From $300k to $35M+ Selling Dog Ramps with Ramon Van Meer, CEO & Founder at Alpha Paw

Yeah there was a cup on the table, I remember. We were drinking water, a little paper cup. We were at this burrito place and you were like If I could buy this cup for five cents and sell it to you for seven cents, that's my passion. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I put my law in it like my day's off On the road less travel never looking back Ramon, he is back. The guest from episode two, which was one of the best episodes ever of this podcast.

And then it was taken down for a bit. I don't know what happened, there was something, we've got to take it down, make a little edit. People started hitting me up. Hey, what happened to Ramon's episode? That's how much people cared. They wanted to know the people were just keeping track because that episode's still in the library. Something happened. Some people noticed, which was amazing to me. And now you're Twitter famous. Yeah. As of today. Well, because of uh you and Sam. Yes, because you and Sam retweeted me and uh I got like

Almost eight thousand followers overnight. I went from two thousand to eleven thousand uh within twenty-four hours. So wow. Well, it's not just because we retweeted, I retweeted a lot of stuff. You told a great story Uh, I'm just actually gonna I'm gonna find the hook here, uh, because you did a good job. Did s 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 tw uh tweet. So Sam actually helped me Okay, this will would work. This is the concept. This is a little bit like how you format it. Then he gave a little bit like I would start with this, I will do with this, and I will explain that.

Then of course I explained it. I send it to him and he said, Like, yeah, 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 have normally said? Or what do you remember what your V one might have been? Yeah. Well, like you you and I are friends, so you also know me personally. Typically I would not start off with like I bought something for just little as Ex And now we're doing why.

Uh I will not too too braggie. 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 uh explain it? That that's what people get people interested. And now I think we have Seven thousand likes and

A bunch of a thousand people between what you said. You said two and a half years ago, I bought a dog ramp business for three hundred thousand dollars. Already interesting. What the heck is a dog ramp business. Since then, I've sold$35 million of dog ramps. Boom. That's the the hook, right? Um this little thing turned into a big thing. And then the promise, why you should read this thread. I'm going to explain. Why I bought it.

How I scaled it. And why about a business versus starting from scratch? But first. Dog ramps question mark. And then that is and then the little hand pointing down like come read more. That is Uh, you didn't take my power writing class, but that is exactly what I you would have been my star student in this if you had done this as the example, because

It has all three elements, right? What I call the frame. I bought it for 300k and I've sold 35 million. So that's the the wow factor. Why why should I pay attention to this? And why do I stop scrolling? Right. So you have a scroll stopping. Number. thirty five million dollars of dog rams. 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, Dogramps, which is like

You you gave him a lightweight entryway. Uh that they they have even if they don't wanna know well how you bought it, why you scaled it, all the operational stuff. I do need to know what the heck dog ramps, what the heck? And so uh beautifully done. And then you tell the story, and the story is kind of amazing'cause People know that I don't talk about what my e commerce business is, but they know that I have an e commerce business.

What they don't know is that it started because we were hanging out in your backyard. And we were talking And the whole time we're talking. Uh your phone is just going ching. It's like the I and I didn't even know what this was. It's the Shopify. Shopify is like notification sound and

You you didn't even notice it'cause it's all is just normal to you. Your phone was sitting on the table. And I was like, Do you need to get that? Like what is that sound? And you go, Oh sorry, that's like sales. And I was just like You know people love this idea of make money while you sleep, like passive income, oh make money while you sleep. That is a sexy idea. Yeah. This was this was even better. It was like

You were just chilling and having fun and money was just being made for you on the side and just like a little ching every five minutes. And it was literally in that moment I was like, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna start an e commerce business because I I can't sit here and just let Ramon have all the fun. This is too good. So you inspired me to do it for sure. That's awesome. Yeah, I had to turn off that notification because it drove me crazy eventually. Like ching ching every time there's a cell. Uh but it was fun in the beginning. Almost like that, uh you know, endorsement release each time. Uh, exactly. Um 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.com slash my first million, I think, or HustleCon, something like that, just search My First Million on YouTube. You'll find it. But you can see the ramp behind Ramon.

