger players. What, what axes do you need to compete on? Is it price? Is it— what, what, what is— how do you win the pitch?

100% speed. They are slow. They're good at what they do, but they're very slow.

What's the speed difference? How long versus how long?

How do you use AI to speed up that quote? Let's say the guy's standing there.

Yep.

Understanding what's the issue.

Yep.

Is he inputting something on his phone and he's getting—

And we've done all the backend work of every document that we have ever produced as a company has been ingested and studied by AI. We've built a retrieval augmented system so that we can do research on the fly and produce answers on the fly.

This is great. So there's companies— I've got a friend that owns an HVAC company and it does close to $200 million in revenue. And he was complaining and lamenting over all, my business sucks for this reason, his, you know, your stuff for that reason. And he was, and he was telling me like, he was like, well, we just have to get better at buying Google AdWords. And he was like, the demand's there. Like, I just have to like operate. And I was like, so envious of that because that's not what I have. I've got to like teach people what it is and whatever. Are you in the weeds of training people or is your personal job just finding who else you're going to buy?

So we've kind of put a pause on M&A right now. We're really trying to nail the operational workflows.

And that's what you're doing.

And AI support. And I'm doing a lot of the building myself.

Is it a pain in the ass to train these technicians?

I'd say it's more than a pain in the ass. It's impossible. Like, this is very, very—

Training or finding them? Which was it?

Both. Because A, there's not enough of them. Those that exist are on their way out, not in.

And who is they?

Field technicians.

I know, but what do they like? Are they in the same category of an HVAC person where like, if you give me 8 weeks of your time, I could teach you how to do this, but it's hard to find someone who's willing to do it?

I'd say not far off of that.

Okay.

It's mechanical, it's electrical, and it's both. And usually very few guys are good at both. It's increasingly instrumentation and controls. So there's more computer and like troubleshooting diagnostics.

How much does a field technician make? Is this like a job that people are gonna want 'cause it pays really well?

This is a good job. This is an opportunity where the elite field technicians, they will clear well into the 6 figures. A guy with a high school education, but it takes time to accumulate the experience and you don't see a lot of generators. So experience accumulates slowly. Even in HVAC, you might do, you know, 3, 4 service calls a day. Our guys are doing 1 or 2 service calls a day.

And the consequences are massive.

The consequences are massive.

How big's the average contract?

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How big is the average contract?

It varies tremendously depending on whether you're dealing with a, you know, a 3-megawatt unit at an AWS data center or a Frank and Shirley's generator in their backyard. For the, you know, data center units, you're probably talking $25,000 a year in service revenue.

And is there ever churn?

There is, but generally they kind of want accountability on the vendor. And so, and that is one thing that's hard about competing against Caterpillar, right? Like the facilities guy's like, well, I hired Caterpillar and they couldn't figure it out, so, right?

So let me make sure I understand. It sounds like you do, you sell the generators, but you service them. I would guess servicing is more than new sales.

Yeah.

And you get brought in directly by the facility or by the guy, whoever the company is that made that, they put service, they need service technicians out in the field everywhere, so they subcontract out to you.

So we're an independent, so we have to, eat what we kill, basically. So you go straight to the facility? We gotta go straight to the facility. We can work through the facilities operations companies like the JLLs and CBRE Real Estate.

And now you're saying my biggest bottleneck is I gotta get enough technicians to be able to service the workload that we have. How are you gonna solve that problem?

So we're still figuring it out. We've got every recruiter spun up sending us leads. Some of it is like, you can pay to bring guys here. Will they stay here? Open question. I'd say we can find the guys who says that he knows how to fix those things. Can we select for the guys who actually know how to fix those things? That's, uh, I think we've had a harder— we've had an easier time finding people and getting them in the door and selling them on joining our company than we have had being damn certain that when that guy shows up there, he's going to find the problem and fix the—

But what did the, um, Like, we— this is the second time we've mentioned him, but like, you know, Tommy Mello, the A1 Garage Door guy. Have you heard of that guy?

Yes.

And then there's like tons of these like influencers who are legit business guys. What have they done to like— because they have all had the exact same thing where they're like, you know, garage doors. Like a lot of the people who come to me are kind of like problematic and I got to teach them how to like— I think he said he's like, we teach them how to like pet the dog. You pet the dog right when you come in. You ask, may I come in?

He does like sales excellence.

Yeah.

But still he needs the technicians to go do the work. One of the things we always talk about is like, uh, as an entrepreneur, it's easy to feel like I have this, this problem, this burden, and it's like unique to me. And it's like very few problems in your business haven't already been solved by somebody else. So the easy thing to ask is, who else has solved this problem and how, how the heck did they do it? So he's saying, how the heck did the garage tech, how did the garage companies get to scale up their technician force? Who do you look at that's already done this?

So you basically have to start a trade school. You are the trade school. Yeah. You have to bring these guys up.

My AC buddy who I'm referring to, he has Hoffman University.

You have to.

Have you done that?

Not yet. We're not big enough to do it just yet. We're working on building our shop, building— we have a 3rd bay in our shop that is the training bay, and we've handed our lead technician, you know, an assignment to— we got to build out our own training capabilities. We've built the digital side of it. So turning every job we do into a training experience that can be relayed onto the team because I need the guys to get more than one rep a day, right? If I can turn every rep we do that day—

Well, how do you do that?

