Pat Yates is a seasoned entrepreneur with a focus on e-commerce.  In 2014 he struck a deal with Robert Herjavec on the Emmy Award winning show “Shark Tank”.  Pat grew a single slipper kiosk business into a multimillion-dollar e-commerce focused business.  During that time Pat has done licensing deals with DreamWorks, NCAA, NFL and Disney.  In 2015 he struck up a relationship with Mark the founder of Quiet Light and continued eventually leading him to becoming an M&A advisor. He speaks on stages around the world and is an expert in the Ecom space.

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

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley welcomes back Pat Yates, a seasoned entrepreneur and M&A advisor at Quiet Light Brokerage. Known for his successful “Shark Tank” deal with Robert Herjavec, Pat shares insights on leveraging the show’s exposure, the importance of networking, and the current e-commerce landscape. He emphasizes the need for thorough preparation before selling a business, understanding financials, and maintaining realistic expectations. Pat also highlights the value of data-driven decision-making and the potential of AI tools to enhance business operations. This episode is a must-listen for entrepreneurs aiming to scale their businesses to new heights.

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

Action Item #1 Consider “Shark Tank”: Entrepreneurs with products that appeal to a broad audience should consider applying to “Shark Tank.”

Action Item #2 Maintain Accurate Financial Records: Running both accrual and cash basis books is crucial for understanding the business’s financial position and preparing for potential exits.

Action Item #3 Focus on Growth: Entrepreneurs should prioritize growth, especially if they are considering an exit.

Special Mention(s):

Related Episode(s):

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

I started my business 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 email me at josh@ecommbreakthrough.com and in your subject line say “strategy audit” for the chance to win a $10,000 comprehensive business strategy audit at no cost!

Josh Hadley 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 E Gerber, the author of the E-myth. Today I am speaking with Pat Yates. He’s actually a returning guest here to the show. In our last conversation, we talked about all things licensing. Pat, as you’ll hear in his bio, has a lot of experience working on licenses with different, big people such as the NFL, NCAA, etc. so if you’re interested in licensing or you feel like that’s something that you can create as a moat around your products, hit the rewind button and go find the other episode with Pat Yates and check that out. This episode, though, is brought to you by Ecomm Breakthrough, where I specialize in investing in and scaling seven figure companies to eight figures and beyond. If you’re an ambitious e-commerce entrepreneur looking for a partner who can help take your business to the next level. My team and I bring hands-on experience, strategic insights, and the resources needed to fuel your growth.

Josh Hadley 00:00:50  So if you or someone you know is ready to scale or looking for an investment partner, reach out to me directly at Josh at Ecomm Breakthrough. Com that’s E-comm with two M’s and let’s turn your dreams into reality. Today I am excited to reintroduce you all to Pat Yates. Pat is a seasoned entrepreneur with a focus on e-commerce. In 2014, he struck a deal with Robert Herjavec on the Emmy Award winning show Shark Tank. Pat grew his single slipper kiosk business into a multi-million dollar, e-commerce focused brand. During that time, Pat has done licensing deals with Dreamworks, the NCAA, the NFL and Disney. And in 2015, he struck up a relationship with Mark, who was the founder of Quiet Light Brokerage, and they continued, eventually leading to a part where he has become an M&A advisor there with quiet light. He speaks on stages around the world, and he is considered an expert in the e-commerce space. So with that introduction, welcome to the show, Pat.

Pat Yates 00:01:37  And you make me sound a lot cooler than I really am.

Pat Yates 00:01:39  I mean, let my wife hear this. You might think I’m important. Josh.

Josh Hadley 00:01:42  Well, hey you, you are the man. You’ve been on TV. You’ve been viewed by millions of people around the world, right?

Pat Yates 00:01:47  I actually do have an IMDb page. I can brag about that. Having been on all those shows, I actually did get a page. It wasn’t a shark. I was one of the few that actually did all three shows, believe it or not, which is Shark Tank, the update, which is the same Shark Tank show. But then there was a show called Beyond the Tank and it was so terrible they canceled after like three years. But I was early enough that I got to do that show as well, which is like a 15 minute segment is our 30 minute segment instead of the 15 minute segments. It’s pretty cool.

Josh Hadley 00:02:07  I love that. So hey, here’s a here’s, I think, an interesting thing we could dive into with our audience real quick would be this, you know, you and I were talking just briefly before we hit the record button that it still sounds like you’re you’re in kind of like an alumni group with the Shark Tank brands.

