Ben Arneberg began his career as a US Air Force satellite engineer and member of the Air Force Parachute Team where he learned to take calculated risks that end in success. He’s a serial entrepreneur with three exits. Founder of PetHonesty, a consumer brand improving pet health. He’s an investor, passionate about disruptive technologies, education, and helping others find and live out their dreams.

> Here’s a glimpse of what you would learn….

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley interviews Ben Arneberg, a seasoned entrepreneur and founder of Pet Honesty. Ben shares his journey from a U.S. Air Force satellite engineer to a successful e-commerce entrepreneur with three business exits. He discusses scaling Pet Honesty from zero to $70 million in revenue in three years, emphasizing the importance of strategic hiring, cash flow management, and leveraging a strong network. Ben also highlights the value of having an advisory board and the significance of personal development and clear vision in achieving entrepreneurial success.

Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:

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This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures.

I started Hadley Designs in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.

I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.

If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then go to www.EcommBreakthrough.com (that’s Ecomm with two M’s) to learn more.

Josh 00:00:00  Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley, where I interview the top business leaders in e-commerce. Past guests include Kevin King, Aaron Cordovez and Michael Gerber, author of the E-myth. Today I am speaking with Ben Arneberg, and we’re going to be talking about timeless business principles that allowed him to exit three different brands, and how he’s on a journey now where he doesn’t even care about money because he is focused on the intrinsic value of what he’s giving back to society. I think that’s everything that we all want to strive to be as entrepreneurs, and he’s going to show us how he’s been able to achieve that in his life. This episode is brought to you by Ecomm Breakthrough, where I specialize in investing in and scaling seven figure ecommerce brands to eight figures and beyond. If you’re an ambitious eCommerce entrepreneur looking for a coach or consultant who can help take your business to the next level, I bring hands on experience, strategic insights, and the resources needed to fuel your growth. So if you or someone you know is ready to scale, or looking for that coach or consultant or partner, reach out to me directly at Josh at Ecomm Breakthrough dot com.

Josh 00:00:52  That’s ecom with two M’s and let’s turn your dreams into reality. Today I am excited to introduce you all to Ben Arneberg. He is. He began his career as a US Air Force satellite engineer and member of the Air Force Parachute Team, where he learned how to take calculated risks that end in success. He is a serial entrepreneur with three exits under his belt. He’s the founder of Pet Honesty, a consumer brand that is improving pet health, and he’s also an investor passionate about disruptive technologies, education and helping others find and live out their dreams. So with that introduction, welcome to the show, Ben. Thanks, Josh.

Ben 00:01:22  It’s great to be here.

Josh 00:01:24  And I think we could probably spend the full episode talking about the the US Air Force and parachuting, because that’s a fascinating topic in and of itself. But, I think the the audience is going to be really interested to kind of get to know you. You’ve got three exits under your belt, like you’ve been there, done that in the e-commerce space.

Josh 00:01:38  So why don’t you just bring everybody up to speed on what got you to where you are today? How did you exit those brands and what’s your background?

Ben 00:01:44  Sure. Yeah. So I was in the Air Force for nine years. Four years at the Academy, was on the parachute team and then five years of active duty. And I love the Air Force, very grateful for the experience. But my last few years in, I was really tired of the bureaucracy and not having autonomy over my life and freedoms on my core values. So I basically started researching what’s the business I could do, you know, on the side to kind of get ready for eventually transitioning out. The Air Force came across e-commerce, specifically selling on Amazon, and this was in the maybe the glory days. Some might say like 2015, 2016 and created a few brands in, you know, selling products on on Amazon and branching out a little bit, I mean, Kickstarter. So I’m on a website, 2017 rolled around and got out of the Air Force, went a little bit crazy, started a few more businesses to the point where in 2018 I found myself with actually five different businesses in a newborn child in my life was complete chaos.

Ben 00:02:29  the businesses actually had grown top line, but bottom line was essentially nonexistent. And it was a very scary year for me because I actually thought the whole thing was going to crumble and I was going to have to basically go get a job and give up on my dream of being an entrepreneur. And this is, again, only, you know, less than a year after being out of the Air Force. So that brought a lot of soul searching. And, I think honestly developing some of these principles I’ll be sharing today because I realized something had to change. And one of the big things I realized is I had become younger at that point. I was shiny object syndrome and so excited about all these different possibilities and brands that I was spreading myself thin, and I wanted at that point to do one thing and one thing with excellence. And that’s where I kind of started realizing the power of maniacal focus. So with that, I ended up actually shutting two of the businesses down. One was a brand open as an agency and just realized, you know, sunk costs, like, let’s just kill these.

Ben 00:03:09  I was able to get two of the businesses to a healthier spot. Sold 1 in 2018 to an aggregator, another 1 in 2019 to ratio, which I’m sure many the listeners are familiar with the recipes. But you know, with with those access, you know, they’re, you know, I think a 1.4, 1.8 million. I had a business partner on one, but that gave me enough cushion, was able to essentially take all the cash. And we invested in the remaining business, which was pet honesty. And right from the start, when that business went live in 2018, I knew it was different from the others, which, by the way, I think is an interesting kind of side note. There was absolutely opportunity costs and the different options people have in creating brands and honestly was definitely a great business to be in. Good timing, great gross margins, all the things were going to impact that later, if interested. But by having all of my focus on that business and giving myself time to think and learn.

Ben 00:03:51  We also got very fortunate timing. It took off like a rocket ship, and we basically went from 0 to 70 million and under three years and is a part of that journey. And I realized it was time to actually bring on a partner to help us take it to the next level. So I did end up selling a majority of it in 21 at a fantastic Nine figure exit for that decided to still roll a significant amount into the new business, but as a minority shareholder, and I did that. So in 2022 decided it was time to step down as CEO. Was pretty tired and burned out at that point. From the pace, you know, from starting in 2015, Air Force side businesses to then, and that’s kind of kicked off a bit of a sabbatical and, kind of inward journey, which probably is a whole nother podcast episode.

Josh 00:04:27  I love it. so, Ben, if I heard you correct. So you said it started honestly in 2018 and then you didn’t sell it until 2021, and you said you sold it for a nine figure valuation.

