ramon van meer welcome to acquiring minds thank you thank you for having me this is uh i'm very excited ramon you are the 35 million dollar dog ramp guy you acquired you acquired an e-commerce business in the pet space you have subsequently grown that into an eight-figure enterprise more than just dog ramps now um and you put out a twitter thread about this story uh which is how i i know i know that piece although i've actually heard you on a number of different podcasts um so i kind of know your story i don't think that all of my audience will though so um i want to hear a lot about alpha paul which is the e-commerce business but also your entire uh story because it's a good one so before we get into the whole e-commerce acquisition entrepreneurship story start us off um with your background you are uh originally dutch so you grew up in the netherlands tell us about that and how you ended up in the states yeah um i can do a very short version um i grew up in holland um dropped out of school when i was 15 ish um then uh because i always wanted to do you know be become an entrepreneur um and have done like almost a million different uh you know gigs or or try to start businesses um had a construction company actually when i was um 19 ish uh for a couple years um yeah did a bunch of different from construction company to promoting um you know edm raves uh and anything in between and then when i was 28 i actually moved to the states and that's when i started buying and selling internet businesses uh all online businesses um and yeah i bought an ad business a couple years ago okay great ramon why was it that you moved to the states well the reason i i moved was a um i always uh was uh impressed about the united states and wanted to to uh build my american dream and i also met the mother of my son in that time period as well so okay but you had you had had um an idea about wanting to be an entrepreneur in the states from being in the netherlands yeah because i you know i love the netherlands i love europe my family all over europe um it's not as easy as a foreign entrepreneur to build businesses there there's just a lot more rules regulations taxes um and it's just not as um i think where in america you know if you really if you want to if you work hard you know it's just uh easier um for entrepreneurs so when you you you come here and you start buying and selling websites this you said this was about 12 13 years ago yes correct okay and and so what of all of the things to do entrepreneurially why buy and sell websites especially at that time when it was you know less well-known less done than it is today um yeah because i i did like the fact of especially with uh a lot of online businesses where um like with my construction company there was always sort of it's similar like a service companies like the more revenue you do the more people you have to hire uh it's almost you know it's not scalable versus an online business it's much easier scalable where you know i had an a blog about soap operas and you know even if we did five hundred thousand dollars in revenue or four million our my overhead was almost this was similar it was almost the same basically so it's so much easier to scale um and also easier to sell with an you know traditional or a brick quote-unquote brick-and-mortar you cut you're kind of a little bit stuck like some a buyer has to be in the same location versus you know i've sold businesses to people in singapore in you know the other side of the country um so the buyer pool uh is is much larger as well then to sell yeah yeah um also more competitive uh the world of online business so yeah uh that's the one counter to that the but um let's i want to i want to hear about the soap opera blog that you just touched on that's one of your big stories it's a remarkable story but not even the main event today but just before we get there so um you're buying and selling websites are you technical at all um a little bit very like very basic okay um so yeah so i cannot build my own website you know i i always just hired somebody to do that basically okay and so what were the these by this buying and selling of websites like what were kind of the size the of businesses that were you were buying were these really tiny sites or what yeah i literally started with um so you know buying something for five hundred two thousand dollars uh making some improvements and then selling them for two thousand and then buying something for two thousand and then selling them for 4 000. really started small um and then you know after a couple months i bought a pinata website actually it's a website that dropships pinatas for 6 000 made some improvements made my money back in two months and then sold that for 22 or 25 i don't remember a thousand in two months yeah and that's when you know um i started scaling and then i did not buy this website but i started it uh because i didn't had there was a website for cell that was writing about soap operas so that's when i got the idea i didn't have enough money to buy it so so like you know what let's just build it myself see how it goes um and that's you know by now you know so far the biggest exits that i have because i started with nothing and then uh sold that for you know close to nine million dollars two and a half years later three years later um so yeah yeah ramon this is a podcast about acquisition entrepreneurship so the stories are starting from scratch uh we don't we don't want those huge success stories of of starting from scratch yeah we should don't stop businesses you buy businesses guys thank you yeah thank you um no but that we're going to get into that story a little bit because it's too remarkable not to but i will just plug somebody else's podcast which you have um told that full story of the soap opera blog uh on an er i think a pretty early episode of my first million uh sean perry interviews you um and so if people want to hear the the hour-long version of that it's it's very worth listening to fascinating um but taking you back to this point in time are you doing this full-time does this kind of website flipping um is this is this making enough money for you that you're doing it full-time or is it a side thing uh no it's full-time um and but now i've bought this pet business you know close to four years ago and that's you know the only thing i'm focusing on right now because it takes up all my time but yeah flipping buying and selling business has been my full-time job for the last 12 years so so when you got here from the netherlands and you started pretty soon after that buying and selling websites and it was pretty much pretty quickly or immediately how you could support yourself and you could do it full-time because i think you the typical story is somebody starts buying and kind of flipping in your case websites kind of as a side hustle and then over some amount of time they accumulate the capital and the the expertise to go full time with it sounds like you went full time pretty quickly pretty immediately yeah and it was more that i had no other choice basically um so uh because i came here