Into a bunch of reps?

How are you turning it into like a simulation?

When you're laying in bed at night and you're thinking, if we can do this, this, and this, Maybe in 5 years we could sell, or maybe I can have this much annual income, or like whatever that number, that vanity thing is for you. What is that?

Man, I think for me, this is my third time around and I feel like I'm doing this because I chose this. I wanted to be doing this. So it's kind of about like, what are all the cool capabilities that we could build that have never been possible before?

Okay. And be specific though. When you're like, when you're thinking about this, you're like, what is that like? What really gets you going?

I think making like really great jobs for these tradesmen, helping them, like ordinary people achieve like really, really extraordinary performance. Yeah, I'm like super excited about what we're going to be able to do and like how we're going to be able to empower people who have never really worked for a company that gave a crap that much about the process.

There was this really cool company. I forget the name, but they took out an ad in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, or some huge national publication. And they played off this idea of like, you know how like your grandfather walked me around the city and he's like, you see that building? I made that, you know? And he was just part of the construction crew. Or like, you know, look, about 50 years ago we installed this thing because— and there's like this pride. And the ad that they put out because they were trying to recruit people is, do you really want to brag to your kids that you made B2B software just a little bit better? You know, something like that. Yeah. And like, I wonder if there's like some cool, like, mission-driven, like, angles that you could take to this, like, recruiting. Because when you talk about like, I'm passionate about giving like everyday guys like a chance like do something interesting.

No, it's an interesting idea. And I think there's definitely a point of pride over, oh, we work on, you know, it's kind of fun too because we work on a lot of high-end properties. So these are like, you know, lifestyles of the rich and famous type of stuff where we work on those properties, we put those generators in.

And the mission-critical hospitals, whatnot.

And that, right? There's such an important duty.

Seems like I coached high school basketball this year and our star player, the power forward, he's graduating. We're like, do you want to go play in college? We can get you in front of some scouts. And he's like, I'm going to trade school. He's like, I'm not going to— trade school doesn't have a basketball team. He wanted to go work for, he wanted to become an electrician, but crazy stuff, like hanging out of a helicopter, doing some repair in some crazy site. And it made me realize there's probably a lot of people who are like, have the talent, whether it's veterans, whether it's ex-athletes, they kind of like the idea of doing certain types of work, getting paid really well for it, not having to go to a 4-year university. And I wonder how you can surface more of them faster or where they're going today that you can tap into that flow.

I think the stigma of the trades is gone. I think that is behind us. Like the things that we were told when we were, you know, coming up, like, you know, you got to go to college, better make sure it's a good one, yada, yada. I think that there's some of that still there. But like, I think the stigma of going into the trades is behind us. And now it's like, this is the opportunity for the tradesman's craft to shine. Right. And we're trying to give them the tools so that they really can and so that they can grow faster, learn faster.

$150,000.

Yeah, it serves all kinds of industries, you know.

And there are some that are really niche. You know, and they're, uh, they're with that specific trade. And so it's, there's not like a big one that everybody would know, oh, that's the stamp of approval. There's not a Harvard of the trades in general, which I do think there's like an excellent opportunity there. And I would love to work on that. I feel like right now I'm working toward that and I need to understand it at a level of depth and have solved it for one quarter of the universe so that we could think about, okay, what, what would, how would you next level this thing?

You have very, um, kinetic and contagious energy. I have a feeling that in the next 4 or 5 years, you're gonna be significantly further along than where you are now. It's very evident.

You picked an amazing space and it's so cool. You know, we had a guy, the last guy was like a franchise guy and you're doing entrepreneurship through search and acquisition. I just love all the different styles. So, you know, appreciate you coming on, man.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

All right, we appreciate you. Thank you.

Hey, let's take a quick break. You know that feeling when strategy is done, the brief is written, everyone's aligned, and you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create all the content? That someone is usually you, and it's due tomorrow. Well, the Breeze Assistant from HubSpot can help. It works right inside HubSpot. You can draft campaign copy, blog posts, emails, all in your brand voice, all using your actual customer data. So you don't create just content, you create content that converts. Check out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.

We have someone else. Welcome.

How's it going?

Good. Excellent posture.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

Yeah. You scream good posture. I work on

it. Yeah. Look at this guy. Geez. Up my game a little bit here. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. All right. What's your name?

What's up guys? I'm Kevin.

Kevin.

Yeah.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Welcome to Shoot Your Shot. Hit us with the big number to start.

So big's relative. My number is $1.8 million. I think I'm a little unique with this setup because I actually just sold my business about 2 or 3 weeks ago.

Nice.

Congrats.

That's what I sold it for. Starter business. On the board.

Wait, so you are—

you just exited at $1.8

million? Just exited at $1.8 million.

Yeah, it was a sale price. What did you sell for $1.8 million?

It was a franchise business called Smash My Trash.

Smash My Trash.

I've heard of this. Have you heard of this before?

No, what is Smash My Trash?

Explain, explain.