Josh Hadley 00:02:21  Tell me what like level of impact Shark Tank has had on your brand. Do you see that as like, hey, if you can get the chance to get your, you know, brand out there, get in front of Shark Tank, pitch it to the, you know, the sharks. Is it worth it? Tell me both the pros and the cons. Well.

Pat Yates 00:02:36  I think if anybody’s an entrepreneur out there, I’d ask the easy question. If you could have 8 million people look at your product for free, what would you do? So an easy question of whether you go on the show. The only downside is if you get torched in there, which I’ve seen a lot of people do, there’s been a lot of problems. And there’s really like one thing people don’t realize, and I’ll say it ahead of time. Talking about the difficulty is you have to sit with a counselor for an hour after you’re done, or you used to because you you can’t walk out of that place if you’re depressed or upset or angry or something.

Pat Yates 00:02:56  You never know what would happen. You cannot leave the room for an hour, I begged them I was in agreement. I said, please let me get out here and go talk to my family. Do something else. I’d like to do anything to get out of here. And you can’t, because it’s a very emotional situation. And having been on that show and you know your business is on the line, it’s like you really have to impress because, you know, I know some companies I’ve been familiar with, companies that have closed and gone bankrupt or whatever, and the business is sort of at that point they became that person on Shark Tank, but then they also failed because it makes them have a whole nother, you know, vision. So there’s been some tougher conversations I’ve seen come out of it. This group that I’m involved in, it’s called Shark Tank Pals. And, there’s a really good group that that runs that, and they do a conference every year where we get together and sort of collaborate on ideas on how to grow your business, talk about, you know, trends and do a lot of speakers.

Pat Yates 00:03:33  I was lucky enough to be on the opening panel where we had a guy from make magazine that came in and talked, and I’m going to work with his leadership group for high school kids at Columbia and Yale this year, a little bit in the summer, too. So there’s some really smart people there that are, you know, fostering entrepreneurs, you know, growth. And all of them being Shark Tank companies have certain things in common that they’ve had the same kind of license agreements. Once you’re on TV, the same kind of people approach you and you get all kinds of opportunities. And the funny thing about it is it’s easy as an offer to get so excited about that. But looking back, I even wish that I’d have been a little slower to take advantage of them. Because sometimes when you go to 0 to 60in a small business, you run outside your means and you look back and say, hey, this is great that I did this. But there were problems to that great situation. So I think this group is great in the sense that they try to stay very philanthropic and educational, and we get together and we do a lot of speaking and idea talking.

Pat Yates 00:04:11  And like I ran into an amazing influencer that came there this year that I think can change the way we’re doing things. So your hope is that you get together and, you know, find things that you work on. From an M&A standpoint. We go as quite light as a sponsor, so we can help people sort of strategically get their companies in place and then exit in the right manner. Working with 5 to 6 companies already in the last couple of years that we’re working with to try to help them exit.

Josh Hadley 00:04:28  Yeah. I think what you hit on, though, is the power of the network, right? Is obviously those those people in your alumni group, everybody that’s been on Shark Tank to be able to interact with them. Obviously there are people that are bringing new ideas to the world and kind of movers and shakers. And so I think that’s an important aspect of it. How how difficult is it for a brand to get onto Shark Tank? And is there ever a point in time where it’s too late? Right.

Josh Hadley 00:04:48  Is it like, hey, have you been you know, your brand’s been alive for over ten years? Yeah, probably not going to get on to Shark Tank. give me your give me your feedback there.

Pat Yates 00:04:57  I don’t, you know, I think the products and the markets and stuff like that are agnostic. Doesn’t really matter where you’re at. I think for me, you know, I’m always in a situation where the businesses that I want to deal with are more e-commerce driven. But if someone’s thinking about applying for Shark Tank, it’d be great if you feel like you want to do it. And it’s not the easiest process. You know, it’s it’s I think when I was doing it now, this is a little ways back and things have changed in a decade when I was basically on. I’m sure it’s a different process, but at that time it was like a 50 page written application. Now imagine written. No one in e-commerce ever writes anymore. I don’t even know how to write letters. I’m like, I can’t, I’m functionally illiterate if I’m not signing my name or typing, and I just don’t do it really well anymore.

