#2 with Ramon Van Meer - Blogging His Way To $9M in Cash

At this point it's a money printer. I was very lucky that uh in content you with a very small team, very low overhead. We're talking monthly, you're pulling in. between four and five hundred thousand in revenue What's up guys, Sean here. I'm doing a special little introduction to this episode from my phone. Because we got some good news. We

broke into the top ten on the uh Apple iTunes rankings, which is really crazy. I thank everybody who downloaded the episode, subscribed, left a review, uh Ben mod me a dollar. Uh everybody who supported the show, thank you very much. You know the rankings don't really r really mean much. I'm gonna do the show anyways because I just like having conversations with smart people. But damn, it does feel good when something actually works and when people like listening to it. And I really appreciate that. So that's good news. The other good news is that we're bringing on our first sponsor. Uh you'll hear me talk about them a little bit in midway through the episode, but I just think it's cool. We're the money podcast. We talk to people about how they made their money. And uh it's only right that we make a little money ourselves, I think. Uh that helps keep the show going and makes it sustainable for everybody. So uh big shout out to Monday dot com who's coming on as our first sponsor. Uh I also like that it's actually a product that I use. Uh in fact, like last week I started using Monday dot com. to organize the podcast because there was so much stuff going on. I gotta book guests, I gotta send stuff to the editor, I gotta do this and that. Any project, it just starts getting super busy. And so uh Monday dot com was a really good place to just organize everything, um, have my lists in a good spot. And it's got really nice design and I'm a sucker for design. And so uh this sounds like an ad now. This is not the ad. The ad comes later, but I really do use the product and I'm glad that the sponsor is something that I actually use and really like. So uh shout out to them for coming on board. Um this week's conversation was with Ramon Van Meer.

Um and Ramon is a really interesting dude and this episode is gonna be different than most episodes. I would say that Majority of the guests when I have them on, they are intimidatingly smart. Um when they're talking to me, it's pretty obvious within five minutes that I'm the dumbest person in the room and I just try to ask questions so that let them talk and let them tell their story and I just do my best to keep up. But Ramon is not a genius. And that's what I'll say, our buddy Sam, who introduced us, he says it differently. He calls Ramon like he just tells him you're so dumb, you're the dumbest smart guy I know. And he means it with love because what Ramon does is he doesn't overcomplicate things.

And you're gonna hear that in his story. For example, the the essence of his story and he he'll tell you better than I will, but it's All right. You know, wanted to start a blog He just looked at what was already popular and then he started a blog in that little niche. He bought a forty nine dollar WordPress template because he doesn't know how to code. He outsourced the writing to some freelancers because he doesn't know how to write. And uh somehow, some way just did those simple things and built the most popular blog about a subject that he doesn't even really know. It's a soap opera blog, like, you know.

Days of our lives, young and the restless, that's s like soap operas. And he's never even seen an episode of a soap opera. And so somehow Uh this guy who can't code, can't write, and never watch soap operas built a blog full filled with uh daily s daily stories about soap operas and uh you know the business started print money generating you know hundreds of thousands of dollars month uh before selling it for about nine million dollars. And so uh Ramon is one of the most humble guys I've ever met in Silicon Valley

Very good at just keeping things simple. It's to remember that you don't have to be a genius and you don't have to have some super complicated high tech business plan to make it work. Sometimes if you just find a niche that has a lot of passion around it, you can build a very simple business and he's gonna tell you about that. So hope you enjoy the episode. If you do, leave a review. Shout me out on Twitter. Uh do something so that I hear you guys. Uh that's what gets me excited to to keep making the show happen. Uh I don't have to do the show, I do it because I love it, and um I really appreciate everything that happened after the first episode. All right, enjoy. Okay.

Here to go. Let's do this. Sometimes I get asked to do a podcast or an interview and I'm a shy person in groups so I don't really like to do T V or interviews. I don't like to talk too much about myself. It's just I don't know why. So sometimes it gets awkward. A friend of mine asked me to do a T V segment for him. It was not a T V like national T V. Nobody would really see it. But as soon as he hit the record on the camera then I started mumbling and uh froze. I froze, yeah. So I'm trying to do my best. Well try not to freeze this one.

informal without even doing an intro. The podcast is called My first million. And the idea is Wanna talk to different

founders, entrepreneurs like you who have hit their first million, million dollars, million downloads, million subscribers, something some huge milestone. And I wanna find out how they did it. And so I wanted you to come on because You have a wild

A wild story about how you hit your first million. Very unorthodox. Very different than You know, the even Most of the Silicon Valley success stories uh yours is is totally different. So let's start with the the very simple question. Yes. How did you make your first million? All right. Nobody will guess this and nobody believes it when I tell them. I started a blog about soap operas. It's a news news blog that will write about the running soap operas and we're talking like

Days of our lives, yes young and the restless. Exactly. And the first question people always ask, Oh, do are you a soap opera watcher? Because especially when they see me, you know, then th they cannot believe it. Up to now I've not watched one episode of any soap opera. But yeah, that was the website. I built it and sold it in three years later. Wow. So okay, so so the story is gonna be you decide to make a soap opera blog. God knows why. Yeah you somehow were able to make a soap opera blog successful despite never watching a soap opera and You sold it how long ago? Ten, eleven months ago. Alright, so eleven months ago you sell it for say nine and a half million Little bit uh below nine million, eight point seven five.

