Hey, welcome to today's episode. I am your host, Dave Martinez. Of course I have Anthony Gaona here today as well. But we have a special guest today we have, we had a we had an MLM person earlier today and we're having another MLM person today. So we're kind of covering something a little bit, but there's no such thing as too much information. And we always like educating and bringing that information to the masses. So if you're here today, we really are happy hearing here today. And our special guest today is Brian Palmer. He is a eight figure earner in the online space. I think his second year in business did like $30 million. And like what the heck, like we're from the real estate space. Nerd up. So we're gonna hurt a lot of those things, a lot of those situations. But here's our special guests right here. We have Anthony as well. How are you doing today? Brian Palmer. It is a wonderful, beautiful day. Well, part of the country are you from? I'm in Tempe, Arizona. So right behind me is Arizona State University. Awesome. Awesome. So how long have you been in business? Because a lot of people will think like, you need to be like 40 years old and 10 years of experience to go out there and run a corporation? Well, I mean, there's no one way right, like there's a million of us to the same kind of end space. And people take different roads to get there. My my first, like real experience in entrepreneurship. My first company ever started was a senior homecare agency in San Jose, California. And it was a franchise of a larger franchise system. And I started that business, it was the late 1990s. And for the people that are old enough, they'll know that that was right around the time, the.com bubble burst exploded. And I was in the Bay Area working in tech at the time, and lots of layoffs started happening. And so I was kind of concerned about my future and having, you know, some control over, you know, how the events unfolded in my life. And so I started looking at businesses to start, and that one on paper sounded great. And all the numbers made sense. And, you know, it actually would have been great, they're all ended up being true. The part I overlooked is that it was a huge pain operationally to manage. So I sold that business after about four years, and kind of kept in the tech world, in high tech in the Bay Area. And I moved to Arizona in 2009. And so I stumbled across a jewelry concept that was just really compelling people. It was primarily like personalized jewelry for women. And it was they were just gravitating to it, they're buying it like crazy. So we launched a company around that called Sappho designs, that was our first direct selling company also called MLM where people were getting paid to kind of represent the products and sell the products, they were doing this, you know, every which way you could think of that company did get really big it got, we got to three, 3 million in revenue by our second full year. And so yeah, when it got big fast, and it created a million operational problems for us. So one of the problems was a lot of our growth was international. So ironically, like 70% of our revenue was in Canada, and then 20% was in Mexico. And then we had some in the European Union. So like, and then some of us, so but the problem was is that all of our costs were US dollar base. So all of our infrastructure costs or employee costs, everything was in US dollars, but our revenue was coming in from Canada and Mexico. And at that time, if you go back and look at the years, you'll see that a huge shift happened in the strength of the US dollar against international currencies. And so that really put us at a really tough spot from a cash perspective. You know, running any type of business, and anything that has inventory. But people find out very quickly is that the faster you grow, the more pressure there is on your cashflow, because you have to buy in advance of that growth in but you don't get a tax relief until you actually sell it. So it creates it really puts you in a really tough cash position already just by the nature of that business. So anyway, we ended up selling that business to a larger entity. That would have been 2016 January 2016. And we had negotiated to keep the technology components that we had built for that company so that we could start offering them to other companies. And so that's Kind of. So that's where our current companies were born out of. So it's credo, which is a mobile mobile app for the direct selling industry. And then Thinkbox HQ, which is outsourced development, where we basically have our near shore development offices, where our clients hire us to either build them projects, or build them applications, or they hire developers, as their outsourced employees to us. And that business has been growing rapidly. And then to make things more complicated through that whole process. What happened is, we do these work for these companies, but then the founders kind of they started to get to know our, our story of the companies we built. And so they, you know, they would, they would, they would always want to hire us to help them build their companies. So some cases, we did that. So we launched, we partnered with an amazing entrepreneur named Cara Brooke, who is a CEO of a cosmetics company called St. Beauty used to be mascara beauty when we launched it, and I was the president of that company for two and a half years, that thing also grew past 30 million in a second year, last year, I did 100 million in revenue. We've been involved in companies, we've built a couple of CBD companies we've built. I mean, every every different type of E commerce company. And