on a student visa where um i i did not had um i couldn't work basically get a job so i had to work for myself regardless um but it was um yeah because i i when i was buying and selling business i also had with one of my best friends an online travel business that basically paid my bills uh and then the buying and selling was just all extra um but even with the online travel business it was like i did the marketing basically it was the same type of work i was doing when i was flipping uh websites and these websites that you were flipping they were content websites and e-commerce drop shipping websites it was kind of a range of all the various digital types of of businesses yeah i i really didn't matter what it was um but most of them were content because that's you know fairly easy you don't need a lot of expertise or a huge team um and i did a couple dropship websites as well uh because similar with content with dropship you also don't need a big team i stayed away from software type businesses because you know you need a developer like it's just a different uh type of business yeah yeah i want to ask you about that in a second okay so um let's let's hear just the quick version of the soap opera blog story so you you said you saw another site i guess on on flippa you're using flippa primarily for the these website acquisitions that was in the soap opera space it was too expensive to buy so you said to yourself let me let me take a swing at doing something in this niche but i'll start it from scratch and and then and then two and a half late two and a half years later you sell it for about whatever approaching nine million dollars yeah um so what is the yeah totally crazy what um yeah can you kind of give us the two-minute version of that story it's an amazing yeah um it was totally unexpected it was not like hey let's let's build a 10 million dollar business let's do soap operas i was just like you know i was just happy with building a quote unquote passive business that can you know support you know pay my bills basically but it started really slow but then as you know as soon as it clicked um so to speak then it started actually growing exponentially but it was one of those things where this was um it had all checked all the boxes and this is i'm talking now looking backwards this was not like for me looking forward like oh this is all the boxes this is a great idea i was just you know trial and error but it was one of those things it's like it's a very niche market um often and i do it same when i come up try to come up with new ideas i was like we always go for like what's the biggest idea or what's the billion dollar business or what's the biggest market uh whatever the next idea is you know we want to target the whole country um soap operas was a niche within a niche it's like day daytime tv but then also even soap operas um but still nine million people watch soap operas yeah um so it was an overlooked niche there was i don't think a lot of internet geeks or wizards or internet marketers were saying like hey let's you know let's go into this niche um and uh with content for the people that may be thinking about buying a content site it's very important that you always whatever topic you choose it's important that you there's enough new content because you want people to come back to your to your website with daytime tv with sopar pros and i didn't notice again when i started it they run almost every single day of the year uh it's five days a week i think they only have a handful of quote unquote blackout days but besides that it's 50 times a day 50 times weeks a year there's new episodes so you can always write about new stuff and then add on the fact that facebook at that time was still very easy and quote unquote cheap to build a huge fan page and a huge community uh that i then use to drive traffic to your website uh you know with any idea or any website that you want to buy you always have to think okay the product could be amazing uh but how i'm gonna get the right audience or the right traffic uh to my website to either consume your content buy your products or you know buy your service and at that time you know i used utilized facebook pages and then later facebook groups facebook facebook pages don't really work as well anymore but facebook groups uh definitely still works so yeah so there was this there was this kind of the the two big opportunities that intersected were an overlooked niche but a big niche because soap operas yeah you said it's a niche within a niche but then you also said it's nine million people so it's actually a sizable market it's a whole industry you know in in hollywood and uh it was overlooked and then um it was at a point in time where there was this new platform or newish opportu or new-ish opportunities via facebook that were still not competitive and you could acquire users or viewers for pretty affordable exactly exactly because with at the end of the day whatever you're going to do service brick and mortar or like well brick-and-mortar i'm not sure but anything online it's all about like okay what is the value of a visitor or in how can i acquire that visitor for cheaper um you know so in with content i made money from banner displays i work together with google or other so quote unquote ad networks that will pay me to display banners on my website and i would get paid for each thousand visitors i will get paid x amount of dollar so if i can just acquire thousand visitors for two dollars but i get four dollars from google now you know now you have a business now you've got your cpm arbitrage going yes exactly you know i would i would think that the the um soap opera viewers aren't the most lucrative demographic um i don't know maybe i'm wrong the stereotype would be that it's kind of moms um and and you know moms do control the pocketbooks of of families i'm speaking in total generalizations and stereotypes here so maybe i'm totally wrong about the demographic but you know one of the other things that when you do a content site or you do some sort of niche you want to look at like the value of the people or the value of that topic and how much disposable income there is there you know how much you know how how how much advertisers and what sorts of advertisers want to reach that demographic um yeah are so popular viewers a good one or what what how do you answer that yeah and it's also no genius a plan beforehand for me i learned this afterwards or during ver like the average um audience or visitor was like 45 years and older and i didn't know that that but like you said uh even in a married married household it's the woman that makes almost all the buying decisions from cars to credit cards to you know shopping you know from all the way from cars all down to shopping um so it's a lot of advertisers want to reach that plus 45 years and up is has a high pretty high disposable income um i had and at the same time when i had a soap opera website i bought actually that one i bought on flippa what a content site about wrestling wwe um not a fan i don't really watch it uh please don't get offended i think