Josh 00:04:38  So what was your revenue run rate at that point when you sold the business? Yeah, we.

Ben 00:04:42  Were we were around $70 million.

Josh 00:04:45  That’s amazing. And what was it that kind of like catapulted you guys to 70 million, right. Like going from 0 to 70 million in three years is is no small feat.

Ben 00:04:54  Yeah. Look, I think definitely a level familiar here. And recognizing there was a lot of circumstances that went our way. I mean, a global pandemic forcing everyone to shop online and everyone’s thinking about pets and health. So that was a pretty incredible combination of factors. But I think also it was us, I think, starting to think about how to properly scale. And I think for me, the big unlock was going to this concept of who, not how, and really moving out of being the guy doing most things with a team of like assistance in the Philippines, to being the guy hiring the best people on the planet for different functions and letting them run the business.

Josh 00:05:28  Very interesting.

Josh 00:05:29  Okay. Let’s dive. Let’s dive into this, this story a little bit further then. So walk me through. You mentioned that in 2018 when you started Pet Honesty that like you noticed that something was different compared to the other brands that you had previously worked on, exited? what was that difference and why was it different and how did you notice it?

Ben 00:05:48  Yeah. So, one of the things I’ll share, this is another principle I have is if there’s something I want to do in life, I find someone who’s done that and I learn from them. And when I started, honestly, I did have this sense that this was different. This was going to be a significant brand of intuition, like, this is $1 billion brand and with with that. But what will lead to that? Even finding the opportunity. And Pat is I was hungry for creating a bigger business. And when I looked at people who had successfully done that, who had quote unquote done what I wanted to do and had those call like nine figure exits because I thought that’d be really fun to shoot for.

Ben 00:06:15  I realized there are certain characteristics of those businesses, so they typically had really great gross margins. They typically had really good lifetime value in the form of oftentimes a consumable repeat purchase product. And there was a there’s like a high emotional appeal to the to the products that were selling. So instead of selling like a spatula, I had a kitchen product brain selling something that helps your dog’s health. There’s like this high, you know, motivation for the buyer to want that. And I started noticing that pattern in a lot of the brands that were fetching the biggest valuations. So that was a big, I think, realization for me to realize I’m building, you know, a kitchen products brand is called Willow, and it was a great little brand and I actually loved it. I was a passionate user, but when I launched but honestly, it just I knew it kind of checked these boxes of just frankly, being a superior business model. Everything is trade offs, of course. So oftentimes these superior business model companies are going to have a lot more competition.

Ben 00:07:03  But what’s interesting is that honestly was literally 100 times more valuable than the kitchen flat screen. My exit between the two was a two year difference. So the kitchen product in 2019 and 2021, I wasn’t 100 excited entrepreneur, right? I wasn’t I didn’t have one better strategy. It was literally the opportunity itself. So that was an important lesson for me is I’m building these other brands. It was hard to initially leave them to go to, but honestly. But it’s one of these I think, almost like cognitive biases that we have is we don’t fully understand opportunity cost. And I could have worked my ass off and been the best of the world at building the kitchen products brand, even at the best in the world, that maybe would have been ten times bigger. So I think that’s like an interesting lesson for me, is the opportunity itself can oftentimes be the most important thing.

Josh 00:07:43  I love that I think that that resonates a lot. And I think that, you know, it’s like, what vehicle are you taking? Right? Because certain vehicles can only go so far.

Josh 00:07:50  And so are you truly on a rocket ship or are you, you know, on your bicycle, right. And, hoping that you can get to that 100 to the moon in a bicycle? don’t think that’s necessarily going to be able to happen. And so I think that that vehicle does make a big difference. as you mentioned, like you weren’t 100 X better, but we’re able to have 100 x better valuation. So what is your advice and recommendations then for somebody that’s hearing you speak right now. And they’re like crap. I don’t know if I’m in the right vehicle or like, what do I do with my existing brand? Because that’s who’s listening to this or existing brand owners. So what’s your recommendation to them? And also like if they do want a nine figure billion dollar valuation type brand, like what do they do.

Ben 00:08:28  Yeah, it’s a great question. I think the first question I would ask is what do they actually want? You know, I kind of realized there’s this kind of huge irony of life of we spend our entire lives living in no time thinking about how we want our life to look like.

Ben 00:08:41  We spend more time on the car we drive in, the house we live in, that actually thinking about how to design our lives. So I think what was helpful for me, what I maybe the listeners, is just get really learn what you want. What do you want for your life. And this is a whole separate conversation. I think there’s ways to do that that come from maybe connecting to what you truly, intrinsically want versus what maybe the ego wants from a place of limitation. And I’ll say it for myself, like for me looking back, you know, going for a big excuse. I’m so glad I did it. But bigger doesn’t always mean better. It doesn’t always mean. So I just ask people first and foremost, like, what do you actually want? And let’s say, okay, they do. They want to have something that can, you know, have a larger financial impact on them. Then I think you’d be getting really honest about where they’re at right now in the business they’re in.

Ben 00:09:20  And do they think their current business has the potential to get to the valuation they want to hit? And the best way to do that is to look at markers of what of other businesses in their industry sold for what the characteristics of that. And if they find out, you know, whatever they’re doing doesn’t have a high potential, then I think it’s time to possibly consider starting something else with what they’ve they’ve done. So a principle I love is some of the book essentialism. He talks about having a season of exploration and then exploitation. So while my life was chaotic in 2017 with five different businesses, it actually brought the level of health, the exploration. And then when I found the one I knew was better, I could fully exploit it. So for some lessons here in an inferior business model that they think has a low probability of getting to the place they want. What would it look like to explore with another business or to, you know, started again and they could, you know, sell the current one.

Ben 00:10:07  They could automate it. Whatever. so that’s one I think if they feel like their current business and industry has the potential, and again, they’re looking at other examples of this, then, you know, so I’m a huge believer of and there’s something I want to do. Find someone who’s done it and learn from them and that’s it. We can come from a book or a course. I find that when building a business, the best information is in the minds of those who are actively doing it, like the operators. And there’s ways that I found effective to create an advisory board. That’s something I did. It honestly was massively helpful. I created advisors who had done what I wanted to do, and they helped me think through the right strategy and have a blueprint to basically build the business that I wanted.