then we've also worked a ton outside of the industry, the MLM industry. So we have clients that, you know, are they have their own set, like one of our clients, is a SaaS provider, which basically, like if you were going to open up your own inflatable rental business out of your house, like out of your garage, and market it for kids birthday parties in your neighborhood and stuff, you would then be like your Shopify, you know, $49 per month, it's your it's your back office, it's your marketing tool. It's your customer management system. So we have a lot of clients like that, that, you know, we we build and manage their, their their SaaS applications. So we've had it. So it's been a wild journey. So we've gotten to see a lot. And it's, it's definitely been interesting. Dude, that's amazing. So just real quick about the software. I don't want to go too far off into the weeds. But so if somebody wants to run like a home based business, they can just download the app. And now Now they have like all their back end systematized? Well, so in the inflatable rental business, when you mean your example, is it specifically around that one business? Or can they have any kind of side hustle running through it? Well, so this, this particular client of ours, like, that's their niche, it's like they've carved out this niche set like they want to dominate, they want to dominate that particular industry. So and you anybody who's running an inflatable or party rental business, like this would be the software of choice. So that's so like, split, we have other clients that might build something specific, like what you're saying, especially in the direct selling space. So every single mobile app that our direct selling clients have for massage is completely customize in that manner. So every single one of them is kind of unique to them. How many, how many client requests you get for they want to build the Uber of? Oh, well, actually, we aren't, we aren't actually, we aren't, we just started on the new marketplace. It's not the Uber of but it is a marketplace. There's a lot of marketplaces out there, it's really interesting. How many even if you just look outside of the ones we work with, I mean, one of the ones I've used just my own personal life was rover for like, you have to travel a lot for business. And it's like, I have a puppy who's a huge pain. I can't, I can't wish that poor on any of my friends and family. So I found rover, and you could just get a pet sitter, you know, and it's like the Uber of, you know, multi day overnight pet sitting. So it's it's a huge trend, you know, the kind of gig economy a component. So we've seen a ton of that. We've all we've seen a ton of Software as a Service. So anybody who, you know, gets into the investment world, you know, will tell you in terms of valuations, SAS companies have incredible valuations because they have monthly recurring revenue as their core components or if they do, and it's a SaaS application, which is like in the kind of example, we were talking about an inflatable rental business. Like, that's how you you run your business on that application. So you don't just make a switch off of it. Like once you use it, you're kind of invested in it. So it's sticky. So it's sticky, it's monthly recurring revenue, like the multiples you get on those types of companies are massive. So you don't have to be as big to create a really large valuation. And so we're seeing also a lot of entrepreneurs trying to build their own SAS application around the business niche that they're familiar with. So I talked to one guy who's in the, in the car business, like the, like the car dealership business, and he wants to build a specific app to manage like warranties within that. So you see a lot of those type of things. examples happening today is well, because there's a lot of value behind them last stickiness behind Forget it, right? We know a little bit about that, don't we? Daniel? That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah, we know a little bit. So me and Anthony are laughing about that, because that's one thing we did we Fast Company towards real estate investors, and oh, really specific towards land real estate. Yeah, so we are. So there's a lot of like, like, there's a lot of interesting examples out there. Like, we're not affiliated with them. But it's, oh my gosh, there's a oh, I can't the name escapes me. But in the real estate space, like a basically where accredited investors can go in and invest in like new luxury hotels that are being built. So we're seeing a lot more like tech. Like, it's interesting, that doesn't even matter almost what industry you're in anymore, whether it's real estate development, or anything. You see technology seeping into it now. Yeah, I think that's cool, man. And that's that's kind of what the division that we had we, we figured, like, how can we scale this real estate thing up? You know, if you're working from the broker side, right? If you're an agent, your broker, your realtor, these guys want to build out these big brokerages. So they can have essentially a lot of boots on the ground doing deals and contracts. And right so you're, you're essentially like gathering personnel. So we saw that opening in the business. And we were, like Daniel said, We niched down into land, which is kind of a strange niche than a lot of people are beating up on. So we said, let's, let's build something where we can make a community around this thing and get as many people as we can involved. And, yeah, sure enough, we've got people all over the globe helping us find these strange and rare deals. Amazing. So tell me a little bit about your