Yeah, so the basic concept is companies that produce a lot of trash, industrial businesses, warehouses, factories, things like that, throw away a lot of stuff in these open-top dumpsters that are these rectangles that hold like 40 cubic yards of stuff. The pricing model is that every time you fill it up and you need a new one, you have to get it replaced. And that can cost like $1,000.

Yeah, I used to like get on top of ours and like jump up and down.

That's it. And that's—

imagine a giant thing came and smashed the trash down.

I thought I was going to like hire someone to come and jump on the trash for me.

Wait, so one— a large company will spend 10 grand a month in trash?

Yeah, or more.

Who? Like a warehouse?

Big factories, production facilities in like agricultural California is where I was doing a lot of work.

Wow.

Companies that just—

So these are like, you just go to the parking lot, there's a huge dumpster back there. That's— that was the opportunity. That's the opportunity. Is to smash the trash down so you have to do less pickups per thing because you're paying per pickup.

That's it.

And do smash— smashing trucks exist already?

It was a new concept. So it's a franchise. This guy came up with the idea, started growing fast, decided to franchise it. So these didn't really exist. They exist in Europe, but they're like mounted to the side of the building. So those companies would back the dumpster up, So the insight was throw these things on a truck, have them drive around and do it as like a mobile service.

You bought a franchise and then now sold your franchise? Correct. One location. How many?

5 locations.

5 locations.

How much did it cost to buy in?

I bought it in chunks. So I think my buy-in was like $185K

upfront.

Upfront.

And then how did you have money before?

I worked in tech. I was like somebody who worked in SaaS and had like the W-2 sales or what were you doing? Yeah, I was in like sales and product and stuff like that. Like the kind of classic Bay Area W-2 thing. So this is so interesting. So you're just sitting there

at the office, you got a good job, you're working in tech, and yet you're like, I need to get out there amongst the trash. What was the, what was the chain of events that led you to like quit this safe thing and go buy into a Smash My Trash franchise?

Yeah, there's a couple of things. It was like a growing sense of dissatisfaction. I like, I kind of started to realize late in life that I wanted to work for myself. And I was also like in this venture world where you were like going after like the next round of funding, this eventual exit. And I didn't, I was like blind to the way that a lot of the world worked in terms of like cash-flowing blue-collar businesses. And I started to get bit by that bug a little bit. Like I started hearing stuff about that and I got interested. And then it was really when I got married and went on my honeymoon and I waited till like the last minute to book our honeymoon. So we stayed at places that like we probably shouldn't have gone to that were nicer than we otherwise would've started talking about, started talking to people there at the pool and stuff and been like, No way. There's people—

All the rich guys are trash people.

People make cash doing businesses that are off the beaten path.

Do you remember, like, what were they, what were they saying? What did they do?

So one guy did like real estate. One guy did like a food truck, but like did like a food truck, like as a serious operation, like had many of them. I had also had the seed planted on my bachelor party. I was there with my friend who was in private equity and he actually got in Smash My Trash before me. Gotcha. So he planted the seed. And he was a private equity guy.

Of the $180,000, how much of— was that a huge chunk of your savings?

I did $85,000 myself. A buddy gave me $70,000. And then so that was like the equity. And then I did a $350,000 SBA loan as well.

Were you like, I'm all in, this has to work? Or was this like a safe, like, I'm putting a small amount in, I'm hedging my bets?

It felt like a pretty safe side bet. I had more than that that I would have been able to, but it felt uncomfortable.

Okay. So you decide to go in, you buy one, what happens?

So I actually bought 3 out of the gate.

Okay.

I bought, I bought 3 territories out of the gate. Now, territories in franchise world, like a lot of times people picture restaurants where like it's clearly a unit. This is area. So I mean, it's really one business. The areas are a little arbitrary.

How many years ago was this?

This is in 2022. I got started.

Okay. So 4 years.

4 years ago. So got started. And part of the reason I got into it was I was interested in something where I could draw a direct line between like brute force effort and cash in the bank. I felt like in tech world, I was so many layers abstracted away from like—

That's like a classic Warren Buffett metric, right? Brute force to cash in the bank.

Yeah, exactly.

So what do you mean? You just meant like, if more people I call, the more money I'm going to make,

right? Like I had this no-brainer offer. I had these people who definitely could use this and 100% could make money. And all I needed to do was go get them to believe me.

Yeah.

and I could just start making cash. And it wasn't like this promise of some future outcome. And I found that really motivating. Okay. So I paid somebody overseas to like zoom in on Google Satellite View and put pins on every dumpster. Okay. And like, that was my plan. And I would drive from Walnut Creek down to, you know, San Jose to Salinas, like hour and a half, 2 hours each way every day and just like trespass, go into warehouses, try to talk to like the person there who's in charge of the dumpster.

Right.

And just kind of willed it into existence. Started driving beyond the confines of my territory.

Well, even zoom in. You go, you drive. Okay. Contractor gives you a pin. You drive to the pin, you get there, you weren't invited. Knock, knock. Now what?

So not even knock, knock. Drive right around to the back where the dumpster is. Okay. So I built this up over time. I learned.

