From $300k to $35M+ Selling Dog Ramps with Ramon Van Meer, CEO & Founder at Alpha Paw
There was a cup on the table. I remember we were drinking water, a little paper cup. We were at this burrito place and you were like, if I could buy this cup for 5 cents and sell it to you for 7 cents, that's my passion. I feel like I could 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. Ramon, he is back. The guest from episode 2, which was one of the best episodes ever of this podcast. And then it was taken down for a bit. I don't know what happened. There was something we had to take down, make a little edit. People started hitting me up.
Yeah.
Hey, what happened to Ramon's episode? That's how much people cared. They wanted to know. People were just keeping track. Is that episode still in the library? Something happened. Some people noticed, which was amazing to me. And now you're Twitter famous.
Yeah.
As of today.
Well, because of you and Sam. Yes, because you and Sam retweeted me and I got like almost 8,000 followers overnight. I went from 2,000 to 11,000, uh, within 24 hours.
So wow. Well, it's not just because we retweeted. I retweeted a lot of stuff. You told a great story. Uh, I'm just actually gonna— I'm gonna find the hook here, uh, because you did a good job. Did Sam write this for you or did you have him edit this? Because this was so well done, I felt like you can't— this can't be your first thread and you started off this good on your first thread. How did that happen?
No. Well, it's Sam dripping off the whole tweet. So Sam actually helped me. Okay, this is what would work. This is the concept. This is a little bit like how you format it. Then he gave a little bit like, I would start with this, I will do this, and I will explain that. Then of course, I explained it. I sent it to him and he said like, yeah, this looks great.
How would you have started it normally? And then I'll show— I'll read what the end result was. What would you have normally said? Or what do you remember what your V1 might have been?
Yeah. Well, you and I are friends, so you also know me personally. Typically, I would not start off with, like, I bought something for just little as X, and now we're doing Y. I will not—
Too braggy.
Yes. But Sam said, like, no, you need to do that. And it's true as well, right? So why not just explain it? That's what gets people interested. And now I think we have 7,000 likes and a bunch, like 1,000+ retweets.
Here's what you said. You said, "2.5 years ago, I bought a dog ramp business for $300,000." Already interesting. What the heck is a dog ramp business? "Since then, I've sold $35 million of dog ramps." Boom. That's the hook, right? Um, yes. This little thing turned into a big thing. And then the promise, why you should read this thread. "I'm going to explain why I bought it." how I scaled it, and why I bought a business versus starting from scratch. But first, dog ramps, question mark. And then that is, and then the little hand pointing down, like, come read more. That is, uh, you didn't take my power writing class, but that is exactly what you would've been my star student in this if you had done this as the example, because it has all 3 elements, right? The, what I call the frame. I bought it for $300K and I've sold $35 million. So that's the, the wow factor. Why, why should I pay attention to this? And the, Why do I stop scrolling? So you have a scroll-stopping number, $35 million of dog ramps. You have a curiosity gap, which is what the heck is a dog ramp and how did this guy do it? And then you have a promise, which is I'm going to tell you A, B, and C, but first dog ramps, which is like you gave them a lightweight entryway that they have, even if they don't want to know how you bought it, why you scaled it, all the operational stuff, I do need to know what the heck, dog ramps, what the heck. And so, uh, beautifully done. And then you tell the story and the story is kind of amazing cuz people know that I don't talk about what my e-commerce business is, but they know that I have an e-commerce business. What they don't know is that it started because we were hanging out in your backyard and we were talking and the whole time we're talking, uh, your phone is just going cha-ching, cha-ching. It's like the, and I didn't even know what this was. It's the Shopify, Shopify's like notification sound and You, you didn't even notice it cuz it's always just normal to you. Your phone was sitting on the table and I was like, do you need to get that? Like, what is that sound? And you go, oh, sorry, that's like sales. And I was just like, you know, people love this idea of make money while you sleep, like passive income. Oh, make money while you sleep. That is a sexy idea. Yep. This was, this was even better. It was like you were just chilling and having fun and money was just being made for you on the side and just like a little cha-ching every 5 minutes. And it was literally in that moment I was like, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna start an e-commerce business because I can't sit here and just let Ramon have all the fun. This is too good. So you inspired me to do it for sure.
That's awesome. Yeah. I had to turn off that notification because it drove me crazy eventually, like ching ching, ching ching every time there's a sale. Uh, but it was fun in the beginning, almost like that, uh, you know, endorphin release each time.
Uh, yeah, exactly. Um, and if you're on YouTube, if you're watching the YouTube channel, which is just, I don't know, what is it? youtube.com/myfirstmillion, I think, or hustlecon, something like that. Just search My First Million on YouTube. You'll find it, but you can see the ramp behind Ramon. So he's got the, uh, all the products behind you. So the, the company's called Alpha Paw. That's your thing. So we're gonna talk about a couple different things. I thought it'd be fun to have you on. You're a substitute teacher for Sam. And like any substitute teacher, the class always has more fun when the sub comes in. Uh, so, so that's what we're gonna do. I think we're gonna talk about a couple things. I want to talk to you about kind of, uh, buying and selling, buying businesses rather than starting businesses. So how you do it, and we'll go through some examples maybe of what's out there. Then we'll jump back and we'll dig into your story. So how the heck you got started, but I first want to give the people and myself really a crash course on this process of buying businesses because I was amazed when you told me you bought this business for $300,000. Did you buy this off of Flippa or Quiet Light, or where'd you end up buying this?