So he's got the uh all the products behind you. So the the company's called Alpha Paw. That's your thing. So we're gonna talk about A couple of different things. I thought it'd be fun have you on. You're substitute teacher for Sam. And like any substitute teacher, the class always has more fun when the sub comes in. Uh so so that's what we're gonna do.

I think we're gonna talk about a couple things. I want to talk to you about Kind of. uh buying and selling buying businesses rather than starting businesses. So how you do it, and we'll go through some examples maybe of what's out there. And then we'll jump back and we'll dig into kind of like your story. So how the heck you got started. But I w first want to 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 Flipa or Quiet Light or what'd you end up buying this? Yeah, I b I bought this on a sip a similar pr uh broker like Quiet Light. They're not around anymore, but it was a similar broker. Not as Flipa, but it's uh it's more of a broker. And when you bought it, I was sort of like what the hell like who does that? I didn't even know anybody who does like off these like random websites

Like I can see you buying something for a few thousand dollars, but three hundred grand I thought was A lot. And I was like, dog ramps, what the heck? And you had told me then That You're like, Yeah, the business is uh doing good and the person really wasn't doing any marketing or they didn't run any Facebook ads, I think was the case. And so you just saw like a clear growth lever. So

Break it down like why do you do this and then how do you do this buying businesses thing. Yeah, me personally, I think it's also like what's your personal preference, what's your skill set. Some people are really good at going from zero to one, are really builders. Others are really good at going from one to ten and those are, you know, scalers. Uh I'm not really good at building. I'm better at scaling. And so I like to buy versus build because it gives you a lot more speed.

It gives you history and data. And it's sort of like real state where I try to find crappy houses that you need to fix up, but in a good up and coming neighborhood, if that makes sense. Right. It's a good market. Yes, good market. There's a market fit. You know if 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, uh product fits. Has history It doesn't have to be, you know, going really well. Uh I'm not looking for websites that are overly optimized. So I tend to not buy websites from other Internet marketers.

Uh because they already Did all the things that I probably would do for it. So it's not really room for growth. What was the person like or what was the business like when you bought the dog ramp business? So describe 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. Then so there's a real problem for a niche audience that you really can target on Facebook.

Those were the good old days that you really could niche target still on Facebook. Um It w had not a lot of competition at that time. Not a lot of people were promoting ramps on Facebook, Instagram, uh, or even Amazon. The website was a very crappy websites where I knew that if we switch to Shopify, if we d increase uh or improve the copy, the pictures, et cetera, the conversion rate will most likely increase.

This case, the two founders were not doing any Facebook ads. There was no paid acquisition. Happening at all. And even though they had a decent size customer database, they were not emailing even existing customers, let alone trying to capture, you know, a card abnorman. Uh this was a good market, which is pets. Yep. It's uh you know, a house that you said, okay, if I renovate the kitchens, the floorboards, the the the countertops

Which is like you re redoing the website and the branding of it, the copywriting. And then lastly They're not even trying to rent it out. They don't rent they don't post it on Craigslist. They don't have flyers out in the neighborhood saying come rent my place, which is they weren't doing paid advertising. 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 kind of like what you like or dislike about some of these businesses. Uh, 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 crossword puzzle website. So Think of when I think a lot of people play these wars with friends games or crowd or scrabble games.

And then There's a website out there, apparently, that you can just put in your letters and it will give a bunch of words recommendations. 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-built 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 sale 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

Yeah, printing money basically. I like these type of niches. Where Not a lot of people think about, but it'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 d I don't know how I would grow this where I I get a faster payback on my money. So what would you do? Wha how would you think about the growth levers for this one? Yeah, that's a good question. I will personally not buy it at the moment because the price tag typically I Only by Things in a couple hundred thousand dollar range, not millions.

without knowing too much of the current business model, I definitely would incre try to increase RPMs, meaning How can we squeeze more advertising dollars? out of the same traffic. They g 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 want to increase Conversion rates, if you have a content size, you want to increase RPMs, meaning how to get more people to click on the ads or

Things like that. Right. So I would do that. Secondly, I would look and do research like for sure if There's a huge segment of people that love Scrabble, what is this like what other games

Do they like And maybe that build a sub Uh a sister website that does, I don't know, like what's it called? Sudoku. Uh Or whatever. So that's that's the two

The two things that I would if I would buy this type of website. And and basically when you buy something like this, most people say, you know, I don't have nine million dollars. And I think when you started doing this, uh when you first started looking at these websites, you also didn't have enough money to buy One of these. So tell tell the story of like how you first started going to these websites even when you didn't have enough money to buy buy one of these companies. Yeah.