Eight point seven five million. Cash. Cash, yes. And this isn't like a Silicon Valley, like you own four percent of the company. This was your company. You owned there's no outside investors. I I had no investors. I bootstrapped it. I had some advisors. I think I owned like ninety eight percent still. Wow. And then I gave, you know, some shares or some profit to employees, but yeah. Okay, love it. So okay, so we're gonna go in. So how does this start? Why even create a soap opera blog to begin with? Yeah, I started this and I called the golden age of Facebook, where you can basically create a fan page about any topic and very cheap and fast. Could build a huge fan page. And back then the newsfeed algorithm was still in favor for publishers. So whatever you post it, a lot of your fans will see it. So are we talking like the buzz feed

Up were the days when they were getting a ton of traffic off Facebook. I just didn't know what The topic would be so is it a should should I sell product or service or content. If a content, what kind of content? So I just take me back. Are you just at home alone in a room thinking about this? Brainstorming on a whiteboard. Yeah, eight hundred square feet apartment, me and my son together and just brainstorming ideas. And what was your son's ideas? What was he what was he thinking? Actually he has actually has uh good ideas actually, but it's more games, but he always comes with these really interesting thoughts that I never think of. And then hey, he has a good point. Right. But yeah, going back to the Facebook, I started Ten, eleven, twelve, I forgot, different fan pages about different topics. So one was about pets, marijuana, soaps, politics. And I would just drive some traffic to it or build some likes, hate.

And then post some random pictures and then see the engagement. So some fan pages really bomb. I had ten thousand fans, I post a picture and I got two likes or whatever, right? Okay, horrible engagement. But there were two topics that really stood out. One was soaps, the other one was politics. And this was even before the craziness that you know Before Trump. Yes, exactly. V T. Way before Trump. Politics I really didn't like because especially, you know, one side was more engaged and everything against what I believe in. So I dropped that actually after two weeks. And then I saw the soap opera. Fan page.

doing you know a lot of people sharing and commenting and liking even though I made a lot of mistakes posting the wrong actors like I posted pictures of of people that were not in the show and um things like that. But the engagement was crazy. Yes, exactly. So I built a simple WordPress site. I bought a team from Team Forest, put it on WordPress, used photo. Are you a technical guy? I mean what's your 'Cause a lot of people get stuck, right? You know, hey, I want to build this website. Yeah. I can't code. Do I go? learn Python the hard way? Do I go buy this course and try to become a developer?

Do I try to outsource it? Yeah. Do I try the you know a WordPress theme? So I I think that's why we live in such a great time, right? Like you don't actually need to know a lot to get stuff, you know, built. WordPress, it's so Shopify if you want to start selling something, Shopify is very easy. and if you want to build uh content side WordPress is also. So I am technical, but I didn't code anything to but like this website I built in a couple of hours was a WordPress, a team

A very simple logo. Because I'm a I I'm just a believer like trying a lot of different things. Fast. Fast. And then see If something works, then you, you know, optimise or make it better or make it look better or faster, things like that. But you know, I try to prevent Spending too much time in the pre launch phase where like I made those mistakes too when I was younger. I had a business idea and then I you know I took weeks to design a business card and uh you know and and a website and and eventually after months of hard work and then it didn't the idea didn't work, right? So now I'm the opposite, just quick. So a couple hours

Very ugly side. Now I had the problem. I don't know anything about soaps. And as you can hear, I have an accent. English is not my first language, so writing is also not my strong. So when on Upwork back then was called O Desk. So this breaks all the rules, by the way. It's Yeah. Yeah. Oh founder market fit. Zero. Zero. Passion is zero. Exactly. Skill skill set. Zero. Can't write and decide to start a blog. Exactly. But you knew one thing. So if we're recapping the kind of what you had, what you didn't have. That's the stuff you didn't have. But Sounds like what you had was

You knew that At least for this time period. There was a cheap way to buy Likes on a Facebook page. Correct. And then whatever that Facebook page is, and you try twenty of them, WWE and Pets and whatever.

And then take that traffic on the f take the likes on the Facebook page, turn it into website traffic. Correct. And so you do their testing period, you decide soaps is the one I'm gonna do because the engagement's high using the data. It's all good. And now you got your blog up. But you don't have

the content we'll go in. Yeah. So when on a website called Odesk, is where you can hire freelancers from writers to video editors to anything you can imagine. Put an ad out, hey I'm starting a soap opera blog, looking for a writer, and very lucky I found an editor writer that used to write print soap opera magazine twenty years ago. She watched all the shows, she's in the industry for many, many years, so she knows the storyline. That's how people used to solve this problem. They would buy the magazine, it would say it would talk about that week's drama in the soap. And then magazines just were too slow for the new world. Yes, exactly. So that was also a luck that there were competitors. But it's like the old school media competitors. It was like these magazines that have been around for twenty, forty years. What's like a big magazine that covers soaps? The biggest one is called Soap Opera Digest. Okay. It's been around I think forty, fifty years. Straight to the point. They have a website, but their main focus up to the last couple of years was always their magazine. Yeah. So it was you see this incumbent who's you know, they're from the print world. They have a website

Website's like a PDF, basically. Exactly. So you know when you see that the website reminds you of a PDF, it's like this is a good market to get it. Found her, started with one article a day and just test out and see how it works. Up to now actually she's still working with the new owners of uh yeah. And so she starts cranking out content. And t give me your mindset. I mean, are you You're pretty certain that this is gonna work?