Yeah, I bought this on a similar broker like Quiet Light. They're not around anymore, but it was a similar broker, not as Flippa, but it's more of a broker.
And when you bought it, I was sort of like, what the hell? Like, who does that? I didn't even know anybody who does like off these like random websites. Like I could see you buying something for a few thousand dollars, but 300 grand I thought was a lot. And I was like, dog ramps, what the heck? And you had told me then that you're like, yeah, the business is doing good and the person really wasn't doing any marketing or they didn't run any Facebook ads, I think was the case. And so you just saw like a clear growth lever. So break it down. Like why do you do this? And then how do you do this buying businesses thing?
Yeah, me personally, I think it's also like, what's your personal preference? What's your skill set? Some people are really good at going from 0 to 1, are really builders. Others are really good at going from 1 to 10, and those are, you know, scalers. I'm not really good at building. I'm better at scaling. And so I like to buy versus build because it gives you a lot more speed. It gives you history and data. And it's similar like real estate where I try to find crappy houses that you need to fix up, but in a good up-and-coming neighborhood, if that makes sense.
Right. It's a good market.
Yes, good market. There's a market fit. You know, if this house was amazing, you would be able to rent this out for 2, 3, 4 times more than the current owner does. It's the same with, with websites. So I look for websites that have a good product mix, uh, product fits, has history, It doesn't have to be going really well. I'm not looking for websites that are overly optimized. So I tend to not buy websites from other internet marketers because they already did all the things that I probably would do for it. So it's not really room for growth.
What was the person like, or what was the business like when you bought the dog ramp business? So describe kind of what you saw and what made you decide, yeah, I'm going to buy this one.
Yeah, it solved a real problem. I wasn't aware that this is actually a problem. I have a dog, but I have a pit bull. I don't have a small dog. Then, so there's a real problem for a niche audience that you really can target on Facebook. Those were the good old days that you really could niche target still on Facebook. It had not a lot of competition at that time. Not a lot of people were promoting ramps on Facebook, Instagram, or even Amazon. The website was a very crappy websites where I knew that if we switch to Shopify, if we increase or improve the copy, the pictures, etc., the conversion rate would most likely increase. This case, the two founders were not doing any Facebook ads. There was no paid acquisition happening at all. And even though they had a decent-sized customer database, they were not emailing even existing customers, let alone trying to capture, you know, a cart abandonment.
Uh, so this was a good market, which is pets. It's You know, a house that you said, okay, if I renovate the kitchens, the floorboards, the, the, the countertops, which is like redoing the website and the branding of it, the copywriting. And then lastly, they're not even trying to rent it out. They don't rent, they don't post it on Craigslist. They don't have flyers out in the neighborhood saying, come rent my place, which is they weren't doing paid advertising to get customers. So you saw it, you bought it, and you grew it. What's another example? So let's walk through some real examples and then you tell me kind of like what you like or dislike about some of these businesses. Uh, cause I know you did some research on, on what's out there Yeah.
So, for example, there's one out, it's sort of a crossword puzzle website. So, think of when— I think a lot of people play these Words with Friends games or Scrabble games. And then there's a website out there apparently that you can just put in your letters and it will give a bunch of words recommendations.
Gcode's website.
Yeah. Exactly. And I kind of love it because it's so— there's nothing to do. I think there's probably a database that's already pre-built that you can you can buy. You build it basically once, and then it's just trying to get SEO traffic, you know, to your website. So for example, there's one for sale now for $9 million. They started it in 2017, does $3.5 million in revenue. And because there's no really team needed, it's like, it's almost all profit. It's like $3, around $3 million of profit. And it's just, you know, printing money basically. I like these type of niches where not a lot of people think about, but there's definitely a huge search volume.
What would you do? So give me two pieces on that. So the first is with something like this, would you, how would you try to grow it? Or would you not buy this because you say, I don't know how I would grow this where I get a faster payback on my money. So what would you do? How would you think about the growth levers for this one?
Yeah, that's a good question. I will personally not buy it at the moment because the price tag, typically I, only buy things in a couple hundred thousand dollar range, not millions. Without knowing too much of the current business model, I definitely would try to increase RPMs, meaning how can we squeeze more advertising dollars out of the same traffic? They get like tens of millions of visitors a month. And I looked at a couple of similar websites and I think there's a huge opportunity by placing ads differently, just increase RPM. Similar, if you have an e-commerce, you want to increase conversion rates. If you have a content site, you want to increase RPMs, meaning how to get more people to click on the ads or things like that, right? So I would do that. Secondly, I would look and do research. Like, for sure, if there's a huge segment of people that love Scrabble, what is this— like, what other games do they like? And maybe build a sub a sister website that does, I don't know, like, what's it called, Sudoku, uh, right, or whatever. So that's, that's the two, the two things that I would, if I would buy this type of website.
And, and basically when you buy something like this, most people say, you know, I don't have $9 million. And I think when you started doing this, uh, when you first started looking at these websites, you also didn't have enough money to buy one of these. So tell, tell the story of like how you first started going to these websites even when you didn't have enough money to buy one of these companies.