I've actually Bart and salt. websites that it started with buying something for five hundred dollars and then sold it for you know fifteen hundred dollars. I started on Flipper. twelve years ago. And you know, I

But Pingata website that sells pingata. You can send a picture. Uh. And it makes a pen out of him. Yes, a company in Mexico in Texas would make a piana and then ship it directly to the customer. So I bought that for five thousand dollars. That's scraped together. Improved the website, traffic, and uh made 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. A little bit and really get a lot of experience. When I started soap up. I actually saw a similar website for sale on Flipper.

That was for sale for a hundred thousand dollars. Was in the daytime. T V Era two. And uh the topic was about d uh daytime TV. Of course I didn't have money, I had like couple thousand dollars. Uh, was not able to buy that.

But what I did is like hey let's See if there is something there. Let's do a small test. Build a fan page. see how the engagement goes and then see if there is something there and then grow from there. I guess we should explain.

You created if you if people have listened to episode two, they know the full story. Uh we won't go the full story again this time, but your claim to fame, the the what episode two is about is telling the story of how you created a Soap opera. content site, like a soap opera uh website. That was basically just saying, Hey, you're watching Days of Our Lives, or you're watching uh, you know, I don't know, The Young and the Restless.

Here's the recap. Here's the spoilers of what's coming next. You kinda built like a spoiler site for Daytime soap operas. W 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 a soap opera episode in his life. So I think people love that because it was so A random, but B Interesting and relatable how 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 s 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 he went through this process where You said okay, how can I test these ideas?'Cause Uh when I met you, you I was like all right, what's your passion?

No, Silicon Valley style. And you were like You know, what problem do you really want to 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 pap 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 uh I like to buy things and sell things for a little bit more and I'm basically an internet marketer and I don't care if it's cups or dog ramps or

So proper spoilers, it doesn't matter to me. I love the process of like business and selling things. And I was like, that's amazing. Uh you know, I love the the sort of self awareness and honesty. And then when you were testing ideas for for before you created the soap opera site. You When on Facebook

And if I remember correctly, you basically made like thirty fan pages or something like that. 'Cause at the time you could promote a page uh a fan page on Facebook for like sense you could go get a bunch of likes of your Facebook page. And a lot of lights weren't worth too much, but you could kind of test. What topic are people most

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? It was like Right wing politics, like soap operas, and what was the last one? It was like uh wrestling or something like that. Yeah.

Wrestling was really popular. Uh soaps and uh politics, uh cars were also pretty pretty high up. Right. And then you were like, you know. Uh I hate politics. I don't wanna do politics. What's the next best one? Soap operas, okay. Uh hire this woman in the Midwest to write uh blogs every day about soap operas and then drive traffic, baby. Uh so 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 on went on upwork.com Hey, looking for a writer.

That can write so far for spoilers. Put a 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 ten cents a day from making from Google AdSense and then a dollar a 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 jump around again. So give me give me another one that you saw before you came on the pod that that you want to talk about. Yeah. So this this is one I just saw an hour ago. I just thought I was interested Interesting. It's uh goat milk soap. What they sell goes. What the heck is that? Yes. So apparently goat milk soap is Better for the environment and it's

Better for they say it's cruelty free. Because apparently a lot of soaps The traditional soaps they do testing on animals. Et cetera. So they claim and like forgive me for people that you know know about goat's milk soap, I this is the first time I heard about it, and that's why that intrigued me. This could probably be a product that people that use this are very passionate about it. Same like you know, people that are into keto are super passionate or

You know, there's tons of these examples where it's a pretty small niche, but people are so passionate that they they will spread the word for you. So this wipe website you can find it on Flip Ar just search Goat Milk Soap. And the listing it's 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? So let's say twelve 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 through how do you think about something like this? Yeah. So first I will do a little bit of research about the product. Does goat milk really work? Is it more of a gimmick or is it actually solved a problem or are people really, you know, interested? Is there a need for this? And again, if it's a gimmick, that's fine too, right? I'm this is not like uh Oh the answer's no, we'll not buy it. Uh it's just important to know.

