00:51 Hey, thanks so much for joining us on this part of the show, Neil. Tell us who you are, and what do you do?  

00:58 Uh, first off, I'm a faithful, even guy. I'm a husband. I'm a father of four daughters. Um, what I do is take care of my family and help drive purpose and value through their lives. And by proxy, I use e-commerce as the vehicle to do that, both the building, launching and growing, scaling, exiting, and acquisition of e-commerce companies. Uh, that's the vehicle I drive to allow purpose and profit in my life.  

01:19 All right. E-commerce companies. There's a lot of flavors of that. Is there a, is there a specific niche? 

01:24 Specifically, we're in the physical products niche. We're on the branding and private label side of physical products, right? So we use omnichannel, multichannel, Amazon FBA, TikTok, Shopify, wholesale, uh, retail, anything that will allow the brand expansion. Uh, into the marketplace to get that brand out there.  

01:39 Awesome. I'm imagining you're doing usually multichannel. 

01:43 Always multichannel. Amazon FBA First for us is the place we start with to grab them, capture existing demand. So, you know, e-coms to some degree of people, um, understand, you know, lead you in eyeballs on offer, getting somebody to know your offer, get your product or service, etcetera. It's usually one of the biggest problems; you know, what the heck do I sell? And who do I sell it to? And, you know, the equation of that is sales fixes, everything, right? Yeah. Um, so the long story short is I go to Amazon first to prove a product in demand and incubate it there to determine, can I capture market share of 15, 20 million people buying every year on this one product type? an I get into that market share and approach it, understand it, speak to the avatar, acquire them, get them to buy more from me, and then from there I can spread out into other channels of business. 

02:28 Interesting. So as you do that research, I mean, are you helping yourself figure that out? Or are you helping? uh, does somebody come with you, come to you and say, Hey, I'm already running this offer. I'm not getting the distribution I want. And then you take them there or what, what's kind of your process? Who are you helping? 

02:44 So we did it ourselves. First and foremost, we've been builders, growers of companies since 2012 on the Amazon, 17 years in business for myself. Um, but in, in the, you know, e-commerce physical product space since 2012. And so we built our own series of companies. It said our first seven figures in 2014, 2015, somewhere around that time. 

03:00  Nice. 

03:01 Uh, and then from there just kept adapting new brands and new products. We currently have somewhere around eight, um, uh, companies we own or product partnerships where we own a majority of the company, uh, that we want today in our operations team. Um, we also consult with entrepreneurs who want to start up and build a seven-figure business in 12 months or less. And go into growth in year two scale in years three and four, and then potentially an exit by year four to five  Depending upon how fast that business grows if it gets above a million and EBITDA before three to five years, then it will be acquisition-ready as well. 

03:32 You got it all figured out.

03:34  Enough of it. Yeah. No, we still Have our opportunities. Not all products go as exactly you want them to go. Not every product gets a home run. That's why we say don't marry your product. There's plenty of other ones to steal instead. Um, so we innovate, we don't invent. And we realized that, you know, while we have all this data and all this experience, not every product hits the same metrics and growth in 90 days after we launch it that we want to.

04:00 I love it. You know, we obviously want it to when we do a lot of research to make that happen. You know, you just said like three different, you had like three different one liners in that one sentence. You just said that were like pivotal. Like, um, I, in fact, I'm trying to, you know, I had one in my head and I was like, dude, I want to, I want to dive into that. And then you said two more and I was like, wait a second, back that up for a second. So, so you, you don't innovate. You what? 

04:20 We don't invent, we innovate. You don't invent. You innovate. Okay? So I have been an inventor in the past and spent the years and went through the process and I've got part of my name's on part of a patent that we hold for some very cool technology in the oil and gas and energy, energy space, energy conversations, right? But no one, it's never gonna see the light of day for a whole lot of other reasons because of, you know, misuse of funds and junk that I had to, you know, go bankrupt over to indemnify myself, so I wouldn't get caught up in that ridiculous nonsense. Oh. Um, and that was a great life lesson as well, but. The long story short is, you know, we innovate products that exist in the market. We simply have become better at direct response marketing and copywriting and can compete in a space, uh, that is already has market share. We simply come in and we innovate a new opportunity the way Uber innovated taxis. We kind of do that with physical products. So there's huge amounts of upside and potential and opportunities. And, you know, people are like, well, you know, there's no good products. There's no opportunity. You know, if you don't invent, if you're not in a shark tank. You know, and no one's going to find your product. If you're not Elon Musk, you can't make millions of dollars. And that's actually not right. Absolutely. You have  innovative products to make millions of dollars a year on. 