Pat Yates 00:05:27  So you had to do a handwritten application, which is a real difficult thing. You had all these vetting you had to do. You had to do all these videos. At the end of the day when I was done, I was glad I did it all. But during the process, it becomes something that becomes its own job. So you got to realize it’s kind of like, you know, developing a division to try to go on a reality show. So you have to commit a lot of time to it and need to make sure you do it. So and again, it’s it’s a little nerve wracking in front of the camera. I mean I was like £40 heavier. It’s like terrible. They looked honestly it was going so bad for so long and it was insane. I thought it would look terrible on TV, but mine turned out pretty good. So. But it’s worth its weight in gold. If you can get on the show, you know, because you just get so much credibility in the product line.

Pat Yates 00:05:58  You get to use the as seen on Shark Tank brand as you go forward. Believe it or not, people will search that on Amazon and find it. And if nothing else, it gives you a level of credibility that a television network and something like that has vetted the company. So there are a lot of positives there, not a whole lot of negatives that came from it. The relationships have been great. you know, the the ability to network with people has been great. And for my business, you know, it’s been awesome. There are things I could have done better, post-show, but it was always awesome.

Josh Hadley 00:06:20  How important do you feel like it is to go in there and make a deal, right? You’re able to create a deal with Robert. How? Like what? What’s been the level of involvement there? Is it more opening up his Rolodex contacts? Is it worth the, you know, the equity you give up? And it sounds like you’re saying.

Pat Yates 00:06:34  Yes, I think that’s I think what’s kind of the misnomer about Shark Tank is people think a lot of these deals close.

Pat Yates 00:06:38  They really don’t. I mean, it’s there are. But I mean, if I want to put a percentage on this, it’s not a joke. I would be shocked if 10% of the deals closed. Really? I’m sure Shark Tank knows. They might know that number, but it’s really kind of down to them reporting it correctly. But once it actually signed an APA transfer money and operate together as a partnership, it’s probably less than 10%. There’s a lot of collaborations. I can help you these things when Robert and I this is not divulging anything about our deal. We didn’t do any money transfer, even though there was a deal that was committed to on the show. We basically did a collaboration agreement for him to help me in a marketplace, and then he didn’t put cash up because I didn’t need it at the time, and then we used the right resources. So he took me to Disney. He went with me to Dreamworks. We used him for the right things, and Robert had fun with it.

Pat Yates 00:07:11  Now it’s interesting. I’m back looking at whether or not we can find a way to revive this. You know, Robert’s kind of on the sunset of his Shark Tank thing and all these different throwback commercials and things. There’s a lot of ways to revive something. So we’re kind of, you know, investigating some fun things to maybe do there. So we’ll see. It’s it’s it’s always been a fun process. Robert is literally the fun shark. He’s a great guy. And so it’s been a great relationship either way. And it’s worth its weight in gold at the time that I’ve been able to work with them.

Josh Hadley 00:07:32  That’s fantastic. Well, I love that you’ve got a wealth of experience. So you are our resident, Shark Tank expert here on the show?

Pat Yates 00:07:39  Yeah, I don’t know about that. I’m not. I’m not much of an expert on anything. Josh. I’m kind of like, you know, one of those guys that you just never know. I’ve. I’ve come up with some crazy ideas.

Pat Yates 00:07:46  Sometimes it’s always fun to say.

Josh Hadley 00:07:48  Hey, well, you you you know enough to be dangerous. I do know that. So, Pat, let’s kind of pivot our conversation. Now. Let’s talk more about what you’re seeing in the e-commerce space as a whole. You still have your brand happy feet, so you’re in the e-commerce space as a seller. You are also an M&A advisor for Quiet Light, which means you’re working with brands that want to sell brands that are looking to acquire other brands. So I’m curious, like here, we’re recording this at the top of 2025 right now. What do you see going on in the market right now and what’s happening in the M&A world and what’s happening in the e-commerce space that you think our listeners need to know about so they can start making plans for this year?

Pat Yates 00:08:25  Yeah. You know, I’m hearing a lot of different things. I’m going to rewind. And the only way to talk about the current situation is talk more about the past a little bit. Only because, you know, last year, 2024 was a challenging year for any entrepreneur.