You don't want to go to the office. Because the office, they're going to, you know, they're going to tell you no. So what I would do is I had a red hard hat that I would put on, get the clipboard going, right? Walk into the back and try to find the person who's physically loading the dumpster. You got the red hard hat on, start asking questions. Most of the time they would just

tell me, he's like, dude, there's no construction around here.

They just think you're like, you're the trash contractor for the company,

right? They're just not sure. They're just like, this guy's asking me like, how many pickups do you get? Who's in charge of it? I start to kind of size the account, get some info, and then I would go to the front. armed with info, and then I would, you know, work my way to the decision maker.

How many months until your first dollar?

Right away. Right away. And the first—

How thrilling was that first sale?

Oh, it was great. Oh, it was great. I was like out with our neighbors when they first— because these are like kind of chunky contracts. We're talking about like large— I mean, for me at the time, you know, a couple thousand bucks a month recurring revenue. So it only took 2, 3, 4 accounts to basically pay my debt service and my driver.

So you had a driver right off the bat?

I hired a driver right off the bat.

Yeah. And did Smashbox just give you this playbook or you were just like, I'm going to red hard hat this? Or they were like, hey, here's how you do it.

They didn't tell me about the red hard hat, but they gave you the basic playbook. And then I, before I opened, went around to a couple other franchisees, including my buddy I mentioned, and just was like, show me everything. How do you guys do it? What works?

It's sort of like, have you ever seen those videos where someone's— something— my friend Neville Madhura, he's an Indian guy. And during South by Southwest every year, he dresses up like a sheikh. Like he wears like a white thing and a hat, and then he's just like, I get in. And then there's like these Instagram videos of guys who like, they're like, I'm just going to like look like a DJ, whatever that means. And then they get into the club. That's like this version of that.

Exactly. People just don't ask questions.

So you— this is amazing. Okay, so you said you sold the business now. Year 1, do you remember kind of like what was the P&L? Like what'd you make in first year of business?

It's hard to say because the first year I bought the 2 additional franchises. So one day I drove beyond the bounds of my territory and I found like the trash gold mine and I bought those 2 franchises and bought 2 more trucks.

Okay.

So all the cash went right back in.

Were all 3 territories successful or one sucked, but another one was amazing and made up for it?

That was kind of it. There was a great one, there's an okay one, there's a medium one. And then I added on like these 2 amazing ones. So I had to buy 2 trucks, had to buy 2 new territories. So all the cash went right back into that. I think I probably did like $600,000 to $800,000 of top line in those first 2 years.

Wow. What was the biggest pain in the ass looking back?

The trucks.

The operators or—

Not even the operators. Fixing the trucks when there's issues was something I just don't— it's a big truck with hydraulic equipment. And I eventually just kind of adopted the philosophy that like I had a mechanic, He was going to charge me what he charged me and he was probably overcharging me. But when there was an issue, I would just overpay for it.

You didn't exactly have like a lot of like shopping around you could do for smashing.

Yeah, I just wanted to get it done. Like a lot of our accounts, they're paying us a lot of money every month and if we can't get to them, I just was willing to pay a lot to just solve that problem and have it not be something we deal with.

So how much profit, how much take-home income did you do your last year?

So why sell?

It was, you know, it just, it felt like a starter business. It was always kind of my starter business. I got into it because I thought it would be like this direct line. It just weighed heavily on me in a number of ways. Like one, these loans, and I got loans for the second 2 trucks. So this is that first $350K SBA loan. I got subsequent loans for the other trucks. So that's a personal guarantee.

Yeah.

In my head every day.

Right.

A lot of people don't realize franchise agreements also have a personal guarantee where you owe them royalties every month as a percentage of revenue. I think most people know that with franchises, but there's minimum royalties, which means You either pay some percent of your revenue or this fixed amount on a schedule, whichever is higher. And that's a 10-year-long agreement that also has a personal guarantee. So I always felt like I could handle that, but that's like also weighs on you. And just like having these big trucks out every day where like a couple of times a year I'd get a call that was like something bad happened.

What did it feel like when the wire hit?

It was kind of anticlimactic a little bit. So I had already like, I'd worked with my accountant on like, all right, tell me like after taxes, after everything, what the number is. I had like seen that number in a Google Sheet. And then when it happened, I was very happy. My wife and I, like, we had a trip just coincidentally planned for to go somewhere the next day. So we did get to enjoy it. But now it's just like back to baseline kind of. Right. I feel the relief of not having like the responsibility and like, I don't have my phone on me right now. I'm used to like

You're walking around, you're raw-dogging, you have no phone right now?

No phone. What I'm saying is normally I would be stressed out. I could go back and there could be just like a bomb dropped on me on my phone where, you know, something went wrong.

Who bought it? Was it just somebody else who wanted even more territories or was like, who's the buyer?

It was the neighboring franchisees. So it's a great thing where, you know, I was happy with the amount they paid. I think they're going to— they got a great deal on it for them because they're just able to fold it into their thing.

Right.

So a lot of franchise M&A ends up happening.

I have a feeling that you're plotting. You have something that you've been, that you've been thinking about. What is that? What are the list of things?

And also, did you know what that was before you sold or the space gave you the time to figure it out?