Josh 00:10:42  Love that. Okay, so let’s double down on that. So let’s go all the way back to 2018. You identify pet. Honesty is like all right here’s a here’s the rocket ship that I want to be on.

Josh 00:10:52  great opportunity. Did you just start it by yourself or did you bring on team members? Who was it that you started it with? And maybe walk me through? Like, what did 2018 look like? What did 2019 look like for this brand and walk me through kind of like that evolution. When did you bring on this advisory board and all of that?

Ben 00:11:09  Yeah. So you know, starting but honestly it was one of like a few different brands. So in the beginning it wasn’t that special in how we started it. I did have one full time employee, Sean, who was on vacation, private brand, who was helping with pet honesty. And then my ex-wife Camille helped me start it as well. And she was great at branding and kind of like intuiting what the customer would want from a local field perspective. So they were both there on the ground floor. And then we had a team of, you know, Vas essentially a few of us from the Philippines that were helping just with like logistics, customer service, that sort of thing.

Ben 00:11:39  But the first year I could already tell it had potential. Maybe within a few months it was $1 million run rate. And right around the time is we’re now turning into 2019. That’s when I finally started getting smarter. Like the expression work smart, hard, work smart and hard. But, and that’s when kind of thing, timing wise. Look what was happening. I think I was starting to, you know, the saying, well, your network is your net worth. And I was starting to seek out those who were building businesses like I wanted to build. So 8 to 9 figures and getting to know, especially some people around Austin who are building consumer brands worth 8 or 9 figures, seeing how they thought what they were doing. And I started realizing I love finding best practices. I believe tech startups hold a lot of the best practices for how to build companies, because they are the most competitive enterprise value creating space. So as I studied how tech companies were built, found a few books that were helpful.

Ben 00:12:23  I started realizing, okay, common practice is to have an advisory board. Common practice is to have actually an equity pool and finding top talent and compensating them with equity. And that’s right around the time I, I basically started to embark on that. So let me think about it. So advisors let me start to hire. I did hire one other employee, to kind of lead back our website without equity. But then in 2019 is when I went after a few hires who were very talented. But I need to start thinking about compensation so I can go deeper into that. But I’ll pause there.

Josh 00:12:53  Yeah. No. Okay, I love this. So it’s kind of like 2018. You saw it had $1,000,000 million run rate pretty quickly. And then 2019 is when you feel like, okay, now it’s time to go do what the tech startups are doing and follow more of their processes. I need an advisory board, and I need to have an equity pool where I can bring on the best talent.

Josh 00:13:10  Am I correct?

Ben 00:13:11  Yes. And in 2019, we did 6 million reviews. So I can’t tell, like okay, this thing’s first.

Josh 00:13:15  So 2019 you’re doing 6 million in revenue. What’s your EBITDA at that point?

Ben 00:13:20  So interestingly I chose to keep EBITDA very low. It fluctuated year to year from zero to 1 or 2 million. this is maybe, you know, not great hygiene, but I just I didn’t care as much about it because I wanted to aggressively reinvest every dollar back in the business.

Josh 00:13:35  Okay. Interesting. So how did you have the funds then? So this is what we’ll dive into then of like bringing on people, because I’m sure a lot of these people are going to be six figure plus salaries if you’re bringing on a level talent. So the question is, all right, well, if you’re reinvesting all of your money back into inventory and advertising in your business, then where’s the where’s the money to fund these, these people that you’re bringing in?

Ben 00:13:55  Yeah. That’s always attention for the small businesses.

Ben 00:13:57  So I’ll say for Pat, honestly, I was fortunate in that I was able to put about $1 million of my own money into it because of the fire exits, so that definitely gave it a good starting point. It did grow so fast and we launched many products that cash was always tight. There is oftentimes weeks where we have like five weeks of projected cash left, and I would do aggressive things like credit cards as possible. It was very difficult to get loans two years ago. One I will say though, from a business perspective, cash flow was superior for this versus the other ones, right? Because instead of importing from China with, you know, all that time of the water year I can make in the US, I can have much better terms at the manufacturer.

Josh 00:14:28  Like what? What were your terms?

Ben 00:14:29  I mean, it varied, but, you know, 3060 is down. So I just had more, you know, less working capital requirements than the previous business.

Josh 00:14:39  Love it. Okay, so you’ve got that going for you.

Josh 00:14:42  How are you still able to afford the top talent then? It would be my question.

Ben 00:14:46  Yeah. Yeah, it’s it’s a great question. And I think how to like I’m trying to think how like you know my story in the, you know, landscape then versus today. And today it’s shifted. Right. And I you know, I helped create a brand last year that we were launching. And in a lot of ways it feels more competitive. But there’s always opportunity. But I think back in this this applies for anyone. We had profitable products and I intentionally decided to invest some of the profits were making into very talented team members, and then the rest into the necessary marketing, to grow to grow the business. I would say that I found I’m always looking for the highest leverage ways to grow the business. So for us in our specific brand, it was launching more products. The cost to launch a product was very inexpensive versus the expected value was incredibly high. Now we were, you know, I’d say an Amazon Marketplace first brand that also figured out DDC.

Ben 00:15:38  But launching a lot of products on marketplaces generates a profit. If you’re more of a DTC first brand, that might not work as well. You can do across sales and stuff, but there’s not the organic traffic to take advantage of. So I would say by having a very aggressive product launch strategy, a lot of that quickly scale, you know, gross profit and then reinvest a lot of that into talent and some into marketing.

Josh 00:15:54  Okay, I love it. And I want to continue to go down this rabbit hole because I feel like this is this is the genesis of what actually got you to 70 million, right? It’s having an advisory board and it’s having really wicked smart people on your team. Right. It’s the who, not Hal. So, Ben, let’s let’s talk maybe more about that. Who are these higher. Who are the key hires that you hired in 2019 and why? Who did you hire first and why?