Pat Yates 00:08:34  It’s like I think people are so shrouded in, in, you know, the election that they didn’t really want to admit whether things were good or bad because they felt like they were, you know, fans of the current administration. They say things are bad, they’re talking against themselves, and other times they don’t want to pump it up. It’s the other way. So I understand the interpersonal stuff. But overriding message in the last year was things were just terrible. I mean, especially for E-com, because if you’re trying to buy a product and you need a loan, you’re paying 12, 12.5% or interest, 13% interest on SBA deals. So no money was flowing in the SBA. the Small Business Administration had the worst first quarter it’s ever had in 2024, which is an incredible thing to think about. As big as the business in SBA was for the four years before it was Trump. Now, I’m not saying it’s one administration, but the other some philosophy stuff went into it, but money just stopped flowing because of interest rates and inflation.

Pat Yates 00:09:11  And what happened is discretionary items that were relying on discretionary income, which that’s why you had the Covid bump when people had all the money in the bank, they were spending money discretionary items never bought. So they went through the roof. And then since that was going on with, and unfortunately the Covid second tranche sort of, you know, put the inflation where it actually probably cost people money against their, their thing. If you went with a four year model of 2020 to 2024, your Covid bump got eaten up, most likely, just when you paid for it. So at the end of the day, I think that people went through really difficult times last year, interpersonally and business wise. But I think that’s worth leaving. And it’s not necessarily again, a commentary on on one administration or the other. There’s a lot of consumer confidence now which is raising business discretionary income. You know, there’s a lot of talk about interest rates lowering. There’s, you know, a push to be able to I mean, you know, if you read it right, there’s a push to eliminate income tax, but which just seems widely like a year ago.

Pat Yates 00:09:53  I never thought that’s possible, but there are things that are going to start putting money back in the industry that is going to help e-commerce as well as M&A, and the flow of business sales is really going to happen more as this that gets loosened up. So I guess the overriding thing is it really wasn’t bad the first couple of years, the 2 or 3 years of 2021 to 2023, 2024, we got really bad with inflation, investment and M&A stopped for the most part against our numbers. We watched it and now the flow is back. So you can tell that there’s a change, whether it’s mentality of that or money markets or what. I think it’s a combination. But I think there’s every reason to be incredibly optimistic. But hopefully people have cleaned up the problems they had during those times. And, you know, we go into those, you know, I think in inflationary times, it’s great to look at your books and figure out what you can cut. That’s a great exercise if you can get leaner.

Pat Yates 00:10:28  And now when businesses start running, hopefully they’ll be more profitable. I know that’s a long winded way of answering your question, but.

Josh Hadley 00:10:33  Yeah, no, I.

Pat Yates 00:10:34  Think market feel.

Josh Hadley 00:10:35  Provides a ton of insight. So you’re saying, hey, there’s there’s more demand, there’s more businesses coming to market now. There’s more activity in other people wanting to acquire brands as well, which is which is great news overall. but as you’ve been advising people over the last year, right, especially as you went through and basically summed it up, say like 2024 was a pretty crappy year for e-commerce as a whole. Okay, what were you telling anybody that was coming to market wanting to sell their business and maybe showcase maybe some of the problems that you saw with brands that were trying to exit. That’s like, no, you’re not ready. Why weren’t they ready? Versus what made the other brands that were ready to sell ready?

Pat Yates 00:11:09  That’s a great question. And I think there’s a there’s a couple of answers to that.

Pat Yates 00:11:12  One is I think we got to look at it from the lens of an advisor versus an M&A broker. And those are really semantics. Some people think we’re M&A brokers that we sell companies really. We’re advisors that try to position you well and make the timing right for when you want to sell your business. So let’s look at it from two lenses. Let’s let’s look at it on how was I approaching clients last year. So many would come in and like Pat things are tight. I’m tired. I’m really worn out mentally. I just can’t handle it. My valuation went from 400,000 to 300,000. And I’m working harder and all these things. And like normally if they were ready to sell on a downtrend, I would be honest with them and say, you don’t want to right now, you need to get back to business and you need to raise that trajectory because every 5 to 10,000 that you recoup, it’s going to put 25 to 30,000 on your valuation. So think of that incremental gain that if you just decide to sink back in and grow it in a year, you might be able to get $100 or 200,000 more.