it's great i think it's uh but i um bought it because i saw a huge opportunity because i almost i thought like oh wrestling wd is almost like soap operas for men uh because they have story lines and they have you know yeah um and but unfortunately um the you know i i don't remember the exact uh difference but it was almost for the soap like just as argument's sake for the soap opera website for each thousand visitors i will get two dollars at the wrestling side for each thousand visitors i will get 50 cents it was almost a quart because the demographic was less um you know uh less um you know advertisers that will be interested um younger demographic so i agree with you that's when i learned like okay the work is exact the same but if you pick the right topic your your outcome you know could be so much higher um so i would always advise to people not just look at what you're passionate about or just like random topic but also think about like you know the work is exact same but if i write about investing versus about you know toys you'll make 10 20 times more for the same amount of work totally now investing typically when there's more money to be made there's also automatically more competitors uh in that space too but uh you know uh i definitely learned that with the wrestling and it's a cool story i bought it for 20 000 um on or 18 000 on flippa and then i think it was 12 14 15 months later i sold it for 220 or 240 i forgot so that that would be an amazing outcome if it weren't overshadowed by your your soap opera story yeah the only reason i sold it is almost like yeah and i don't mean this in a braggy way but it's like yeah my soap opera was making much more money um you know i wanted to just focus more time on the soap opera where i could have a higher return on time basically than the wrestling so i sold that one but still an amazing outcome um and um yeah um and i bought it on flippa yeah i i actually want to get your opinion on the marketplaces and how they've evolved over the years for digital businesses but um just one other thing that i heard you say a second a few minutes ago that your soap opera site kind of got started it kind of was slow at first and then there was a bit of a an inflection point a tipping point what happened at that tipping point did it just google start paying attention to the site or was it something like what happened where there was mediocre growth and then quick growth yeah um i i think it was like almost in sorry english sometimes my english is not but it was like it took some time to build up the fan pages and then as soon so i started making 50 cents a day from google adsense and then a dollar and then it took a couple weeks to get to ten dollars and then twenty but um right away i focused a lot on okay now hundred percent of my traffic is facebook fan pages that's never good doesn't matter if you have brick and mortar you don't want to have 100 of your income from one customer right if you're a plumbing business you don't want to just have one because if the customer goes out of business or chooses a different vendor then you're screwed same with online businesses you don't want all your traffic to come from google search or from emails or from facebook or from podcasts so right away i really focused and invested all my profits uh back into building an email list starting fan uh groups on facebook tried to get my website into google news and i don't know how i did it but uh it got accepted in google news and that's started to drive seo so i really was focused on you know building a diverse you know diversification of traffic sources um and like the email is you know i'm still man i wish i could replicate that like very quickly went from zero to eight hundred thousand uh people um like yes uh and the biggest and this is maybe you know hopefully somebody can use this trick i've half of those emails over 400 000 i collect it by creating a quiz and for sure people have seen it before on facebook it's like find out what character you're on and then click on earth and you get these silly questions are you a morning person or an evening person are you do you like to drink wine or water or beer and then you so you have these ten questions that are totally random um and then it shows like oh you are just like this character on this soap opera um but in order to see the results you had to give you know your name and email um and um yeah i collected 400 000 emails almost virtually free like i did boosted some posts here and there uh tried to get you know more but a couple hundred dollars max and you you always wonder with like a marketing tactic like that if even though you capture the email address are those people gonna be engaged with the content that you start sending them but i guess if they're interested enough to take a quiz about what soap opera character they are they're probably really into soap operas and yes welcome to your email exactly and then and then of course with this is a whole other topic is that you can you know build email flows to make sure you know you have only email the high you know you know the people that are really high engaged in your list yeah but that's why i like this this niche too is because these people love soap operas so whatever i did a quiz a puzzle and giveaways like people were eating it up so it was almost uh versus you know the audience for the wrestling didn't that you know i tried it there it worked okay but nothing compared to the soap operas because i think you know the younger demographic more tech savvy more you know not they're interested in wrestling but it's not their whole life you know so yeah that's funny i because i think of wrestling fans as just rabid fans although i guess soap opera fans are are kind of the joke about soap opera fans is also that they're really really into their soap operas so yeah like if you have to sit down and because i've watched you know pieces here and there i've never really watched the whole because it's just like so it's so slow basically uh but if you know you have to have a lot of commitment to sit every single day uh from one to two uh basically and watch your show um yeah but yeah okay ramon so you have this incredible so that i mean that's just an unbelievable story you make a life-changing amount of money from this ad from this sale um you and you did it in a short amount of time two and a half years uh and so now you're looking at your can i ask how old you were at the time of acquisition at the time that you sold your soap opera business um yeah um i have to 36 37 37 okay so um still many years of a career ahead of you um and so you're looking around at your opportunities and what what are you thinking digital has treated you well so obviously you want to stay in digital people know that the end the end of the story here is that you buy e-commerce but go back into your mind your frame of mind at that point and what were you considering next and how are you just making that decision yeah and by the way looking backwards plea don't take my advice like i wish i've done something different but i wait you wish you you wish you