Yeah. I've actually bought and sold websites that started with buying something for $500 and sold it for $1,500. I started on Flippa 12 years ago. And I've bought a piñata website that sells piñatas. You can send a picture of Seb and—
It makes a piñata of him.
Yes, a company in Texas would make a piñata and then ship it directly to the customer. So I bought that for $5,000, that's escrowed together, improved the website traffic and made my money back in 2.5 months and then sold it a month later for $22,000. So it's not huge numbers, but those really helped me to grow a little bit and really get a lot of experience. When I started SoapHub, I actually saw a similar website for sale on Flippa that was for sale for $100,000. Was in the daytime TV era too, and the topic was about daytime TV. Of course, I didn't have money. I had like a couple thousand dollars. I was not able to buy that, but what I did is like, hey, let's see if there is something there. Let's do a small test. Build a fan page, see how the engagement goes, and then see if there is something there and then grow from there.
I guess we should explain. You created— if people have listened to episode 2, they know the full story. We won't go the full story again this time, but your claim to fame, what episode 2 is about, is telling the story of how you created a soap opera content site, like a soap opera website that was basically just saying, hey, you're watching Days of Our Lives or you're watching, I don't know, The Young and the Restless, "Here's the recap. Here's the spoilers of what's coming next." So you kind of built like a spoiler site for daytime soap operas. Who the heck thinks of that? And then you ended up selling it for $9 or $10 million cash. And that's like an amazing, amazing exit. And this is from a guy who has never watched a soap opera episode in his life. So I think people love that because it was so, A, random, but B, interesting and relatable how you did that. And it sounds like one of the ways you were getting business ideas was you were going on these websites and you, I think you had told me at the time, you're like, I saw a website for sale that was also in the daytime TV niche that was like $100,000 for sale. And you were like, cool. Like, I don't have $100,000, but if this is worth $100,000, maybe I can make something like this. And then you went through this process where you said, okay, how can I test these ideas? Because, uh, when I met you, I was like, all right, what's your passion? You know, Silicon Valley style. And you were like, You know, what problem you really wanna solve? What, what topic, what industry you're really passionate about? And you were like, there was a cup on the table. I remember we were drinking, we were drinking water, a little paper cup. We were at this burrito place and you were like, if I could buy this cup for 5 cents and sell it to you for 7 cents, that's my passion. Like, uh, I like to buy things and sell things for a little bit more. And I'm basically an internet marketer and I don't care if it's cups or dog ramps or soap opera spoilers. It doesn't matter to me. I love the process of like business and selling things. And I was like, that's amazing. Uh, you know, I love the, the sort of self-awareness and honesty. And then when you were testing ideas for, for before you created the Soap Opera site, you went on Facebook and if I remember correctly, you basically made like 30 fan pages or something like that. Cuz at the time you could promote a page, uh, a fan page on Facebook for like cents. You could go get a bunch of likes of your Facebook page. And a lot of likes weren't worth too much, but you could kind of test what topics are people most engaged with? What topics, if I post content in this page, will I get a bunch of likes for? And I think it ended up being like the top 3 were something like, what was it? It was like right-wing politics, like soap operas, and what was the last one? It was like wrestling or something like that.
Yeah, wrestling was really popular. Soaps and politics, cars were also pretty high up.
Right. And then you were like, you know, I hate politics. I don't want to do politics. What's the next best one? Soap operas.
Okay.
Uh, hire this woman in the Midwest to write, uh, blogs every day about soap operas and then drive traffic, baby. Uh, sell— let's go sell some paper cups.
Exactly. And I just didn't really overthink it. I didn't write a business plan. I just like go on— went on upwork.com. Hey, looking for a writer that can write soap opera spoilers. Put a very simple blog up just to test to see would people go from Facebook onto a blog and write a story. And that's how it basically started. And then, you know, started with 10 cents a day from making from Google AdSense and then a dollar a day and then $10. And that's how it grew.
Right.
Okay.
Let's look at a couple more deals and then we'll jump around again. So give me, give me another one that you saw before you came on the pod that you want to talk about.
Yeah. So this, this is one I just saw an hour ago. I just thought it was interested. Interesting. It's a goat milk soap website. They sell goat milk soap.
What the heck is that?
Yes. So apparently goat milk soap is better for the environment and it's better for— they say it's cruelty-free because apparently a lot of soaps, the traditional soaps, they do testing on animals, etc. So they claim— and like, forgive me for people that, you know, know about goat milk soap, I— this is the first time I heard about it. And that's why that intrigued me. This could probably be a product that people that use this are very passionate about it, same like, you know, people that are into keto are super passionate, or, you know, there's tons of these examples where it's a pretty small niche, but people are so passionate that they will spread the word for you. So this website, you can find it on Flippa, just search goat milk soap. And I'm looking at the listing.
It says 4 years old, monthly profit $20,000 a month. It's got a 29% profit margin and it's selling at a 1.8x multiple, right? So, okay, so what is that? So let's say 20 times 12. We don't do public math, but we do type things in. 240, 240 times 1.8. So it's selling for $400-something thousand. Is that right?
Correct. $425,000 is the asking price.