How are you paying the bills at this point? Like w take me back to because I know it works, right? Spoiler of this podcast shit worked out. Yeah. Sold the company. You know, that worked. So but I think it's important to go back when it wasn't clear that it was gonna work. Yeah you have some belief, but like again, I want to know how were you paying the bills and then what was your certainty level on this, or were you still hedging your bets with other things. Yeah. It's always easy to look Backwards like you know, oh of course it it's you know it works. In my case, every person I told this idea to told me, you know, you're crazy. Like it's never gonna work. So it's like who watches that? And why didn't you listen to them? You're just a stubborn guy or what? Yeah, and because You know

I like to keep trying things until I see it doesn't work and then I go to the next idea. I saw the engagement. So going back It took Four, five months. before I really started seeing good amount of traffic to the site. Because the problem with content, you need a lot of traffic to really make money. You know, I back then I was just using only Google ads, so the banners on my website. Even after a couple of weeks I made like two dollars a day and then four dollars. You know, I couldn't You know, I paid more for the article than

What kept me going was that the engagement on the fan page, like the fan page I only had to pay The first couple of weeks, you know, I think the twenty or thirty thousand d uh likes.

After that The fan page just grew organically. Whatever I posted got so many shares. And I did see an opportunity, okay, there's not a lot of competition. The fans is are super engaged. It's content that is every day. Like soap operas are aired every single day for fifty two weeks.

Straight. They have some blackout dates, but but basically it's every new episodes. New episodes every month. So apparently they record A bunch of them on the same day. Like five six. It's very very basic meaning like their sets

It's just the actors, like I think even the directors are in a in a booth upstairs and then they just crank out, you know you know, with all the respect of uh the soap opera, you know, actors. It it's not like a Hollywood You know, Game of Thrones we're talking about. Yes, exactly. So it's a lot of content. And when you write about the topic or think about you know, starting a content site, you will also want to think, okay, is there gonna be enough content to write about? So for example, if you do a Game of Thrones blog You're kinda limited because it only airs two, three months, I don't know, actually uh a year. This season was six episodes. Now it's done. And it's done, right? So then six Sundays. Yeah. So that's not a lot of uh content. To be fair I are you are you a Game of Thrones fan? No.

Okay, so to be fair, you could write an infinite amount of content just complaining now about the ending and the last season. Start a petition. Exactly. So soap opera's had this unique property. Daily content, new content every day. And I mean, what is your article about? Is it here's the recap of what happened in case you missed it. Was it like speculation of what's gonna happen, what was the content like? Or is it just pure clickbait on Facebook of like See which character you are on this quiz. Yeah. So because I didn't know anything about the audience, I had to learn like what did I like, what did they read. So I tried everything. But it was very obvious people like to read what's gonna happen tomorrow or the next day or next week. So the Yeah. Really spoilers. Okay. And just like the answer. This is what's gonna happen. Yeah, like oh J Jake is gonna, you know, leave uh Mary tomorrow, you know? That kind of articles really Did well. Did well. Like I think eighty percent of our traffic came from spoiler or spoiler related articles. Unbelievable.

Then of course we did, you know, to get more content out because the more content you put out the more traffic you get, you know, more traffic, more revenue. So we we did we wrote about recaps for the people that missed an episode. We did you know what days of our life's character are you? But it was more quiz to capture emails. I really used that as a as an email List building tool. did really well. Like we built over three hundred, I think close to three fifty, three hundred fifty thousand emails we collected with these You know, silly quizzes. Right.

You said the first few months you're Trying to get traffic. First four or five months, not very much traffic. You know, two bucks a day in AdSense type of thing. Yeah. But you keep going because you see the engagement. Yeah. And did you have a day job at the time? I mean how did you live h you know, it's you and your son at home. How how are you paying the bills? Yeah, so I had an online travel agency company before with my uh

previous business partner and I sold half of my shares And the new the buyer that's bought my shares. Paid. A year long. Every month.

So that was exactly what I needed to pay my bill. So that was you know it was was my luck that you know I could then, you know, just And are you the type where you know did your mind ever go, I should I should just get a job? Or were you just bullheaded of like no, I need to create these websites and own them and and make a business out of that. Yeah. I've been an entrepreneur, like I've been so many different uh businesses. Like I had Some jobs when I was eighteen, nineteen, but basically I always had my own companies. So it was never a thought of okay, if the soaps doesn't work, I'm gonna go get a job. It was actually if soap doesn't work I'm gonna

figure out something else. Right. I'll try pets. I'll try politics. I'll try something else. Mm-hmm. Okay. And so all right, so let's jump back in. You're building up the traffic. And what's the what c what was the inflection point? Why did Things go from A little bit of traffic, a little bit of ad revenue to give me a sense, where did the traffic get to over time? What was like the peak of it?

of traffic. It was like very slow like flat almost, but very a little bit uphill, like and then suddenly yeah, we we started growing much faster. Because I was starting to collect emails. Starting when a person came to my website I asked, Hey, do you want to get a push notification? So I started to diversify my traffic sources. Not just Facebook. And Then

Yeah, four or five months into it, then it started doubling every day and then the growth w went really fast, actually. Awesome. And you were you're buying traffic at this point still, or at some point did you just stop buying and you just start making the content and people shared. Yeah, so I only bought thirty the first thirty, forty thousand likes at below one cent. Per like? So it was very cheap. After that was all organic. Wow. Yeah.