had done something different than the e-commerce no then so when i sold the business the and i got the money um looking backwards i actually should have took a break and really think about what's going to be my next step instead i bought several online businesses i bought an e-commerce business i bought an youtube channel a content site and a sas business and then a couple other things but i basically bought three totally different online businesses that you looking backwards it's now like of course uh it's very makes sense uh but you cannot really share resources even or like to you know to build a team around a sas business is totally different than an e-commerce and totally different youtube channel so you did you need different skill sets different people it's a totally different business so looking backwards i wish i just you know really was more uh uh you know thought it through of okay what's going to be my next step my next project and then really just go on there versus just buying a couple of random businesses yeah um so i bought the best pet business that you know went from um i bought it for 300 thousand dollars um at that time was doing seven hundred thousand dollars in revenue um close to two hundred thousand dollars in ebitda um and i was able to buy it uh for fairly cheap especially you know considering the valuations now or even higher but i bought it for 325 plus inventory the reason why i wanted to buy it um was because the website was old um there was almost no paid marketing so there was a lot of low hanging fruit that me as a marketer thought okay i can buy this and i can double triple quadruple the revenue um and then increase value and then flip it that was actually the idea of when i bought it to flip it to to just optimize it over a relatively short amount of time and and not build it into your business and and ramon let me ask you so so um this uh alpha paw is the name of the business alpha paw the alphabet acquisition was your e-commerce acquisition while you also bought the youtube channel and the sas and the other okay and what happened to those businesses when alpha paw started to take off you divested yourself of them you sold them um yeah the youtube channel i still have but it's more uh and this is this may be a good story too it's like you know a lot of podcasts focus on success stories and i think it's great um the youtube channel is actually not a success story i bought that for over a million dollars um i used an sba loan um probably you talk about sba loans on your broadcast because that's you know how um you can buy businesses uh with little money down um it was doing around 60 000 in revenue uh a month and um i forgot to profit but you know it was a youtube channel so there was not a lot of overhead um for because of several reasons but youtube made a couple algorithm updates google made search made algorithm updates um and it's now doing you know probably ten thousand a month um so it basically almost breaks even for my sba loan so now granted that if i only had that business and did not have the e-commerce and all the others and i could focus more on it i probably could have made it work um but it's definitely not a success story um yeah so you know i know you know this is maybe not a positive uh to promote but i think it's very important for people to know that you know this business was 10 years old and was historically very stable but then a youtube decides to do you know an update that could affect you know either go you know in some cases it could affect you possibly you know can up go upping rankings in this case it went down and it like went like like it took a year but slowly you know went from sixty thousand to fifty thousand fifty to forty and you know forty five um well ramon as a as a content guy a guy you know who had you know made his fortune um producing content and and recognize the value of seo you you you understood that a youtube channel was vulnerable to algorithm changes so you i'm sure you saw that risk and so when you saw the algorithm change you bought the business with an sba loan then you saw the algorithm change occur you probably panicked because you you were sophisticated enough enough to know like what this means that this is really really bad news because there's so much channel concentration i mean there's just there's just the youtube algorithm like your entire um channel depends on on that on how the algorithm favors the channel or not yeah exactly the only because my you know going back to the pet business you know that was growing you know we went from seven hundred thousand dollars when i bought it the first year we were able to do seven million dollars in revenue the next year 18 million dollars it was growing so fast i like my mindset was like okay you know what the youtube channel i just like i can put 10 hours a week trying to fix this uh or grow that a little bit or i can put the 10 hours back into the pet business and what where would where is my return on time the highest and i made the decision to just like i will fix the youtube channel later when i sell the pet business um and um you know focus you know put all my energy on the pet business um just two things okay just two things about the youtube channel um before we really dive into alpha paw um first i'm surprised you could get an sba loan for a youtube youtube channel you're the first person i've heard to be able to do that um did you have a hard time getting that loan did you have to really look for a lender who would do that for you um well the broker i used quite light brokers um uh introduced me to uh an sba broker i don't know his official stephen spear and yeah yeah um i mean i cannot compare how easy or much more work it was than another sba like it was a lot of work because at the end of the day day sba is government so it's just like you need a lot of paperwork and you know i need to i think they pulled up a traffic ticket i had eight years ago and i had to explain that and uh so it's definitely more work than a traditional bank um but it's totally worth it it was not a lot it was just collecting a lot of tax returns and paperwork and uh i think it took you know months or something to close and the channel can you tell us what the channel is or what it was about what the subject matter was yeah it was it was like a listicle um uh channel so you know top you know the top 10 you know podcast microphones oh sorry uh the top you know all kinds of random uh facts and you know lists um and uh yeah i i'm gonna i still own it and then we still you know my plan is to revive it and and and work on it later um but yeah that's why you know i bought a couple businesses that had no synergy basically it was not like um they couldn't complement each other um and you know if i would have you know can do it over if if i would buy different businesses or multiple businesses i would have at least done it where they complement complement each other or in the same category um but you know you live and learn like this yeah you know i make more mistakes than uh you know then wins so um and then so what what attracted