model, man. So you guys are scaling up the software, which we're very interested in, we saw it over there, and Phoenix and our Scottsdale and we want to take a deeper dive at it, we're going to be your next customers. But so how does your business work? Do you have an affiliate program with it? So how are you how are you scaling this thing? So there's really, it's, there's two divisions of the company. You know, they look like two different companies. But they're really two divisions of the same company with a shared infrastructure. So credo, which is the mobile app, which you're asking about. So the model around that is we build each one of those individually for our clients, but on top of a shared platform. So it takes a lot of the cost out of it. And we basically customize that for the client. And then what we do is, we try to help provide examples of how to create repeatable systems within the app. And so like in our industry, in with affiliates, it's about like, you know, how to give a tool or set of tools to an affiliate, that's easy for them to, to leverage to get sales, or to share the word about the product. So we usually advocate, you know, building out some sort of a three part or four part selling system, you know, where there's components of lead generation, there's components of kind of like taking a lead, and then converting it to a first sale. So like moving the prospect along the process. And then also, we've tried to close out the process with some form of like, trying to convert the customer into like, the highest value long term customer was usually equates to some sort of like recurring purchase, or some sort of loyalty program or something to kind of keep that customer associated with the company. So each one of those is built customized for each company. And like, it is interesting how, how uniquely they get deployed. So because sometimes a product is it's like a soap or shampoo that is, you know, focused on women, another time, it might be a company that's focused on teaching people how to do debt relief, another time, it could be a health care supplement that's geared towards men, you know, and every single time like, there's different aspects to what drives that business and what they want to put into the app. Um, so that's the kind of the creative side that's the mobile app side, the Thinkbox side is basically the custom dev side. So when someone when we have a client that wants to build something from scratch, and they want to own the intellectual property all on their own, then it generally they're hiring kind of theme parks division to build that for them. I have something in mind. It's actually not my idea. It's a friend of mine, but uh, I have I have something I want to throw at you probably at another time, because she's still like in the r&d phase, and she doesn't want to blast anything out yet. Keep it keep it quiet. Yeah, so I want to I do want to get a hold of you about that and see what we might be looking at for a build out on that. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, let's let's kind of dive into team building and leadership in general, because one thing we kind of touched on in the last episode we just recorded, but what, what are some tips you can give for people coming in new into the space to kind of like, Team Build and understand how the process works and how to make the most of it, because there's a lot of money to be made in this, it's just not able to understand what the process is. And it has a bad stigma in some some cases, you know, yeah, um, you know, with anything, entrepreneurship, I'd say a little bit of patience is warranted, you know, a lot of times, you know, people get discouraged, because they don't get the results as fast as they want. And that's usually the first thing I share with them is because you're really fighting, don't get discouraged, stick with it. And then I think, you know, the other kind of piece of coaching you should give people is you really have to find your own voice. And then you know, what I mean by that is like, what's like your own like, methodology for sharing the opportunity or sharing the affiliate program with people. For me, I'm you know, people have called me Mr. soft sell, like, I'm not pushy sales guy. So, um, my voice is more like, I focus more on just kind of sharing my experience in and it's sharing kind of like my story, and then people gravitate, I can follow that up, are more comfortable being more direct and more out with it, and that's fine, too. But I do think there's a point where you got to have a balance. And because when people are too aggressive, or you haven't talked to someone forever, and you're just like saying them unprompted sales net? Well, you know, we're all getting those all the time on the daily, and you really described yourself as a as someone who you know, that they're going to trust when you when, you know, you come at them unwarranted. So for me, I like a little bit more of the attraction marketing philosophy than the super outbound. And then along those lines, you know, to be good at attraction marketing, you really need, you need a balance a story of your own beyond just the product, or the or what you're sharing, you know, like, Saint beauty, one of our most amazing affiliates, wasn't great at cosmetics, they were actually great at hair. But they had all these people come in, you know, watching them how to do different hairstyles, and then she'd be oh, by the way, this is the amazing makeup, I love to kind of finish it off. And she was killing it, just killing it. But people were drawn to her because she had a unique story to share that was complementary to