05:20 What's an example of a product that you've taken that, that maybe saw more growth than you expected? 

05:26 So we sell, here's what, okay. I sell everything, but it's probably easier to say it that way. Um, and then give you some actual examples. We don't sell health and supplements anymore. We used to, we had a health supplement company and ran into the alphabet soup of agencies trying to, you know, get down to what word you use and the meaning of that word. And then compliance and regulates to shaming over that. And the channels I was in that industry for about, I was in there for about eight years too. I know that. So if you've been around  Utah, then you've probably been around supplements.  Cause it's like the supplement. Capital of the world. And we had manufacturing there and even, you know, the large manufacturers with us, but, um, so I don't sell that anymore and we don't sell anything on the skin. So any of those things that have to do with regulatory compliance and oversight, we're just, right. Uh, we don't sell electronics because the time and frame and the growth and now AI and other things churn it so fast, you just. Can't keep up with the innovation and constant shifts. It's now three instead of six months. And, you know, it just takes a lot of, you know, manufacturing and stuff. And while we deal with inventory, the turn can happen so fast that you may be loaded up with inventory and then someone launches an innovation of an electronic in three months and you're like, well, crap, we can't keep up with that. So it's constant innovation. Yeah. Um, and the last one we don't do is like clothing and apparel, unless we have a really specific hook on it, or maybe we need a celebrity endorsement or something that kind of makes it ring a bell. Um, because so many can do print on, you know, demand with imperil and other things nowadays, it's really hard to differentiate so we don't mess and the profits are too low for our criteria. What we call our green light process defines a particular product segment of data and then defines the product based on that data. So the simple thing we've come to understand after doing this on a thousand product launches in the last 10, 11 years now, Uh, is it, I can put anything in a box and sell it to anyone as long as I understand how to sell it to them first. So that's the big question about understanding e commerce is to understand, uh, how to get the data correctly, understand what they want, make sure you get your profit numbers, uh, correctly, understand their benefit structure and the language and copy of that, and then you can put anything in a box and sell it to anyone in 30 seconds or less, 

07:30 No doubt. No doubt. Okay. So example time like you told us what you don't do. Yeah, give us an idea 

07:37 So we just launched a bed sheet line on amazon that we took in about eight days at this point from zero To just over five thousand a day in sales  So it is growing extremely fast, you know reviews are coming in extremely positive We're now ordering new inventory and looking to scale that as we go into the you know, it's november Uh this point we're headed to black friday cyber monday and into the holidays We're expecting a really Great slingshot effect to occur, uh, as we go into 2025 with that product. And, you know, we're now projecting beyond a million in sales already. It took us about seven months to get it to market. It's taken us about seven days to eight days to get it to that, to that point. Um, so now we're super excited about where that's growing. We've got, um, you know, kitchen appliances coming online, everything from, you know, ice nugget makers to, we sell, you know, Uh, we're selling a new kitchen, uh, line of, uh, frothers and, uh, you know, kitchen supplies around the coffee niche. Uh, the coffee itself is being sold. 

08:30 Are you speaking my language, man? 

08:32 Love coffee, right? Got one. 

08:33 Well, I just, I love all the kitchen gadgets. 

08:34 I'm a kitchen gadgets that kind of get home. Good gadgets, outdoor gadgets, tents, uh, you know, mattresses, air mattresses that are self inflating with dual, you know, uh, inner chambers. And they've been innovated to be extremely strong. So they don't have that collapsible problem. We sell it like crazy. It's about a 3 million brand next year at current projections on pace, uh, for what we sold so far about 200, 000 in that product and in about three months. Uh, so that is all being scaled now, um, in its next steps. Uh, let's see, what else are we selling? Oh gosh, there's a whole long list. I'm sure there is product developments literally it just gets down to the data at the end of the day Yeah, those product ideas can be extrapolated 10 different ways But if I don't understand who wants it and how I make it profitable the rest of that won't matter at the end of the day And so many people get it reversed they hear physical product businesses and they think Well, I have to engineer a product. I have to, you know, go build and invent something. I have to spend years creating this thing. And in actuality, you don't.  