So the first 2 years were a dead sprint. The last 2 years I got it in passive mode. I had 2 kids and so I wasn't able to go down there every day. So I did a lot of stuff to make it like truly passive and I spent a lot of that time trying to figure out my next move. I don't want to say too much about what it is, But I do have something in the works.

What other opportunities did you consider doing that you did not?

Mm-hmm.

And so you were like, where's somewhere that I can just brute force, you know, get dollars in the bank by going and, you know, calling or showing up on more sites? And then even just now you're like, and the pitch I wanna be giving is a, you definitely are gonna make more money. It, all I gotta do is prove it to you and I could prove it to you on a cost that's very little to me or a quick, quick, uh, demo from my side. to show you that the value is there. And I think so few people take a sales-first approach, but as an entrepreneur, that's actually all you experience in the business is just growing the business mostly. Uh, like the product is very like fungible. You could swap the product out.

Yeah, that's— I, so what it is for me is I just, I think like you guys, I like business. Like I'm a business nerd. I like hiring, I like selling, I like figuring out the systems and the processes. So when you have that, you kind of have the luxury of being able to pick. a business that you think would be enjoyable and straightforward to run.

When are you going to start it?

I already started the new thing.

So you only— and that's only 3 weeks ago that you sold?

Yeah.

Do you have a new mindset with this new one? Like, what's changed now that you had that experience going into the new one? Do you have any new rules on how you want to do this?

Bootstrapping. Bootstrapping. I found— and this is probably just because I'm more risk-averse than I care to admit, but like this idea of The personal guarantee being tied to a franchise agreement, I really felt like the one-way door, you know, irreversible decision thing. So I think going forward, I'm going to try to bootstrap as much as I can and keep my options open as much as I can.

It's like great fighters. They don't pride themselves on how much risk they're taking in a fight. It's really, it's a self-defense. It's hit and don't get hit, right? And the best fighters, if you look at Floyd Mayweather, goes undefeated. He didn't even really get hit that much. Khabib didn't really get hit that much. It's like the black belts understand that it's about minimizing the damage you take while still winning.

Yeah. There's all these investors and they're like, rule number 1, don't lose money. Rule number 2, pay attention to rule number 1. And it's pretty funny. Let me ask you another question.

I've been talking to my friend who's a friend from college and he's got a normal job business. He wants to go do something entrepreneurial. And I think he wants to do it very much for the money, but I think truly the benefit would be that he's just gonna have a lot more fun. He doesn't like his job and just liking your day matters a lot more. You had a good job, you did it for 4 or 5 years. Did you end up way ahead financially versus where you would've been just taking your salary with raises and savings? Was it a big financial win or was it the life win, the confidence, the fun that you had? Like, where was the win?

I think about it as like the escape velocity that I needed to go work. I can work for myself for the rest of my life as long as I don't like mess it up. And that's how I think about it. It gave me that escape velocity out of that.

And I think financial runway or it was confidence.

It's financial runway, it's confidence, it's experience, it's pattern recognition, skills and everything like that. And for me, I kind of had to like do the— because really because I bought the business so far from my house, I was going to try to keep my job for like a second there. And then I realized I had to quit it. That was the case for me. I think for other people, the move is to find something you can like step into and test it out a little bit. before you pulley, before you fully rip it.

We've never done franchises, and I've always been a little skeptical of franchises. It's like franchises seem like great business for the franchisors, not the franchisee. And so you did it, you have a good outcome. What's your current perspective on, is franchises a good place to go? Or did you discover some other franchise along the way that you're like, shit, I wish I had done that one. That's, now that I understand what makes these work, that's a way better one. Tell me something smart about franchises.

it got you where you wanted to go,

right? I wasn't going to do it otherwise.

Well, Kevin, you're the shit. Thank you for doing this.

Yeah. Thanks, guys.

Awesome. Thanks for coming on.

Yeah.

Today's podcast is brought to you by my friends at Mercury. They make the world's best banking product. I think you know this already. I use Mercury for all of my businesses. I think I have like maybe 7 or 8 businesses. We use Mercury as our business banking across all of them. And now they actually just launched a personal banking account. So I have my personal account there. I moved off of Wells Fargo and Chase. I'm just all in on Mercury. Why? Uh, I like products that are easy to use. I like products that get me and the problems that I have. So like very easy to make a joint account with my wife, very easy to spin up virtual cards. Uh, one click and I get savings yield. It just has all the stuff that I need in one place. So if you're looking for the best banking product on the market, it's definitely Mercury. I will fistfight anybody who disagrees with me on that. Go to mercury.com/personal and learn more. Mercury is a fintech, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group and Column NA, members FDIC.

Bring him in. What's up? What's going on?

Oh, good to meet you.

Great meeting you.

What's up, brother?

What's your name?

Noam.

Noam. Yes. Noam, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. I'm excited.

Okay. I don't know if they told you what you're getting into, but, uh, Maybe start with what we call the big juicy number. So give us one number that'll get us interested.

Jaw massagers?

Yes, sir.

Okay. So that was my nickname in high school. Hey,

okay. Damn. Less detail the better on that one. So do you have one? What is that? What is a heated jaw massager?