Right. Okay. Amazing. So walk me through, how do you think about something like this?
Yeah. So first, I will do a little bit of research about the product. Does goat milk really work? Is it more of a gimmick, or is it actually solve a problem, or are people really interested? Is there a need for this? And again, if it's a gimmick, that's fine too, right? This is not like, oh, the answer is no, we'll not buy it. It's just important to know.
Right. Back to the piñata example.
Exactly. How many— because it's very important too for like, not all big ideas have to be a $100 million idea. Like, I think a million dollar a year business is amazing as well, uh, right? So maybe goat milk soap is, you know, a very passionate niche, um, product. I will do research like, okay, how many people in the US search for it? You can use Google Trends or you can use all kinds of search volume trackers. That you can see how many people are searching for these keywords. I will look on Instagram, are there like, is there a rabbit fan base, you know, like goat milk, you know, fans, uh, or Facebook groups. Then I will also look on Amazon. Is this sold on Amazon? If yes, how is the trend and what is the sales? And then you can use a tool called Helium 10 to see how much revenue a listing is doing. It's, by the way, really amazing tool to do research. I do the same for pet products. You know, I look what is trending on Amazon, what is, you know, blowing out the waters for sales, and then I will do research if we should also start selling that. Then I look, of course, on the business stuff, like business— is the trend up or down or flat? And also, like, most the business I bought were either flat or down because that's how, you know, you get, you know, a good deal. So even if it's flat, even if it's not trending up, I still would you know, potentially buy it. What is important are the traffic channels diversified. Is 100 or 90% coming from just Facebook, or is it just emails, or is it just, um, SEO? That could be a little bit, you know, risky, especially if it's all paid traffic from Facebook, because all the e-com founders or listeners, uh, on this podcast will know, you know, Apple can make an update and suddenly, you know, the paid traffic landscape change. So I'm looking for diversified channels. Then of course I look at revenue profit margins. So you can really calculate like, okay, if I pump, is this gonna be more of a scale where I can pump more money into Facebook? I put a dollar in, I get $3 back. Or is this more like of a long-term play where I have to create SEO content that, you know, is less costly, but it's a longer game. And then also what's important to understand what you're buying are the trademarks, are the patents, is there email subscribers. So in this case, they have 43,000 email subscribers, there's 33,000 SMS subscribers. I think there's a social media. All these things, in my opinion, are valuable because that's the same with when I bought Alpha Paw. Had a huge Instagram following, a huge Facebook following. They had an email list. They had trademarks and patents. All that was included in the sale.
And if you— those are great. Those are the assets. And so let's take a business like this. Let's say it's $400,000 listing. How does it work if you don't have $400 grand lying around in a briefcase like an evil genius. What do you do? How do you buy a business like this if you don't have $400,000 lying around?
Yeah. So you can use SBA loans to buy internet businesses. SBA loan is basically a business loan, small business loan that I don't know when they started, a few years ago, where they now also fund internet businesses. And you can borrow up to 90%. So technically you can buy something that is for sale for $400,000 and you only have to put down $40,000. And the interest rate is, is pretty low. It's anywhere between 5% and 7%. So it's, it's higher than a mortgage, but it's much lower than a traditional, you know, a business loan for people like us. Right. Then the second thing you can do When you see an asking price of $400,000, you can always— there's a cash upfront offer and then you can offer like, hey, I will pay you $250,000 cash upfront at closing. The remaining $150K, I will pay you spread out over the next 12 months interest-free. So every time I buy a business, that's never 100%— cash on closing. I always have 60 to 80% cash on closing and the remaining is either seller's note or an earnout.
Um, and that keeps the seller, you know, helpful because they're, you know, they, they need to help you out. Plus it lowers the amount that you have to loan. So let's just say, let's just do a little loan calculator. So the SBA loan is what, 10-year loan, something like that?
Yes.
So 10-year loan. So let's say you did the full amount, no seller financing, just for simplicity. Simplicity here. So you put down $40K, you're going to take the other $360K as an SBA loan. And let's say you're paying 6% a year for 10 years. So your monthly payment on that loan is going to be $4,000. This business makes $20,000 a month of profit. So you take the $20,000 a month of profit, you pay back your loan for 4, you're left with $16K of profit every month right now. So you could buy this today and be making money. And so that, that difference, let's say $16K, you only put down, you know, you only put down $40,000. So it only takes 2.5 months for you to get all your equity back. And then you're, and you're profitable every single month and you could reinvest some of that into growth. So that's like a pretty sweet deal. And that's more than most people are making at their quote unquote safe job.
Correct. And SBA, the beauty with SBA loans, they, of course, they look at your personal credit history, and et cetera, but they really look and make a decision, the lenders, on the business. So they will never fund you if there's too high of a risk, if they think like, oh, if we cannot— the borrower cannot pay the interest month over month. So it's an amazing tool. Actually, I spoke with Joe Valley from Quiet Light Broker today, and he told me a story. There was a woman, she bought bought a business for $1.25 million with an SBA loan 2 years ago and just closed and sold the same business for $5.5, I believe. It was in the 5 range, but put only 10% down. So, she didn't even put $200K down, but her return was—
$4 million.
Yeah. Yeah. So, if done right, SBA loans is a really great tool, a great leverage tool to get into internet businesses or buy a business. Amazing.
