Dan Martell - How to Grow a Business (The Simple Way) - Lowell Rempel @ Dropified Interview

00:00:00.000 I had to make the decision like, hey, I either need to sell, give away, or just shut down.

00:00:18.260 Lowell, what's up?

00:00:19.460 How you doing, man?

00:00:20.140 Dude, I'm so good, and I'm really excited to have you here.

00:00:23.440 It's been fun working with you guys at Dropified, seeing your success.

00:00:28.960 Congrats on that.

00:00:30.800 Getting to know you better.

00:00:32.900 I'm still excited to visit my wife.

00:00:35.700 I told my wife about your beautiful home.

00:00:38.700 She likes that kind of thing, so I'm excited.

00:00:40.500 And you mentioned UTVs that the kids are excited

00:00:43.980 to play around with, so I know that's gonna be a lot of fun.

00:00:46.820 But I wanna talk about the entrepreneurial journey

00:00:49.480 and yours specifically, because I think a lot of people

00:00:51.420 are gonna relate with kind of the marketing background

00:00:54.520 and then seeing an opportunity in the market

00:00:56.080 and building software.

00:00:57.620 But let's, where are we at today in regards to the business?

00:01:00.780 And I know you're involved in many businesses,

00:01:02.460 but like in regards to Dropified,

00:01:04.700 talk about kind of where you guys are at today.

00:01:08.060 Well, you know what, it's always a journey, right?

00:01:10.260 It doesn't matter where you're at, but things are good.

00:01:13.940 I mean, we're expanding, we're planning,

00:01:16.680 we're always looking at growth opportunities

00:01:19.240 and just sort of mapping out that whole journey

00:01:23.620 and how to get there, right?

00:01:24.920 So no, things are good.

00:01:27.240 Yeah, and in regards to the business size

00:01:29.900 and the customers you're serving, the offer,

00:01:32.200 like what do you guys do?

00:01:33.120 Like if you had to explain to other people,

00:01:34.560 obviously I know, but.

00:01:36.040 Yeah, no, great question.

00:01:37.500 So it's, I mean, really we're a suite of software,

00:01:40.280 but if I was just to like nail it down

00:01:43.640 to like what exactly do you do?

00:01:45.960 We just take all the hard stuff

00:01:47.880 that people have to do with physical products

00:01:49.980 in an e-commerce business

00:01:51.300 and we make it really easy.

00:01:52.960 We automate everything.

00:01:54.300 So it truly was like a very small kind of, you know, drop shipping company.

00:02:00.900 And then we turned that into like that on steroids sort of thing, right?

00:02:05.700 So it now, it doesn't matter what level of business that you're in,

00:02:08.740 if you're a complete newbie or you're pretty advanced,

00:02:11.380 there's some pretty cool opportunities that we solve and just help people.

00:02:15.340 Why is drop shipping such a big thing right now?

00:02:19.320 Well, you know, it's always been there.

00:02:21.360 And I don't even love the word dropshipping because it's sort of, it's almost like, I don't know, it's some sort of like arbitrage or something like it automatically associates you with some sort of, I don't know, like a newbie or a one time kind of business owner.

00:02:37.360 But really, dropshipping is, because so many people are new to the whole, you know, Shopify world and just e-commerce in general, I think it's just a term that's used that, hey, you know, like, I don't have to touch these products.

00:02:52.700 I don't have to do these things.

00:02:53.840 I can just focus on what I do best and, you know, run my online store or whatever.

00:02:58.840 But you're never actually touching the product, right?

00:03:02.020 So for some newer entrepreneurs, that's probably like, what's the big deal?

00:03:06.480 Not a big deal, but for someone-

00:03:08.300 It just sounds like the right way to build a business.

00:03:10.240 Yeah, I mean, it's pretty cool that you can scale all sorts of levels

00:03:15.500 and you're not really ever buying inventory until you've already been paid.

00:03:19.660 You're literally not buying inventory.

00:03:22.540 Nothing.

00:03:23.500 Okay, so then your job is just purely to market.

00:03:26.760 Now, is it your own brand though?

00:03:29.900 I mean, for those that are kind of new to this,

00:03:32.640 what makes it a great business model?

00:03:37.260 Well, like we have different levels.

00:03:39.360 So if you were a complete newbie

00:03:41.580 or just somebody that's starting out, you know,

00:03:43.280 and you had your store

00:03:44.520 and you're all excited to sell something.

00:03:46.100 So, you know, the typical way of like sourcing a product

00:03:49.240 and trying to, you know, get that into your hands

00:03:52.000 and figure out all the different, you know,

00:03:53.780 did you buy it at the right price?

00:03:55.220 Did you, is it even going to sell?

00:03:56.660 Like you don't know any of these things.

00:03:58.040 Typically you're taking a pretty good gamble

00:04:00.180 on whatever kind of product that you first sourced

00:04:02.920 or inventory or whatever, right?

00:04:04.800 So this way, it makes it like within, you know, 30 seconds, once you've picked your product and whatever else, you can instantly import that into the software, which brings it right into your store.

00:04:17.240 You can edit the picture so it's yours on the way in, the title, the description, you know, all sorts of pricing metrics and matrices based on what you're, you know, if the price goes up, it'll automatically adjust your price.

00:04:31.780 And it's just a fully automated software end-to-end sort of thing, right?

00:04:36.900 So, and then when you sell that product, right?

00:04:40.780 So it's 2 a.m., you sold the product, whatever.

00:04:43.680 It automatically notifies, you know, whoever the dropshipper is 0.96

00:04:47.780 to actually send the product to the address.

00:04:49.680 It's all white-labeled, so there's no mark of-

00:04:54.040 So they print your information on the box.

00:04:57.860 Right, right.

00:04:58.540 So this is sort of the entry-level thing.

00:04:59.940 And it even puts the tracking number into the software,

00:05:03.240 like which your e-commerce store is going to pump out

00:05:06.060 and show the end user, yeah, exactly,

00:05:11.140 where exactly that product is.

00:05:12.280 So that's sort of the entry level stuff.

00:05:14.380 And then we have something really on the more high end,

00:05:17.020 just looking at where we wanted to see the journey

00:05:20.580 of our customers go.

00:05:22.200 So we started, I think about a year and a half ago,

00:05:24.900 it's called Private Label On Demand.

00:05:27.040 So this is pretty cool.

00:05:28.460 So being that I came from the whole space of like supplements

00:05:32.540 and health and wellness and stuff like that,

00:05:34.840 we wanted to see an opportunity where customers could,

00:05:38.520 you know, come up with their own label, their own design,

00:05:41.460 and it would like instantly generate like a mock-up

00:05:44.100 and a product that they could sell,

00:05:46.060 but it wasn't even real yet.

00:05:47.140 So it's in their store and it's like, I don't know,

00:05:49.440 like a protein powder and it has like their own brand,

00:05:52.580 their own look, their own feel, you know,

00:05:54.300 all that kind of stuff.

00:05:55.800 But if a customer buys that,

00:05:59.040 the label has not even been printed yet.

00:06:00.780 Like nothing is actually real yet

00:06:02.920 until they make a purchase.

00:06:04.660 And when that happens, the label's printed,

00:06:06.800 it's applied, it's your brand.

00:06:08.140 So whatever they saw in your store

00:06:09.780 is exactly what arrives in two to three days in the US,

00:06:13.340 which is pretty crazy.

00:06:14.700 How do you make, I mean,

00:06:15.880 and I wanna get to the origin story

00:06:17.380 because it's gotta be fascinating,

00:06:18.760 but like, how do you even get the economics to work that way?

00:06:22.440 Like, how do you as Dropify,

00:06:24.840 Like you guys are a software company.

00:06:26.740 Do you have a Dropified 3PL place 0.94

00:06:31.360 for printing off 3D labels?

00:06:32.980 Like, how do you do this?

00:06:34.400 Yeah, no, that's good.

00:06:35.240 Well, yeah, we do.

00:06:36.440 I mean, I think to just start this all yourself

00:06:39.980 and I've done that in a business before.

00:06:41.680 And as soon as you start touching products

00:06:43.500 or doing something that's out of your world

00:06:46.540 or out of your space,

00:06:47.600 it starts costing money real fast, right?

00:06:49.820 So we started to look for partners

00:06:53.140 that we could do this with

00:06:54.240 that already had an old school kind of a business

00:06:57.400 and they were open and looking for growth and expansion

00:07:00.720 and doing something new.

00:07:02.180 So we sort of pitched them on the idea.

00:07:04.460 And now we have multiple partners

00:07:06.340 that are doing the exact same thing.

00:07:07.540 For different product categories.

00:07:08.620 Yeah, yeah.

00:07:09.620 Crazy. 0.84

00:07:10.700 How do you come up with this idea? 0.99

00:07:12.940 You know what?

00:07:13.780 I'm a very visionary kind of person.

00:07:16.980 So I can usually see the business through

00:07:20.340 before we even started, right?

00:07:21.840 So that's a big part of what I do.

00:07:24.460 And then I break it all down, reverse engineer it,

00:07:27.580 and basically make a plan on how to execute

00:07:30.400 and make that happen, right?

00:07:31.820 So like anybody, there's walls and hurdles

00:07:34.520 and stuff like that, but those are just problems

00:07:36.960 that you turn into opportunities, right?

00:07:38.740 But the story of, I mean, even your entrepreneurial journey

00:07:41.920 starting, I think, as an agency, right?

00:07:44.420 Like a marketing agency, you built a big agency, sold that.

00:07:48.540 Tell us the story of Lowell's, you know,

00:07:51.340 starting off as an entrepreneur.

00:07:53.080 Oh, geez, man, that was way back.

00:07:55.080 I was a kid.

00:07:56.160 Like I was literally like pitching

00:07:58.560 little things all the time.

00:07:59.720 I think I was the youngest kid to sell something.

00:08:04.480 Yeah, no, even when I was a kid,

00:08:06.040 I used to have this paper road, right?

00:08:07.820 This is where this all started

00:08:08.940 because I always knew that there was something bigger.

00:08:11.160 And my parents were always sort of a,

00:08:14.080 like they were like a teacher and an engineer, right?

00:08:16.260 So they were not into the business thing.

00:08:18.760 And any time I had a business idea,

00:08:20.220 it was sort of like just like, you know,

00:08:22.000 it's not a good path and you should, you know,

00:08:24.020 continue, go to college, get, you know,

00:08:25.640 typical kind of conversations.

00:08:27.200 But I kept always challenging that

00:08:30.140 and I sort of believed in what I thought I could do.

00:08:33.740 And so I was literally, I was, this is a funny story

00:08:36.660 because I was like nine years old, literally.

00:08:38.580 And I thought of this idea that I could go wash windows

00:08:40.840 in this little town that I grew up in, right?

00:08:43.520 and uh so i saved up forever and i i know this doesn't sound like much but when you're a kid

00:08:48.740 making like two bucks a day or whatever it was but i saved up 60 bucks to get this uh like a

00:08:54.440 wind washing kid how old i was nine years old dude right i didn't have 60 bucks at nine years

00:08:59.820 old that's crazy that was a long time a lot of saving so anyways got this whole window washing

00:09:03.780 gear all this kind of stuff and my parents i couldn't even tell them what i was doing because

00:09:08.220 they they would think this was a horrible idea and i shouldn't spend my money on that blah blah

00:09:12.340 bus so anyways i did it and i i went and i bought all this equipment and i went downtown i started

00:09:17.360 pitching people on washing the windows for like five bucks a window or whatever but that day

00:09:22.000 i think i made about 180 bucks and uh which is crazy at that time nine years old so i i got the

00:09:28.920 bug i got the itch literally from there it started a whole just a realm of things right so and i i

00:09:35.640 always tried to step it up like like uh you know years i don't know a year into it let's say it

00:09:41.460 It wasn't years, but the next year,

00:09:43.280 all of a sudden I had competition

00:09:44.660 and all these older kids and all this kind of stuff.

00:09:47.760 So I thought of this idea,

00:09:48.580 well, what if I had this contract?

00:09:51.000 So I went around to all the businesses

00:09:52.940 and they must've thought it was so funny,

00:09:54.340 like this nine-year-old kid,

00:09:56.520 hucking along this bucket of water and stuff like that.

00:09:59.000 But I actually had a little contract

00:10:00.760 on this old dot matrix printer.

00:10:03.180 And I'd get them to sign it

00:10:04.240 that if I did their windows all year long,

00:10:06.100 I'd do it for a better price and stuff like that.

00:10:07.980 But it was, it just, that's where it all morphed.

00:10:10.800 So it just sort of went from there.

00:10:11.980 So how do you go from that

00:10:13.340 to becoming like a marketing guy?

00:10:16.800 Well, I think I always learned,

00:10:19.020 I learned how to sell things.

00:10:20.360 I learned how to like put a story around things

00:10:22.500 and how to solve someone's problems.

00:10:25.740 And some of that stuff I didn't know

00:10:27.460 that I understood that till later on.

00:10:29.820 Like I sort of thought like everybody was the same,

00:10:31.860 like we all market the same way we all.

00:10:34.200 But I started realizing pretty quick into it

00:10:36.360 that actually not that many people truly know that.

00:10:39.800 Like even people that were working for agencies

00:10:42.040 or working for marketing firms or whatever,

00:10:44.760 they actually, they knew the lingo,

00:10:47.960 they knew all the stuff,

00:10:48.800 but they didn't actually really know

00:10:50.620 how to execute a proper marketing plan

00:10:52.720 and how to have success with that, right?

00:10:55.620 So that's sort of how that morphed.

00:10:58.860 But yeah, things just grew.

00:11:00.340 I mean, I did a lot of stuff as a kid,

00:11:02.960 you know, ice cream buildings,

00:11:04.260 put myself through college, all this kind of stuff.

00:11:06.200 Had your little ice cream stand?

00:11:07.520 Yeah, we had ice cream stands all over the city, Edmonton.

00:11:11.080 All over?

00:11:11.540 How many did you have?

00:11:12.380 I had three of them, right?

00:11:13.720 Dude, that's crazy.

00:11:14.300 Yeah, so we had all the soft ice cream.

00:11:16.480 Cash.

00:11:16.680 Yeah, exactly.

00:11:17.660 Gotta love that.

00:11:18.620 So a good little summer gig and put myself through college.

00:11:21.540 And then, yeah, just sort of, and then, you know, I was always told, like, you got to do the corporate thing.

00:11:27.540 You got to, you know, so I did try that out and, you know, I did okay in it, but it just-

00:11:32.460 How long did you last?

00:11:33.080 That was at Coca-Cola?

00:11:34.800 Yeah, I did.

00:11:36.020 Well, I did that for about seven years,

00:11:38.220 but I had the side hustles going on, right?

00:11:42.220 So, yeah.

00:11:42.880 So, yeah.

00:11:43.480 So, I actually, I started a chain of stores

00:11:45.280 selling hot tubs and pools and patio furniture

00:11:48.440 and billiard equipment and stuff like that.

00:11:50.260 So, I had that at the same time running this.

00:11:53.040 Dude, it's crazy.

00:11:53.920 That was pretty fun.

00:11:54.680 So, you had a corporate job at Coca-Cola,

00:11:56.820 retail stores selling hot tubs and pools.

00:12:00.940 Yeah.

00:12:02.000 And then decide to...

00:12:04.060 What made you decide to go all in on just your own thing

00:12:07.260 and leave the corporate thing?

00:12:09.840 Well, we had a pretty big journey.

00:12:12.620 Our middle child, our daughter, was born with half of a heart.

00:12:16.940 And it was a big way to just take you out of whatever you're doing in life,

00:12:21.940 and it just turned you right upside down.

00:12:23.980 So everything changed when that happened.

00:12:26.940 We were just sucked right out of our lives,

00:12:28.700 and we had to go to a children's hospital that wasn't available here.

00:12:31.380 and we were there for like months and months and months, right?

00:12:35.200 So I had to make a decision and, you know,

00:12:38.220 I think it's a lot of time when you have time,

00:12:41.100 when you have space, you got time to just figure things out

00:12:43.460 and, you know, you're not really thinking about yourself so much,

00:12:46.360 but I did have some time to go through stuff

00:12:48.580 and I thought, you know what, like life's short, right?

00:12:50.920 And why try to do all these things for someone else

00:12:54.340 when I could just focus all on myself

00:12:55.980 and, you know, keep growing my own thing,

00:12:58.960 create my own time, you know, do all that kind of stuff.

00:13:01.740 So that was sort of the big transition period.

00:13:05.280 You know, at first, I mean, you learn how to manage

00:13:10.640 and do all these things at the same time.

00:13:12.140 But at first, I think it was a little bit

00:13:14.640 of a security blanket, right?

00:13:15.900 You have this corporate gig, it's still paying you well.

00:13:18.520 And, you know, you always have that sort of,

00:13:20.680 or you feel that you need that for some reason, right?

00:13:23.400 So, or I did anyways, so.

00:13:25.580 Felt safe.

00:13:26.500 Yeah.

00:13:27.340 And then what made you decide to do the marketing agency

00:13:31.620 out of all, I mean, dude, you did papers

00:13:34.280 and window cleaning and hot tubs. 0.76

00:13:37.240 Why did you choose that?

00:13:40.600 Well, you know, for the chain of stores I had,

00:13:43.660 I was really good at growing it

00:13:45.480 and marketing it and doing that.

00:13:47.060 So my younger brother, who's quite a bit younger

00:13:50.100 had had quite a bit of success online.

00:13:52.100 So he was always challenging or just saying like,

00:13:54.200 man, you gotta take this online.

00:13:55.880 You gotta do, like your brain online would,

00:13:58.420 you know, you'd just blow it up sort of thing, right?

00:14:00.300 So, and I didn't really know what he meant by that.

00:14:02.900 Like, just like, I don't even know what he was selling

00:14:04.940 and it was sort of, you know,

00:14:06.120 at that time it was still fairly new, the online space.

00:14:09.380 So it was, you know, that newness

00:14:12.200 and just maybe not understanding.

00:14:14.060 This would have been like 90, 95.

00:14:17.400 Oh dude, this is super early.

00:14:18.760 So yeah.

00:14:19.600 This isn't even Facebook.

00:14:20.780 This is like.

00:14:22.540 Right, yeah, exactly.

00:14:23.480 Crazy.

00:14:24.320 Google, is Google even out?

00:14:26.840 I mean, not even.

00:14:27.680 This is Alta Vista.

00:14:29.160 You said 95, right?

00:14:30.560 Excite, yeah.

00:14:31.100 So this is when he was first planting this in the brain.

00:14:34.140 Okay.

00:14:34.520 Right.

00:14:35.300 But I didn't go right away.

00:14:36.900 I actually, you know, I stuck it out for quite a while.

00:14:40.280 And I was just sort of-

00:14:41.020 What was he doing on the internet back then?

00:14:42.780 He was doing like sales letters.

00:14:46.420 And this was like before-

00:14:47.960 Oh yeah, before VSLs and all that kind of stuff.

00:14:50.500 It was like early on, right?

00:14:52.260 so um so yeah and he was a pretty young guy i mean he was nine years younger than me and i i was

00:14:58.900 watching him have a lot of success and again at that time there wasn't even near as many people

00:15:03.460 you know using the internet and all that kind of stuff right so um so anyways just watching him he

00:15:08.820 had the bug in the ear and he kept doing this over and over again um so enough for him like you know

00:15:14.820 what i'm gonna actually i'm gonna play around with this i'm gonna try out see how i do sort of thing

00:15:18.820 And, and, uh, yeah, I mean, the first thing you did, like, what did you, did you buy a course?

00:15:24.640 Did you? Yeah, man, I was, I mean, I always wanted to learn, but there wasn't that much

00:15:28.720 stuff out there really. Right. So, um, and then what was funny is all these people that I was

00:15:35.840 learning from, you know, I was trying to like live up to what they would do or how they do stuff.

00:15:40.980 But I realized pretty quick that that wasn't really what I actually wanted. Like that was,

00:15:45.540 their dream or their thing. And I also learned that I was actually, I was a lot bigger than

00:15:51.800 most of these guys that were selling some of this stuff, even though I wasn't that big at

00:15:54.820 that time. Right. So, um, so I mean, I, I failed at lots of things too, right? I mean, it wasn't

00:15:59.380 just all, all great sort of thing. There was lots of things that didn't work out and stuff, but,

00:16:03.800 um, I got into the whole like CPA kind of space and, uh, and just, just, uh, creating lots of

00:16:11.040 leads for companies and selling that affiliate kind of promoting. Yeah, doing some affiliate space.

00:16:16.720 And then I learned how to like sort of, I was really good at the organic space, like SEO and

00:16:22.920 stuff like that. So we'd fill up like all sorts of like pages and sort of own all of those

00:16:30.020 properties. Like, you know, it wasn't just like first position. I would own like 20 positions.

00:16:35.380 So the first two pages was me and we would have something like, I don't know, like a dental

00:16:40.720 hygienist or dental surgery, New York or whatever. Right. So we would own all of those pages, but

00:16:46.760 they were pretty generic. Right. So I would sell those properties and just basically sell those

00:16:52.380 leads. And I'd always have a way. It was, it was literally like real estate. Like it was so

00:16:56.620 profitable. And if anybody's like, Hey, you know, this isn't really working. Like with one click,

00:17:00.400 we turn it all off. Their phones would stop ringing. The emails would stop. Leads start

00:17:04.900 coming, you know, and that we'd already have somebody in the pipeline to come back in sort

00:17:08.540 of thing. Right. And it was, I don't think once somebody canceled and didn't call back within 24

00:17:13.340 hours. Right. Turn it back on. Yeah. So it was, it's just stuff like that. Right. So that's,

00:17:17.820 that's where it sort of all morphed and started. And, and so I got, I grew into the whole agency

00:17:25.300 side of thing where it wasn't like agency to direct to a business, but it was more,

00:17:31.160 like the agencies, the marketing firms, all that kind of stuff. We were actually selling our

00:17:36.600 services to all of those companies. It's like a white label. Yeah. Yeah. So that grew and it

00:17:43.240 actually, it really took off, but it was, you know, when you start scaling things,

00:17:49.440 that's when I started to learn some really hard lessons, like how hard it is to have consistency

00:17:54.480 or if you didn't have a system on this, how you just couldn't follow through on some of the

00:18:00.100 that you used to be able to follow through

00:18:01.900 because it's not you anymore, right?

00:18:03.680 You have all these people working for you

00:18:05.180 and you're trying to have the same kind of clarity

00:18:08.560 and all that kind of stuff.

00:18:09.800 But anyways, it was a pretty good journey

00:18:13.840 in the marketing side, we grew.

00:18:15.360 I don't know exactly what size we were,

00:18:18.820 but I think we were one of the largest wholesalers for sure.

00:18:21.720 I mean, we have thousands of agencies underneath us.

00:18:24.660 Wow.

00:18:25.240 So it was, yeah, it was fun.

00:18:26.380 But you mentioned some failures along the way.

00:18:28.380 What are some examples of those?

00:18:31.180 Oh man, we, yeah, we had lots of them.

00:18:34.000 I mean, I was young still and doing quite well.

00:18:37.080 So I was fairly cocky at, you know,

00:18:39.600 what I thought that I knew, you know,

00:18:41.500 like I think we all sort of,

00:18:43.260 a lot of entrepreneurs go through that point

00:18:44.760 where that they've maybe built themselves up

00:18:47.220 or done enough things that they think

00:18:48.680 that they sort of, they got it all figured out.

00:18:50.620 Yeah, everything I touch turns a gold.

00:18:52.220 But yeah, that's right.

00:18:54.320 But as you start maturing and learning

00:18:57.100 that really you don't actually know that much at all, right?

00:19:00.860 Like life gives you some pretty hard lessons.

00:19:02.860 So we lost some, a couple of like really big clients

00:19:07.320 probably cause we were more, we were just young.

00:19:09.660 We were cocky.

00:19:10.500 We thought that we knew a lot more than we did.

00:19:14.160 And you know, there was some of those kinds of things,

00:19:17.840 but just, yeah, there was lots of hard lessons.

00:19:20.620 Like just, you know, growing too fast,

00:19:24.800 not having the right systems in place.

00:19:27.180 A lot of staff, like great staff that, you know,

00:19:31.660 I had to grow up too.

00:19:32.620 Like I was always in this entrepreneur mode,

00:19:35.260 but I learned that, you know,

00:19:36.280 to grow into being like a business person

00:19:39.040 is quite a different place, right?

00:19:40.900 Like how to manage people and, you know,

00:19:43.380 understand what they want and help them get there.

00:19:45.460 And, you know, like it was a whole new stream of things.

00:19:47.600 Well, there's a difference between like that, you know,

00:19:49.480 quadrant, the Kiyosaki's quadrant,

00:19:52.020 which I poured out of like self-employed to then,

00:19:55.640 you know, business owner to kind of investor

00:19:59.820 in like the who you need to become

00:20:03.080 to be able to run a business, right?

00:20:06.360 Definitely.

00:20:07.200 And I think when you're kind of side hustling,

00:20:09.780 it's kind of that self-employed attitude

00:20:11.720 where you just get people to do stuff,

00:20:13.220 but you know, at scale, you need to learn how to lead.

00:20:17.780 What were some of those,

00:20:19.660 how did that show up in your business,

00:20:22.060 not knowing how to do that?

00:20:23.400 Like what were some of the issues you had to deal with?

00:20:25.540 Oh man, we were having like from turnover,

00:20:27.980 like really good people that we were losing.

00:20:29.900 They just quit?

00:20:30.980 Yeah, just quit or else we were teaching people

00:20:33.740 how to do stuff.

00:20:34.580 And then all of a sudden they were our competitor.

00:20:36.300 That was a good one, right?

00:20:37.460 So that happened a lot?

00:20:38.900 Well, at first, cause we didn't have all the proper contracts

00:20:41.640 and we, you know, we didn't go through some of that stuff

00:20:43.780 or, you know, just even expectations with clients.

00:20:47.880 Like we were growing so fast.

00:20:49.440 So all these agencies were selling things,

00:20:52.500 but they didn't really understand marketing themselves.

00:20:55.500 So they were selling things

00:20:56.380 that were like impossible to do to their clients.

00:20:59.400 And then they wanted us to deliver, right?

00:21:00.900 So there was always this sort of expectation management

00:21:03.900 and like resetting things and teaching them how to sell

00:21:06.740 and going through things.

00:21:08.100 And that's when I started learning

00:21:09.000 that most of these agencies really didn't know

00:21:11.940 that much about marketing, right?

00:21:13.540 And they were marketing agencies.

00:21:14.680 Yeah, yeah, exactly, right?

00:21:16.240 So that's when it was like, huh, like an aha moment

00:21:19.700 sort of just, you know, in general or expectations

00:21:24.580 of who you would assume that every agency

00:21:26.500 would just know what they're doing

00:21:27.540 because they're a marketing firm or whatever, right?

00:21:29.840 No, I think we both learned that along the journey.

00:21:32.360 That's not the case.

00:21:33.300 And then, so you go from that

00:21:35.260 to learning the e-commerce side really well

00:21:38.400 and start teaching people e-commerce.

00:21:40.520 I believe you were involved with an academy

00:21:43.100 on the e-commerce side.

00:21:44.860 Yeah, so I did really well online,

00:21:47.800 like starting a new store.

00:21:49.840 I could scale that to millions of dollars in sales.

00:21:53.020 And then I dabbled in Amazon.

00:21:56.020 We did really well on Amazon.

00:21:58.360 Some in the supplement space as well,

00:22:00.160 like pet supplements and stuff like that.

00:22:01.880 So while we were doing that all,

00:22:05.180 just that typical entrepreneur mindset,

00:22:08.260 you start doing all these side hustles

00:22:09.920 that are turning into companies.

00:22:11.220 And because people knew that I knew how to market,

00:22:13.600 all of a sudden I was being involved

00:22:14.860 in all these other companies, right?

00:22:16.540 So I was getting pulled like all over the place

00:22:19.220 and honestly just giving every company crumbs, right?

00:22:22.300 It wasn't, it was my own problem

00:22:24.620 because I didn't say no, I'm just like, yeah, for sure.

00:22:26.700 Of course I could do that.

00:22:27.540 Of course I could run that, right?

00:22:29.280 But I was just running out of time.

00:22:30.880 It was, you know, sort of the same sort of thing

00:22:33.680 of what I was saying earlier with my daughter

00:22:36.120 and making a choice.

00:22:37.500 And I was always preaching, you know, focus,

00:22:39.720 have focus, you know, follow through, have focus.

00:22:42.400 but I was like the least focused person.

00:22:44.940 Like I had so many things going on and it just-

00:22:48.600 How many projects or businesses at one point did you-

00:22:51.720 Oh man, I had 17 different companies that was-

00:22:57.040 That you committed some kind of outcome for.

00:23:00.360 Yeah, and it wasn't like just on the board,

00:23:01.880 like it was like running them,

00:23:03.200 like doing the marketing or strategy or, you know,

00:23:06.720 mapping out the customer journey, whatever that is, right?

00:23:09.640 So it was pretty-

00:23:11.040 How did you tell everybody, how did you make the shift?

00:23:14.380 To get out of those?

00:23:15.200 Yeah.

00:23:17.120 I had a really hard,

00:23:19.720 just a hard look at stuff of where I really wanted to go.

00:23:22.280 And when I started reversing in or reverse engineering that,

00:23:27.020 I just, I had to make the decision like,

00:23:30.060 okay, we either need to sell, give away or just shut down.

00:23:34.280 But is something happening in your life

00:23:36.200 to make you kind of act as a forcing function

00:23:38.780 for you to make that decision?

00:23:40.700 I don't think there was one,

00:23:41.540 it was probably a series of things,

00:23:42.900 but I think I wasn't getting where I really wanted to go.

00:23:48.640 So I had a plan for myself.

00:23:50.460 And death by a thousand paper cuts.

00:23:52.140 Yeah, exactly.

00:23:53.140 There was just so many things going on

00:23:54.740 that I wasn't happy anymore.

00:23:58.360 Like all the things I used to get up and just love to do.

00:24:01.600 I was sort of, I was just doing a big job.

00:24:04.260 It felt like, like I was just getting up.

00:24:06.960 Grinding.

00:24:07.860 Yeah, and again, starting to listen to some of the people

00:24:12.040 like, you got to grind it every day and hustle hard

00:24:14.180 and all this stuff.

00:24:15.020 I was just falling into all this stuff.

00:24:16.300 But I'm like, hold on a second.

00:24:17.880 Like, what am I really trying to do here?

00:24:19.640 Where am I trying to go?

00:24:22.100 So just some hard lessons of where I wanted to go.

00:24:26.340 That's when I started getting rid of the things that weren't

00:24:29.280 really making me happy or I just didn't need.

00:24:31.800 Even if they were making money, it was just like,

00:24:34.460 I remember some of the employees that we

00:24:36.020 they gave a bunch of businesses too.

00:24:38.300 They were just like, why are you doing this?

00:24:40.360 You literally just took customers and said,

00:24:43.200 you can have this go deliver.

00:24:44.640 If we couldn't sell it fast enough, it was like,

00:24:46.700 okay, I got an awesome opportunity for you guys.

00:24:48.420 How long did this period last?

00:24:50.360 I did this in a year and a half.

00:24:52.220 And I brought this down to like four companies.

00:24:54.020 So it was pretty quick.

00:24:55.320 The ones that you're willing to invest in.

00:24:57.360 Yeah.

00:24:58.700 It's interesting because entrepreneurs can create,

00:25:01.060 you know, like complexity is easy, simple is hard.

00:25:06.020 And you looked at this portfolio of companies and said,

00:25:09.020 these are the four that I want to make bets on.

00:25:12.020 Did you ever think that even four was too many?

00:25:16.020 Yeah, but those were all tied together.

00:25:19.020 So there was some structure.

00:25:20.020 There was synergy there.

00:25:21.020 Yeah, exactly.

00:25:22.020 So it wasn't, really it was one encompassing.

00:25:25.020 Four different departments.

00:25:26.020 That's right, yeah.

00:25:27.020 Awesome.

00:25:28.020 Yeah.

00:25:29.020 And was one of those dropified or the early days?

00:25:31.020 That's right, yeah.

00:25:32.020 Got it.

00:25:33.020 Yeah.

00:25:34.020 I mean, recently, you know,

00:25:37.620 we were chatting about your decision to bring in a CEO,

00:25:42.000 you know, like how did, you know, to run Dropified,

00:25:44.920 how did you make that decision?

00:25:46.960 How did you recruit?

00:25:48.540 You know, a lot of people dream of the day

00:25:50.100 they can bring in a CEO to run their business

00:25:52.440 and be an owner.

00:25:54.660 How did you pull that off?

00:25:57.460 Well, you know what?

00:25:58.300 I think the way I was looking at things is that,

00:26:02.280 I mean, we all put lids on ourselves, right?

00:26:04.640 Whether you think that you, or I do anyways,

00:26:07.700 there's definitely some ceilings, you know, some caps,

00:26:10.880 whatever you want to call it sort of thing.

00:26:12.440 Upper limit beliefs, whatever they are.

00:26:13.840 Yeah, Guy Hendrickson talks about this in the big lead.

00:26:16.100 Yeah, exactly, right?

00:26:17.320 So I remember actually years ago, I was listening to this.

00:26:21.180 It was actually an event that we put on

00:26:22.560 and we had a speaker talk and it was a really cool thing

00:26:27.400 that stuck out with me.

00:26:28.380 And he was talking about how, he was talking about a flea,

00:26:31.840 like how small a flea was,

00:26:33.340 like the end of this little pencil lead,

00:26:35.160 sort of like microscopic,

00:26:36.720 but a flea can actually jump about four to five feet, right?

00:26:41.760 Which is crazy, like straight up vertical, right?

00:26:44.080 So I actually Googled this thing.

00:26:45.100 It's actually three feet, right?

00:26:46.840 But still crazy, three feet,

00:26:49.040 this little microscopic thing.

00:26:50.420 However, if you put it in like a mason jar,

00:26:53.180 like the most it'll ever jump,

00:26:54.260 obviously, because there's a lid on it,

00:26:55.860 is six inches, right?

00:26:57.540 But if it reproduces

00:26:59.340 and there's like little baby fleas and stuff,

00:27:01.260 they will never jump more than six inches,

00:27:04.280 even if you take them out of the jar.

00:27:06.760 And I was sort of thinking about this,

00:27:08.360 how we put lids on ourselves, or caps,

00:27:10.820 and I was thinking this on lots of things,

00:27:12.600 like even a big giant elephant or something like that,

00:27:15.960 and you watch them at the zoo or something,

00:27:18.040 and they're locked down with this tiny little nail.

00:27:21.600 Peg, or something.

00:27:22.440 And I'm like, how is that possible?

00:27:24.480 But at one time, it was a lot bigger,

00:27:26.620 and it just got smaller and smaller,

00:27:27.920 and they just sort of gave up.

00:27:28.960 They just know like, you know, so I think all of us can have lids and caps and things on us.

00:27:35.500 So, and I knew that there were some things that even though you have to have that entrepreneur,

00:27:40.200 how you always have a solve, you always have a solution.

00:27:42.940 But, you know, I knew that we could, there was something bigger for us, something better.

00:27:46.700 And if we focused on the things that my partner and myself each were really good at,

00:27:52.660 you know, we would even excel that much more and we'd break through our own lid, our own barrier.

00:27:57.700 And, you know, it's funny. He hasn't been with us for that long, our new CEO, but he is exposing so many things that we already knew of.

00:28:05.760 Like they're not like a big surprise. Right. But for whatever reason, you hide them or you just don't deal with them or, you know, we'll get to that soon.

00:28:14.500 But it's not a priority because either we don't know how to do it or we put a cap on that or we're focused on something else, whatever those things are.

00:28:22.140 But to have somebody that that's what they do,

00:28:25.280 that's their focus, that's their metrics,

00:28:27.120 and they're good at it, it happens very quickly.

00:28:30.100 Like in weeks, we're making like serious progress, right?

00:28:34.140 So it's been awesome, like it's been an amazing journey.

00:28:38.520 So, and I know it's so early to say,

00:28:41.920 but I wish we would have already done this years ago.

00:28:44.200 What are some of the things the CEO kind of came in

00:28:47.380 and saw like in the first few weeks

00:28:50.160 that you might've prioritized differently or not?

00:28:53.400 Yeah, you know what?

00:28:55.980 I think a lot of stuff is just like,

00:28:58.720 because we move fast as entrepreneurs

00:29:01.480 or in our business and everything's moving so quickly,

00:29:06.220 I think sometimes you just forget about

00:29:07.840 some of the simple stuff like contracts

00:29:09.960 with other companies that you have, buttoning those up.

00:29:13.980 Even like some of the accountabilities

00:29:16.920 that we have for our staff,

00:29:17.880 like some of our staff sort of become friends

00:29:19.880 and it's not as much accountabilities

00:29:22.220 or we're not really measuring the KPIs the same way

00:29:25.540 or maybe we've changed, but they haven't changed.

00:29:29.640 So we got to like raise the bar

00:29:31.540 and put some more metrics underneath

00:29:33.280 or accountabilities on different faucets

00:29:36.840 of our business sort of thing, right?

00:29:38.480 So I think it's just, it's clarity, I think.

00:29:42.380 To sum it up in a word, it's clarity

00:29:45.420 and they're focused on what they do best,

00:29:47.900 which is not what we do best, right?

00:29:51.340 So I think just looking at all the advances

00:29:57.120 he's done already, it's moving very quickly.

00:30:00.980 And are you able now to not have to be

00:30:04.260 as involved in the business?

00:30:05.740 And how does that, did you buy your time back

00:30:08.720 or what's the?

00:30:10.260 Yeah, I mean, I'm getting more time to focus

00:30:12.320 just the things that I love to do.

00:30:14.780 there's still a transition period.

00:30:16.700 I mean, there's, and I know this is upset

00:30:19.420 before it's like super clear.

00:30:21.540 So, I mean, we're moving some positions around.

00:30:24.400 There's probably some people that won't be there.

00:30:27.080 We're adding lots of new roles and positions.

00:30:29.760 And so it's good.

00:30:31.540 You know, there's lots of new lingo.

00:30:34.940 And, you know, I mean, I know you know a lot about this,

00:30:37.520 but all the, I know some of it like M&A firms

00:30:40.600 and, you know, all the different kind of lingo and stuff,

00:30:43.020 but he's very vocal in that.

00:30:44.960 And just strategic on his thinking,

00:30:48.380 like just as an example,

00:30:49.980 if we're ever gonna go for an exit,

00:30:52.600 instead of just assuming like, oh yeah, it's EBITDA,

00:30:54.960 it's growth, it's MRR, it's the typical, whatever.

00:30:58.420 Instead of that, he already went to a bunch of M&A firms

00:31:01.120 and he's like, okay, what exactly are our type of company?

00:31:04.680 Exactly, like what are you looking for

00:31:06.580 to sell a company like this?

00:31:07.720 Exactly, and that's what we wanna do, right?

00:31:09.560 So like just common sense stuff,

00:31:11.700 Yeah, it's experience, right?

00:31:14.180 It is, yeah.

00:31:14.980 Yeah, you're buying a solution.

00:31:16.880 A lot of people realize when we hire,

00:31:18.300 we're buying solutions to problems,

00:31:20.040 and sometimes we don't even know the problems

00:31:21.500 that we're going to potentially have.

00:31:22.900 Totally.

00:31:23.460 In that experience.

00:31:26.500 Obviously, you've been through a lot of ups and downs,

00:31:29.660 you know, just building all these companies.

00:31:31.840 What are some of those potential, like,

00:31:34.300 downs that almost took you out of the game?

00:31:38.740 Oh, geez.

00:31:39.340 You know, probably a lot of things,

00:31:42.360 but one thing that I think, you know,

00:31:45.900 for whatever reason,

00:31:46.780 when you first start your journey of whatever,

00:31:50.000 like I believe that there's a lot of things

00:31:52.400 that are put on you

00:31:53.140 that you don't necessarily know

00:31:54.480 that you're carrying, right?

00:31:55.600 So like I was mentioning earlier,

00:31:57.800 how your parents or my parents had this thing

00:32:01.240 where, you know,

00:32:02.420 you shouldn't be doing the entrepreneurship thing.

00:32:05.380 It's, you know, it's very-

00:32:07.080 So your parents weren't entrepreneurs?

00:32:08.140 Not at all.

00:32:08.700 like teacher, engineer, right?

00:32:10.420 Like so far from any kind of business or risk

00:32:14.980 or any of that kind of stuff, right?

00:32:16.440 So even though I had a high belief

00:32:18.920 in what I thought I could do,

00:32:20.980 I still always had that sort of that aura

00:32:23.900 or that thing around me that was telling me,

00:32:26.180 you know, I hadn't quite arrived yet.

00:32:29.360 I didn't, I'm not gonna get there.

00:32:31.020 I'm gonna have a failure.

00:32:32.420 Like it was almost like a crutch.

00:32:34.320 I didn't really realize that

00:32:35.760 till I started looking at like just deep inside

00:32:39.640 of what you really wanna do

00:32:41.380 and where you wanna go and stuff like that.

00:32:43.780 But without knowing that,

00:32:48.100 or even with knowing that,

00:32:50.260 just cause you're like, oh, I'll just like push that off.

00:32:52.580 They didn't really know what they were talking about,

00:32:53.800 but you still carry that for whatever reason,

00:32:55.760 it was things that you had on you, right?

00:32:57.200 So for me to sort of push through that

00:33:02.900 and understand what that is,

00:33:05.540 I probably self detriment or whatever you want to call it,

00:33:13.460 where I probably hurt my own business

00:33:15.360 by just having that filter on there of knowing,

00:33:19.760 you know, it's certain, like hard to explain,

00:33:21.880 but like I almost-

00:33:22.820 Did you have a belief that-

00:33:24.120 Self-sabotage myself is probably a good word of-

00:33:26.380 And was it a belief that you were going to potentially fail?

00:33:29.860 So you kind of approached things timidly or-

00:33:35.020 Yeah, there was some of that or just maybe not following through a whole,

00:33:41.940 you know, all the way through of all the steps that I should have,

00:33:44.440 that I knew that I had to do, but I didn't do because of whatever reason.

00:33:48.440 I don't know.