Okay, listen, I do have one.

It fits in your pocket.

Is this like a look-maxing thing?

See, Steve Jobs had 1,000 songs

in your pocket. He's got one hot job on in your pocket.

Is it kosher to share jaw massagers, or is this like a toothbrush?

It's, uh, it's super kosher, actually.

Okay.

Yeah. Uh, it's not going in your mouth, but I mean, so I have 2, actually. This one is like what we're selling right now.

Okay.

Uh, it's the Gen 1. It's like 3D printed. Looks like a vape. All right. Um, this one is Gen 2. I'm flying to China tonight, actually. So I'm trying to do it, but you basically click this button. Adjustable speed. Gen 1 doesn't work as far as I can tell. Yeah, that one doesn't work. I gave, I gave all my San Francisco Gen 1s away. I was just at a conference. It's over. I only have this, so. But yeah, you have the 2 buttons there. Adjustable heat, adjustable vibration. A vibrator for your mouth.

Yeah. There you go.

Literally.

Okay, so I do this?

Yeah. So it's like a couple of things. Is this looksmaxxing? You have muscle scraping.

Is that what we're doing?

You know what? Some people are looksmaxxing, but the main thing actually is it's for people with like TMJ disorders.

Right.

So, I mean, there are like tens of millions of people out there dealing with like chronic jaw pain. And generally that audience is not the looksmaxxing crowd. My main Customers, not that, but they do exist.

So, so it is TMJ.

Can you explain TMJ, like in America, one out of every how many people have it? Give us something like that.

Yeah. So around 5% of people seek treatment, but it's many more that have it and potentially don't even know. So like there are a lot of like really

common things that happen. Like the way I started dealing with it was like 5 years ago, my jaw started clicking on the right side and I was like, I think my mom

got this. Like, you get it like temporarily sometimes, right? Stress and things like that can bring it up.

Is it just annoying or is it dangerous?

So the clicking, if it's pain-free, oftentimes it's, it's just annoying. Some people say up to like 1 in 3 people have this at some point in their life. But for me, it started getting worse. It started clicking on the left and then my jaw started like locking closed. And then that would happen like once a month and then once a week, then once a day I would wake up and I couldn't like brush my teeth. I couldn't What causes this? It's a good question. Like, a lot of different things can cause it, you know, like clenching, for example. A lot of people have a clenching issue, clenching, grinding at night. Some things is like, you know, a lot of looksmaxing can actually end up causing this. It could be trauma to the joint. It could be all this. For lockup specifically, there's like a disc in there and it, you know, can displace.

And you put this on your jaw how often and how long?

So the idea is a couple of things. For, for the musculature, right? Like most people's pain actually ends up coming from like the muscles and because it's overcompensating, that kind of stuff. So you're using it as like a scraper or a heater once a day or like a couple of times a day, 20 minutes a day. That's what the research says you should do, the doctors say. But honestly, it's just like, hey, I am, I have a flare-up, my head hurts. You go in, you, you work on the muscles or you just have like instant heat in your pocket.

And you have close to half a million a month.

Uh, yeah.

So you sell like $5 million a year of this?

Uh, that's, uh, annualized. Annualized. Yeah.

And it's called, it's called Your TMJ Pen?

It's called Your TMJ Pen.

How much does it cost?

So we're, we're normally $249. Uh, right now there's like a clearance sale.

And did you raise funding?

No, no, no. It's very much fully bootstrapped. Yeah.

This is, uh, I feel like I would see this on TikTok Shop. I would see this like on IG ads late at night.

Yeah. Listen, I wish—

You're that guy. You're the guy behind those ads.

I am that guy. I am that guy on Instagram. I'm the TMJ guy.

I think I've seen you. You're the face of this, right?

I am the face of that ad.

I think I've seen you.

A lot of rage bait on Instagram.

I love it.

So what's— you said rage bait.

Okay, so one of our like most viral videos is like, I'm on this plane, right? And I—

this Karen—

This character he just went into.

Really? Wow.

That's awesome.

How did you think of that? Just go with the Karen on the plane?

It's mostly the vape on the plane, really. Okay, the vape on the plane. It looks like a vape. Everyone tells me that.

So. Right.

What's going to stop every Chinese knockoff from coming after you?

I mean, listen, at some point, like, they're going to come. But the reality is, like, when I started this, like, I looked it up.

I was heating and massaging myself, like, every day with, like, a mug of water. I'd microwave it, whatever. And I would look it up. And there wasn't a heated massager for the jaw. There were no products, period, sold for people with TMJ problems.

Like, not a single one, which was baffling. And so I like, not, there was no brand. There was no, you developed the actual device. I developed this and yeah, like I'm the first brand.

Did you say you 3D printed this?

Yeah. So the way I started the business is because like, dude, listen, hardware used to be, I think, one of the most risky things you can get into making like a hardware device.

Like you'll look at Shark Tank, like people are like, yeah, I spent like $100 grand making this.

And it's like, dude, that was a big mistake.

How much did you spend to make the first handful?

What were you doing before?

Looked it up. I was a mechanical engineer. I was in college.

How old are you now?

24.

How old is this?