the product message to the company's message. And so you know, it's great if you can have two or three to one of your own story, your own personal message, your people are attracted to you. And then you're mixing in, you know how this product or this thing that you're promoting fits in. I think that's a really great, really great methodology. Then also, I always recommend, make sure you're making full use of the tools that your companies provide you because a lot of times, there's amazing tools that people like as an example, we have a haircare brand, that they have a sample system. So like an affiliate can send a sample to a friend like oh, your hair looks amazing. Oh, well, you should try our new amazing hair mask product that you want me to get, send you a sample and then they go to their app, send a sample to their friend. And of course, a full on marketing drip, you know, happens less than amazing tool that the affiliate doesn't know about like they're missing out on is easy way to introduce. Another one is we're seeing a ton of like strategic couponing now in the industry. What I mean by that is doing things like give 10 Get 10 programs, so you give like a discount code to your affiliates, like they could give a $10 coupon on the customers first purchase. Right, so that additional cash strategic couponing, a lot of times that's available to these affiliates. And they can use that to to to buy a lot of times a sign up new affiliates and get built used to build their team, but they're unaware of because they haven't really gotten into the tools of the company. So that'd be the everything I usually tell people is make sure you're leveraging the tools, you have to build your team. And then probably the last thing is if you do want to build a team, you got to make sure you're willing to kind of be there for them to think about how you're going to communicate with your team. How are you going to keep them in the loop and how you're going to add value to their lives? Because the more value you add to their lives, the more you're going to draw more people into that group. So it sounds like you got a bunch of like organic strategies, right? And then you build out these companies to eight figures, nine figures. If you don't have like a necessarily a warm network to push this stuff out, where do you start cold, you start like on social. Are you running paid advertising or, you know, promotion to other companies like b2b? Yeah, you could do that. So you have paid advertising, of course, you could do strategic social media advertising. You could do strategic partnerships with other companies that are complementary, you know, used to be years ago where You know, companies wouldn't allow people to represent more than one company. But it's not the case anymore, it actually makes a lot of sense to represent multiple companies. And then the third thing that you will see in, you guys might have heard a little bit about this at the conference you were at, is building a presidential founding group. So the idea being, you know, if you can find a handful of professionals, who are excellent at, at marketing and building out teams have a history of it, have a following, not a following that just like they snap their fingers that come over, that's not really real, but like, they know how to you have a following they know how to leverage it, to jumpstart a team and a new company. You know, coming up with a strategic plan to bring on a handful of those type of leaders is, is probably a third leg of that stool, and is definitely helpful. Yemen, that's what we're actually looking at right now is for one some some looking for some presidential founders. And then also we talked to them over there and wasn't even the company over there Hannah Shay. Yeah. So say that you have to hire like a director sales type candidate. Yeah, cuz I think that's where we are right now in our business, man. So the real estate side is healthy. The software side is healthy. You know, we're pushing on 400 subscribers, like in 15 months with is nothing to write home about. But it's pretty cool to take it from scratch to hear where we are almost little to no advertising dollars. It's just like, like word of mouth. But yeah, I think we're getting to that stage right now is we're ready. We're ready for some growth, we can handle the influx of new people. Teams are growing. So yeah, if somebody came in on board that had a lot of experience that can run these large scale companies. I think our model was closest to like exp or Keller Williams or a real where they are. They're like these real estate, MLM type companies. Those are actually brokerages and a lot of people in our company are not licensed. But some of them are. Oh, interesting. Yeah, we're looking at an exploding and growth, haven't they? Yeah, so that's what we've been watching. You know, we didn't do it to model off of them. Actually, I didn't even know they had the model until we we launched ours. But I think it's pretty cool to be doing what we're doing without the license. You know, it kind of cuts out some of the red tape and some of the limitations where a broker makes three to 6%. You know, sometimes on some deals we're making 1,000%, you know, so very curious to see what happens when this thing scales up. Yeah, for sure. So, what else? What else? Can we do Manton like leverage? I mean, I think you have just a brief overview of our model, right? And, you know, if you were going to start to promote a company like, like ours, right, let's just put it to the test. Well, we have a SaaS model based around a real estate niche. What would you do? Or what can what do you what do you suggest