Ben 00:16:15  Yeah, and maybe if I can just, like, zoom out really quick to help the listeners because I think, I think what I want to do is like a lot of these, there’s, you know, tactic strategies that we do is important.

Ben 00:16:24  But I’d also like people to understand the timeless principles. And the way I kind of see it is like first seeing the vision of what you want to do. And I’m like, I want to build, you know, nine figure brain in consumer. I just know that’s possible. So once I think a person is clear on the vision and they believe it’s possible. By the way, a lot of visions become self-fulfilling prophecies because if you fully believe it, imagine trying to sell an employee. Imagine we tried this whole employee being like, I’m going to build a seven figure kitchen brain versus, hey, we’re going to build $1 billion brand. Like you get way better talent and it becomes a self prophecy. So again, have the vision we believe in. But two is have the right strategy every single day. There’s a million things you can do. There’s a million. There’s an unlimited amount of things to do. So there’s no difference between a billionaire and a homeless person in bars. They all have 24 hours a day, but where is their time going? How are they spending that time? Are they working on the most important things? 1820 the one thing we all know this, but how do you actually figure out what is your business? And that’s where for me, finding the right strategy comes down to finding the models worth emulating, right? Like find someone who’s done what I want to do and learn from them.

Ben 00:17:18  Like that principle has driven most of my success. So for me, it was a combination of, you know, gleaning from podcasts. Again, brands are most similar to mine. Finding these advisors with built brands very similar to the ones I wanted to build, and literally building a detailed scorecard, building out every aspect I wanted this adviser to embody, and then not resting until I found them. And then how other brands do that. We’re in the marketplace and learning from some of our competitors, like, wow, they’re launching a ton of products. It’s a lot of money. So I’m informing and constantly updating my strategy and priorities from the models I found to emulate.

Josh 00:17:46  Love it, love it. Okay, so then that goes. So that pulls the curtain back even further into like the advisory board really is like the genesis of of a lot of this as well.

Ben 00:17:55  So yeah. Right. Because I think we have a listener like how do you know who to hire? Right. Like, how did I know who to hire? I had a kitchen of one W2 and a team of guys.

Ben 00:18:02  I didn’t even know how company structures look. Honestly, I don’t even know, like, oh, you have like operations and you have like, finance and like product. Like, I didn’t even know a fucking org charts like so. So for me. Yeah. Like let me start with, let me find advisors who have built what I want to build right before I even think about who to hire. Let me just find someone then what I want to do because, like, that’s the simplest thing I can do. Like, I know they don’t what I want to do and let me learn from them.

Josh 00:18:23  So how did you find them? Yeah, that’s my question. And how many of them did you have? Yeah.

Ben 00:18:27  How do you find them? So this is like a I use a hiring principle. We can talk about hiring because there’s a few best practices I found helpful. But there’s this concept of a scorecard. So and I’m sure you’re familiar with this like it’s it’s basically, you know, distilling what I want in this person.

Ben 00:18:42  So I literally wrote out I want and I want a different advisor. So I made a different scorecard. But I want one advisor who has built a consumer brand with a high margin consumer product to, you know, a nine figure exit. I want another one who’s built a pet brand, you know, with heavy online sales. Like, I take it really specific on the advisor such that it matched what I was trying to do, because the closer I could find someone who’s done what I want to do, the higher probability that I could emulate. So for me is online sales, a specific target industry focus. And once I got very clear on that and wrote it down to me, it’s then kind of a scorched earth approach. I’m going to do everything I can to find people. I find most people. You can find anyone on the street to give you advice in this problem. People take advice from anyone. That’s so stupid in my opinion, because anyone give you an opinion, like obviously the guy off the street versus the dude who’s done exactly what I want to do, there’s a massive opportunity cost not advice.

Ben 00:19:27  Most people settle for mediocrity with where they’re getting advice. So I always say be mindful of opportunity. Cost is one of the most important things. There’s unlimited information ability, so only get your information from the sources you think have the highest probability to help you, and then then actually can start because every hour of your execution or team’s execution, thousands of hours per year is going against the information sources. So you better make sure information sources are fantastic. So that’s why take time to write a very specific scorecard, and then go to your network to try to find these people. And that is a challenge. And that’s where it’s important to really build out a network. And sometimes it comes down to like one. Breadcrumb, right? I moved to Austin. I got connected to a guy who’s building a fantastic consumer brand. That was my one entry point, and he was very gracious and met with me and gave me great advice. And I always tell people like, if you get a meeting someone who’s kind of doing what you want to do, like be super gracious with, you know, grateful for their time, I kind of follow up people give tell them how you’re implementing it.

Ben 00:20:18  and then, hey, who else can I talk to? So I think it’s really trying to build your network. Also looking for super connectors is something I found helpful. So getting to know perhaps a lawyer or a banker who knows a lot of people in your industry, they want to help you out because they’re hoping for more business eventually. But that has been another helpful technique. Like two of my four advisors came from a banker who is super connected, and they’re highly motivated to help because they want your business one day, whether it’s on the personal side or corporate, but it’s just being ruthless with like finding the person to be on your network and developing a network. There’s masterminds, you can join the IPO, there’s all these different things. Yeah, the mechanics that I would share, there’s something called a fast agreement. So if your listeners just Google fast agreement, and I could probably put it in the link, the fast agreement I found incredibly helpful for basically saying, it’s a structure as a contract and how to work with your advisor.

Ben 00:21:06  Very simple. It basically says for this stage company, this must be from the advisor who was most likely to end up giving your advisors like 0.2 to 20% equity. But again, how do you even know what a what an appropriate equity pool is? How do you know what best practices find the people who have done it? They built an integrated company. They’ve probably been through this. You can learn that from your advisor. So they helped me understand, hey, if you’re building a business like this, we probably want to have 10% of your company set aside for your management team. And that’s why I love it.

Josh 00:21:30  Okay, perfect. So let’s then dive into so you had some really good advisors that joined you on the board. you then were giving up some equity to have them on your advisory board, and then you’re going to go attract some, some talent. So let’s dive into those hiring strategies of how do you identify a level talent. And were you paying them above market wages. Below market wages but with equity.