09:38 Interesting. All right. So, so, so take a step back. Cause I think you're right. I think that's what almost everybody thinks is they got to do something to differentiate. But what you're saying is the differentiator is. It's maybe just the packaging, maybe the, uh, the way you message it, the way you talk about it. 

09:54 You're dead on. If I can take 200 units of a product and prove in the market that in my brand, my control, my account, my approach to the market for that, you know, buyer demographic, what they're trying to fix, run higher, get faster, sleep better, go whatever.And I can dial that in for 200 units. And I know I can order 2, 000 units. I can go to a full product launch with confidence. And in that 2, 000 units, I'm going to innovate. Not for the 200 units. Okay. Like you, you, there's a pro tip. All I'm gonna do is change the packaging. Okay. Yep. And here's the deal. Unless you go in and order two of those products from two different competitors, you're not going to know. Totally. The difference in the product at that point. Totally. Because when you buy a product, do you actually buy the product? Or do you buy the expected outcome of the product two days or less after it comes to you? So when everybody's focused on the other end, they're overthinking and over complicating this. When I actually test 200 units in the market, it's going to tell me what it wants. It's like a survey, if you will. And when it says, I want this bigger, I want the handle smaller. When I want the changes and I can see the pros and cons of the product, we simply give back two or three or four, uh, of those differentiators to the manufacturer and say, make those changes on the next 2000 units. And then we simply take those benefits and re install them back. At the top end of the copy, the graphics, images, videos, et cetera. And then we go to market and do a full product launch. 

11:12 Love it. Love it. Love it. Love it. Now, this is a process and it's a system and it's, and you're using great tools to do so,  you know, in speaking, in speaking to an audience of people who are,  excuse me, who are founders, but are still trying to differentiate, they're still trying to, to ideate.  And they're really trying to get to a scalable, uh, process in their business. What you're talking about is you do this multiple times a year with different products. And, and if you're figuring it out through doing it this way, why can't other people, why do they get so stuck? Like, why, why do most businesses fail to innovate  and get stuck on trying to invent the whole time?  Why? 

11:54 They forget a key phrase. Opportunity begins at the end of your excuses. Right. So when I hear businesses that complain and complain and complain, it is typically because they're making excuses for things they either don't understand or they don't want to do, right? Okay. And many times it's not just understanding, I should try this and process this and analyze it. It is also the risk level of the excuse of why they're not doing it. I don't want to spend the time. I don't want to spend the money. I don't know that it's going to work. What if, what if, what if.  Right. And I just feel a fear of doing it anyways. You're not going to know until you actually do it. And that's why you do the 200 batch and you just see what people are going to do. Execution, right? Right, right. Leads to knowledge. Knowledge leads to wisdom. Everybody wants to skip straight to wisdom. Where's my growth hack? Where's my next thing? Where's my big win? And then skips the part about wisdom altogether because they never actually executed to figure out where the knowledge was. They want to jump faster. They're impatient. 

12:57 Right. And so how often are you, uh, doing a 200 badge and you're just kind of testing the waters, feeling it, feeling what the demand feels like actually. Um, how many of those do you, do you not end up doing, not making the 2000 order and, and how many do you actually follow through with?

13:12 Many. Yeah, that's great. That's a good question. It playbook. five products in the market that organically sell 25 units a day with a minimum of 12 in net profit per unit. That will leave me a six figure in profit business over a 12, uh, month run rate. Okay. If it's the blow end of that, I can hit seven figures on a hundred K profit. Then I'm on the really low end of that base case, right? But it has proven I can sell the product the market is there and now I need to optimize for growth in year two. Should I optimize faster? Of course, that seven figures could turn into 200 or 300 or 400, 000 in profit depending upon which product and segment and market you go after. So it was, is mostly about 80 20 right now. I'm going to borrow the Prado's law because we've got it to a point where 80 percent at the time, we know the product enough. We know the data, we know the segment, we know the market. We've been selling it in another way or with another client or a different positioning of the product.So we know that there's a 20 percent potential failure rate of that product. 

14:11 Interesting. 