And then I only started boosting posts on Facebook, like buying, you know, like paying for traffic a year after So we're talking like you spent hundreds and the hundreds of dollars. Yeah. My math's not great, but I think that one penny something like that. Yeah. unpaid for this website built that asset up into something that you were able to sell for almost nine million bucks. So that's a tremendous, tremendous type of return. Is that what you thought was possible? Or no? Were you thinking this will make me ten K a month and then I'll figure something else out? Yeah. When I started I thought because I was in you know, I sold my shares, okay, what I'm gonna do next. I know I like internet marketing and I was always, you know doing marketing stuff, where buying some small websites, selling them or building them from scratch and so I thought okay, this would Could be

A fun project that maybe makes me, you know, twenty K a month and you know, that will be I I I didn't know like You know, my first goal was a hundred dollars a day and then very quickly was a thousand dollars a day. And then I thought Oh man, this is a thousand dollars a day, this is amazing and but it kept growing Today's sponsor is Monday.com. Need help making your first million? Be direct. Our sponsor, Monday.com, is here to help with a weekly dose of the Monday.com motivation. See the thing is you know what you want, so you gotta ditch the fluff and state your goals straight up. Send emails, make phone calls, network.

Being able to communicate your goal directly makes achieving it that much easier. Check out Monday dot com to see how their color coordinated dashboards improve communication for your team, can increase your workflow, manage workloads, and get you one step closer to getting that money. Monday.com. All right. And the thing I love about you is you're so different than all my other friends here where A lot of people, you know, you live in Silicon Valley, there's a lot of people who love self promotion. I'm one of them. Started a podcast. But a lot of people who love Twitter, they love talking to people, they love meeting people, they go to networking events, they host dinners. Mm-hmm.

You don't do any of that shit. No. You're like a you know, solo guy who just makes shit happen and that's really all you're interested in. It's just that That very singular laser focus. So when this is happening, my question is How do you celebrate? How do you get ideas? So when you're

Hitting these milestones Is it just kinda you doing a fist pump in a room? Are you talking to somebody, you're just telling your son? Well yeah. How did you celebrate? And then I also want to know How did you get your ideas of hey, I should do push notifications, I should the do these next things. So tell me a little bit about both those. So Once we started making

money I You know, w one thing that I learned is that reinvesting right away back in the business. Like I was only making maybe five grand a month and then I hired a full time person because I knew okay Even though Business wise it's probably not smart, like you don't make enough to afford that, but I just data because I knew I could then focus on growth and then that person can focus on the day to day things. So after probably six to nine months, you know, I got a small office and then got first employee

I got some remo freelance remote people uh writing and and helping out some freelancers. The audience is so passionate that it was very easy for me to find, you know, uh people that just wanna work for free. Yeah, like, you know, help but post stuff on Facebook and things like that. But that's that's the journey of the entrepreneur. It's just often Like lonely, especially if you're still in the phase of of working from home. Because yeah, you have no people around to celebrate. Ideas I got from you know because I love doing it. Like I it it it it's a super cliche, but you know, I don't see it as work, right? Like it's my hobby. If I'm not You know, I I love reading, I love, you know, coming up with growth like hacks and and you know, ideas on how to drive more traffic and this might be the entrepreneur test, right? If you're listening to this right now and you're like, you know, those like Viagra commercials where it's like they describe fifty symptoms at the half a second. It's like if these belong you know, if any of these plenty of you, please go see your doctor. Yeah.

The way I see what you're describing is the if any of these apply to you, please become an entrepreneur. Which is like most people. that you meet. They work their sort of nine to five and the objective is to turn off their brain and turn off the work part of their brain. So can't wait to, you know, go home Get off that. You know, the weekend is here. All right, fantastic. Oh no, Monday's Monday is back. Now we have to go. Apply my brain to this thing that I don't

necessarily want to be thinking about yeah. Whereas it seems like for an entrepreneur there's a certain level of curiosity and obsession that just makes it where You you can't turn that part of your brain off. You're always thinking of ideas. Yeah. And so that's the you know, if those apply to you, please go see you know, please go see your doctor. Please go see your investor and go get a check to to start your business. It's it's it's true, and it's a blessing and a curse at the same time because I cannot I always this morning talking with somebody and I said Even if I want to, I cannot turn off the switch. Right. So it's very hard for me and for my family actually for me to go on vacation. Right. Like even if not a great date. No, I even on vacation I, you know, I work. Of course I will combine it with doing stuff, you know, I have to do that for my son.