3 years since I started making it, and then 2 years of selling it.

And so you're like, I'm an idiot. So you have a 3D printer at home.

Yeah.

And you're on ChatGPT at the time, and you're like, teach me how to like—

You're like, give me a—

Well, ChatGPT back in the day was not good enough.

But then like, there's a motor. I mean, I don't know how electronics work.

Okay, so what did you do? You're at home, you've never made a thing.

So what I did, I, so, uh, I wrote out, what do I need this thing to do? I need it to heat, I need vibration, I need, you know, it to charge, it needs to be portable, whatever. You write out what you want. The obvious thing that it needs is like a PCB. It's a printed circuit board. So it's those little green things.

Yeah, it looks like a chip.

Yeah, it looks like a chip. It has a bunch of things, a bunch of lines on it. Um, so to design that, like, I didn't know what to do, but I looked on Reddit, I asked for advice, I went on YouTube, I figured out how to design this thing. Um, that was like the first thing I did. Then you designed the casings, you look up potential motors, you buy them all, test them, and, and, uh, so you ended up making the, assembling the thing yourself.

Yes.

And made them on the spot there.

Yeah, you can make them. And so now my 3PL makes it and that's how we were able to grow to this point.

So you're flying to China tonight?

I'm flying to China tonight.

You're going to get— you already have, because this is made.

Yeah. So we—

I made a prototype. You found somebody on Alibaba? What'd you do?

No, no, I did not do that. That would be risky. Um, no, I got connected. So I, I'm like pretty big on Instagram now and like YouTube. So I, I made sure to like get connected via word of mouth. Um, so I found a factory together with them. We designed this thing.

I flew there like a couple of months ago. We Um, we got to this sort of like golden sample and now production is like sort of done. Like the molds are done-ish. So I'm going there now to like get the final samples and then we'll be able to—

How many employees do you have?

I don't have any like, like full-time employees, uh, but I have like, you know, contractors. I have like, um, 5 contractors.

So have you taken money out of the business yet? Are you like, oh, you took a million bucks out of the business last year?

Yeah. So like this year it'll do, let's say, let's say hypothetically you do $5 million in total revenue in '26. How much cash flow Like how much profit? I don't know if you measure it.

Yeah, it's around like 20%, like net income. I don't know. I kind of look at it. It's just like my business. Like some of it's in the business bank, some of it's my Vanguard, some of it's in my personal bank. I don't know. I just kind of like take it as I see fit.

And there's no repeat purchase, right? Like nobody's going to buy again.

Yeah, there's not.

Yeah.

But what is like, I remember years ago when Thera, you know, Theragun.

Yeah.

Like my, I have a Hypervolt that I use forever. I love it. And I remember they came out and people were like, dude, like all the Chinese companies are just going to knock this off. But they, they did. They did. But they did do a good job of like kind of branding it where I am like into my Hypervolt. But then they also came out with like 30 products. There's like the things that like do my legs and I love all of them and it's become my routine. Is there like other things that you're going to, you can do?

I do have this vision of being like a, a brand specifically focused on making products for the TMJ community. The brand is like Your TMJ. Yeah. So it's like Your TMJ Pen. Then I'm thinking like Your TMJ Band.

We had this guy on the podcast named David.

Yeah.

And his whole company and like we started out as a shtick, but it wasn't entirely a shtick where it was like Sam doesn't believe that picking an important name is actually important. And this guy's whole job, he makes a lot of money naming companies.

He named BlackBerry and Swiffer and—

Sonos, Febreze. He named all this stuff. And I am totally on board with what he's doing now. And his whole— I actually just hung out with him the other day. His whole thing is like, if you're a young entrepreneur, start your company, who cares? But once you get some traction, consider making a name that can last forever because it actually does matter. And I buy into that. I would highly consider keeping that as maybe the TMJ pen, that product, but having like a proper company name.

Yeah, that's, that's possible. I don't know. I feel like it's just like Not the main like concern right now, because like that maybe for this product. Yeah, like people it's like this is like the TMJ pen. You know, it's like it's like when people say TMJ pen, it's this. Like there's no other thing. So it's like I think that's a pretty good name. But yeah, for the company,

like so you said like you did have a question. Well, what was your question going to be?

Well, yeah, my question was going to be like listen, you're going to you're going to be like oh money doesn't matter da da da. But

no no we won't say that. We won't say that.

It's called my first million, not just one million and stop.

Listen, I've heard a lot of guests come on the show. It's like, you know, they've made it and it's like, oh, you know, I was like, nah, I want a couple mil in the bank, right? I want that. So I get this urge to like sell in maybe 2 to 3 years or something.

Sell the company.

Yeah. And I don't know what therefore I should like really be focusing on because like if it— for me, like the obvious thing right now is like, hey, what's the like main constraint? It's, you know, going and solving the supply, the supply issue. Then it's going to be like demand. It's going to be like—

Short-term constraint. And then you have your long-term constraint in this scenario.

Yeah. And I don't know what the like long-term, like maybe it is a long-term constraint to not have other products, but the issue is like, I don't know, like what would be super important then to weigh against like losing focus on just like cranking out more ads now. So maybe it's recurring revenue, right? Like

maybe I should get into TMJ like supplements and oils and creams and stuff. Or maybe it's having more products on the consumer side. Maybe it's having IP. Maybe it's having registration with the FDA. Maybe it's having—

You have 3 options.