14:12 80%. We know the data already is there. We know the market. We know the why they're selling. We know the copy that's already sold them. We are launching more products. If we get down into that vertical and you start with a funnel, okay, you know, first brand first funnel, because that's how it usually works. Then it's, you know, I throw everything in the top and I want to see what falls out so that I can get my data into a cylinder. Once it's in a cylinder, I know with more confidence, everything I put in the top should have expected turnout in the bottom. Right? And as I do that, and then I widen that concept of the product in this instance into variations, type, you know, shapes and sizes. If for those of you who are listening to this, that would be like you who have an iPhone and then bought the iWatch, who then got one for your wife, who then got one for your kid, who then upgraded to the iMac. You bought all the same product in different packaging. Well, we borrow that same trick from retail, and we do the same thing. Once we dial it in, we just keep launching the same different products, different packaging, different sizes, and more of the same into that brand until there's SKUs setting in that one platform with one specific niche dialed into one specific focus. And all of those products are engineered. And then the phrase is success becomes boring. Because at that point, you gotta move on to a new brand. You gotta open a new channel. You gotta move into another segment of the business growth. 

15:22 I love it. So you're not doing this for clients, you're doing this for your own growth within your own brand? Uh, creating, 

15:28 I actually do it, it for both. 

15:29 Okay. Okay.

15:30 I actually do it for both. Just to clarify, and I'm sorry not to cut you off my bad. 

15:33 No, no, no. 

15:37 Well, I do, we actually do it for both, but I, I do it in a very small margin. 

15:41 Okay. Interesting. So, so what is, it? What is the appetite for that? Because what does that look like as you're. I mean, clearly the process is working for you and clearly it works for others when they ask you to do it. When do you draw the line of like, Hey, we're good. We don't need to, you know what I mean? Like, what does that look like in your, in your growth trajectory for your business? 

15:58 Well, here's why I don't; here's why I don't have a course or a program, just so anybody's listening to this. I have nothing to sell you here. The end of the day, what I have is a consultancy by which my operations now run from CEO operators that I have trained into businesses who run their own companies and then split some of their time and profit sharing with us to run companies we run, to run partnerships we run, or to acquire companies and then run them with us. So I got out of the employee thing a long time ago, myself, when I left IBM or in the boats, but not the bridges, very, uh, very important, and made sure that I gave that opportunity enough time to get out there. But what I learned in the wrong way of, in my mind, was to build this big business, big idea, big infrastructure, 20, 20,000 square feet of warehouse in Utah. Cause that's where we were centrally located by the airport there in Salt Lake City. We could get a lot of product in and out really fast and had like 12 employees in there pumping out product continuously. Okay. That is in its own stress, you know, problem thing with employees and the nanny; all of it became just too much. And there's gotta be an easier way. So as we shut that down and then looked at how we would continue to do that operation without employees, we made the concerted effort together, myself and my partner. Uh, read to focus more on helping someone like you build your business up with us and our processes in our system kind of being incubated into my existing framework and then get you to run a business you own by yourself, understand how we did it in our framework and then say, Hey, you know, would you like to operate another company with us? Would you like to get a profit split and operate this company? You've been trained. You're an operator. Very good at this. And most all of them. Interesting. So as they became successful, they've now helped us run other businesses. They've helped us run the consulting side of client divisions. And I now look for five to seven other operators a month to do the exact same thing with, because now we're into acquisitions. So as we've gone up into partnerships, which are run by operators, now we're into acquisitions, which are companies in 10, 20 million in size, where we're going to run the operations. So as I continue to look to train people,  okay, give them a hand up opportunity to come be an entrepreneur and learn how to do this business model even if they've never done it and never launched their own product or whatever. I will teach you how to do it from scratch in 12 months. Systems, process, technology, we have our own software, we run proprietary, and run you through the process how to get to seven figures in 12 months or less. And then as you become an operator, all the other opportunities present themselves, right? Which are partnerships and ownership, uh, companies. So I've now got a very, you know, tight group of CEO operators who run companies that work with us. 

18:33 Love it.  That's, that's awesome! 