we might do to take this thing to the next level? Well, you know, I think, you know, identifying the right staff and people from a director sales component is a huge Jumpstart. So that that's a key component, for sure, I think having a comprehensive, you know, launch soft launch marketing strategy that encompasses some of the different pieces that we've discussed, you know, from paid ads, to social media strategy, you know, in additionally, be thinking about, you know, creating maybe a package for those leaders that you can attract, you know, giving them some sort of additional benefit for taking a risk on you, because really, that, you know, that's what they're doing, they're, they're making a bet on you guys as a company. And as like a long term spot where they, if they do in fact build, they can, they can really benefit financially long term. So I think creating maybe like a package for those presidential founding folks as well, is big. And I think like, you know, kind of putting it all together in terms of like, a compelling launch is really helpful. There's, there's a lot to be said, for momentum in the business. So like, the more you can kind of synchronize those things. It's some sort of like, even like a faux event, like a soft launch event that leads up to a full launch, you know, number of weeks or number of months later, you know, these these are practices we've seen do really well because they help kind of create this like you know, perpetuation of excitement and people want to check it out and what's going on and in and then also keeps the team focused so that you're you're putting your synchronizing all of that, you know, from a marketing sales perspective into the same kind of strategy Yeah, like yeah, you have anything Daniel. Yeah, I'm, I'm kind of waiting. But what does it take? Because a lot of people like there's different levels of business and a lot of people like hitting a million dollars is a big is a big milestone that audible trying to attain, but like, what does it take like? mentally personnel wise to, like, even hit like these, these 10 million plus numbers like, what what was like the biggest epiphany you had when you hit 10 million in revenue? Well, I mean, I think you know how to get there and how to do it is, you know, unfortunately, it's just determination, and a willingness to fail repeatedly and not give up. It's always it's really, it's not the greatest message in the world, but it's the truth. And it's kind of so so actually, it's funny, I have a part time position mentoring students startups at ASU. And so they like, get together and they build their little startups. And this is actually a common question. And always, what I tell them is that really, what if you want to be successful at entrepreneurship, in building, you have to fall in love with the process in the process is painful. I like I like to, I like to describe it as childbirth, you know, that it's very, very painful and very, very rewarding. And, obviously, it's totally different. But it's one of those things where, like, you know, and we just listened to like, seasoned entrepreneurs, they all kind of have some variant of saying the same thing, which is, you know, you have to build a will this thing into existence. And when you say will something like that, like, what you don't need will when you're comfortable. And so anyway, I think I think fall in love the process of what is that process, the process can mean a lot of different things, a lot of different people and talk about Lean Manufacturing, in all these different things, I think, you know, you could do a podcast probably on the process, a whole series on just the process. But I think the thing that I've always that's always stuck with me is part of the process is that likely, whatever, like your immediate idea is, it probably, it probably is going to change, it probably needs to change or be altered. Like we're just not, you're just not aware of it yet, the information hasn't been revealed to you yet, the unfolding of the market hasn't revealed itself yet. And so a lot of times, what we make the mistake of as entrepreneurs is falling in love with that original idea and exactly the way it is, and not allowing it to change and morph. You know, over time, it's kind of like another old saying is like, a point, what I've always liked is, I'd rather give a B plan to a group of eight players, then give a plan to a group of B players. And the reason why I'd rather give a P plan to a group of a players is because the A players will fix it. And they'll turn it into a plan. A good plan to a B player, a group of B players, they'll screw it up. And they'll screw up the plan and they will execute. And so again, it's just another way of saying the same thing, which is you got to be willing constantly looking trying to get constantly good to where you're doing this constantly revisiting thinking about how you can alter change it. In in that's part of the that's part of the process. So that was a long answer. That's incredible, man. I've never heard that before. I'm really glad you mentioned that because a lot of people think like, it's a will like, there's, there's difference between entrepreneurs and everybody else, entrepreneurs, they have a stronger will than everybody else. And they're they're an unstoppable force in their own and it's a good and a bad thing. But that's what that's what it takes in most cases. And I'm really glad you mentioned that because everybody wants a silver bullet. Everyone's a silver bullet. What's the silver bullet? How do I get there? Yeah, really strong willed and stubbornness. Yeah. But I said all the negative stuff, I