go ahead you're satisfied well very quick about sas business too i bought that one also quite light brokers and we ran that for close to two years um was very um was very very passive almost on autopilot and uh but decided to sell it so i could focus more on the pet business um and um yeah i bought that one i think for 500 000 and then sold it for you know not a lot more but i i made profit on it um and what was it what did it do the sas was an uh to do app uh similar nowadays you have a lot to give todoist and and there's tons of these you know productivity apps on your phone uh but this was really you know this was built 14 years ago this was before the iphone um and it was you know i still like the product it's just with sas again you need technical people around you like a co-founder ideally so if you want to buy a software business you know you know look for a technical co-founder because even if you don't have to build more onto it you still have bugs you know apple makes a new update or chrome makes a new browser update you know that can crash your website so you always have to have you know you're always going to have development work doesn't matter you know how you spin it so yeah the e-commerce business alpha paw so so one of the things in your in your thread that uh on your twitter thread that you talk about is like you know you you when you look at for a business to buy you look at things for things that you can improve so you're looking for some some weaknesses in the business where you can really come in and add a lot of value um did you see that you've already touched on a few of those again but let's let's go through those again so um it was under optimized it was um you took it to shopify so so um indulge me and go through those again and um yeah and then i want to ask a follow-up question about how you would tell somebody else like if they were looking at an e-commerce business today what you would advise them to look for yeah yeah so similar like real estate i would always want to buy something that i can improve and increase value uh i will never buy a business from a fellow internet marketer that i don't see like at least two three four things i can change that hopefully you know you know you know you don't know but hopefully you have a high confidence level that it will increase revenue or or profit in the case of alpha pawn it was uh they were first they were not doing paid advertising so they were not running facebook ads instagram ads youtube ads nothing so there's seven hundred thousand dollars in revenue was pure coming from organic pretty cool you know pretty good you know uh um that they did that but i thought okay running facebook ads is a no-brainer um secondly they were not doing any email marketing even to their existing customers they were not sending updates or you know hey a new product launch or anything um let alone capturing emails from people that visit your website you know or doing contests um you know uh or you know do a quiz what kind of breed are you you know you have to give your email and then you know you get emails from us so and then third one was the website was very was based was built on magento or something it's like an e-commerce platform um and um the website was just like design was not um like didn't look good the copy was not great the pictures were not great you know the the the company was built by two guys from australia that you know did an amazing job with products but were not as you know experienced in in internet marketing so i just did very simple i right away moved the website from magento to shopify made new pictures for the from the products um rewrote the copy the sales copy on the website um i started sending emails to customers and added a pop-up to the website connected that to mailchimp very simple and cheap you know email uh esp and then i created some simple basic video ads and post it on facebook or like um you know did facebook ads and then see how it went and that's when when we started facebook ads that's when we're from you know doing thirty thousand dollars one month to 150k the next month to 250k the month after 400k the month after um and that's when i saw like hey actually this is fun this is growing really fast you know everything is amazing uh let me just focus on this business and try to you know make this big yeah and the what year is this now ramon uh i bought it november 2018 so um 2000 early 2019 is when you know we saw this hockey stick growth yeah one of the things that people um often wonder when when they acquire business is like why am i the one lucky enough to get this business like lucky enough like you know there are a lot of e-commerce i mean now there's huge amounts of e-commerce buyers out there but i'm sure even in 2017 and 18 um other people looked at this opportunity other people looked at the business if it was probably on quiet lights website publicly um and passed on it so you know you had to tell yours you had to convince yourself that like you know that you saw this potential in this business even though these other people who are also sophisticated e-commerce buyers chose against it did that you know it's kind of like if i'm the one buying this business more savvy people more you know better resourced people have passed on it why what do they see that i don't that made them pass on the deal did did you have that thought process at all um yeah because in this case i didn't buy it on quite like this one but um the reason why i was able to buy it for so little is because they were trying to sell it for a while and couldn't and i think the reason was a lot of their financials and all these things was a little bit of a mess and it was not an easy business to take over because they had um 3pls in uk in australia in the united states and it was like a very it was not a clean business person like they didn't have their docs in a row so i think that scared off a lot of buyers um and you know i think but again i was more lucky than anything i don't think people um including myself i didn't know that rams dog like so many people would actually need and buy dog ramps um again same with the soap opera side i bought the dog business not thinking oh we're gonna 10x or like you know 30 exit i thought oh we'll just do a couple small things we go from 700k to 2.5 million and i can flip it for it you know four times and make my money back um and you know it just started to grow much faster than i expected so i think nobody including myself saw like oh dark ram you can sell 35 million dollars of in dog ramps basically uh i didn't even know people used doc rams when i saw this thing i didn't like yeah it was a totally new thing for me uh i have a pitbull so i don't really you know my dog doesn't need any furniture or help to get on sofa um so yeah i think that that was particular um but that goes back like most of my quote unquote success says were not one billion dollar ideas at the time if that makes sense it was not like oh this is going to be huge or hey i want to buy something that makes me you know a billionaire no there was like my successes were all