18:36 So I do help those individuals for that particular reason. If I can help you get a business to success. Then my business by proxy wins too. And you win as well. And at some point we exit in one of those companies, you win in the measure of that effort as well. So I look for a smaller group of unicorn style people, um, to come and be involved and be trained by us to become an operator and not everybody fits. You know, I'm like, I'm pretty strict about who gets involved. Uh, everybody has to go through a disc assessment profile, because I'm going to find out if you've got the right aptitude to do this and it matches up with my best profiles because I have some very cool operators who've done some very significant things, my. Largest case study to date verifiable is 5 million a month and nine months. So when we want to go to scale in this type of business with this type of thing, you have to be willing to obviously understand the time, energy, attention, and money that's required to capitalize a physical products business, like real  estate to some degree, but it's also very operationally independent. So I don't have any warehouses, as I mentioned, don't have any employees. I use third party logistics companies. Like Amazon FBA and third party warehouses to move all of our products, do all the shipping, do all the logistics and freight management. So that we basically run these businesses with AI blinky dashboards and operators that can run two to three companies by just managing the logistics and freight, you know, transfer and the PPC marketing and the movement of the brand without ever physically touching the product. 

19:56 So much smarter than trying to do all of it in house. Cause I, I, it sounds like you, you tried that at the airport. I've tried that before. It's a nightmare. 

20:04 Well, and the systems have changed so dramatically in five years. Yeah. Right. That even in Amazon itself with it's fulfilled by Amazon, which is basically the sixth largest logistics company in the world. Okay. Trains and automobiles and 15 billion of infrastructure. Why would I try to replicate that at any level? Why wouldn't I just utilize it? Of course it has a cost, but work it into the numbers. 

Right and with that I can take that logistics company. I can sell on amazon. I can sell on tiktok shop I can sell on shopify. I can sell wholesale I can distribute anywhere on multi channel with that infrastructure So once it's in place, you know, i'm freed up to move around I can live out here on 50 acres in the country I can travel with my kids for a month to florida and do my business. I have generational time freedom now Yeah, um, but it's given me the opportunity for generational wealth freedom as well So and with that, you know giving other people the opportunity as part of it. I'm not a philanthropist There's work to be done and i'm not trying to make a million millionaires and all that other bs. I'm running companies. We're an operations group at the end of the day. 

21:01 Love it. Love it And how often do you do do you uh, how deep do you dive into the actual?  I mean, it sounds like you're finding product, you're finding manufacturers, and then you're, you're mostly,  you're mainly focused on distribution.

21:17 Yeah, pretty much we do manufacture our own products and we have US based companies doing it for us. We've got companies in, uh, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Italy, uh, China, of course, to some degree, but we're pulling back a lot from China over the last five years. Sure. So we're already in a really good position to not be China heavy. Anyways, um, Mexico is picking up extremely fast, although we don't have current manufacturing operations, but we work very closely with the heads of those, uh, organizations to manufacture products uniquely for us. So I don't need to be the manufacturer if I can have very close relationships and ties and even exclusivity agreements with manufacturers to create some of these products.

21:53 I love it. I love it. And I'm more on shore, frankly.  No doubt about it. No doubt about it. And, and I think you're gonna be highly incentivized to do so in the next year,  . 

22:05 I hope so. I feel like it. I voted for that reason because of a product, business and logistics company that I own. I'm for the person who's willing to bring stuff back to America to hire people and build, you know, energy and community and money into the, into the United States. I'm all for that. We need to bring our manufacturing back on shore. 

22:19 I love it. I love it. Well, looking back at, at the process, you know, as I've, as I've interviewed people, you know, I've, I've had over 500 of these interviews and I feel like the common thread is people processes and tools. And you've just described how you solve all three of those problems.Uh, very, very clearly, uh, you've solved the people problem. You solve the process problem and the tools problem you, you created in a way, but, but looking back at, at the build out of those three solution sets.  What are some of the big mistakes you made? I mean, what are the things that you kind of overlooked that you thought, man, if I could take that thing back, we would be  a lot further down the road than we are.