Uh, yeah, yeah. This is one of the tricks. Now, uh, what do you give people a sense of? How do you make sure you're not buying a lemon?
Yes. That's, uh, I get a question a lot. So when you go to flippa.com, I would be careful because flippa.com is a marketplace. Anybody can just upload, you know, their listing or their website and basically claim whatever. It's on you to do due diligence. If you go to a broker like Quiet Light Brokers, they basically do all the vetting for you. They will look at the business, is everything legit? So the risk is much smaller. But regardless, if you're new to this, if you are, you know, it's your first business, you can hire a due diligence company. Centurica.com is one. I think those are the biggest, well-known. You pay— you know, it depends on the listing price, but it's as cheap as a couple hundred dollars and it goes up from there. But they do all the due diligence for you. They look through all the traffic. Is it legit? Is the revenue legit? Is whatever everything they claimed, is it all legit? And then they can come back to you with like, well, we looked at all the data, all the numbers. You bought it for $1.2 million, but we think it's actually worth $900K because these are the reasons. So definitely recommend going with a due diligence company like Centurica.
Gotcha. Okay. And give, okay, so these are businesses you could buy. What was the first kind of like, how the heck did you become you? Right? So how are you figuring out how to do this? Give people kind of the, uh, not, not, you don't go deep into any one, but just describe kind of the journey. And then I might poke into some that sound interesting. So, okay. You're, you're Ramon, you're born. I don't know when you got your entrepreneurial start. What was the first entrepreneurial venture? Were you in your teens or 20s or what?
My first real business was a construction business. I've done things before that, but they were nothing really significant. But I think the way how I started the construction company is really my DNA, if that makes sense. Because if I look back, A lot of other companies I started basically the same. I didn't know anything about construction. And the story, I will keep it very quick, but I think it maybe could be helpful for people that maybe are overthinking steps or overthinking things. I was out of a job, was 20 years old, had to pay my rent. Co-worker of my mom said, I need a painter to paint the inside of my house. I can pay you X. I forgot the number, but it was like a month's worth of money that I made in 3 days. So I thought, oh, this is amazing. I can be my own boss. It's a lot of money. The harder I work, the more money I make. That was really what intrigued me, right? Like, if I can do this in 1 day, I will actually make the same amount of money than in a whole month.
So you got paid on your output, not your input.
Correct. And as you know, I'm a high school dropout, right? So there was not—
What year did you actually drop out?
Um, officially 15, but I stopped really going when I was 14.
Okay. So that's basically 9th grade, right? That's the US 9th grade. I don't know what it is there.
Okay. My mom actually got a letter from the board of school to, with an official waiver, like, okay, your son doesn't have to go to school because in Holland you have to go to school mandatory to 16. They actually gave me a pass because no high school wanted to accept me. Um, but that's a different story. So going back, uh, On Sunday night, she paid me out. I said, this is amazing. So on Monday morning, I came up with a name, House Improvements or Home Improvements, one of those two, designed a couple very ugly business cards, made a one-page website, and put an ad out on the Dutch version of Craigslist. And I thought, you know what, let's just not do only painting. Let's do like, we do everything. Construction, like remodeling from A to Z, whatever. I thought like—
you don't know how to do any of that, by the way.
No, no, I don't know anything. I barely was able to paint.
So what gives you that confidence to say, I'll, I'll renovate everything A to Z, and yet I don't know how to do anything A to Z?
I think that's the naive thing, part of me that I still have, is like, let's just see first if I can get a job and then figure out like how to solve or do the job. And So an hour later or 2 hours later, I got an email from a guy saying, hey, I'm looking for an electrician and, um, I am rewiring the whole building, blah, blah, blah. I said, sure, no problem.
I will see you tomorrow. I'm a 9th grade dropout. I'll be there in 3 hours. I got this.
I went out to buy an official construction outfit. So I really looked like a construction guy or like, you know, And I went there the next morning and disclaimer, of course I will not have done things that will potentially kill people, but I just wanted to see like, I don't know, like maybe it was something simple. So he gave me the tour and it was like, I couldn't even understand the words he was saying, like, oh, we need to wire this and we need to do it. And the floors were open and the walls were open. And I was still playing along, but in my mind I was like, there's no way I can do this. Plus, it's dangerous as fuck. So he went out to run some errands. I waited for him because I didn't want to be like, you know, an asshole, just go left. So I waited for an hour. He came back and I was like, listen, I'm gonna be honest. I don't know shit about the construction company. I don't know shit about Electra. I just started yesterday. I want to build a construction company, but I don't know anything. And he was— because he was an entrepreneur, he He laughed his ass off, and he actually gave me work. He said, like, you're hilarious. Just help me with, you know, getting—
carry this box over here.
Yeah. And he paid me the same amount of dollars or euros hourly rate than he would have done before. I think also, by the way, if we have young listeners, I think it's so important to do those things when you're young. Because if I would do it now, I'm 40 years old. Not endearing. I don't think it's that endearing. It's not like, oh, I appreciate your hustle. No, it's like, hey, you're a con man. Like, yes. So if you're young, take advantage. You know, Sam was also really genius of doing that as well, right? Like, you can just get away with so much more of showing hustle. But also, like, I think he appreciated that I waited for him and just be like, honest, like, hey, listen, I don't know shit about this. But he gave me a really good tip. He said, in order to own a construction company, you don't have to know everything or do it yourself. If I were you, find freelancers. You focus on getting the projects, and then you outsource it to freelancers. So that's what I did, and found an electrician freelancer, plumber, you know, everything you need, a whole crew that you need.. And 2 weeks later I got a second job and I didn't do anything. I just had my—
send it, dispatched someone there.