Yeah.

And you don't have to decide right now, but it's good to know what they are because then when you're doing the business, you'll look for clues that support one of the 3 options. Either you can go wider TMJ, so you could say, great, TMJ, this helps, but it's not a solved problem. I can sell the creams, I can sell the oils, I can sell the supplements, I can sell the whatever. So you go wider TMJ. You can go wider pain relief. So maybe heated massage, for other conditions, other parts of your body, the kind of Hyperice model, the Theragun model where you're going to create— right now—

They're just like a recovery company.

And you potentially have liquidity already.

And you're so young, you're gonna have money in the bank and you're gonna have like a bunch of lessons learned that with a clean slate, like this can be your starter business. Like most entrepreneurs have a, have a starter business, have a thing that they did early that wasn't their lifetime business. And, you know, so that's the other possibility. So you, you, you know, you don't know which one of the 3 it is right now. Maybe you should write down a hypothesis as to which one of those 3 it is. And then as you operate the next 6 to 9 months and you're focused on growing this business, you'll at least be aware of and looking for clues as to which one this might be. Maybe you launch a little test in one of those, one of those 3 areas and you figure it out that way.

Yeah.

I mean, I think, I think it's, What it is, is like, I like to use the business as like a learning opportunity, like as just like a personal growth thing. It's probably going to be like, hey, is there more juice to squeeze out of that in the TMJ space?

There definitely is.

Because I think so too.

and if you go to the doctor, they're just like,

Well, you know,

just to try not to stress so much. Like, yo, I'm kind of pretty stressed because this hurts every day also, in addition to whatever caused it in the first place.

My first, my first, uh, specialist I went to prescribed me like 2,000 milligrams of Tylenol a day. I

was like, I would, if I had to make a guess, this will, you're going to grow a lot over the next 3 years and sell it. And I think that would be pretty cool.

These are fundamentally pretty tough businesses to sell. Um, you know, non-recurring niche product heavily based on your marketing genius. So it might be that optimizing for the exit sometimes looks different than optimizing for cash flow. And so you want to kind of weigh those out. You don't even, again, you can go look at some comps and be like, is there any, who's done this before and exited well? Lemme go talk to them and understand, does the factors that made that a successful exit match what I have fundamentally in my business? But if it's just a cash flow business, that's great. Cash flow businesses can be awesome.

Have you ever talked to any bankers or brokers?

I haven't.

A lot of times people only do that when they're ready to sell, when you should have done it 3 years earlier and you find out you're like, I have a number in my mind, just tell me what I need to achieve to make that number possible. And I'm just going to go do that for 2 years.

Tell me 3 companies you looked at that are like this. What did they sell for? Why did they get that multiple they got? When did they do it?

And you're like, okay, it could be like this revenue, this cash flow. And, you know, these are the 5 or 6 other metrics. I'll just do that for 3 years and then, and then I'll look up and be like, okay,

Okay. Yeah. If you guys know any, I had some people reach out on LinkedIn about it, but they seem kind of skeezy. So I was like, I'm good.

Yeah, no, I would. So I would talk to Quiet Light. They're more of an online brokerage, but they're easy to talk to. Go to— if you go look at their thing, they have a lot of these like FBA businesses that they sell that like are kind of like, I would say, lower durability, lower quality businesses overall, but they seem to be selling. So like they know How to package those? What type? What business

work into Quiet Light Brokerage? Okay.

Yeah, dot com. So go to them, and then go look at brokers in your space. Maybe like you know you just have to Google and like tell ChatGPT go do deep research on who sold you know who are bankers that sell products like mine. Like I don't even know what the name of this category is, but it might be like it's like non medical wellness, non medical wellness devices. Okay, cool.

And you could you email the founders of people who have had had exits and say who did who all did you talk to because everyone who sales at a company will talk to 3 or 4. They'll say, I used this person, they were great. These 2 were kind of good.

Yeah. Dude, thanks for doing this. You're awesome. No, of course.

Thanks for having me. Good luck in China. Yeah. Good meeting you. All right, that is part 2 of Shoot Your Shot. We got one more episode coming out of the San Francisco location. We got 3 more founders coming up on the next episode. Make sure you're subscribed on YouTube, on Spotify. We looked at the data. I think 80, 90% of you guys are not subscribed who watch the episodes. What are you doing? Subscribe so you can watch episode 2.

And do me a favor. Whether you're a listener, then you're going to go to Spotify, or if you're a watcher, go to YouTube. Put in the comments the city that you want us to go to next. Right now we're doing this in San Francisco. We've already done New York. We'll go somewhere next to do it. So let us know in the comments right now.

I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off on the road. Let's travel, never looking back.

All right, let's take a quick break. I want to tell you about Marketing School. It is a podcast that is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network, and it is run by Neil Patel and Eric Siu. And these guys are both marketers who are running businesses. And so if you want real-world tactics from practitioners who are actually out there in the field doing it, this is the podcast for you. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts.