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 of water a little paper cup we were at this burrito place and you're were like if i could buy this cup for five cents and sell it to you for seven cents that's my passion i feel like i could rule to where to know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a days off on a road less travel never looking back ra ramon he is back the guest from epic episode two 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 get to take down and make a little edit people started hitting me up yeah hey what happened to ramon episode that's how much people care they wanted to know they people were just keep track is that puts episode still in the library something happened some people notice 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 eight thousand followers overnight i went from two thousand to eleven thousand within twenty four hours so wow well it's not just because we retweeted i a lot of stuff you told a great story i'm just actually gonna i wanna find the hook here because you did a good job did 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 two tweet so sam actually helped me okay this will would work this is the concept this is a little bit like how you formatted it then he gave a little bit like i would start with this i will do with this and i will explain that then of course i explained it i sent it to him and he said like at this this looks great how would you have started it normally and then i'll i'll show i'll read what what the end result was what would you normally said or what do you remember what your v one might have been yeah well like you you and not our friend so you also know me personally typically i would not start off with like i bought something for just little acts and now we're doing why i will not to too brag yes but you know sam said like no that's you need to do that and you know it's true as well right so why not just explain it that's that's what people get people interested and now i think we have seven thousand likes and a bunch of like a thousand years between said you said two and a half years ago i bought a dog ramp business for three hundred thousand dollars already interesting with what the heck is a dial ramp business since then i've sold thirty five million dollars of dog boom that's the the hook right yeah you did this little thing trying to do a big thing and then the promise why you should read this trend i'm gonna 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 you didn't take my power writing class but that is exactly what you would have been my star student in this if you had done this as the example because it has all three elements right the what i call the frame i bought it for henry k and i i've sold thirty five million so that's the the wow factor what why should i pay attention to this and the why do i stop scrolling right so you have a scroll stopping number thirty five million dollars of dog mh 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 gonna tell you a b and c but first diagrams which is like you you gave them a lightweight entry way that they they have even if they don't wanna know how you bought it while you scale it all the operational stuff i do need to know what the heck dog ramps what the heck and so beautifully done and then you tell the story and the story is kind of amazing because people know that i don't talk about what my commerce business is but they know that i have at 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 your phone is just going ching to ching it's like the and i didn't even know what this was this in the shopify shopify is like notification sound and you you didn't even notice it because it's always just normal to you your phone is sitting on the table and i was like do you need to get that like what does 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 make money while you sleep that is a sexy idea yeah this is this is 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 ching every five minutes and this literally in that moment i was like i'm gonna do this i'm gonna start an commerce business because i can't sit here and just let ramon have all the fun this is too good so yeah 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 teaching teaching every time to sell but it was fun in the beginning almost like that you know endorsement friend release each time yeah shame exactly and if you're on youtube if you're watching the youtube channel which is just i don't know what what is it youtube dot com slash my first million i think or hu con something like that just search my first million on youtube you'll find but you could see the ramp behind ramon so he's got the all the products behind you so the the company called alpha that's your thing so we're gonna talk about a couple of different things i thought it'd be fun have you on your substitute teacher for sam and like any substitute teacher the class always has more fun when the sub comes in so so that's what we're gonna do i think we're gonna talk about a couple things i wanna talk to you about kind of 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 and then we'll jump back and we'll dig into kinda of like your story so how the heck you got started but i first wanna give the the people and and myself really kind of a crash course on this process of buying businesses because i was amazed when you told me you bought this business for three hundred thousand and did you buy this off of flip or quiet light or where you had to buying this yeah i i bought this on a sip a similar broker like quiet lights they're not around anymore but it was a similar broker not flip up but it's it's more of a broker and and when you bought it i was sort like what the hell like who does that i didn't even know anybody who does like off these like random websites like i can see you buying somebody for a few thousand dollars but three hundred grand i thought was a lot and i was like dogg 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 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 which is skill sets some people are really good at going from zero to one are really builders others are really good at going from one to ten and those are you know scalar i'm not really good at building i'm better at scaling and so i like to buy versus builds 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 so good market yes good markets there's a market fit you know if this house was amazing you would be able to rent this out for two three four 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 product fits has history it doesn't have to be you know 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 dollar ramp business describe kinda what you saw and what made you decide yeah i'm gonna 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 ben 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 will have not a lot of competition at that time not a lot of people were promoting ramps on facebook in instagram or even amazon the website was a very crappy websites where i knew that if we switched to shopify we increase or improve to copy the pictures etcetera the rate would most likely increase this case the two founders were not doing any facebook we got there was no paid acquisition happening at all and even though they had a decent side customer database they were not emailing even existing customers let alone trying to capture you know a card abandonment so this was so a good market which is pets yep it's you know a house you said okay if i renovate the kitchens the floor boards the the the countertops which is like you re redoing the website and the branding of it the copy 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 ticket 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 kinda like what you like or dislike about some of these businesses because i know you did some research on on what's out there today yeah so for example there's one out it's sort of a a cross work puzzle website so think of when i think a lot of people play these awards with friends games or or sc 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 recommendation recommendations website yeah exactly and i kinda love it because it's so there's no nothing to do like you i think there's probably a database that's already pre bill that 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 sell now for nine million dollars they started it in two thousand seventeen does three point five million in revenue and because there's no really team needed it's like it's almost all profit it's like three around three million dollars 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 two pieces on that so the first is with something like this would you how would you try to grow it or would you would you not buy this because you say i 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 that's a good question i will personally not buy it at the moment yeah because the price tag typically i only buy banks in a couple hundred thousand dollar range not millions without knowing too much of the current business model i definitely would try to increase rpm meaning how can we squeeze more advertising dollars out of the same traffic they right 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 if you have an e commerce you wanna increase conversion rates if you have a content sites you wanna increase rpm 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 sc what is this like what other games do they like and maybe that build a sup sister website that does i don't know like what's it called su 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 i don't have nine million dollars and i think when you started doing this 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 into these websites even when you didn't have enough money to buy buy one of these companies yeah i actually bought and sold websites that it started with buying something for five hundred dollars and sold it for you know fifteen hundred dollars i started on flip twelve years ago and you know i've bought pi website that sells pi you can send a picture of san and it makes a pinata him yes a company in mix in texas would make pi and then ship it directly to the customer so i bought that for five thousand dollars that's great together improve the website traffic and make my money back in two and a half months and then sold it a month later for twenty two thousand right so it's not huge numbers but those really you know helped me to grow little bit and really get a lot of experience when i started soap pump i actually saw a similar website for sale on flip that was for sale for a hundred thousand dollars was in the daytime tv error too and the topic was about the daytime tv of course i didn't had money i had like a couple thousand dollars i wasn't not able to buy that but what i did is like hey let's see if there 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 you if people have listened to episode two they know the full story we won't go the full story again this time but your claim to fame the what episode two 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 you know i don't know the young and the restless here's the recap here's the spoilers of what's coming next so you kinda built like a spoiler site for daytime soap opera with like who the heck thinks of that and then you ended up selling it for nine or ten million dollars cash and that's like an amazing amazing exit and this is from a guy who has never watched the stop opera episode in his life so i think people love that because it was so a random but b interesting and relatable how 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 a hundred thousand dollars for sale and you were like cool like i don't have a hundred thousand dollars but if this is worth a hundred thousand dollars 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 when i met you you i was like alright what's your passion silicon valley style and you were like you know what problem you really wanna solve what what topic what industry 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 five cents and sell it to you for seven cents that's my passion like i like to buy things existing 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 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 thirty fan pages or something like that because at the time you could promote a page 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 kinda test what topics are people most engaged with what 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 three were something like what was it is like right wing politics like soap opera and what was the last one it was like a wrestling or something like that yeah wrestling was really popular soaps and politics cars were also pretty pretty high up right and then you were like you know i hate politics i don't wanna do politics what's the next best one soap opera okay hire this woman in the midwest to right blogs every day about soap opera and then drive traffic baby sell wants to go sell some paper cups exactly and i just didn't really overthink it i didn't wrote a business plan i just like go went on upwork dot com hey looking for a writer that can write soap opera spoilers put in very simple blog up just to test to see would people go from facebook onto a blog and write story and that's how it basically started and then you know started with tencent cents today from making from google adsense accents and then the dollar day and then ten dollars and that's how it grew right okay let's look at a couple more deals and then we'll we'll we'll jump out again so give me give me another one that you saw before you came on the pod that that you wanna talk about yeah so this this is one i just saw an hour ago i just thought i was interested interesting and it's a goat milk soap website so goat what the heck is that yes so apparently goat milk soap is a better for environment and it's better for they say it's cruelty free because apparently a lot of soaps traditional soaps they do testing on animals etcetera so they claim and like forgive me for people that you know know about goats milk so i this is the first time i heard about it and that's why that intrigued me the this could probably be a product that people that use this already passionate about same like you know people that are keto are super passionate or you know there's tons of these examples where it's a pretty small niche spread people are so passionate that they they will spread the war for you so this is why website you can find it on flip just search goat milk soap and in the listing it it says four years old monthly profit twenty thousand dollars a month it's got a twenty nine percent profit margin and it's selling at a one point eight x multiple right so okay so what is that let's say twenty times twelve we don't do public math but we do type things in two forty two forty times one point eight so it's selling for four hundred something thousand is that right correct four hundred four hundred twenty five is the asking price right okay amazing so walk me you through how do you think about something like this yeah so first i will do a live with research about the product does go milk really work case it's more of an gimmick or is it that actually solve a problem or are people really you know it that is there a need for this again if it's a gimmick gets fine too right i'm this is not like an of the answer no we'll not buy it it's just important to know right back to the put to the periodic pinata example exactly how many because that's it's very important too for like not all bit ideas have to be a hundred million dollar idea like i think a a million dollar a year business is amazing as well right so maybe goat milk soap is you know a very passionate and niche 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 like is there a rabbit fan base you know like goat milk you know fans or facebook groups then i also look on amazon is this sold on amazon if yes how is the trend and what is the cells and then you can use a tool called helium ten 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 is the trend up or down or flat and also like most the business i've 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 hun or ninety percent coming from just facebook or is it just emails or is it just seo that could be a little bit you know risky especially if it's all paid traffic from facebook because all the commerce founders or listeners on this podcast will know you know apple can make an updates and suddenly you know their kate's traffic landscape change so i'm i'm looking for diversified channels then of course i look at revenue profit margins so you can really calculate like okay like pump is this gonna be more of a scale where i can pump more money into facebook i put a dollar in i get the three dollars 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 their patents is there email subscribers so in this case they have a forty three thousand email subscribers there's thirty three thousand 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 had a huge instagram following a huge facebook following they had an email list they had trademarks and patents all that was you know included in the sale and if you those are great are the assets and so let's take a business like this let's say it's four hundred thousand dollar listing how does it work you know if you don't have four hundred grand lying around you know in in a brief briefcase like a like a you know evil evil genius what do you what do how do you buy a business like this if you don't have four hundred grand 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 i don't know when they started few years ago where they now also fund internet businesses and you can borrow up to ninety percent so technically you can buy something that is for sale for four hundred a thousand and you only have to put down forty thousand dollars and interest rate is is pretty low it's anywhere of between five and seven 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've seen asking price of four hundred thousand dollars you can always there's a cash upfront offer and then you can offer like hey i will pay you two hundred fifty thousand dollars cash upfront at closing the remaining hundred fifty k i will pay you spread out over the next twelve months interest free so every time i buy business that's never hundred percent hundred percent cash on closing i always have sixty to eighty percent cash and closing and the remaining it's either sellers notes or earn out 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 to alone so let's just say let's just do a little loan calculator so that's sba a loan is what ten year loan something like that yes so ten year loan so let's say you did the full amount no seller financing just for simplicity simplicity here so you put down forty k you're gonna take the other three hundred sixty k as a as a sba loan and let's say you're paying sixty six percent a year for ten years so your monthly payment on that loan it's gonna be four thousand dollars this business makes twenty thousand dollars a month of profit so you take the twenty thousand dollars a month of profit you pay back your loan for four you're left with sixteen k of profit every month right now so you could buy this today and be making money and so that that difference say sixteen k you only put down you know you only put down forty thousand dollars so it only takes two and a half months for you to get all your equity back and then you're and you're profitable every single month that 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 etcetera but they really look and make a decision the the lenders on the business so they will never fund you if there's too high a risk right if they think like oh if we cannot you know the the the borrower cannot pay the the interest month over a month so it's amazing tool actually you spoke with joe valley from quiet light broker today and he told me a story it was a woman she bought a business for one point two five million with an sba loan two years ago and just closed and sold the same business for five point five i believe it was for in the five range but puts only ten percent down so see only see they didn't even put two hundred k down but her return was you know four million yeah yeah so if done right you know sba loans is a really great tool grid leverage tool to get into internet is it's or buy business amazing yeah yes is one of the tricks now what do you give people a a sense of how do you need to make sure you're not buying a lemon yes that's i got a question a lot so when you go to flip dot com i would be careful because flip dot 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 the diligence if you go to a broker like wildlife life brokers they basically do all the betting for you they will look at the business is everything legit so the risk is much smaller but regardless if you're are new to this if you are you know it's your first business you can hire an due diligence company cent s dot com is one i think those are the biggest well known you pay you know it depends on the listing price but it 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 it's the revenue legit is whatever everything they claimed is it all legit and then they didn't come back to you with like well we looked at all the data all the numbers you bought it for one point two but we think it's actually worth nine hundred k because these are the reasons so definitely recommend going with a due diligence company like tu gotcha okay and we get give okay so these are business 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 a not not you don't go deep into anyone but just describe kind of the journey and then i might poke into some of that sound interesting so okay you're you're ramon you're born and i don't know don't know when you got your entrepreneurial start what was the first kind of like entrepreneurial you've or your new teens or or twenties or what my first real business was an construction business i've done things before that but of our like 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 and the story i will keep it very quick but i think it's maybe could be helpful for people that maybe are over overthinking steps or over overthinking things i was out of a job was twenty years old had to pay my rent coworker of my mom said i need a painter to paint the inside of my house i can pay you x i forgot to number but it was like a month's worth of money that i made in three days so thought oh this is amazing i can you know be my own boss it's a lot of money the harder i work the more money i make that was really what to treat me right like if i can do this in one day i will actually you know have make the same amount of money than in the whole month you got paid on your output not your input correct and and as you know like in my high school dropout out right so there was not that's what what what year did you actually drop out officially fifteen but i stopped really going when i was fourteen okay so that's basically ninth grade right that's us ninth i know what it is there okay i my mom actually got a letter from the board's 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 sixteen they actually gave me a pass because no high school wanted to accept me but it's a different story so comes a good guy the 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 build some design a couple very ugly business cards made a one page website and put an add out on the dutch version of craigslist list and i thought you know what's let's just not do only painting let's do like we do everything construction like remodeling from a to z whatever i thought you don't know how to do any of that by the way no no i don't know anything i barely was able okay 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 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 two hours later i got an email from a guy saying hey i'm looking for an electrician and i am re wiring the whole building blah blah i said sure no problem i will to a ninth grade dropout i'll be there in three hours i i got this yeah i went out to bought 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 would you know potentially kill people but i just wanted to see like you know i don't know like maybe it was something simple we see he he gave me he gave me the tour and it was like i couldn't even understand the words he were saying like oh we need to wire this and we need to do and the floors were open and the walls who were open and i was still playing along but in my like i'm 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 wanna be like you know and asshole just go left 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 elect electron i just started yesterday i wanna build a construction company but i don't know anything and he was because he was an entrepreneur he laughed his ass off and he actually gave me work he said like you're hilarious just help me with you know getting you reply yeah yeah and he paid the same amount of dollars or euros hourly rates 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 forty years old not i don't think it's not a daring it's not like oh i appreciate your hustle no it's like hey you're conrad man like yes so if you're young take advantage it you know sam was also genius of doing that as well right like you can just get away with so much more of showing how so 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 yourself if i were you find freelancers you focus on getting the projects and then you outsource it to freelance so that's what i did and found an electrician freelancer plumber you know everything you need a whole crew that you need and two weeks later kind of second job and i didn't do anything i just have my and dispatched some very yeah yeah i sold it for ten k my cut was like around five k and that's how i basically grew construction company and within a year a little over year we were like a twenty to twenty four people depending on how many projects we had and at that time we did close to million dollars or million euros sorry a year in revenue and your life nineteen ten years old something like that that yeah twenty twenty one when we you know we're you're here in and so what happened to that happy ending or sat ending to the story well very quick maybe story about how our scales 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 two weeks and you have to find another job there what job is four weeks they have to find another job right so it was really hard to keep the guy is busy and really you know make sure that the the projects align if that makes sense yep 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 re out of my place i was way too young i was like you know blue collar guy with all these fancy pants but one thing to another that i met the biggest real estate investor in my region that i lived and he was like literally built buying apartment buildings at the foreclosure every month between twenty and a hundred buildings at the time wow so now he became my client and that he was my client to the ends 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 a for example you in a construction same with e commerce you have to put a lot of money up upfront i have to pay every friday to the crew i have