should say some of the good stuff. So like I pretty cool was one of the big time guys like book writer stuff he had, he always used to say, the great thing about entrepreneurship is you only have to be right once. We can screw it up 1000 times, but you only have to be right once. So you just keep at it, you're gonna probably write once. So like that, to me, was always one of my favorites. And then at the end of the day, there is a payoff at the end, like all this security and you know, jobs. It's all false. Like if you just go back to the beginning of our discussion, what got me into entrepreneurship, were massive layoffs in tech. I was scared for my job. And I realized then right then, that this idea of cause I'm a little bit of an older generation this My father worked for the same company for 35 years, like like that idea that you got a job and you worked it for 3035 years, you had a stability and you had this, like this great life like this, like the that got washed away from a very young and I think people today, younger people today like you guys like see that more inherently, that like we you know like that that was my kind of real kind of like Aha, like, Oh, wow. So the other thing of entrepreneurship is it seems scarier, it seems riskier. But I would actually contend that it's the less risky path, you could take preprofessional like for me, like, I control my risk, I control how I diversify my business. I control a lot of that. So yeah, do I have risk? Yeah. But I at least have control and insight into that risk and the decisions that go to mitigating that risk versus, you know, being an employee. So that so like the power of that in this and then and then and then just the pure joy and satisfaction of seeing something you Bill, do what you thought it could do. There's I don't know if anything better than that. I mean, that's literally one of the greatest things. I think a person can experience so there's so many amazing rewards, I think that keeps keeps you coming back and being willing to will something you know. I feel that right there. I felt like this should really get it mentioned that too, because it's it's I cut out God Anthony. No, you're good. You were just talking like, no, no, it's one of those things were like, Yeah, I'm having a connection issue. Man, I might just drop out. But it's one of those things where you, there's a huge benefit, and you don't even know how huge benefit it is to you till you're there. And it's just one of the things you gotta really understand. So I was asked this question, Brian, but what is the question? Or what is the quote that is yours or somebody else's that you resonate with? I know you mentioned one, I want to get another one out of you. Because that one, good. Okay, I'll give you another one. They'll give you a view to my personality. If you want to tell if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plan. Wow, okay. Okay, that was good. And that was that's a good one. Okay. Oh, is there any books you recommend? As far because we have some we have a lot of readers sure that like educating them for sure. I'll tell you why I read 100 books and business books in one year. I don't know why I did that I got in my head. I have plenty of recommendations for you. But I would say blue ocean strategy is something that any entrepreneur should read. definitely changed my thought process and understanding a lot. So I thought I think that's a brilliant book. I like I like books on creativity. So the book originals, I find to be very compelling. I liked it a lot. If you like, if you like biographies, there's good Elon Musk when I like the Pixar creator has amazing one Shoe Dog, which is a story of Nike, another really great book, if you if you're into like the stories, how the companies get built. I really like those. But you know, in terms of like, if I could if I could only make one recommendation, I would definitely I would say blue ocean strategy that that that book probably changed my thought process. More so than than any other. Man. So I'm really glad you mentioned that because like I've heard that a few times, and I've been looking for next book will be in the end that we just finished a book that we read, somewhat cohesively. So it's probably the next book we got to read, because I've heard that one a few times. Okay, we're gonna make it happen. And I really appreciate your time. Any last question? No, nothing for me. Thanks for having us. Yeah. I was just gonna ask you a quick man. Have you ever been released a book yet? Do you have any content that you push out like that? That's, you know, funny story is I did attempt to write a book and it was so bad. I had a thought. And I reread it. I was like, Oh, my God is garbage. It was just garbage. So yes, I wrote a book, but I didn't really lay wondering other than this editor to help me write it, you know, read it, because it was it was just terrible. It was a preachy mess. But I'm going to read I'm going to try and I'm going to try to at some point, you can argue that was gonna be my next question was some tips on the book. We're writing a book right now. I think we're about three quarters of the way done so I was gonna ask you for like a launch strategy, but I think I'll skip that one. Oh, yeah. You gotta skip I Led Zeppelin line into the ground. All right, Brian. Yeah, man, I'm gonna stay in contact. And like I said, we want to talk about credo I don't know if he had time to deep dive on that real quick. But yeah, I will definitely be in touch. We want to take a look at that. Okay, well, hey, thanks for having me. This has been great. Awesome, brother. Thank you. See you soon. Take care guys