22:57 Yeah. I thought that I could have quite like, we had a process for the way we did things in terms of our analytics, our data, uh, the market research, product research, et cetera. We had our own system. We even built a tool around it years ago. One of the first for, for Amazon. And so as we got through that development and realizing that we are not developers, we spent way too much time trying to become a development company instead of a physical product-selling company. And so we made the mistake of acquiring another company that turned out to be a really bad deal. And so then having to untangle that deal was messy. And with some legal problems, we got it untangled and got that gone. And then when that was done and said, we started building our own tool set after that internally. Uh, to take control of the data and the migration of the tool inside of our own company. And so with that, we've hired a lead development team out of Texas to manage it for us. So I don't manage the day to day operations and control of it.  Um, they do, and they meet with our timelines and goals. And so I let them just have that control. And we're producing some really great output. A very, um, new version is about to release. Very excited with that new version. Uh, and the way that we're running our systems and we keep evolving that technology set, but it's behind an NDA. So I don't sell it publicly. It only is involved in companies and businesses that work with us or individuals have to sign an NDA to get involved because the data is like 10 years of proprietary data. The process of it is proprietary, and so we keep that close to the chest, uh, for those who, yeah, intellectual property is very important.   

24:23 Intellectual property, but I think a lot of people underestimate the value of good lead sets. And so I think that protection of that data is a high priority. 

24:34 Well, and we have a unique way we do things in our, in our five by five process, and it isn't, uh.You know, I see some try to replicate components of that, but on the back end, having done it, seen it, watched it, looked at the products growth, seeing the, you know, we, we've got a product going to market right now, as I mentioned, and then just super excited to see another one of those go out. Uh, the beds, uh, that we launched here about four months ago, uh, you know, they shot to like 70, 000 in sales in the first month. So we proved in that first test that we had got, you know, all of our data, all of our ducks in a row, and once again, proven the continuation of the process. And so now technology people in process.  

25:08 I love it. Yep. I totally believe that. Now, now, uh,  just in, in understanding the end result, like, are you looking to, to your research, you develop, you test, you build scale. What is your exit strategy for each of these entities? And, and are you separating them as entities and, and how do you kind of, um,  how do you flush it out to, to where you're keeping control of a smaller base set? Or are you trying to. to more product sets. 

25:35 So we're looking to scale into more product sets, but we're doing it very differently than we did when we formed the holding company in 2019, we formed that to create a portfolio in which I went out and spent about 18 months raising capital to go and acquire 50 companies and to acquire 50 companies with the buy box set we were looking for, and this was kind of pre aggregation days on the world of Amazon. If you've ever heard where they raised billions of dollars, we were actually in the process before other aggregators sort of beat us to market with capitalization, which turns out to be a godsend because what happened was, as we got through that process, 18 months later, had a couple of family home offices committing 50 million a piece to the acquisitions. The final numbers before we went to contract, we rolled through in November, 2020, um, 20, 2021. And the numbers didn't work. We no longer work because of all the other capital that was flowing into the market. The valuation for the company were going up too high, 30 and 40 percent above market value. So kind of like BlackRock taking over nonsense in the real estate world and adding, you know, 50 000 in cash to every deal just to grab it. The aggregators were doing the same thing on the business side and it was forcing pricing up. And so we paused and we said, Hey, we got to stop. We can't acquire these companies.  Um, so as it turned out, it was the best move a year later, you know, they're capitulating or going bankrupt, or now there's someone being investigated for SEC problems and the whole thing fell apart, but our name and business wasn't caught up in it. Now in that conversation, I had a friend that I talked to through one of our group of relationships, our strategic, uh, strategic partnerships is a company out of Alabama called wealth without wall street. Uh, and they do a strategic IBC, infinite banking concepts and becoming your own bank and building your own. And he was a member of that group and had a conversation with him. Turns out he's a Patriot and a veteran and somebody that was looking to build up capitalization for business acquisition. I said, well, you know, what about, and we had this, what about conversation and over. Golf and stuff at the, at the event, we kind of formulated an initial idea and he went out and tackled it and raised up a group called Patriot Growth Capital, a private equity company funded, founded and operated, um, by veterans with a mission to support veterans in the community in their process of leaving or growing, uh, or just helping them with their families and stuff.  And it's all mission focused. And so in that we raised up a PE group. Now it's more internal as we set on board, uh, to acquire these companies. So the answer to your question is as we build launch, grow and scale them. Voltage is a partner in operations and executive control. PE, uh, PGC, Patriot Growth Capital as the PE group is acquiring and vetting the companies. Vetting the funding of the companies and then bringing it to us as the final decision-maker on the LOI, should we vet the company and approve it, we'll go to an acquisition. We'll go through the due diligence process to acquire that company. So the end game is acquiring these companies. As my clients launch, grow and scale and do this in three or four years, when they meet the buy box criteria, we will then have what's called first rights of refusal to acquire those companies away from them. And they have that opportunity to sell. So we are both the beginning and the end.  