Josh 00:21:52  So talk to me more about that.

Ben 00:21:54  Yeah great question. So for hiring you know I’m a sucker for best practices. I found this book called the Who methadone hiring that I think is the best practice on hiring. They interviewed fortune 500 CEOs and billionaires. And it just works. It talks about how to source your talent, how to vet your talent, actually just copy their method because it’s that fantastic. I’d rather not reinvent the wheel. Sure, I modified it a bit, use some different assessment tools that I liked, put our own cultural spin on it over time, but before using that method versus using it, increased my accuracy triple. Probably just absolutely essential. And what I started realizing is, as a CEO, if my top priority is talent, I need to be spending the majority of my time on this. So I would start doing my own outreach and trying to find people to source in addition to putting up job postings. But frankly, the best talent oftentimes is not looking for jobs.

Ben 00:22:42  They’re gainfully employed. So poaching became the source of, I would say, our best talent, actually. And oftentimes that comes from a network. Again, the whole book on hiring actually talks about this. So just follow the best practice. but yeah, when I thought about top talent, then Charlie Munger says, show me the incentives and I’ll show you the outcome. And I believe in aligning employees incentives with incentives as much as possible. In my incentive is an owner is to pay myself as little as possible and maximize my enterprise value. That’s the business I wanted to build. Some people maybe want cash flow or whatever. It’s fine. So what I look for with employees was, I want to pay you as little as possible and give you as much equity possible. And it’s a bit of arbitrage because we bootstrapped, I could give larger equity grants than, VC backed businesses. And there’s a signal for me if someone’s like, no, I only want high cash, I want equity, I actually don’t want that person on my team because they don’t believe in what they’re building and they want their money.

Ben 00:23:32  Today. I want someone who’s going to ride with me. So that’s that’s the approach. Again, not right for every business. Depends what you’re trying to build. But that’s what I prefer to do I.

Josh 00:23:40  Love it okay. So you’re paying technically below market average probably. But incentivizing people with equity and those are the people that you wanted. Let’s talk more about the poaching aspect, though. It is a big component of that whole book, which is like your best candidates are going to come from referrals from your network. so talk to me about like, how would you approach poaching, other candidates? Was it primarily through LinkedIn? Because again, if you’re getting contacts like these are just like cold introductions, relatively warm of people talk to me more about like, what that looked like and how you were doing that because you said you said it right. Like as the CEO, you quickly learned that like, the number one thing I need to do with my time is hire the best people, right? so what were you doing? Like, on a day to day basis? Walk us through what that actually looks like to poach good talent.

Ben 00:24:23  Yeah. This is a, It’s an incredibly important topic. That’s very difficult. I will also mention the listeners. There’s a book called High Growth Handbook that is fantastic. It’s written by a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, and there’s a few excerpts on how to hire and how to. And it’s just amazing. So I highly recommend buying that book and reading a few chapters on hiring additions to yours. Interesting. Like so much of success, I think in business does come down to the network like some of my best hires as we got underway, like an advisor to someone, right? Or the, you know, bank or whatever, like you appear in building a business. So that does become vitally important. So I think for listeners thinking about, could you spend a few hours a week actually improving your network and doing so in a non transactional, loving way? I think it’s important to I’m always looking to give first. But but that’s important. You know, the important thing is here’s the thing. If again this came down to me logically proving to myself the highest use of my time is finding top talent.

Ben 00:25:19  I’m going to buck it off X percentage of the time I’ve done this. I just try everything. Like sometimes we just brute force the shit. You try to work hard, but sometimes just gotta work hard until something works. And there’s a bit of, like a full star problem where it’s like. Like my. My first couple hires were the hardest cause I didn’t have a good network. I had a seven figure brand. I’m like selling hopes and dreams. It was easier a year later when we’re in a 30 million run rate upgrade. Advisors like it’s a flywheel, right? But in the beginning, and I guess that’s where you start. It’s really hard. And, and that’s okay. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. So I’ll share something I did. I really wanted an amazing growth marketer, so I would literally go on and then I had this hypothesis that someone with a consulting background from like a top consulting agency was just whip smart and figure out those problems. So I was literally on LinkedIn searching for X consultants with growth marketing.

Ben 00:25:57  And the title was not a job, literally, like just cold messaging. People often wanted me to end up getting coffee with a guy here in Austin, and he was our fifth employee and just incredible because this wouldn’t succeed with that, but because he just learned in here and through it. That was amazing. I realized early on from some of his best practices, I needed an incredible executive assistant, jack of all trades, super HR, different functions, and I made the posts, you know, posting all the indeed all that shit. But then I’m like going to my network. And I think at this point I was in a massive e-commerce fuel and I was like, guys like, anyone know a great day. And this dude, Alan, great guys. I think my friend Natalie is like looking for a new job, and she ended up being ten times better than any candidate in the funnel. And it just came from me being so like just telling everyone, you know, this person is the only person putting together a quick paragraph and blasting out to my network while trying all the job boards, while by the way, later I would hire recruiters because sometimes recruiters are able to find these people.

Ben 00:26:43  But for me it’s just being ruthless. Like just trying everything to find this person having such a high bar, you know, not accepting anyone off the street.

Josh 00:26:52  Yeah. Ben, I absolutely love that. And I love you. Kind of pulling back the curtain because, like, you did everything right. It wasn’t a one size fits all. It’s like, hey, everybody we hired came from a job post on LinkedIn. Go put your job post on LinkedIn, and they’re gonna all apply, right? Like that’s not what it’s about. I love that, like every person that you brought on to your team. And it’s been the same way for myself as like they’ve all had their unique entry points into the business and there is no one size fits all. But it does mean that, like you have to actively be pursuing these people, you got to be putting it out into the world that like, I’m looking for this person, right? And sometimes I guess here would be my follow up question to you, because I’ve had this problem, sometimes I put it out into the world and it’s like crickets.

Josh 00:27:28  It’s like, hey, I’m looking for this. And then like, it’s like, wait, did my post get any traction? Like, did that happen to you?