Pat Yates 00:11:56  I quite like we judge ourselves by the quality of our conversation, and the best conversation is not always, hey, you should listen with me because I need to make fees. The answer is really, how am I differential to the business owner who’s built their whole life around this company? How do I give them the best advice? So with most of them, I send them away, which most are like, you understand, I’m interviewing other brokers. I’m like, yeah, I’ll get you the second time, because right now you’re not ready. And the multiple that they’re telling you that you’re getting, you excited to sell your company and believe this pain is something you’re going to find out in four months. You’re going to do a price reduction. And that’s something that is unsaid. So when you think about this, you got to think about it. A decision of one of the biggest transactions of your life. Like people sell a 400,000 home, that they have a little bit of equity and they get excited.

Pat Yates 00:12:30  What if you built this from scratch? You have 400,000 in no debt. It’s the biggest decision you’ve ever made. So don’t rush into it. In a market that’s tough. You wouldn’t sell your house in a down market. So what I try to do is give them advice that’s actionable to be able to say, hey, let’s figure out where we are and where we want to be, and then set that back versus making an emotional decision. So in 2024, I try to encourage a lot of people not to list, and it’s completely what I’m supposed to do. It’s like I’m supposed to make money, but I’m like, why Why don’t you get people to list? I like money, it’s like, do something. But I felt like I need to be honest. So now the tables have turned a little bit. So people are tired and they’ve got things back up. Maybe the holiday season for season was a little bit better. Whatever. After the election, there’s all the reasons to come back in and get the best information, but that’s what we start with.

Pat Yates 00:13:05  It’s like, let’s run your financials, let’s make a smart decision based on metrics, not emotion. And I think that’s what I’m trying to get them to slow down and do, and then set that map for when they want to sell. But I think a lot of those people are coming back now because truthfully, I’m one of the few people quite like is one of the few brokerages that will tell people simply no, I mean, no, I understand we need to get business. We’re for profit company, but the best advice for you is to work on A, B, C, d. Keep working with me. Let’s update your financials every quarter. I believe that you can get another 100 150 grand for this. It’s about maximizing that exit versus, you know, basically giving them what they want right then, which is to try to sell under duress or in a bad situation. So we try to get that best advice and let them make the decision to that point. I just spoke with a company that was on like, believe it or not, they’re an eight figure sales company on about a 20% drop on an 8% advertising drop only.

Pat Yates 00:13:46  So our sorry, a 20% advertiser drop, 8% sales drop. So you can see part of why. And I was going to send them away because the incremental gain they had would probably be several million dollars. And they’re just tired. They’re they’re looking to list and they want to sell their business. That’s okay, because that’s a good reason. But my job was to tell them the best advice. And I try to turn down an eight figure listing because it was better for the entrepreneur. But they were so impressed by it, they came back and said, I like your methodology. I don’t want to screw around this. Let’s do it the right way. And they’re probably going to list. So I think being honest and trying to help them differentially to build a company they spent so much time working on is really the best advice. And the rest sort of take care of itself.

Josh Hadley 00:14:16  Yeah. No, I, I love that and I think that does separate you in the market from what I’ve gathered amongst the different like places where you can buy and sell businesses and brokerages and things like that, that quietly has a fantastic reputation.

Josh Hadley 00:14:27  I have not heard anybody that has had a negative thing to say. So I am curious though, just despite being involved, it is still a good company. Right? Exactly. I was going to ask you, you had mentioned that, hey, you were you were sharing some actionable strategies with people when they came to you and you’re like, yeah, you’re not ready. Okay. So can you maybe list out a few of those actionable strategies that you are giving to these brand owners that weren’t ready. And the reason I ask you that is because I think our audience are. E-commerce entrepreneurs. These are hopefully things that they could be implementing in their own business. And if they’re not, they can start taking action on them today.

Pat Yates 00:15:03  One thing I’ll do to Josh, and I’m sure you put this up on the podcast, if anyone will email me and I’m sure you have it up there at Paddock Com and ask for a digital version of the exit Preneur playbook, which is actually on Amazon. It’s a book written by Joe Valley, who was one of our original, four that started it quite late.

Pat Yates 00:15:16  He basically wrote our process in a book. That’s absolutely amazing if you want to prepare, but let’s get some cliff notes on that. If anyone wants to have some free copy digitally, or you can buy it on Amazon, it’s a shameless plug for Joe’s book. Joe, you owe me a commission. anyway. But, so when you go into this process, the biggest thing you want to do is get the best information in front of them. So we want to run your financials and make sure we look at them. Look at the multiple preparation is the biggest thing. So when they come in we’re going to be able to do that not only from a standpoint of the financials. We’re going to look at strategic side of it. So it’s all about preparation. And I don’t know if that’s answer your question or not. Where’s it deeper from there.