like me thinking like oh this is great business and i can maybe you know five acts my you know investment yeah and and and so would you advise people is that kind of like don't overthink it don't necessarily like maybe markets or markets are bigger than you think is that kind of the takeaway there i wonder what the advice is there yeah i think first that you know the dark ramp is a niche business too soap operas was a niche business wrestling is a niche i think niches are very powerful um i don't know how to translate it into a brick of mortar type situation but especially online i think don't overlook niches like i know a person that makes a lot of money selling knitting equipment i know another person that actually sells knitting patterns and makes millions of dollars selling just patterns um who could have you know it's just like the weirdest things but they're because they're in a niche and actually the nature you can do the easier it is to market actually um in my opinion like for me it was oh if you have this breed you are your dog is very high risk of getting ivd here's a product that can't you know potentially prevent that disease boom and that was basically the hook um and so i think you know going into don't be afraid of niches actually i look i love you know niches of course it has to have a specific size you know if the topic you're looking into only has like you know 10 000 people you know potentially you know interested in it that's too small um so yeah i don't know if it's helpful but no that's great remember the the the one of the things that people in the world of of call it the world of search so a lot of the acquiring minds audience are are people who are looking for traditional businesses not digital businesses to buy okay and they're typically you know they gonna buy a business that could be a 20 year old 30 year old business from the retiring owner founder and there are a lot of businesses out there like that but not a lot of high quality ones and so the process of search and finding a business that is really worth it to buy with an sba loan finding a good business is hard and it takes searchers 6 months 12 months 24 months to find those businesses in the world of e-commerce um do you think that the opportunity that it's like that that it's kind of a needle in a haystack that alpha paw was a needle in a haystack or like when you used to or maybe still do look at quiet light or other e-commerce listings you just see opportunity everywhere like i guess what's the ratio of of business listings for sale e-commerce businesses that you see to ones that you actually think are worth buying for an entrepreneur yeah um i think um especially in the last couple years the buyers the size of buyers of course increased with the size of sellers too like the listings you know also um i think it's less because i also you know we talked about it before we started recording like i'm looking at you know uh um because of i you know my friend cody sanchez he's the preacher of like buying you know brick and mortar boring brick and mortar businesses so she got me a little bit hooked on that um so i'm just like snooping around on biz buy sell or whatever their website is um yep for traditional but like you said like the whole experience is horrible like i think i've submitted a form like i saw a business like oh i want some more information and learn about it like not potentially not per se buying i just want to learn about it um and more i barely get response first of all uh it's just like a whole the just more cumbersome process uh versus with the online businesses probably because it's online um when you go to quiet live brokers you see a listing you fill out your email you get within two minutes you get access to their whole business their p l the summary they already did all the work um a vid a video recording with the founder like it's video recording yeah and then you send an email hey i want to talk with dubai or seller the next day you have an interview and then brokers like quite light they also have access to funding so they have access to sba lenders they have access right that can help as well and actually they even pre-qualify listings too where where you they already did all the hard work with an sba lender you if you are interested in buying it you just have to you know do the personal side that is far less work um so they you know everything is much smoother um so i think long story short um it's definitely you know i would not rush it um you know when i bought alpha paw like i'm always looking without really being in the market so i'm always like looking on this website because i just love you know window shopping um and learning um but i think it will still like really to find something that you're comfortable with that's in your price mark or in the range um that also now you know with online businesses unfortunately well it's good for the sellers now there's so many buyers uh maybe it changed in the last two months because of macro you know trends changing but um up to a couple months ago it's not unheard of that um somebody got 10 15 different offers right like so um that's i think more where you find a business that you like now it's a whole other story of like you getting the business without you know overpaying too much um yeah because there's a lot of buyers um in this this world but yeah there's um if i i can i always recommend centorica.com spelled with a c they have a marketplace engine maybe you've already talked about it in your show but you know that's what i you know i sign up with with their email list so every every day or whatever i get basically email with the latest listings um so that they aggregate from all the all the various brokers so you don't have to go from quiet light to whatever website closers to fe international they're all right there yeah there's like there's so many now even you know because the whole industry grew right like you know more buyers more sellers uh also more brokers um you know on the market so there's like 20 30 different ones um so yeah centurica and then also uh centurica does the due diligence for you so for first-time buyers or even if you're not first time that's something i really highly recommend is to hire a due diligence company and but ramon when you get these listings and from email to you from censureco so you're keeping an eye on the market and just window shopping is your impression do you often see listings that you're like oh that i you know if i weren't already working on alpha paw i'd love to buy that that seems like a great opportunity like how often do you have that sensation um and and it kind of to compare it to biz by cell a lot of people who are looking for traditional traditional business on biz by sell they just don't feel that way very often they're going through all these listings and they're like oh no no no no you know none of these are really very appealing businesses is it the same sensation that you have when you're looking at the centurica listings or is it or no it's in fact it's like oh no there seems like there's opportunities everywhere competitive