Ben 00:27:35  I think you know anything where I get no feedback for a role. I think if that happens, it’s a function of is the role not exciting enough or the opportunity that’s definitely happened? I’d say with like the kitchen products brand, I was like, why is this? But I’m putting myself in choosing the employee or they want an exciting opportunity with something they’re passionate about that has like upside. so I think there’s a way to like tweak it to get that. but I think another problem I had that maybe resonates with listeners is sometimes I didn’t know what good looked like. Like I knew I needed a growth marketer to figure out Adidas. Your DTC was a million a year and they should be way bigger. We should be about 10 million. So I did all the advice, I made a scorecard, blah blah blah. Like, how do I know what a good growth market looks like? And that’s where this book talks about like we’ll go find amazing growth marketers.

Ben 00:28:17  So you know what good looks like. We’ll just give you advice. They’re probably not for hire. But learn from them and they can help you know what like levers to look for. And I will say that role was one where I had challenge finding candidates because it’s I think growth margins are one of the hardest in like e-commerce, like it’s the hardest role to fill in. The best talent is not looking for jobs. Oftentimes you’re doing the wrong thing. So just to do a posting like I was just getting mediocre talent. So that is one where I did have to engage recruiter to hit my network pretty hard. yeah.

Josh 00:28:41  Did you find people through a recruiter then?

Ben 00:28:44  I have, yeah, I honestly, I like to do it in parallel. Right. So for my, my, my VP of ops, I had a really strong referral from someone, but I didn’t know I never hired him to ask for like, is he good or not? So I want to run a process in parallel.

Ben 00:28:56  So I had a recruiter spin up a bunch of candidates if I were talking to candidates also helped me understand what to look for, especially when talking to good ones and going with referrals. But it was I like to do things in parallel. Growth market opposite happened where I had a few referrals coming in. Engage recruiter recruiters candidate was actually better. And then one more anecdote that I think is interesting and it gets juices flowing. So I wanted someone eventually to lead one of our biggest marketplaces which was chewy. So as a team, we went out to chewy headquarters a few times and before going, this is where Scrappiness comes in. I just linked in blasted like 22 employees and I’m like, hey, we’re back at headquarters. Did you get coffee? And like, why not let me just learn? And a few of them were willing to meet up and one of them, you know, hit it off really well with and just start planting the seed like, hey, if you ever leaving, want to work for a brand, this could be a good opportunity.

Ben 00:29:39  And I think that’s where the power of the CDO is like trying to be a fantastic salesman. So we kept in touch and six months later he ended up quitting chewy to join us. And he was one of the best hires we’ve made. But again, like, it just took me doing something that seemed kind of stupid. Like I’m going to cold message a bunch of two people. but I guess as two people from cold LinkedIn messages that it works. And by the way, a lot of that comes down to like someone had a blast with LinkedIn. So how do you make it compelling? How does your first sentence. Yeah, excited to open the message.

Josh 00:30:04  I love that. And I think like, you know, to your point, like when I say like, hey, I’ve some of my posts have fallen on deaf ears. Maybe. Is it a messaging problem? Right? It’s like maybe tweak the the message, right? What is that first sentence? How am I attracting people? Like is it actually exciting enough? So I love that.

Josh 00:30:17  And I think it’s a constant game of iteration as well. Right. Got to put it out there like, this works, this doesn’t work. And just like just grow and and pivot as you go through that process. So I’d love to hear that kind of iterative process. It wasn’t like you went out and hired a whole management team in three months, and then three months later, like, you guys are off to the races, it sounds like you added one puzzle piece at a time over various stages. Is that true?

Ben 00:30:39  Yeah, that’s that’s so true. And one of the things that, maybe if I mentioned, I’m kind of like I’m curious about enduring principles that lead to success. And one of the things I’ve been, you know, thinking about is you’re absolutely right. Iteration is key. so I think for, for any listener today is like to get from where you are to where you want to go. I believe it requires action on the right things. But also learning is so important and allowing for iterations to take place as you’re assimilating new information from mentors, books, etc., but executing on the right Priorities.

Ben 00:31:06  And for me, honestly, that came down to a few core habits. Like every single day, I set aside at least 20 minutes to learn learn about the most relevant topic for my business. I call this a just in time learning approach versus what people just read like, oh, that’s interesting. Hopefully anyone learn about the most important area of your business and that learning will compound. So by setting aside 20 minutes every day at a minimum, I was burning through who this book, whatever and taking notes and trying to summarize it to then force it into my business. But that was a complete game changer like that. The books, besides the advisors or one of the, I think, the greatest source of knowledge, the other piece, though, that helped me a lot, was another core habit was actually setting aside time every week to think to to take 1 to 2 hours uninterrupted time. There’s this guy, Keith Cunningham, who I learned this from. But what happens in thinking times? You pose a powerful question, and it takes a few iterations to find the right question.

Ben 00:31:50  When you have the right question, what comes out of you is pure magic, because your subconscious has so much wisdom that you’re pulling out of this time and really thinking time is a time to assimilate all the learning you’re having and solve the bigger problems in the business. So a lot of times, and here’s like a great irony is, you know, we spend 50 hours a week working, no time thinking about how to run my time. So oftentimes in thinking time, I would say, what should I be thinking about? What’s the next question? Okay, where should I be spending my time? What’s the highest point? Average okay. And I look at my notebooks like your mind knows where it needs to go, wants to focus on. but I think that repeated, you know, consistency of having that dedicated time to thinking about the biggest priorities and solving these problems is what led me to a lot of the strategies, etc., that I’m talking about, because, by the way, the strategies I’m sharing aren’t one size fits all.

Ben 00:32:30  You will develop your own strategies for your business, but I find thinking time the best way to tease that out.

Josh 00:32:34  So Ben true or false here. Do you feel like it’s better for an entrepreneur to or especially in outer space? Lots of entrepreneurs have multiple brands that they are running, right. Like, oh, I started this brand, then I started this brand. I had this idea, so I started this brand. This looked like a good opportunity. So I’ve got multiple brands. Is it better to have multiple brands or is it better to go all in on one, especially as you’re talking about like setting aside time to do deep work and talk about strategies? Give me your feedback based off of running multiple brands all at the same time. And then basically you kind of honed in on one. What’s the give me the pros and cons. And if you were to go back and do it again, what’s the right approach for entrepreneurs to take?