Yeah. Yeah. I sold it for $10K. My cut was like around $5K. And that's how I basically grew the construction company. And within a year, a little over a year, we were like 20 to 24 people depending on how many projects we had. And at that time we did, close to a million dollars or million euros.
Sorry.
Um, a year, uh, in revenue.
And you're like 19, 20 years old, something like that at that time.
Yeah. 20, 21 when we, you know, we're a year, a year in.
And so what happened to that happy ending or sad ending to this story?
Well, very quick, maybe story about how I scaled the scaling part. I think it's also could be helpful for people is that the big problem with construction is every, like the job is 2 weeks and then you have to find another job. The job is 4 weeks and you have to find another job. Right. So it was really hard to keep the guys busy and really, you know, make sure that the projects align, if that makes sense. So I thought, hey, who can I find? What can I do so I don't have to find jobs anymore? Real estate investors, they buy apartment buildings all at once. They all need to be renovated at once. So I went to local real estate meetups. That was actually horrible because I was A, really out of my place. I was way too young. I was like a blue-collar guy with all these fancy pants. But one thing leads to another that I met the biggest real estate investor in my region that I lived. And he was like literally buying apartment buildings at the foreclosure every month between 20 and 100 buildings at a time. Wow. So now, he became my client and he was my client to the end. Basically, I never had to search for a new customer. So that was all the good news. Then I made a bunch of mistakes. Cash flow projection was one where construction, you really— it's a similar, a little bit similar, like with e-commerce. I think you could grow yourself into bankruptcy, if that makes sense. Making, for example, you with a construction, same with e-commerce, you have to put a lot of money up front. I have to pay every Friday the crew, I have to buy the supplies, but I only get paid all the way at the end when the project is done. So the faster you grow, the more projects you have, the more money you have to put out in open, and you have to wait for it. So that started— that was really, uh, and I was just not good at cash flow projections. I, well, I just didn't do it. And, um, another thing that really was bad was growing too fast that I have to hire people that I normally would not have hired and really lost grip of the business. That makes sense. And, you know, it started to break and I had to close the company after 3 years, more or less.
And our mutual buddy Suli was at my house this weekend and he said something like, uh, I don't know if maybe you already— maybe this is the guy you already talked about, but he said He said you had some like mentor kind of help you early on, uh, somebody who really changed the course of your life. I don't know. Is he talking about the guy who gave you that first kind of insight to hire freelancers or is there somebody else he's talking about?
No, it's a different story.
Okay. Tell that one.
Um, all right. That story, uh, was before my construction company. I was almost 18 or around that time. My mother kicked me out the house. You have to You have to figure your shit out. So I have to pay rent. So I had to find a job at the local Best Buy, the Dutch version of Best Buy. Couple weeks in, I said like, this sucks, right? Like long hours, whatever. And there was a guy came up coming in in a nice expensive suit. He wanted to buy something, was not in stock. He gave me a business card and says like software solutions.. And I didn't know anything about software or programming or whatever, but I knew solutions because it, or solutions, whatever. I didn't know anything. Uh, but I just knew like, okay, hey, there's a lot of money to be made and a lot of opportunity in, because this was like the early internet days, right? Like, you know, I'm an old fuck, right? This is like before 2001, before the internet bubble, if people remember. And so I didn't know what he was doing, but it was something in software and solutions.
And that's what— you knew it was good because he came in in a fancy suit or you separately had been thinking about the internet?
Uh, separately been thinking about, because I always was like trying to, you know, oh, let's buy this type of product in Germany and then try to sell it in Holland. Like I was always trying to build these, doing these schemes, legal, of course, but internet was just like this whole new— like for me, this was like amazing. There's so much opportunity. And so I knew that. I just didn't know like exactly what, how to get started, how to even write a line of code or whatever. So I started stalking him. I said, "Hey," and this is again the benefit of being young, like, "Hey, I want to get a job at your company." And he said, we're not hiring. But I kept stalking him respectfully, but I did caught stalking him for months, like 3, 4 months, to a point where he said, you know what, I'm so sick and tired of this in a good way. Let's make a deal. If I'm going to give you a book on Friday, we have an internal exam for programmers. If you pass that exam, I will hire you. The company will hire you and give you a 6-month internal program to become a Microsoft, uh, developer. "but you have to promise me if you fail this exam on Friday, you have to leave me alone for the rest of your life." I said, "Okay, let's do it." Didn't know what I was expecting. He gave me a book about Microsoft Access database programming. Studied that as if my life was depending on it, did exam, and I passed. I didn't pass A+, but I passed enough. And so they gave me a job. And for the next 6 months, they trained me. I was able to become a Microsoft software developer within this company. They gave me a lease car, they gave me a laptop, they gave me like phone, like it was, it was insane. So this guy really changed my life because I think learning how to code really is helpful also in other ways in your life, like because it really, you analyze problems in situations just different if, um, when you know how to code, that makes sense.