28:31 Yeah. I was just going to say, you've kind of got all, you've got the beginning, the end and everything in the middle. I mean, you, you really are building the life cycle with different partners at different ends of the spectrum to do what they do best and then move them on to the next thing. 

28:46 And I had a vision to do this and my partner, God bless him. You know, I'm the guy that jumps off the cliff and builds the parachute on the way down. He's finally figured it out after a long time that he just grabs a backpack and goes with me. Um, and doesn't always ask questions and we ran into it and, you know, he, he called a lid on the, on the buying of the companies due to the numbers not being right. He's the COO and CFO and he's like, hey, time out. We can't go this far. And of course I'm like, ah, I spent 18 months doing this. You can't possibly do this to me. And that was the right decision. Absolutely. But now we just pivoted it. And I think that's the important understanding here. We pivoted with, without losing the strategy, okay. Without losing the vision of where we were going, even though we got very close to running into an iceberg. Yeah. Right. Pivoted in that momentum and turn course enough and missed that obstacle. But the same mission still apply. It just changed directions and his purpose changed its purpose became more purpose and value driven. And the profits are sort of secondary to the goal of mission of what PGC is after and why we're backing it and why we're getting involved because we want to make operators a part of that business, give them an opportunity to exit with the company and become an adult, you know, become an owner of the company.

29:47 Sure, sure. I love it. And I feel like what you're doing with the type of audience you're working with, with the, with the veterans and with the, you know, helping them do what they want to do and ultimately, you know, I'm not given the opportunity to do so very often. I think it's a, it's an amazing mission, amazing blessing that you're, you're giving to the lives of a lot of people. 

30:09 And I just feel blessed to be a part of it. We're amongst a very good group of people inside of voltage. Uh, my partner and friends and our consultants and our operators and just everybody I get to be around. I'm a blessing. I get to be the dumbest guy in the room and hang out with a super smart amount of people, always looking for more super smart people who think that they want to create some of this opportunity. You can build a seven-figure business in less than 12 months with physical products. We've done it repeatedly. I've got plenty of case studies to prove it. Those who show up, you know, think about the time, energy, attention, and money. It's a physical product business. Don't show up with a few thousand dollars. That's not how a physical product business works. But the opportunity is growth. It's the only double-, double-digit growth industry right now. Anyways, it's growing on insanely fast. Um, and it is a great model to be in a lot of fun. And by the way, it's the second oldest profession in the world selling physical products. 

30:55 Well, Neil, you kind of, you kind of nailed that one. So, uh, I think you're right that that has been the primary piece of trade for pretty much ever.  

31:09 It's just a different way of trading a value statement. And that's why I loved it when I got involved in it, because I was a purely digital model prior to that with lead generation, online marketing, and building up companies. And I was like, well, I got to own the offer. I need to own the final end. And it just made more sense to own a physical product, taking Fiat cash out of the bank, transferring it to a physical product that has a write-off, write-down, and, you know, has all the tax benefits, with the upside potential being worth 10 times more than what I bought it for. And I tie that to the digital front and the virtual digital. And I've now got a, what I feel is a complete holistic business of both digital and physical. And that's what I love about this model. 

31:41 Love it. Love it. Love it. Very, very cool, man. I appreciate you so much for taking the time to share this story with our audience, and I hope that in some way you find. Some good-quality people are interested in these opportunities that might come to you through this podcast.

31:56 Like I said, your opportunity begins at the end of your excuses. 

31:59 So there you go. 

32:00 No more excuses. Let's go. 

32:03 If there's those of you that are listening to this and beating your head against the wall, because you don't have a strategy, you don't have a process, you don't have tools. Learn first by working with someone like Neil to figure out the model; understand how everything works with his mentorship, with his processes and with his tools. It sounds like you can't really fail that easily. Thanks, Neil. I appreciate you, man. 

32:25 I'm not going to wrap anything else. You said it so well.  

32:30 Well, that's it, man. I appreciate you taking the time to be here. And for the rest of you, we'll catch you on the next episode. Thanks so much.