to buy the supplies but i only get paid all the way at the end when the projects 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 and that was just not good at cash flow projections i well i just didn't do it and another thing that really was bad was grown 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 right and i had to close the company after three years more or less and mutual buddy su was at my house this weekend and he said something like i don't know if maybe you already maybe this is the guy you already talked about but we said he said you had some like mentor kinda help you early on somebody who really changed you the course of your life don't know is he talking about that guy that we gave you that first kinda insight to hire freelancers or is there somebody else i was talking about no it this is a different story okay tell that one alright that story was before my construction company i was almost eighteen or around that time my mother kicked me out the house you have to you have to figure your shit out so have to pay rent so i had to find a job at a local best buy the 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 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 know solutions because it or solutions whatever i didn't know anything 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 early internet days right like you know i'm an old fuck right this is like before two thousand one before the internet bubble it's good to remember and so i didn't know what he was doing but it was something in software and solutions and that you knew it was good because he came in in a fancy suit or you separately had been thinking about the internet so separately been thinking about because i always was like trying to you know oh let's buy this type of product in germany and try to sell it in holland like i always always trying to build these doing these schemes legal of course but internet was just like this whole new like for me my like this was like amazing there's so many so much opportunity and so i knew that i just didn't know like exactly what how to get started how to even you know write a line of codes or whatever so i started stalking him i said hey and this is again the benefit of being young like hey i wanna get job at your company and he said we're not hiring but i kept stalking him respectfully but i did talk stalking him for months like three four months to 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 gonna give you a book on friday we have an internal exam for programmers if you passed that exam i will hire the company will hire you and give you a six months internal program to become at microsoft 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 it's okay let's do it they know whether it was expect he gave me a book about microsoft database access access database program study that if my life was depending on it did exam and i passed i in passed a plus but i passed enough and so they gave me job and for six to next six months they trained me i was able to become a microsoft software developer within this company they gave me a leased card they gave me a laptop they gave me like phone like it was it was anything insane so this guy really changed my life because i think learning how to codes really is helpful also in other ways in in your life like because of really you analyze problems in situations just different if when you know how to code that makes sense and you're but today you don't consider yourself like a code or like let's say for your 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 i'm learning how to think that way was helpful yeah and at the that time i had to learn visual basic that language doesn't even exist anymore so it's like i know how to read ph 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 if it's a programming is it's like finding bugs so you have like you know a ten thousand line codes and there's one thing it breaks you have to go through like all the codes but i'd really train 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 the all kinds of other you know real life situations so i don't a program right now now okay fair enough and we got five 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 it's and why did you wanna play this game by the way because i think your audience would like to know these questions like the witch you're honor so it's a root router give the people what they want yes alright so here's the first one would you rather be the ceo of apple or the president of the u oh okay president of the u like dana white too much travel i'm traveling i'm on the road all the time dealing with with all kinds of head event planning like when i through my wedding i was like this is the only event i'll ever throw like this and for the u every weekend that they throw you know a mega wedding so no way i'm doing that i also wouldn't really wanna be the ceo of apple so i'll take the job i'll go buy your company for half a trillion buy my company for half a trillion and then i'll piece out alright that's awesome i saw this on a meme actually would you rather have dinner with jc z or take five hundred thousand dollars of cash five hundred thousand dollars cash easy what would you do would you take dinner with i feel like you might be a i want a unique experience person no yeah i will take the cash to it there was there was a whole debates like people say like you should take j z because he let's say fifth let's say fifty thousand dollars cash fifty thousand dollars shares so i think it's a closer bet here yeah then i will in the situation i'm right now i will take the dinner if i have no money i will take the cash right yeah yeah i'm i'm in the same boat i think the dinner is most likely gonna be kinda lame but you know i get a good story who knows maybe maybe we hit it off maybe he's interesting five hundred thousand that's you could go buy your charity dinner with jay z for for ninety thousand and yeah have the rest left over for for goods after that or you can buy a goat milk soap website right exactly i mean with by whatever that's the question would i rather have that goat milk business today or just dinner with jc tomorrow i'll take the goat milk business today thank you yeah let's do which rather which rather bootstrap bootstrap a million dollar business or vc back ten million dollar year business i think i would rather have a vc back ten million dollar year business i'll tell you why i think that once you can get a business to ten million dollars i think the odds of you're being able to get it to fifty or a hundred are quite high i think zero to ten is a lot harder or more likely to to to round down to zero then ten will stay at ten so i think ten million dollars really what you're saying is hey just stick with it for a little bit longer and you'll be at thirty forty fifty