It's always spinning, so to speak. So it's it's a blessing and uh and a curse. So you were saying you that's how you're getting ideas. You were just constantly thinking of different things to try. Were you looking at competitors? Were you Talking to advisors or what what was your method to get new ideas? So I like to uh reverse engineer shit, right? So I always look at First at direct competitors. So if you want to do something, look at the market, the competitors that are out there, and then see what they're doing. Right, and what are they n you know, not doing so well. And just pick ideas from that.

Then I looked at You know, sites that were not competitors but are doing great in content in general, and then just had, you know, oh they s you know, they're building a list with push notifications. Oh, let me try that. Oh, I see you and quiz, you know, figure out what kind of dog you are. Maybe we can You know, changes into a soap opera actor quiz, right? Stuff like that. And then you're not trying to be a genius.

You're trying to get the result. Yes. Yeah. If somebody else has an idea that's getting good results, you'll try it. Yeah, reverse engineer. Uh maybe the first time we went out to dinner. 'Cause I was like it was something around why soaps. Why did you even try soaps to begin with? And y you had said something like Tell the Story where

You said you saw somebody selling a website like this and he you know, if the guy was asking for a hundred thousand dollars and you were like, I mean, I don't even have I don't even have a hundred dollars to give you for this, but If you're selling it for one hundred thousand, that means there must be some value here. Is it is that how it went down for that part? So still to know, I always like to look at marketplaces where people buy and sell websites. I think you can learn a lot. They write a whole summary and give access to the P L's and then so you can. Quiet Light Brokers is actually one of the biggest one. It's a it's like a f see it as a real estate broker where they have a couple of website listings and then you can buy or sell. I was on there this morning actually. I was looking at when I went to Qui'cause I hadn't heard of Quiet Light. I had seen some of the different Shopify buy sell ones. And I went to Quiet Light and you're right. I mean you just see Hey, I have a business. I sell leather products and I'm doing

Two million a year in sales. Yeah. That's kinda interesting. Let me see you know whether you want to buy it or you want to take inspiration and sort of come up with similar businesses exactly as a strategy. Yeah. They're already doing two million But The side is shitty and uh you know, like opportunities to add value. Add value, and then you can either decide, okay, maybe I

I'll see if I can buy it, or you start from scratch. I had no money. So In that same period when I was building those fan pages, I saw a listing on Flippa about soap operas and Right to summary. And I thought this is interesting. And You know, but the price was way too high, it was a hundred thousand dollars. So I said, Okay, let's just

You know, see and just build it from scratch or so. Right. It's like real estate, right? You go you know, you see these listings. You say, I could go raise the rents. But sometimes if you have no money, the beauty of the internet is it's like you can go build building just like that. Yeah. In in the real world, okay, well I can't go build my own building, but What you were able to do in maybe six to eight months was You built your own building. Hey, I can't buy that one, but I can build my own. Yeah. And so so w at what point did you realize this is gonna work? This is gonna be successful at a scale that

even bigger than I originally thought. Yeah. What was that turning point? I still remember it was December I think twenty seven. It was when I was testing different articles and different times to post and different things. And but that day was the first day we made a hundred dollars, but it was really calculated, okay, we're post on this time, this kind of article and it all sort of fell into place. So you made a hundred bucks, but you knew you would make the hundred bucks. It was it was it was not luck. No, you got a system. Yeah, you got a s now got finally I was working on a system and it was kinda working out, kinda working and but now was like it fell in place. Okay, now the strategy, the blueprint

It's it's it's working. And then now it's just a matter of scaling, you know, getting more fans to the fan pages, building you know, find different ways to get traffic and and You know, more content. So now it was more a uh a matter of scaling. So to speak. And w what worked with scaling? What were some of the

were some of the techniques that really worked. The biggest was building the email list. There was also a huge hedge for because back then this was before Facebook, you know, started s screwing up the newsfeed, so to speak, the algorithm. So once Facebook was doing that, every publisher, including me, we saw a huge drop in reach. So less and less people would go to our site. from Facebook. So I had to hatch that risk, so to speak, by building an email list and also Facebook groups.

So up to today actually Facebook groups still uh really Really powerful. And did you see that coming? Or was this a reaction, oh shit, Facebook turned off the traffic. We better do something, or did you sort of anticipate that? The first time around was on at this like I nobody really knew and then you know the news came out and then suddenly the the traffic came down. But the second time, the big update, by that time I had a couple advisors. One Sam Parr who runs the hustle, and another advisor that

used to work. Uh to Facebook. So You know, he told me, you know, like in big lines like, you know, okay I don't know exactly how or what or when, but I know, you know, Mark Zuckerberg's vision is really, you know, not pro publisher, so to speak. You know, he really wants people, you know so make sure you hedge Like, you know, focus on Facebook groups and focus on

getting into you know Google, Google News and things like that. Strongly emphasize that you should look at the don't put all your eggs in one basket and and And uh Still to today like when I buy or sell or or by start a side is like I I want At the first

Traffic. Traffic, yeah. I don't want to be able to do it. Hundred percent. depending on Google, a hundred percent even email or hundred percent, you know, a push notification. From all these the email is still the the the best bet, but you know, even Google can make any change tomorrow and then you know you don't get the traffic you used to get. Right. And so you

You know, you you're going down this path and In different businesses uh there's a a moment and there's this guy Ben Horowitz who's a venture capitalist uh in the city for Andreessen Horowitz and he he has this term that he likes to use W F I O WIFO and what that stands for is We're f it's over. Uh meaning something goes so horribly wrong that You're unsure.