Right. Back to the p to the pinata example. Exactly. How many Because not it's very important too for like not all b ideas have to be a hundred million dollar idea. Like I think A a million dollar a year business is amazing as well. Uh, right. So Maybe goat milk soap is, you know.

A very passionate which um product. 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 or there are like

Is there a rabbit fan base, you know, like goat milk, you know? fans, uh or Facebook groups. And I will also look on Amazon. Is this sold on Amazon? If yes. how is the trend and what is the sales. And then you can use a tool called Helium Ten.

To see How much revenue a listening is doing. It's by the way a really amazing tool. to do research. I do the same for Pet products. Yeah, I look

What is trending on Amazon What is you know blowing out the waters for ourselves and then I will do research and 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.

It also like Most of the business I bot were either flat or down. Because that's how you know you get You know, a good deal.

Uh so even if it's flat even if it's not turning up, I still would You know, potentially buy it. What is important, are the traffic channels diversified? Is the hundred or ninety percent coming from just Facebook, or is it just emails, or is it just Um SEO. That could be a little bit, you know

Risky. Especially if it's all paid traffic from Facebook. Because All the economy. founders or listeners uh on this podcast will know, you know

Apple can make an update and suddenly, you know, the paid uh 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, if I pump Is this gonna be more of an skill 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? Um That you know Is Less costly

But it's a longer game. And then also what's important to understand what you're buying. Are the trademarks, are the patents, is their email subscribers. So in this case, they have a 43,000 email subscribers. There's thirty three Thousand SMS subscribers.

I think this is social media. All these things, um, in my opinion, are valuable because that's the same with when I bought Alpha Bar. had a huge Instagram following, a huge Facebook following, they had an email list. They had trademarks and pattern, all that was, you know.

uh included in the cell. And if you th those are great, those 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 briefcase like a like a you know, evil evil genius, what do you what do you 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's I I don't know when they started a 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 thousand. And you only have to put down Forty thousand dollars. And the interest rate is is pretty low. It's anywhere 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 see an asking prize of four hundred thousand dollars You can

Always. Is it? Cash upfront offer? And then you can offer like hey, I will pay you two hundred fifty thousand dollars cash up front. 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 a remaining it's either seller's note or an earnout. Um And that keeps the seller, you know, helpful because they're you know, they they need to help you out, plus it lowers the amount that you have to loan. So let's just say uh let's just do a little loan calculator. So the SBA 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.

Uh s 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 per uh 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, let's 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 p and you're profitable every single month and you can reinvest some of that into growth. So that's like a pretty s uh sweet deal. And that's more than most people are making at their quote unquote safe job. Correct.

And the SBA, the beauty with SBA loans, they of course they look at your personal credit history and et cetera. But they really look and make a decision. The the lenders on the business. So they will never fund you if there's too high of a risk, right? If they think like oh

If uh we cannot You know, the the the borrower cannot pay the the interest month over month. So it's an amazing tool. Actually I spoke with uh Joe Valley from Quiet Light broker. Uh today And he told me story there was a woman

Simpat. 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 f in the five range. But puts only ten percent down. So she only she 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, a good leverage tool, uh to get into internet businesses or buy a business. Amazing. Uh yeah. is one of the tricks. Now, uh what do you g give people a a sense of how do you know make sure you're not buying a lemon? Yes.

That's uh I got a question a lot. So when you go to flipper dot com, I would be careful because flipper.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 due diligence.

If you go to a broker like Quietlife Brokers, they basically do all the vetting for you. They will look at the business, is everything legit? So the risk is much smaller. But regardless, if you're new to this, if you are you know it's your first business, you can Hire an due diligence company. Centurica is centurica.com is one. I think those are the biggest uh well known. You pay

You know, it's it depends on the listing price, but It's as cheap as a couple hundred dollars. And it goes up from there, but they do all the due diligence for you. They look through all the traffic. Is it legit? Is the revenue legit? Is whatever everything they claimed, is it all legit? And then they game 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 Centurka. Gotcha. Okay.