but opportunities everywhere yeah i think definitely online um and i'm trying to think maybe what the reason could be uh i think there's more opportunities online um if you go to centurica now i will bet you there's over 10 pet related e-commerce businesses for sale versus if i go to biz buy cell and i want to buy a donut shop in austin where i live there's maybe one uh donut shop um yeah and so maybe it's that maybe there's just more because it's in you know online uh you're not you know locked into location so maybe there's just more uh listings um and um so i do have that way more i have to protect myself to really like not get excited because i don't you know i don't have the bandwidth to to buy another business uh so yeah you've learned that lesson oh man yeah like oh man that looks amazing um we can do you know i could do xyz and then i start daydreaming uh what i would do with that business and um but yeah it's definitely um i have that a lot um and i don't to your point i don't actually have but i also have never bought a brick-and-mortar website or a sorry brick-and-mortar company so when i see those listings i don't really know is this a good deal or is it not this is like that's why i'm just trying to learn basically versus with an online i very because i've been doing it for so long very quickly can you know assess oh these are the low-hanging fruits oh this is where it's underperforming oh the value is pretty you know the asking price is pretty reasonable um oh these are red flags that you know i should look out for versus with the brick and mortar if i look at a donut shop like i i don't know like what what does an average donut shop uh do i don't like revenue-wise how many people uh do they have you know running the donut shop and is that more or less than average or you know things like that so i don't because of my lack of experience i don't really have you know a good sense yet well it it raises the question then why why are you looking at traditional businesses what what has cody sanchez said that's been so convincing to you especially as a guy who's already demonstrated his ability now twice to build digital businesses of of really respectable size yeah it's a good question uh well because i think you know um the reason why i'm still working too is because i like learning i like you know i like doing and trying new things i think similar like with real estate like i think it would be cool to own something that you can touch and go to and my son i have a 12 year old son and you know not that i'm buying a donut shop but let's keep with the donut shop that my son can you know just work there uh or whatever brick and mortar um you know and probably i'm gonna look more something closer to the passive side where i don't you know will probably not buy a plumbing website or company sorry um where you know i have to actually work as a plumber um but um yeah i think it will still and i think there's um i think it's similar like a soap opera niche i think it's overlooked by the online internet marketers i think there's a like because i know several people that do brick and mortar roll ups and they're printing money they're printing money like and it's more what are the roll-ups and uh funny enough plumbing uh i know a plumberry um a phone like an internet service um so uh internet service polls or something um i know dentists i know vets like you know all these uh because they're in the vet space and i think in dentists it's a pretty common thing where like pes buy like you know owner-operated dentists um and then the only thing they do is okay we can right away share resources marketing bookkeeping accounting customer service uh all these can be taken off the plate um and you know run and do a rollup and it's it's very more stable than ecommerce like you know ecommerce is fun when it goes up but i've you know i i go to the you know emotions every week where we have a tough week where revenue doesn't go well or facebook ads are not performing or container ships are stuck it's at you know in front of the port we all read the articles last year right like where supply chain still to now it's it's horrible for us um and it was a very tough year last year because of that um all these things you know i think it's less uh with you know brick and mortar let me two last questions for you ramon and on this point about e-commerce and the difficulties of e-commerce what would you say like for somebody out there who's listening to acquiring minds who's kind of intrigued by e-commerce but maybe they don't know a lot about it what would you tell that person that you know they should like if they like this they'll like e-commerce and if they don't like this then they should really stay away from e-commerce you've kind of just answered that like if you can't handle ups and downs there's a lot of ups and downs in e-commerce and anything else like that that either you would tell somebody is a real a real pro of e-commerce or a real con of e-commerce yeah i think with e-commerce there's a lot of moving pieces so you have to be able to move with the punches not just like emotionally with revenue but also you know there's so many things that can go wrong um because it's you know something is produced in china or vietnam or wherever it is then it has to be you know then you have to deal with a fried company they have to deal with it import uh you know the customs they have to deal with a trucking company that gets it to the warehouse then you have to deal with a 3pl company and then you have like there's so many um so you need to know a lot and it's only operations and they have to talk about marketing and they have to talk about website and they have to talk about customer service so you know with running an um you know a successful or like a large or quote-unquote large e-commerce you just need a lot of people um so it's not it will be very hard i know a couple people that do it with a very small team but in general you just need you know in a big team and you need to know a lot about you know a lot of things it's definitely not a nine to five you know um you know versus my content site i mean i i did work you know weekends and stuff because i wanted to but i didn't need it to uh but e-commerce you just you need like this you know because you're talking with people in china and you're talking with you know um so you know time difference on my first million um sean perry talks about i'm doing an e-commerce he's doing an e-commerce business and i think i've the the story that the inspiration to do an e-commerce business um he tells the story of being with you and your phone is like the cash registered ding is just going off constantly as you guys are hanging out representing you know your shopify sales and so he's like man what what what is this all about uh that sounds pretty good to just like have this you know my phone ding with a new sale like every whatever it was 10 minutes or half an hour so that would give somebody the impression obviously it inspired sean that would give somebody the impression that it's like you know the money is just coming in