If you can really recover from it. Were there any of those moments? It sounds like the Facebook traffic thing could have been one of those moments, but you're very calm, cool, collected guy. So I I don't know if did you ever have that panic did you ever hit the panic button and say Yeah. This is it. We're after it might be over.

I think you never lose that as an entrepreneur is that you don't know what's gonna happen, right? Like what is the right decision. So several times I was thinking, Okay, should I sell now or should I wait? If I don't wanna wait too long because maybe things change and then my traffic goes down and then the value of my company is Much less. I cannot sell it anymore, or nobody wants to buy it. Or I was also Because I was only writing about soap operas. And soap operas are The only four

airing like only four in the United States. Ten, twelve years ago there were like twelve or thirteen like you know, they the the soap get cancelled. So I I was also you know, thinking, Oh man, what happens if two soap opera get canceled, then I don't have content to write about or less content. Right. And then nobody will buy it. So I was that was like, you know when, for example, the soap operas would re sign the contracts with the networks, like those were the times, man, shit, should I sell it, should I not? Like Trying to get information, you know, trying to get inside information from the networks, you know. So did you talk to any of the soap opera folks? Do they know who you are? Yes. And did you have to pretend were you like oh I'm a huge fan. Oh so sorry. So not me personally. I didn't I didn't talk to them, but our writers, our writer team, yes. So after

I hired the first one. She already had connections with networks and soap opera actors and then some of our other writers. One that lived in LA, he knows all the publishers and the networks and so we got also You know, interviews, uh exclusive interviews with soap opera actors. We got the spoilers for two weeks out, you know, so we write more about like what's gonna happen tomorrow. Right all that stuff. So we had some uh but I I didn't do it. And but even if you didn't have to pretend And I would not do it either. Yeah, like I I never watched an episode. I don't watch it, you know, I'm sorry. It's but you know, I I love the the audience. I love, you know Love the traffic. Yeah, I love the traffic. So The fan base is amazing. And so when you advise people, if somebody who came to you for advice,

Are you one of those people who says, listen to what I say, not what I do as in Follow your passion. Hey, I'm not I'm not doing that necessarily with the topics I'm writing about or the companies, kinda the customers I'm serving. I'm not one of you know, I'm not scratching my own itch. I'm not uh super passionate about that space, but you do it anyways. You think that's a good strategy, or it's just a strategy that works for you and maybe not advisable for others to follow? Yeah. So that's also I think one thing why I don't really like'cause nowadays in the news in your Facebook you see so many of these so claimed gurus and then the six steps to this and the four steps to that. And you know, it makes me cringe because what works for me

doesn't work for somebody else. I think you really, you know every person is different. I think what worked for me would will not work for a lot of other people. It's but in my case I think my passion is not so much the content doesn't really matter. My passion is Entrepreneurship. uh you know the journey.

Not knowing what the outcome is. And trying to find creative ways to to make it happen. So for me I like

You have a product, a service, a content, soap opera. content side, whatever it is, and then you have Traffic that you need to drive there. So For me it's like figuring out okay, how can we Get as much traffic for as cheap as possible from point A to point B. Right. And that's for me the game that I like to If you were selling paper clips or cups. Exactly. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Right. It's the game of

driving traffic, customers, or however you see it from point A to point B. As cheap as possible. You get to the you get to the end. What why'd you decide to sell? Why not keep going?'Cause at this point it's a money printer. Yes.

I was very lucky that uh in content you with a very small team, very low overhead, you can Make good revenue. And we're talking monthly, you're pulling in between four and five hundred thousand in revenue. And overheads. was, you know, hundred something, hundred

You know, depending on the month, but we were a very small team. In house were was me and three others. And then a handful of writers. So it was a very small team where the person doing the arts, a day to day person that runs everything and then a video host and editor.

Love it. You have this cash cow. Why why sell? Because you don't get often s you know multi million dollar offerings, you know, like so I thought it's it's a life changing So somebody just came to you or did you no out and market it? So first I wanted to see hey, can I can I even sell it? So initially I went to ask one of the advisors, Dave Nemetz, one of the founders of Bleach Report, I asked him, Hey, how much do you think I could sell this, right? Like and he brought me in touch with an I'm a a merchant acquisition person or a guy, however you say it. And I hired him and he shopped it around and you know

I got some meetings with some companies that were interested in buying it. I got horrible offers like you know like one time My revenue for example and then one X revenue. Maybe with a little bit of cash and then the rest of the money I had to wait like, you know, four years. Every month I would get a little bit, you know. They try to drip you your money. Yes. It's like the the you know the the the private equity play, right? Where they try to repay or pay with the cash flow from the business. Right. So that was not worth it. Then I reach out to the broker. I used to work with quite light brokers. I bought and sold a couple of other smaller sites through them. But I always thought, Oh, this is too big of a website. I don't know a lot of people that can afford, you know, or can buy and did you go in with a number in mind? That's hard for entrepreneurs, right? Yeah.