And g give okay, so these are businesses you could buy. What was the first kind of like How the heck did you become View, right? So how are you figuring out how to do this? Give people kind of a Uh not not you don't go deep into any one, but just Describe kind of the journey and then I might Poke into some that sound interesting. So

Okay, you're you're Ramon, you're born. And uh I don't know, I don't know when you got your entrepreneurial start. What was the first kind of like entrepreneurial venture where you've Were you in your teens or or twenties or what? My first real business was an construction business. I've done

Things before that, but were 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 are started basically the same. I didn't know anything about construction. Uh And uh the story, I will keep it very uh quick, but I think it's maybe could be helpful for people that maybe are overthinking steps or overthinking things. I was out of a job, was

Twenty years old. Had to pay my rent. Co work of my mom said, I need a painter to paint the inside of my house. I can pay you X. I forgot the number, but it was w like a month's worth of money.

That I made in three days. I 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. I that was really what intrigued me, right? Like if I can do this in one day. Oh actually, you know. H make the same amount of money than in a whole month. So you got paid on your output, not your input.

Correct. And um And as you know, like in my high school dropout, right? So there was not uh that's Wha what year did you actually drop out? Um Officially fifteen, but I stopped really going when I was fourteen. Okay. So that's basically ninth grade, right? That's US ninth grade. I don't know what it is there. Okay.

Actually my mom actually got a letter from the board of school to with an official waiver like okay, your son doesn't have to go to school because in Holland you have to go to school mandatory mandatory to sixteen. They actually gave me a pass because no high school wanted to accept me. Um but that's a different story. 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, built some uh designed a couple very ugly business cards made a one page website. And put an add out on the Dutch version of Craigslist.

And I thought, you know what, let's just not do only painting, let's do like we do everything. Construction like remodeling from A to Z. Whatever. I thought. You don't know how to do any of that, by the way. No, no. I don't know anything. I barely was able to So what gives you that confidence to say, I'll I'll renovate everything A to Z and yet I don't know how to do anything A to Z? I think that's the naive thing part of me that I still have is like Let's just see first if I can get a job and then figure out like how to solve or do the job. And

So An hour later, or two hours later, I got an email. From a guy saying, Hey, I'm looking for an electrician. And um I am Rewiring the whole building, blah blah blah. I said sure, no problem. I'll cease tomorrow. I'm a ninth grade drop out. I'll be there in three hours. I I got this.

I went out to bother an official construction outfit. So I really look like a construction guy or like, you know And I went there the next morning and disclaimer, of course I will not have done things that will you know, potentially kill people. But I just wanted to see like, you know, I don't know, like maybe it was Something simple. He gave me the tour and it was like

I couldn't even understand the words you were saying, like, Oh, we need to wire this and we need to do and the floors were open and the walls were open. And uh I was still playing along, but in my mind was like I there's no way I can do this, plus it's dangerous as fuck. Uh So you went out. To run some errands, I waited for him. 'Cause I didn't want to be like, you know, an asshole just go uh left. So I waited for an hour, he came back and I was like, Listen

I'm gonna be honest. I don't know shit about the construction company. I don't know shit about Electra. I Just started l yesterday. I want to 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. Um just help me with, you know Getting you know supplies. And he paid me the same amount of dollars or euros uh hourly rate than uh 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 in the I don't think

It's not as daring, it's not like oh I appreciate your hustle. No. It's like hey you're con man like Yes. So If you're young, take advantage. You know, Sam was also really genius of doing that as well, right? Like you can just get away with so much more. of showing 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. But 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 Second job. And I didn't do anything, I just had my And dispatch someone there.

Yeah. Yeah. I sold it for ten K. My cut was like around five K. And that's how I basically grew the construction company and within a year, a little over a year We were like at twenty to twenty four people, depending on how many projects.

We had And at that time we did close to a million dollars or million euros, sorry, um a year. Uh in revenue. And you're like nineteen, twenty years old, something like that at that time. Yeah, twenty twenty one when we you know, were year year in. And so what happened to that? Happy ending or sad ending to the story?