And you're— but today you don't consider yourself like a coder. Like let's say for your e-commerce website, you're not the one going and making changes. Is— do you do it like sometimes or early on before you hire people? Do you just do stuff yourself or no? You're just saying learning it back then and using it back then and learning how to think that way was helpful.
Yeah. And at that time I had to learn Visual Basic. That language doesn't even exist anymore. So it's like, I know how to read PHP and HTML, and, you know, I know, I know how to do it, but I'm like, I, I never do it, basically. I, I think it's more of breaking down what was so frustrating as a programmer is like finding bugs. So you have like, you know, a 10,000-line code and there's one thing it breaks, you have to go through like all the codes, but it really trains your brain like, okay, how to really try to narrow down what it could be and where the problem could be. And that mindset you can use in, in all kinds of other, you know, real life situations. So I don't program right now.
Okay, fair enough. And we got 5 minutes left. You had a game you wanted to play at the end. Let's do, let's do the game.
Okay, so I wanted to ask you, it's very silly, but I was—
and why did you want to play this game, by the way?
Uh, because I think your audience would like to know these questions, like, would you rather. So it's a would you rather.
Give the people what they want.
Yes. All right, so here's the first one. Would you rather be the CEO of Apple or the president of the UFC?
Ooh, okay, president of the UFC, like Dana White, uh, too much travel. I'm traveling, I'm on the road all the time dealing with all kinds of event planning. Like when I threw my wedding, I was like, this is the only event I'll ever throw like this. And for the UFC, every weekend they throw, you know, a mega wedding, so no way I'm doing that. I also wouldn't really want to be the CEO of Apple, so I'll take the job. I'll go buy your company for half a trillion. I'll buy my company for half a trillion, and then I'll peace out.
All right, that's awesome. Um, I saw this, uh, on a meme actually. Would you rather have dinner with Jay-Z or take $500,000 cash?
Uh, $500,000 cash, easy. Uh, what would you do? Would you take dinner with Jay-Z? I feel like you might be a I want a unique experience person.
No. Yeah, I will take the cash too. There was, there was a whole debate, uh, like people saying like you should take Jay-Z because he's gonna—
let's say $50,000 cash. $50,000 cash I think is a closer bet here.
Yeah. Then I will, in the situation I'm right now, I will take the dinner. Um, if I have no money, I will take the cash.
Right. Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm in the same boat. I think The dinner is most likely going to be kind of lame, but, you know, I get a good story. Who knows, maybe, maybe we hit it off, maybe he's interesting. $500,000, that's— you could go buy your charity dinner with Jay-Z for, for $90,000 and have the rest left over for, for goods after that.
Or you can buy a goat milk soap website.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, whatever. That's the question: would I rather have that goat milk business today or this dinner with Jay-Z tomorrow? I'll take the goat milk this today.
Thank you. Yeah, let's do— would you rather, would you rather bootstrap a million-dollar business or VC-backed $10 million a year business?
I think I would rather have a VC-backed $10 million a year business. I'll tell you why. I think that once you can get a business to $10 million, I think the odds of you being able to get it to $50 or $100 are quite high. I think zero to $10 is a lot harder or more likely to round down to zero, then 10 will stay at 10. So I think $10 million, really what you're saying is, hey, just stick with it for a little bit longer and you'll be at 30, 40, 50, 70, something like that million within 2, 3 years. So I think that's the case. And then I'm actually, a lot of people think VC means you're VC forever and that you're in this endless chase. They're like, well, the VCs say you need to grow. The VCs say you'll have to raise your next round. My experience with VCs has actually been quite different, which is VCs give you the money, they might want you to do something, but it's your call what you do. And you can raise one round and never raise again from VC, or you can raise one round and grow at the pace you want. They might strongly advise you to do something, but it's on you to say, "Look, are you going to fire me? Do you have the power to do that? Are you going to fire me? If not, then I'm going to need you to shut the fuck up and stay in the back seat and let me do what I'm going to do." here. So I think the $10 million business is just better than the bootstrap to $1 million.
Then a very quick— for the listeners that have an idea but not the capital, would you tell them to try to get VC money or try to get the company started, get some revenue, and then do the VC route?
Or— yeah, I mean, this is going to sound cliché, but it's true and whoever is doing this needs to hear this, which is raising money is not the goal. So a lot of people are like, "Hey, I want to talk to you, I'll invest in a company." And they'll say, "I want to talk to you about what metrics we need to do to be able to raise an A in 9 months," or, "We're starting planning for our Series B. I want to talk to you about what metrics we need to do to hit the B." And I'm like, I understand what they're saying and it's good to be thoughtful and plan, But there's this sort of implication that raising money is the milestone. And it's like, oh, what business— what does this business need to do to be able to achieve this outcome? And it's actually the opposite. It's I have a business outcome I'm trying to get to. I'm trying to get to $10 million in revenue with 20% EBITDA, or I'm trying to get 20% market share in this market, or 5%. I want to grow 20% a month. You have a business outcome in mind and then you just say, do I need more money to make that happen? Yes or no? Money is the fuel. It is not the destination. It is not the— it's not the point of the journey for raising money. And so I would just say like, yeah, when you start, when you have the idea, the goal is, okay, well, I need to get like 1 customer, 10 customers, 100 customers, 1,000 customers. You start doing that. And then at some point, if you get stuck because you lack the money, meaning you truly, you need to go buy inventory or You're paid ads are working. You just need to spend more to get to the next milestone. Then you raise the money. Don't raise, don't raise as your excuse to go do the business.