Yeah. And some days I wake up and I say, Take this off my hands. Did you have a number in mind? How did you think about it? That's true. Like a lot of especially entrepreneurs that are married to the idea, they think their their company is worth way more than than it actually is. By that time I had, you know, friends that are in the same industry and then you kinda get to know like standard. Yeah, or like oh this site sold for XYZ and so you can see at at different valuations. So I had a number in mind. that was actually way lower than I actually sold it for. Right. And uh I went to the broker. I said not listening. Yeah. Well this is an interest it's interesting story too. So the broker, how that works with when you go to a broker, they just

look at your last twelve months of profit and then they put a multiple on it. So if you did a million dollars in profit, they can sell it either between Two X. And five X, depending on the industry, the trend, you know. Right. Traffic sources, all kinds of stuff. So when I started the process of selling through the broker

You know, at that time Whatever I was doing in profit. It came down to a five million dollar Million. Yeah, multiple five million. So okay, yeah. I will take five million. Started the process.

But the whole process takes Months too. So because you have to get all your paperwork s uh you know, all your P and L's and all your your data rooms, so to speak, and then a summary and the interviews and then you start talking with potential buyers. So in those months that pass by, my revenue Just skyrocketing. So I told the broker, I call her, I still remember, like I felt so bad because I felt, you know, oh man

this broker has worked so hard on my deal and now I'm gonna call him saying, Hey You know Five million is not enough. Like I I wanna I wanna I wanna stop, you know, the pro like I don't wanna sell it at this moment, just wait for a couple more months, then the value is much higher. I call him and I told him the story, I said, Listen, you know, like this happened and he totally understand it. So what happened by me

Pulling the listing. Whoever was already interested in it now wanted More. Even more. Like I wish I this was a genius plan of mine. This was pure like just happen. So Couple days later Whoever first offered five million To say okay, I want to

uh I offer six million. And then another so there was a bidding war. Right. between initially three bitters and then two. And eventually I had to choose One of them. Amazing. Yeah. And so by then you you're like hey, this is a good deal now. I'm happy with this deal. You take it, you sell the company. Painful process or was was was

You know, standard transaction. It's a it's an emotional roller coaster because it's a lot of money on the on the line. My biggest issue was like okay, can this person really close like at the end of the day? Like because you go to due diligence period. So first it's not all about price. You also need the certainty that they're gonna deliver and they're gonna close. Yeah. So once they You agree on a prize.

You sign an LOI letter of intent and then they have X amount of weeks to dig into all your numbers. One big mistake, uh one of the many mistakes I made was my books were not as clean as I supposed to. Like I had other websites. I had just one L C one bank account, you know, at very scrappy basis. So we had to go Literally each item of of all bank statements, each line item, okay, this is not for the soap side, this is for the like we had to go through everything. Their lawyers, my lawyers, their CPA, my CPA. So it was a very uh painful

long process. And of course there's now looking back for it is easy, but at that moment I think oh man, maybe they're gonna change their mind. Maybe, you know, maybe w in between the due diligence period, my traffic, you know, Facebook makes another uh update and my traffic goes down and they they pull the deal, you know, like that goes through your mind the whole time. Like, man, you know, let's Hurry up. Yeah, it took two months. And the buyer had some issues too that one of the investors pulled their their funding two weeks before closing and yeah. Stuff like that. All the adventures. Okay, so it ends up closing. Does your life change?

Wait, this podcast is called My First Million. Yeah. I think I remember. You know, thinking hey. If I had a million bucks in the bank, then my life would be so different. Then I would feel this way, I would act this way, I would spend this, I would do this. In reality, from doing this podcast, talking to people.

That doesn't seem to be the case. What was the what was day one of Yeah. It's super and I always screw up this word, it's anti climaxal. Anticlimatic. Climatic. Yeah. So anticlimatic because I remember

When the money came in the bank. Um You know Uh that I did. I was looking for it and and of course I took a screenshot, but I you know, I got uh some champagne for the office, we did a toast. And then literally like fifty minutes later we all were back. Like it was

And the next day, you know, at night I just I had to pick up my son. Cook dinner. You know, it's just normal life. And then the next day he went back to the office and just work. No, it doesn't no, he didn't care. Uh I I think it's different when You have really no money and then suddenly you hit a

You win a lottery and then the next day you have a lot of money. relatively quick, two to three years. But the The website was already doing You know, really well. So If I wanted to buy something

I most things I was would could already have bought, you know. So there was not not something oh if I sell this I'm gonna buy, you know, this and this and this. Like I didn't have that. I was just okay, no On to the next journey, sorry, speak. And so We can about ten minutes before they kick us out of here, but uh The question's you know, what happens then? So you

Since then you've bought A handful of other websites. Yes. Again, like a real estate guy, you sort of buy it, you try to build it up, you either run it or you sell it from there. Was that a good idea or bad idea? Are you happy with how you how you parlayed one thing into the next, or would you do it differently? I can see that look on your face. Yes. Because you know the answer already. But yeah, no, I w what I wanted to set up was sort of like a PE kind of setup like a private equity where I could buy you know undervalued internet businesses, you know, make them better and then resell them. Mistake what I did was I bought from totally different