Well, very quick maybe story about how I scaled The scaling part I think that's also could be helpful for people is that The big problem with construction is every like the job is two weeks and then you have to find another job. The war job is four weeks and you have to find another job. Right. So it was really hard to keep The guy's busy and really

You know, make sure that the the projects align, if that makes sense. So I thought hey Who can I find? What can I do? So I don't have to find jobs anymore. Real estate investors. They buy Apartment buildings all at once. They all need to be renovated at once.

So I went to um local real estate uh meetups. That was actually horrible because I was a really 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 lead to another that I'm met the biggest real state investor

in my region that I lived. And he was like literally built buying Apartment buildings. Uh to foreclosure every month. Between twenty and a hundred buildings at a time. Wow.

He became my client and uh he was my client to the end, basically. I never had to search for a new customer. So that was all the good news. Then I made a bunch of mistakes. Cash flow projection was one. where construction you really it's a similar a little bit similar like with e commerce I think

You could grow yourself into bankruptcy, if that makes sense. Making for example You with a construction, same with e commerce. You have to put a lot of money up front. I have to pay every Friday the the crew. I have to

by the suppliers, but I only get paid all the way at the end when the project is done. So The faster you grow, the more projects you have, the more money you have to put out in the open and you have to wait for it. So that started That was really uh and that was just not good.

That's cash flow projection. I well, I just didn't do it. And um 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. And I had closed the company after Three years more or less.

And our mutual buddy Sully was at my house this weekend and he said something like uh I don't know if maybe you already maybe this is the guy you already talked about, but he said So you had some like mentor kinda help you early on. Uh, somebody who really changed you the course of your life. I I I don't know. Is he talking about the guy that who gave you that first kind of insight to hire freelancers or is there somebody else that he's talking about? No, it's a different story. Okay, tell that one.

All right. That story uh 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 sh your shit out. So I have to pay rent. So I had to find a job at a local

Best by the Dutch version of Best Buy. Couple weeks in I said, like, this sucks, right? Like long hours, whatever. And There was a guy came up coming in. In a nice, expensive suit. Uh he wanted to buy something was not in stock.

He gave me a business card and says like software solutions. And I didn't know anything about software or programming or whatever, but I knew Or solutions. Whatever. I didn't know anything. Uh But I just knew like okay, hey There's a lot of money to be made and a lot of opportunity in Because this was like the early internet days, right? Like, you know, I'm an old fuck, right? This is like

Before two thousand one, before the internet bubble, if people remember. And So I didn't know what he was doing. But it was something in software and solutions. And that's it. And ha you knew it was g good because he came in in a fancy suit, or you uh separately had been thinking about the internet? Uh separately been thinking about Because I always was like

Trying to, you know. Oh let's buy this type of product in Germany and then try to sell it in Holland. Like I was always trying to build these doing these schemes. Legal, of course, but Internet was just like this whole new like for me my like this is like amazing. There's so many opportun 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 code or whatever. So I started stalking

I said, Hey. And this is again the benefit of being young. Like hey I want to get a job at your company. And she said, We're not hiring.

But I kept stalking him respectfully, but I did caught stalking him for months, like three, four months. To a point where he said You know what? I'm so sick and tired of this. In a good way. Let's make a deal.

If I'm gonna give you a book On Friday we have an internal exam. For programmers. If you pass that exam. I will hire the company will hire you and give you a six month internal program to become a Microsoft

uh developer. But you have to promise me if you fail this exam on Friday, you have to leave me alone for the rest of your life. Okay, let's do it. They know what it was expect he gave me a book about Microsoft database access access database programming. Study that If my life was depending on it, did exam and I passed. I did pass a plus, but I passed enough.

And uh so they gave me a 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 A lease car, they gave me a laptop, they gave me like

Phone like it was it was insane. So this guy really changed my life because I think Learning how to code really is helpful also in other ways in in your life. Like because it really You analyzed

Problems. In situations just different. If um when you know how to code, that makes sense. And you're but today you don't consider yourself like a coder, like let's say for your 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? Do you're just saying learning it back then and using it back then and learning how to think that way was helpful. Yeah. And at 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.

PHP and HTML and you know, I know I know how to do it, but I'm like I I never do it. Basically. I I think it's more of breaking down What's so frustrating if it's a programmer is like finding bugs. So you have like You know? Ten thousand line code.