Ben 00:33:13  Yeah, I don’t think there’s a right approach.

Ben 00:33:14  I think it all depends on their goals and what they want. I think if someone is trying to maximize time, freedom and financial outcome, there’s no question one brand is the best because maniacal focus is always wins. I’ve never seen it. Not. if you’re someone with crazy idea and wants to spend a lot of plays and loves stress, like cool. Like I was there for a few years, honestly and said sometimes that leads to like the exploration, like we talked about. so I’ll say for myself, I do prefer if I’m going to be in builder CEO mode, having one thing to go deep on that. Absolutely. The other, though, I’m realizing, is I made this transition from exploring to exploiting and having chaos. A bunch of small brands, and one big brain is the the bigger transition wasn’t even me getting smarter on like, advisors and hiring. It was actually leading myself because as the CEO, I am always a constraint on the business’s growth and success. It can only grow as much as I’m grown, and the biggest transition I made from that season of chaos to having the big winner, was getting my own internal systems under wraps.

Ben 00:34:16  So is actually doing this morning pretty consistently, reading every single day and learning every single day. Thinking 1 or 2 times a week without fail. That is what having dedicated, deep work on my top priorities before that, I didn’t do that. Just like ping ping ping ping, reactive, reactive, reactive. So that was by far the biggest shift. And I will never again build something without having dedicated learning time, dedicated deep work time and thinking time. And by the way, doing that for me basically makes it impossible to have multiple things because I’m a firm believer and by definition, priority can really be like one thing, maybe most three. So how could I have three? How could I have so many things going on and have to distill it to three goals for the week? I just that’s not how I want to live and I don’t think it leads to success. So that would be my log into.

Josh 00:35:00  Yeah. You know, I agree with that statement there. I think that I call them shower ideas.

Josh 00:35:03  Right. Like your subconscious is going to work for you in the background. But if you have three different businesses and then you have, let’s say, let’s say you’ve got two priorities for each of those businesses. Now you’ve got six, right? So you’ve got six priorities. Now what if you had three priorities for each business? Now you’ve got nine. Your subconscious can’t go deep onto any of those one priorities because you’re so scattered and you’re too focused. And I’ve heard this time and time again is I’ve even coached and mentored other entrepreneurs. It’s like, well, I’ve got this brand. I’m trying to do this over here, and I’ve got this brand. I’m trying to do that over there. And I’m like, look, if you just went all in on one of these brands and you tried to do all go all in on influencer marketing for this one brand, I know you’re going to crush it, but instead you’re going at it with 33% of your energy over here, 33% over there, and you’re getting mediocre results.

Josh 00:35:48  And neither brand is taking off like a rocket ship because like, you’re just spread too thin. And I love your your comment there of like the business is only going to grow as far as you are developing as a leader, and it’s your mindset like you are the constraint of the business, your limiting beliefs are the constraint to the business. Your time to do deep, deep research and deep work on the business and set the correct strategies is truly the constraint. And I think way too many people skip over that and they stay in the place of like level of comfort that they know, which is like I can find a bunch of different small product ideas and launch those and spin them into cash real quick. But like on the other side of the hard concrete wall that you got to jump over, which is deep work conquering really difficult challenges, whether it’s retail distribution or brand new business models or whatever it is. It’s by getting beyond that that the ten x the 100 x valuations happen.

Ben 00:36:35  Oh yeah.

Josh 00:36:38  Okay.

Josh 00:36:38  Then as we start to wrap things up, is there anything about your journey that you want to share with the listeners that we haven’t yet touched on?

Ben 00:36:45  I think the last thing I’ll say is, again, to reiterate, just get really clear on what you want and make sure it comes from a good place. Make sure that what you want isn’t trying to compensate for some limiting belief or negativity. But if I get X then I’ll be happy. Like, make sure it’s coming from a pure place that feels aligned with your values and what you want for your overall life. And then once you get clear on that, get really clear and specific because everything you do is a multiplier after your vision. So just get incredible in what it is you actually want.

Josh 00:37:15  Love that. Great, great words of wisdom there. Then, as we wrap things up, I’d love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from every episode. Here are the three actionable takeaways that I noted. You let me know if I’m missing something.

Josh 00:37:25  Action item number one piggybacks off of exactly what you just capped off with saying. It’s like it’s all about your vision and the goals that you have. And again, reiterating the fact that, like, your business will only grow to the level of growth that you are experiencing as a leader, you are the constraint of the business. You are the one who’s dictating. Do you want this to be a $10 million cash flow business, or do you want this to be a $100 million cash flowing business? Or do you want this to have 100 billion or a $1 billion or $100 billion valuation one day? Right? All of those things are possible, but you do have to make the decision. And I do think that there are a lot of people and even myself at times, like a lot of us shirk away from that. It’s like, I don’t know, let’s just see. I want it to grow as big as it possibly can. And it’s like, well, if you do want that, there are certain things that need to be done now.

Josh 00:38:08  And you talked about that, right, which is going and getting the advice of mentors that have been there, done that. If you want $100 million brand, go talk to the people that have already done that. Then they’ll show you the playbook, but then you can get your mind sold on that. Then you can go poach and then you can go sell talent to come join your team. So number one, create that vision for your life. And then maybe we’ll talk about this at the end. But you’re talking about how to take traction, implement it into the business. Lots of people are running iOS. But I think that vision aspect, can you take that same traction playbook and implement it into your own personal life? To say, this is the angle, when I’m 80 years old, I want to be able to say this and then backwards plan your life. Because when you’re able to do that, you bring those decisions to today and you’ll start to make different decisions. What would your 80 year old self want you to make? All right.