There was there's no synergy for the properties I bought. So all the properties are profitable. But uh would have been just make more sense now looking backwards if I had just around one topic or one like industry. So it could be easily to s I could scale it easily. I need less people. Right. Less headache. Or or one business model, right? Because you have a SaaS company. Yeah. It's like a that's a B to B company. Yeah. And then you have a content site. Yeah. You have a e commerce Yeah, a pet site. Yeah. Exactly. And you all you need different skill levels, different kind of people, different models, different ways how to drive traffic. So it's it's not that focused. When I started the so

was on my mind, how to drive more traffic. How to drive more traffic. And and now it's like oh with a you know B to B like we need a sales team for this. Oh we need, you know, uh content science. We need you know different things. So We all live and learn. And now you have a new project, new idea that you're cooking up. Yes. Almost

Back to the roots a little bit w in terms of what you're doing. So let's talk a little bit about what you're doing. I'm super excited. Yeah. I'm come on as an investor because I think that this thing is gonna be big. So tell us a little bit about it. Yeah. So Very quickly, Novali is actually an a platform where People can read short romantic stories, short romantic novels, books, on their iPhone or tablet. Either read it or listen to it. So it's an a book but also an audio version. came up with the idea where we're back and forth, we're really good friends, we always come up with weird and crazy ideas. And I we came up with this idea when I still had the soap opera website. And I still had access to all these readers. So we thought oh people that like soap operas probably also read romantic novels. So

Same story, put a really ugly, simple WordPress site up, had somebody write a couple of short romantic stories and drove traffic to it. See the engagement, see people like it or not. And uh the engagement was crazy. People were literally like begging in the comments like oh we love this chapter, what when is the next chapter? Things like that. But then I started a process of selling. The soap side, so I put this idea on hold, so to speak. Okay, we can figure it out later. Yeah. Couple months ago we just revisited and now we're building an app and It's gonna go live in a couple of months. It's uh same demographic, you know, like the the middle aged woman that that like to read romance novels. Think of these these novels that you growing up saw at the supermarket or the gas station, you know, with this cheesy book cover. Well, yes, exactly.

She's written more novels than anyone. Like she's got like three hundred days on the Yeah, three hundred weeks straight on the bestseller list or something crazy with different books as she you know, she's a machine. Yes. And then there's, you know, obviously Fifty Shades of Grey, there's Twilight, there's all these kind of franchises that have been built in the same kind of in a romantic fiction genre. And so you see something there. You think that r that this romantic stories or romantic fiction is

Yeah. Well A the category is huge. There's a huge amount of people reading these kind of books, but it's also People that read romance novels are also very frequent readers, meaning on average in America a person reads five books a year. The average romantic novel reader reads every one book every two weeks. Like you said about your mother, like she read many. Books, right? So it's not a lot of people, but also they read a lot of these kind of and there's a lot of subcategories. You have a lot of subcategories as well. I remember uh as a kid I used to read every sports fiction book I could get my hands on. Yeah.

And I think one day I crossed over into that and one of the books in the sports fiction was like a sports romantic fiction or something. I remember taking it home, reading it first ten pages, I was like, What is this? Yeah. By the fifteenth page, I was like, all right, I'm finishing this book. This is a great book. As an eighth grader, I remember that. So yeah, there are all these sub genres. Just within it. And so you know, what what does success look like? What do you think? Where do you want to be with this project with Novely, you know, six months from now? Six months? Well, six months is maybe twelve months. Six months we w hopefully will be, you know, uh launched and and have a good number of of of downloads. But in in a year we wanna be at least at one hundred thousand active users and build a platform not just for readers, but also for writers. I think because I had a lot of writers in the soap hub time. I think writers are very undervalued nowadays. It it gets more and more difficult for them to make money and for different reasons, you know, more competition, Amazon probably things like that. So we want Novali to also be a really good platform for writers to make more money

have access to their audience. communicate with their audience, with their readers. And get also more exposure. I think this is a great idea. I think that the writers getting that opportunity writing now. Yeah. So knowing that hey, if I publish here I'll get readers. And I'll get money. Uh on the other side for readers. Netflix paid like a hundred million bucks for one more year of Friends or you know, the office is the number one shows because

People love this comfort and familiarity with content. They love that if they can just push a button and then they will feel a certain way. It's like push a button, get an emotion. Yeah. And that's really what comes of You know, if you build a platform like this,'cause somebody will be able to push a button, they'll know what they're getting out of it. It's not like opening up Amazon and saying, Here's a bookstore. Yeah. Go find what you want. This is saying, hey, you want to you know, here's a great story, it's a romantic fiction story. And they'll be trained to say, Hey, if I want that feeling, if I want that type of entertainment, this is the app to go to. I really think this this has a lot of potential. I'm excited. See what you can do with it. Yeah, we're excited too. And uh all right, great. So we'll we'll wrap it up there. Ruh, it's been awesome having you here. You know, I would normally say, Hey, where can people find you? This is your chance to shout out your social media, wherever Self promotion. Yeah, I don't think uh I don't think you even have anything there. If if somebody has uh like I always like to help and advise or or you know, if people have a specific question, they can find me on LinkedIn if you look Ramon Van Meer. Right.

Then you can uh shoot me a message. Well, thank you so much for coming. It's been awesome uh hanging with you. And uh I believe we have a a Spartan race this Saturday to go to. So I will uh I will see you in the mud very soon, Michael. All right. Awesome. Thank you so much, Bertie.

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