And as one thing bro uh it breaks. You have to go through like all the codes, but It really trains your brain like okay how to Really try to narrow down. What it could be and where the problem could be. And that

mindset you can use in in all kinds of other, you know, real life situations. So I don't a program right now, no. 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 w And why did you want to play this game, by the way? Uh because I think

Your audience would like to know these questions. Like what your router so it's a root your road. Give the people what they want. Yes. All right. So here's the first one. Would you rather be the CO of Apple or the president of the UFC? Ooh okay, president of the UFC. Like Dana White, uh Too much travel. I'm traveling. I'm on the road all the time.

Dealing with with all kinds of head event planning, like When I threw my wedding I was like, this is the only event I'll ever throw like this. And uh for the UFC, every weekend they throw, you know, a mega wedding. So no way I'm doing that. I also wouldn't really want to be the CEO of Apple, so I'll take the job, I'll go buy your company for half a trillion, I'll buy my company for half a trillion, and then I'll peace out. All right.

That's awesome. Um I saw this uh on a meme actually Would you rather have dinner with J Z or take five hundred thousand dollar cash? Uh$500,000 cash. Easy. Uh what would you do? Would you take dinner with Jay Z? I feel like he might be a I want a unique experienced person, no?

Yeah, I will take the cash too. There was there was a whole debate, uh like people saying like you should take J Z because he's gonna be. Let's say fifty thousand dollars cash. Fifty thousand dollars cash, I think is a closer bet here. Yeah. Then I will in The situation I'm right now, I will take the dinner.

Um If I have no money, I'm gonna take the cash. Right. Yeah, yeah. I'm I'm in the same boat. I think Dinner's 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 uh you could go buy your charity dinner with Jay Z for for ninety thousand and have the rest left over for for goods after that. Or you can buy a goat milk soap website. Exactly. I mean, that's the question. Would I rather have that goat milk business Today or just dinner with J C tomorrow? I'll take the goat milk business today. Thank you. Yeah. Let's do would you rather Would you rather bootstrape

Bootstrap a million dollar business. Or V C back ten million dollar year. Business. I think I would rather have a V C backed 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 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 10 will stay at 10. So I think ten million 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 uh chase. They're like, Well, the VCs say you need to grow. The V Cs say, you know, you'll have to raise your next round. My experience with VCs has actually been quite different, which is VCs give me the money, they might ha 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 V C. Or you can raise one round and grow at the pace you want. Um they might strongly Advise you to do something, but It's on you to say look. Are you gonna fire me? 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. Then a very quick for the listeners that have an idea, but not the capital, would you tell them to Try to get VC Money. Or try to get

The company start it, uh, get some revenue and then do the V C route or Yeah. I mean this gonna sound cliche, but it's True and whoever's doing this needs to hear this. Which is The

Raising money is not the uh is not the goal. Like so a lot of people are like, Hey, I want to talk to you, uh like I'll invest in a company. And they'll say I want to talk to you about, you know, what metrics we need to do to be able to raise an A. in uh nine months or you know we're we're starting planning for our series B uh 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 and plan. But there's a sort of im implication that Raising money is the milestone. And it's like, oh what business what does this business need to do to be able to achieve this outcome? And it's actually the opposite. It's I have a business outcome I'm trying to get to. I'm trying to get to ten million in revenue with twenty percent eBiddle or I'm trying to get

Uh twenty percent market share in this market or five percent. I wanna grow twenty percent a month. If you have a business outcome in mind And then you just say Do I need more money to make that happen? Yes or no? Um money is the fuel. It is not the destination. It is not the it's not the point of the journey.

Uh uh for for for raising money. And so I would just say like yeah, you when you start when you have the idea. Uh 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

You're Paid ads are working, you just need to spend more to get to the next milestone, then you raise the money. Don't raise Don't raise as your excuse to go do the business. Yeah.

And you also see a lot of uh deals with people approaching you and you know, me in a little bit lesser way, but I do feel like there's a lot of people think they need money. To launch a business? But actually. Don't.