00:33:49.020 Like there was definitely some things that, you know,

00:33:52.920 like I never had the fail point of like risking like money or effort

00:33:58.780 because I always knew that I could sort of come through.

00:34:00.620 I believed in myself that way.

00:34:01.700 But for a business, for example,

00:34:05.240 there was a certain cap that I put on myself

00:34:07.200 and then all of a sudden,

00:34:08.400 I couldn't get any bigger than that.

00:34:09.820 Like that would be, that was it.

00:34:11.140 Like that was the-

00:34:12.220 This revenue level or size.

00:34:13.400 Yeah, exactly, right?

00:34:14.880 So-

00:34:16.200 How did you break through that?

00:34:18.480 So that was, you know what, it's help.

00:34:21.340 Like you can't, you know, I was reading books,

00:34:24.800 you know, coaches, hanging out with people

00:34:27.940 that are doing better, diving into their business.

00:34:31.680 asking those hard questions, you know,

00:34:35.080 and just even asking like your staff, like hard questions,

00:34:38.900 not, I mean, you have to build the relationship,

00:34:42.160 but like, you know, how could it be a better leader

00:34:44.640 or what are some of the things that I can improve?

00:34:47.840 And if you ask that at first,

00:34:48.840 they're like, oh, what are you talking about?

00:34:49.840 Like everything's awesome, right?

00:34:51.400 But if you actually dive into that a bit,

00:34:52.980 they'll start being honest and they'll be like, yeah,

00:34:54.920 you know, here's a couple of things

00:34:56.240 that you can improve on and stuff like, oh, awesome.

00:34:58.120 Like instead of just like defending it,

00:35:00.540 just reward them on being honest with you.

00:35:03.440 And anyways, once you start like diving into that

00:35:06.460 and jumping into that more and more,

00:35:09.720 that's when I started realizing, you know,

00:35:11.840 a lot of growth opportunities that I could have, right?

00:35:15.180 So instead of just guessing or trying to do it all yourself,

00:35:19.520 that's when I, you know, you look to experts,

00:35:22.160 you start doing coaching, you start doing,

00:35:25.020 and that's when you start to grow.

00:35:26.320 I don't think if you just like, you know,

00:35:28.400 here's your swim coach, you're going to be an awesome swimmer.

00:35:30.360 Like, you have to want it.

00:35:31.980 You have to want to expose yourself, be vulnerable, and be open to growing.

00:35:37.480 So even if you could get a coach, if you're not wanting to improve this,

00:35:41.900 if you're not feeling like you're hitting a limit,

00:35:44.040 that's not going to solve a problem.

00:35:46.420 Yeah, not at all.

00:35:47.600 Yeah, and then when you hit that limit for you, and I totally agree,

00:35:51.620 we got to look inward and then also get that feedback from our employees.

00:35:58.000 I mean, that's, to me, the biggest opportunity, you know, that, you know, as a coach, I recommend all the time.

00:36:05.520 It's like, be honest, because they won't.

00:36:07.400 As you said, they will not tell you right away, you know, the little things like, hey, you know, you're late for meetings or you're inconsistent with your commitments or I feel you're letting this person off the hook and you're holding everybody else to higher standard.

00:36:21.620 And those are the nuances where it's like,

00:36:24.220 oh geez, I never even thought of it that way.

00:36:26.300 That I've discovered has, can really help somebody

00:36:29.940 kind of unlock that next level.

00:36:31.900 Totally.

00:36:33.820 You know, well, as we wrap up,

00:36:35.680 I love asking the question, you know,

00:36:37.960 as you look back, this nine year old kid

00:36:40.900 starting a window cleaning company,

00:36:43.100 you think of the mindset and the beliefs you had back then

00:36:45.180 to, you know, the serial entrepreneur that you are today,

00:36:48.400 who do you feel you needed to become

00:36:51.320 to be the person that gets to run these companies?

00:36:55.120 No, that's a great question.

00:36:56.220 And I think you need to be really honest with yourself, right?

00:37:03.980 And you need to be vulnerable with like people

00:37:08.940 that you trust, your friends, your family, your spouse,

00:37:11.760 and really want to actually not change,

00:37:16.760 want to actually not change,

00:37:19.220 but want to at least address the things

00:37:21.360 that you have problems with or things that you can't,

00:37:26.260 like no one just does everything awesome, right?

00:37:28.800 And I think just being aware of that

00:37:33.120 and being aware that you don't have to do everything yourself.

00:37:38.000 You can actually, you can ask for help

00:37:39.980 and people actually answer and help you, right?

00:37:43.320 In all faucets of life.

00:37:44.740 I mean, I think like looking back,

00:37:46.980 that's one thing I truly did not do.

00:37:49.060 I just tried to always do everything by myself

00:37:51.500 and, you know, just hold everything inside all the time.

00:37:54.780 But sometimes it was just as easy as just asking a question

00:37:57.900 or, you know, like getting real.

00:38:03.120 And so that's probably the, I mean,

00:38:05.120 just looking back at the biggest thing,

00:38:06.280 that's definitely something that I wish

00:38:08.660 I would have done earlier,

00:38:09.640 but I'm glad I'm doing it now

00:38:10.860 because that's when the growth really starts happening.

00:38:14.160 That's when you're, that's when I, I feel anyways.

00:38:17.480 When things start to take off.

00:38:19.060 That's super cool, man.

00:38:20.040 Well, I appreciate the stories, the opportunity to,

00:38:24.380 to learn from your journey and excited to continue seeing the decades ahead

00:38:28.460 of us. I mean, that's the cool part is we've got a whole lot of creating ahead

00:38:31.340 of us. So how do people find you online?

00:38:34.820 Yeah. You know what? Facebook just, you're going to drop five,

00:38:38.920 reach out directly. So that's the best way. Awesome. Cool.

00:38:42.080 Well, I'm sure people are going to reach out, tell you how much they appreciate the wisdom.

00:38:45.660 And I'm looking forward to watching your journey.

00:38:48.100 Awesome.

00:38:48.620 Thanks, man.

00:38:49.080 Thanks, all.

Dan Martell - December 20, 2021

How to Grow a Business (The Simple Way) - Lowell Rempel @ Dropified Interview

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