um passively to use that dangerous word um yeah but but you're telling us that your e-commerce business is anything but it's it's really a lot to manage yeah and it's i think it's also like you have to uh one of my friends actually always talks about is like you have to uh figure out yourself like what type of business do you want like on a personal side because i know several people that have an e-commerce business but are considered a lifestyle business meaning they're not really focused on high growth they're not really focusing on selling uh and but it's netting you know over a million dollars and they're selling you know it's almost like on autopilot because they they hired a couple people that they trained they invested a lot of time in training them and it's basically the same products the same ads the same email list and but they really treat that business as a lifestyle business and that is you know and they work less than 40 hours um and um well that sounds pretty i made the decision yeah netting netting a million dollars a year for less than four hours like yeah give me that i wanted to see if i can make build alpha paw into like a huge business and sell it for you know 100 plus million um and that's why i you know okay let's focus on growth let's focus on you know uh and and and you know so it's it's also within the e-commerce similar to like with content there's different types like maybe you know um you sell a product that is made in the us and you just do one product and then it's a much easier um you know operations like we have you know 50 products so you're dealing with 50 different manufacturers and you know getting making sure to understand when to reorder when is you know what's the sales velocity if you just have one or let's say five products then yeah you can do that by yourself or a very small team if it's manufactured by one company in the us it also takes out you know several steps of not dealing with a fried company customs you know so we do our fulfillment in-house um you know there's another story but you know most people use a 3pl so there's less headache um so so you couldn't definitely build quote-unquote a lifestyle more passive than i'm doing uh business um in e-commerce ramon the last question i want to ask you is about circling back just to the whole theme of acquiring minds and and really why i had you on here to tell your story of acquisition entrepreneurship i've heard you say in other interviews that um you know you're a proponent of acquisition entrepreneurship because you're a one to ten guy not a zero to one guy but in fact you have done both you have done zero to one and you know your biggest exit was zero to one so um just you know uh talk to talk to me a little bit about that and why for somebody who's been so successful starting something from scratch and yet you remain kind of a big proponent of acquisition entrepreneurship and in fact see yourself more as a better acquisition entrepreneur than some a start from scratch entrepreneur why is that yeah and i think this is one of those things that there's no right or wrong basically it's the same debate as you know building a team in-house versus remote i think it's all based on personal preference it could work both ways successfully sam i think he tweeted a couple days ago he likes to build versus buy because you know when you build from scratch you can put your soul into the business i forgot this tweet right so there's different you know roads to you know success um i've done both i what i think especially if you're new like i also have done internet marketing for the last 12 years on the day today right like i know a little bit about well a lot about seo a little bit out of email facebook ads like i know everything that is needed in order to start your own you know business if you're new to it i think it's safer um and have a better um and less risky um to buy something that's already rolling i can give an example of the alpha paw including in the cell came patents to the product all the contracts with manufacturing uh a website domain seo traffic uh a customer list um trademarks you know a facebook page with two million likes an instagram account with 400 you know followers so they had a whole bag of assets that if i would start that from scratch it would have taken me a year if not longer to get to that same level um so it buys you speeds in my opinion and you can literally just focus on buying something that lacks the skill sets that you have so if you are good at sales um you can buy a goods b2b business that sells leads or whatever where you can see opportunity like hey with my sales skills level i can you know triple the leads or triple the sales or if you're a good designer then find the websites or things that like really have a good product but horrible design that of course will you know affect conversion rates so i think with buying something you can find you know it's the same with i said it in the other podcast you can buy a lot build an apartment building and then you know rent it out that works a lot of people make a lot of money doing that the downside is it will take one to two years before you even start seeing return on your investment or some people find an existing apartment building that is a little bit you know run down and they fix it up and then increase the rent and that's how they increase value um both ideas work there's not right wrong um but i think you know especially if you're new to it same to building like i would never buy a lot and then start building i have zero idea about like how difficult it is how much it costs how you know permits but i have a good friend of mine that that's what the only thing he does he buys lots yeah and builds you know gas stations and other stuff on it and that's his niche but they have other friends that buy apartment buildings make them better improve them and flip them um it's the same with internet marketing or internet businesses um so i think it's a safer bet for people that are new to internet uh businesses great that's great ramon that was that was that was awesome sorry listen and serve it yeah not how can people uh find you on twitter what is the twitter handle and i i will be linking to the uh your your viral twitter thread but tell people what the handle is please yeah um ramon vanmir um i don't know actually if it's all together but if you search ramon vanmir uh i'm not super active lately on twitter but i'm gonna try to be more active but if you have questions dm me i always try to answer as many you know dms as i can to to help out cool i could i could see um audience members sometimes want to ask guests about a particular deal they're looking at so i could see people looking at e-commerce deals reaching out to you and saying asking if you might glance at it and give your quick opinion so if that's something you're open to yeah awesome for sure awesome ramon thank you very much what a story um really glad i got you on here i've i've i've kind of followed your career from afar so i was i was honored to that you came on the pod so thanks very much yes thank you too bye-bye