Um, because they think, oh, it needs to be pretty or it has to have all these functionalities. Um But maybe they could just like start with one functionality and just have, you know, a fiber designer just do it and you know, do it at least get started. Yeah, my favorite people to f to to f fund are people who have uh created a company and like

Made all the mistakes. Ended up with a small win where they got a taste of w 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 ups 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 it's even if somebody tells you. experience the best teacher because uh y the voice in your head typically uh for most entrepreneurs I meet The voice in your head typically is giving you some bad advice your first first time through and it's okay. Like just go do it. Learn those lessons and then the second time you're much better off. Yeah.

I agree. Then last question. Would you rather do a boxing match against Sam or do an Iron Man with me and Sulli. Uh both. I'll r I'd rather do the boxing match with Sam because that sounds more fun and exciting.

Uh than like an endurance race. But uh yeah, so I would do a boxing match with Sam. I think that'd be great. Uh you know. I've always wanted to like feel what it's like to be In a real fight.

Like I think I got into like one or two little altered cases when I was younger, like in high school or middle school, but it was always like I hit the kid and then he He ran away or like he hit me and then it got broken up and it's like it never was like Okay, let's do this. Let's get let's start. No one's gonna break this up and the point is to actually get in a fight. So I would do it, although Sam is definitely like, you know, on horse uh tranquilizers or whatever, like horse uh you know, growth hormone or whatever he's taken. That guy's uh built like a absolute monster right now. So

Uh you know, I I need a little training period, but I would do it. Actually a lot of people because he's been posting videos of me and him sparring. Um you know, he wants to become an uh Business influencer now. To h to his credit, by the way, he post pict He posts videos of you

Hitting him and him going down. Normally when people post they cherry pick what makes them look good, he does the opposite. He posts of you hitting him with liver shots and him falling down over and over again. Like a compilation. Yeah. And to be also to his credit, he um 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. Um

You know I've been training much longer. But a lot of people on the Twitter uh comments actually are voting for Uh U versus Sam.

So maybe we should give the parents what they need. Let's give the fans what they want. Yeah. We need we need like a Kickstarter or GoFundMe or something. It's like If uh if if if certain number of people vote for this or buy the pre-buy a pay per view, five dollar pay per view of this, we'll do it. We need like whatever, 10,000 pre buys. Okay. Ten thousand pre buys, that's the goal.

10,000 pre-buys of a$10 pay per view, and then we'll do it. Okay. Let's set it up. And then you can either give me like, I don't know, four months to to train. And we'll fulfill the training. Yeah.

Or six weeks. Each one can get one uh good trainer, boxing trainer. Uh do you do you would you go to boxing or MA or No boxing is something I don't have time to learn five martial arts, so we'll get to the point where we're both shitty at boxing and then we'll do it. Yeah, let's do it. I think we should uh do it and then maybe Sully and I can box to as the pre uh we should we should get anybody. U it's a CEO boxing tournament.

Yes. And we stream it Uh and we do it in a really small ratchet like boxing gym here. So we can go there and then we'll just stream it for for the people. Right. Uh ten thousand pre buys. That's uh a lot, but I think it's doable. I think so. Especially if you can get the support of your listeners.

Yeah, we're saying it now. Uh people will just have to see uh We'll just have to get'em a link. And let's get'em a link and let's do it. Yes. All right. This I can away. All right, perfect.

Um, okay, I gotta run. I gotta do a call with this guy. Ramon, thanks for being on. Where should people find you? So now you're Twitter famous. So Is it Ramon Van Meer? Is that your your Twitter handle? Right? Actually. I feel so dumb. Um I don't know actually. Let me see. Um Because I barely.

used it since until yesterday. Yeah, Remote at Ramon Van Mere all together. At Revo Ramon Van Meer, go by if you have a small dog like I have a multi poo. Uh, I have four of your ramps in my house because it's a lifesaver. Uh otherwise your dogs get like, you know, injured backs and they're jumping off couches and stuff like that. That's like imagine jumping onto something or off of something that's three times your height. Right. That's what they're doing. And so these ramps are onto the bed, onto the couch, up the stairs. You know, the that's how I use them. So go buy go buy some ramps from Alpha Paul.

Well, thank you for the plug. Uh thank you was good talking and I see you at the at the boxing match. Uh I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I'm put my all in it like my day's off On the road less travel never looking back

What you see above is a preview of the first minutes. One unlock costs 3 credits and covers this episode forever: full segment and word-level timestamps on this page, plus .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like.