Yeah. And you also see a lot of, uh, deals or people approaching you and, you know, me in a little bit lesser way, but I do feel like there's a lot of people think they need money to launch a business, but actually don't. Because they think, oh, it needs to be pretty, or it has to have all these functionalities. Um, but maybe they could just like start with one functionality and just have, you know, a Fiverr designer just do it and, you know, do it, at least get started.
Yeah, my favorite people to fund are people who have, uh, created a company and like made all the mistakes, ended up with a small win where they got a taste of winning, but, you know, not, not not enough to go retire on a yacht because the next time they start, they're like, not going to waste those 6 months on design mockups and branding and getting the trademark and all this other stuff. Like they know what are the traps and they know what, what you really need to do versus what you think you need to do. And there's a big gap there. But usually even if somebody tells you experience is the best teacher because the voice in your head typically from most entrepreneurs I meet, the voice in your head typically is giving you some bad advice your first, first time through. And it's okay. Like just go do it, learn those lessons, and then the second time you're much better off.
Yeah, I agree. Then last question, would you rather do a boxing match against Sam or do an Ironman with me and Sully?
Uh, both. I, I'll, I'd rather do the boxing match with Sam because that sounds more fun and exciting, uh, than like an endurance race. But, uh, yeah, so I would do a boxing match with Sam. I think that'd be great. You know, I've always wanted to like feel what it's like to be in a real fight. Like, I think I got into like one or two little altercations when I was younger, like in high school or middle school, but it was always like I hit the kid and then he, he ran away, or like, yeah, he hit me and then it got broken up. And it's like it never— yeah, it was like, okay, let's do this. Let's get— let's start. No one's gonna break this up, and the point is to actually get in a fight. So I would do it, although Sam is definitely like, you know, on horse tranquilizers or whatever, like horse, you know, growth hormone or whatever he's taking. That guy built like an absolute monster right now, so, you know, I need a little training period, but I would do it.
Actually, a lot of people, because he's been posting videos of me and him sparring, you know, he wants to become a fitness influencer now.
To his credit, by the way, he posts videos of you hitting him and him going down. Normally when people post, they cherry-pick what makes them look good. He does the opposite. He posts of you hitting him with liver shots and him falling down over and over again. Like a compilation.
Yeah. And also to his credit, he started 4 or 5 months ago, not super serious, not that he's doing it every day, but he actually got really good really fast. I've been training much longer, but a lot of people on the Twitter comments actually are voting for you versus Sam. So yeah, maybe we should give the fans what they need.
Let's give the fans what they want. Yeah, we need, we need like a Kickstarter or GoFundMe or something. It's like, if, uh, if, if, if certain number of people vote for this or buy the pre-buy a pay-per-view, $5 pay-per-view of this, we'll do it. We need like whatever, 10,000 pre-buys.
Okay, 10,000 pre-buys, that's the goal.
10,000 pre-buys of a $10 pay-per-view and then we'll do it.
Okay, let's set it up and then you can hear me like, you give me like, I don't know, 4 months to, to train.
And we'll film the training.
4 months to train.
Yeah, 4 to 6.
Each one can get one, uh, good trainer, boxing trainer. Uh, do you— do you— would you want to do boxing or MMA or—
no, boxing. I don't have time to learn 5 martial arts, so we'll get to the point where we're both shitty at boxing and then we'll do it.
Yeah, let's do it. I think we should do it, and then maybe Suli and I can box too as the pre—
uh, yeah, we should, we should get— It's a CEO boxing tournament.
Yes. And we stream it and we do it in a really small ratchet, like boxing gym here. So we can go there and then we'll just stream it for the people. 10,000 prebuys. That's a lot, but I think it's doable. I think it's doable. Especially if we can get the support of your listeners.
Yeah, we're saying it now. People will just have to see We'll just have to get them a link and let's get them a link and let's do it.
Yes. All right. I cannot wait.
All right, perfect. Okay, I got to run. I got to do a call with this guy. Ramon, thanks for being on. Where should people find you? So now you're Twitter famous. So is it @ramonvanmeer? Is that your Twitter handle, right?
Actually, I feel so dumb. I don't know, actually. Let me see. Because I barely used it since until yesterday. Yeah, @ramonvanmeer, all together.
@ramonvanmeer. Go buy, if you have a small dog, like I have a Maltipoo, I have 4 of your ramps in my house 'cause it's a lifesaver. Yes. Otherwise your dogs get like, you know, injured backs and they're jumping off couches and stuff like that. That's like, imagine jumping onto something or off of something that's 3 times your height, right? That's what they're doing. And so these ramps are onto the bed, onto the couch, up the stairs, you know, that's how I use them. So go buy, go buy some ramps from Alpha Paw.
Well, thank you for the plug. Thank you, it was good talking, and I see you at the boxing match.
Amazing.