Josh 00:38:53  Action item number two is we’re going to be talking about creating the right strategy okay. So whatever your goal is go find the right people that have been there done that. I love your your idea of going out and finding advisors okay. And there are so many out there. So but you have to go find them, right? It’s not easy. There’s no job board that says like I’m an advisor. I would love to be on somebody’s advisory board. You have to do a lot of networking to find these people. However, go find them. And when you find them, you’re going to be able to kind of get the business model from them and say like, all right, how do I bring on people? And then you’re able to tap into their network as well. But it’s first you’ve got to have the right strategy. And part of that strategy is first, are you in the right vehicle that could actually utilize that strategy. So it’s a combination of both there. But I think having mentors that can say, hey, you want $100 million brand or $100 million brand, it ain’t going to be in this vehicle.

Josh 00:39:42  Like and having maybe that reality check is what you need. So that’s action item number two. Action item number three is being able to to prioritize the one thing. Okay. So can you really focus on like what are what is my one big growth lever for this business. Right. And we talked about like that means probably not having multiple businesses. It means going all in, getting your big win and focusing. What is the one thing that I can do that will have exponential results. And Alex Ramsey talks about this really well. He says business strategy is nothing more than having unlimited possibilities. Okay. But with finite resources. And you’ve got to be able to make the call of like, I could do anything today, but what is the one thing that if I do, this will actually grow above all else? All the other things, tasks, activities that I could do in the business? This is what we’ll reap the most rewards in the future. Then. Anything else that you feel like I missed here?

Ben 00:40:35  That’s beautiful.

Ben 00:40:36  I think what I would maybe tell listeners is it’s one thing to know what to do, something to do it. And I would say knowledge that doesn’t, you know, infiltrate the physical world in some ways worthless. And I believe all this needs to be encapsulated in the right habits. You know, we always fall off the level of our habits in our system. So what I would tell listeners is just make sure you have it in place, because my opinion is the most important thing and there’s different ways to get that habit, etc.. I’m actually going to hold you on this idea for a program that helps with this. But basically, if you are setting your priorities daily, weekly, monthly, you’re every day carving out deep work to work on set priorities. You’re learning every day like we talked about, and then you’re setting aside 1 or 2 times a week to think, I believe success is inevitable. Like that. That’s it. It’s like that. It’s actually that simple. But because of compounding, which is the eighth wonder of the world, we typically don’t understand as humans because it’s geometric.

Ben 00:41:25  Compounding applies not just to money, but applies to what we’re talking about here. But that’s it. But most people, from my experience, don’t have the discipline to everyday set aside two hours to work, to set aside, you know, time of the week, to plan the week priorities, to learn every day. It’s very simple. It’s not easy, but it’s incredibly simple. And if you just do those things and again, this is the shift I made from chaos to success was implementing these four habits. It just becomes inevitable because you’ll figure it out whenever you’re smart enough. But they need the right habits to allow it to compound.

Josh 00:41:51  Love it. Really? Well said. All right, Ben, final three questions. What’s been the most influential book that you’ve read and why?

Ben 00:41:57  Yeah, there’s a bunch of come to mind, but I was paging through the one thing again, and I’ll say that right now because it’s just so it’s so simple, yet powerful and again, an ever increasingly complex world.

Ben 00:42:08  Simplicity is incredible. And yeah, so I would tell listeners, like, if you haven’t read it, read it, if you have read it, read it again, but do it with notes, do the hard thing and actually handwrite notes. And when you’re done handwriting your notes, type it up. Every time I do this, it completely changes my life. So I highly recommend taking notes for the one thing, because if you actually implement it, I think it’s the highest leverage book I’ve experienced.

Josh 00:42:27  Yeah. Wonderful advice. That’s a great book as well. All right. Question number two. What’s your favorite AI tool or ChatGPT prompt that you’ve been using.

Ben 00:42:34  AI right now. And so I’m a little old school and leaving the part of my mind would do a lot of journaling and thinking time. But obviously the AI is incredible. So there’s a tool called untold. It’s a voice journal. And typically I’m like whatever one voice journals. but you can speak six times faster than you can handle it and three times faster you can type.

Ben 00:42:50  This is kind of one test on myself, but you can transmit a lot more information via the voice in this app. Now, for me, acts like a therapist and sometimes like a coach. It asks you questions back based on what you’re saying. So for me, it’s been an incredible way to dump what’s on my mind. Being totally honest about where I’m at. I think honesty is really important in life and business, and I get massive clarity from what comes out of like a ten minute voice journaling session. So that one’s been helpful for me.

Josh 00:43:13  What app is that? Did you say.

Ben 00:43:14  Untold.

Josh 00:43:15  Untold.

Ben 00:43:16  Untold.

Josh 00:43:17  Awesome. Love that. All right, final question here. So who is somebody that you’ve come across in the e-comm space that’s impressed you lately? Maybe it’s a contractor who’s crush it on PPC ads logistics, redesigned a storefront. Anybody that stood out to you recently?

Ben 00:43:33  I’m not super in the weeds with the couple of businesses I’m involved with, so I will say no. But instead I’ll share maybe a principle I found.

Ben 00:43:40  I think it’s one. I think conferences, etc. are fine. I have a firm belief that the most important pieces of business in e-commerce, which I think is marketing the best talent, is are the operators that I can train those with that maybe aren’t going to be at profit or other shows. So one thing I found very helpful is if I’m able to connect with someone I think is a top talent, I will fly out and meet with them in person. They’re typically in New York or LA. That’s where I find the best growth. Marketing talent today throws exceptions, but I have found massive, massive value from taking the time to meet in person with these top talented people. They will tell me all the tools are using. They’ll give me other people to meet with, but that is a complete game changer, so I prefer to do that.

Josh 00:44:16  Love it. Awesome. Well, Ben, this has been a great episode. Thanks so much for your time. If people want to follow you in your journey, they want to see what you’re up to in your sabbatical and your new endeavors.

Josh 00:44:25  Where’s the best people people can follow you at?

Ben 00:44:27  Yeah, I would say you could go to LinkedIn Ben or Instagram Ben. I might start putting more content at some point. So like give me a follow request and I might start sharing if people have questions. I’m happy to help as well. So just being.

Josh 00:44:41  Awesome. Ben, thanks again for your time today.

Ben 00:44:43  Thanks, Josh.