seventy something like that million within two three years so i think that's the case and then i'm 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 vc say you need to grow the vc say you know you'll have to raise your next round my experience with the vc has actually been quite different which is vc give you the money they might want you to do something but it's your call what you do and like you can raise one round and never raise again from vc or you can raise one round and grow it the pace you want they might strongly advise you to do something but it's on you to say look are you gonna fire me and do you have the power to do that are you gonna fire me if not then i'm gonna need you to you know shut the fuck up and stay in the back seat and like let me do what i'm gonna do here so i think the ten million dollar business is just better than the the bootstrap to one million that a very quick for the listeners that have an idea but not the capital would you tell them to try to get we see money or try to get the company started get some revenue and then do the vc routes or yeah i mean this gonna sound cliche but it's true and whoever doing this needs to hear this which is the raising money is not the is not the goal like so a lot of people are like hey i wanna talk to you like i'll invest a company and they'll say i wanna talk to you about you know what metrics we need to do to be able to raise an a in nine months or you know we're we're we're starting planning for our series b wanna 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 at plan but there's a 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 you i'm trying to get to ten million dollars in revenue with twenty percent eb i'm trying to get twenty percent market share in this market or five percent wanna grow twenty percent 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 and it's not the it's not the point of the journey for for for raising money and so i would just say like yeah you when you start when you have the idea the goal is okay well i need to get like one customer ten customers a hundred customers a thousand 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 your 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 deals or people approaching you and you know me in a little lesser way but i do feel like there's a lot of people think they need money to launch a business right but actually don't because i think oh it needs to be pretty or it has to have all these functionalities but maybe they could just like start with one functionality and just have you know a fiber designer or just do it and you know do it at least get started yeah my favorite people to to to fund are people who have 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 gonna waste those six months on design mock up 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 the best teacher because you 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 no i agree then last question would you rather do a boxing mats against sam or do an ironman with me and sue both out i'd rather do the boxing of match with sam because that sounds more fun and exciting than like an endurance race but yeah so i would do a boxing match for 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 to like one or two little altercation when i was younger like in high school in 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 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 a fight so i would do it although sam is definitely like you know on horse tranquil fertilizer or whatever like horse you know growth hormone or whatever he's taken that guy's built like a absolute monster right now so you know i i do a little training period but i would do it actually a lot of people because he's been posting videos of me and him spa you know he wants to become and fitness his influencer now to hit to his credit by the way he post picked he posts videos of you hitting him in him going down normally would people post cherry pink what makes them look good he does the opposite he posts of you hitting him into liver shots and him falling down over and over again like compilation yeah and to also to his credit he he started four or five months ago not super serious not that he's doing it every day but he he actually got really good really fast you know 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 you should give let's what they need let's give the fans what they want yeah we need we need like a kick kickstarter or go fund me or something it's like if if if if certain number of people vote for this or buy the pre buy pay view five dollar pay view of this we'll do it we need like whatever ten thousand pre buys okay ten thousand pre buys it's the goal ten thousand pre buys of a ten dollar pay view and then we'll do it okay let's set it up and then you can hear give me like to me like i don't know four months to to train and we'll we'll fulfill the months the train yeah forty six weeks each one can get one good trainer a boxing trainer do you do what you're going do boxing or mma or no bop box guess i don't have time to learn five martial arts so we're we look at to appointment where we're both shitty at boxing then we'll do it yeah let's do it i think we should do it and then maybe sue and i can box through as there a three that three yeah we we should we should get all the company it's a ceo boxing tournament yes i we stream it i would do it in in really small ratchet like boxing gym here so we can go there and then we'll just stream it for for the people right ten thousand pre buys that's a a lot but i think it's doable i think if we can get to support of your listeners nurse yeah we're saying it now people will just have to see we'll just have to get him a link and let's get him a link and unless see yes alright this i can away alright perfect okay i gotta a run i gotta do a call with this guy ramon thanks for being on where should people find you so now your twitter frame so is it ramon van mere is that your 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 ramon at ramon bend all together at remote van mirror go by if you have a small dog like i have a multi i have four of your ramps in my house because it's a life saver yeah otherwise your dogs get like you know injured backs and they're jumping off couches and stuff like that that's like imagine jumping on to something or off of something that's three times your height alright that's what they're doing and so these ramps are onto the bed onto the couch upstairs you know the that's how i use them so go by go buy some ramps for apple paul oh thank you for the plug think you it was good talking and i see it at at the boxing match please yeah i feel like i could rule world i know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a day's off on a goal travel never looking back like