Josh Hadley 00:15:43  Well I, I think we go even deeper. Right. So preparation. Preparation of what. Right.

Pat Yates 00:15:48  And the biggest step So let’s say financials.

Pat Yates 00:15:50  First of all, the biggest mistake that most people make is they’re on accrual financials. Some people don’t even know what that is. They don’t want accrual versus cash is I’ll give you the most rudimentary example. If in this month you wrote your vendor a check for $10,000 for product and it landed in your warehouse and you put 10,000 on your cost of goods sold, it’s sitting in your warehouse. You’re on cash basis. If you bought $10,000 of product, it hit on the last day and you put zero on your sheet because you hadn’t paid any of them yet, you’re doing it on a cruel. And then the next month, if you sell ten of them, whatever ten into that number is, is your accrual. As long as you’re on what you ship that month versus what you bought, you’re on accrual. If not, you need to start that process. We can help you understand how to do that. If you’re ready to sell, we can even reverse engineer it. We can go in and export your skew sales, allocate what your actual cost of goods is, ballpark that and it’s enough to be able to list.

Pat Yates 00:16:29  So the first thing is we need to go through your financials and find what we can save. Like if there’s money we can figure out, like if you have an agency that’s charging you $5,000 a month when they really should be charging you two, and then some of it’s a percentage, then you’re burning $36,000 in cash and fees you should be spending. Multiply that times A3X multiple. I just gave you $180,000 on your sale. You found 100,530 and A3X multiple. So our goal is to find things that you can change in your financials to raise the viability of the business and or give you tips to make strategically the sales go up. So it may take six months for you to fix this. We’re giving you tips for growing the business. So the hope is that that trend line goes up. And then you list on the long game. And we invest that time ahead of time. We don’t charge consulting fees. We don’t charge anything. I’m easy to reach on email. I’m happy to help any entrepreneur.

Pat Yates 00:17:06  But if I can somehow raise their valuation 100,000, they exit even if we don’t sell it. I’ve done my job because it’s about enriching them, you know? It’s about the entrepreneur, not about us. As brokers, we take a whole different view in it. And I and honestly, I have a weakness at quite light. Even Chuck, he points it out all the time. I run business away in M&A because I give too much good advice on how to change it. That’s not really what I’m supposed to do, but it’s actionable for the entrepreneur. So we invest in the long game in relationships versus necessarily looking at the transaction right then.

Josh Hadley 00:17:29  Awesome. So I think you touched on a really important point there, which is the accrual versus cash basis accounting. And as you mentioned, like if you don’t understand the difference, like make sure you do. And I would say for two different reasons. Number one, yes, if you’re going to sell your business, you need to have accrual books.

Josh Hadley 00:17:42  But also it is super important like the accrual books will help you understand the true health of your business. As it stands today. Right? Like, are you actually making a profit with what you sold last month and how much you paid for that inventory, etc., and how much you paid for advertising? That’s one thing.

Pat Yates 00:17:59  I’ll give you a great example. I sold a business two years ago that had a cost of goods that looked fairly consistent, but I was looking at it one month and it looked like this oddity. So I finally asked the wrong the right question. I’m like, you told me these were on a curve. Are you certain of this? So he went back and actually looked into it, and we found that it wasn’t on a true accrual because they were buying ahead with a vendor and they were like stocking something. The vendor had it. So he was doing it kind of on a blended basis. But when I even went to the extent of we were so nervous about it, we exported every single sales skew.

Pat Yates 00:18:20  We figured the cost of goods and we reverse engineered it. What we found out was there was like $360,000 missed in its cost of goods sold, which by the time we did exercise it at three multiples of a million. We thought we were going to get 1.1 million. We sold it for 2.3. So wow. See the the how huge. That becomes. Like people have to make sure their books are tight. The last thing you want to do is do that. And if you think you’re going to sell in a year, why not do it now and invest that year? Fixing it because it’s all sold on the trailing 12 months. Imagine if we can find you 5 to $7000 in savings. Let’s say it’s 7000. It’s A3X multiple. That’s 84,000. In a year, if you run the straight 12 times, three is a quarter of $1 million. We just found you. These things matter.

Josh Hadley 00:18:54  Yeah, I think that’s that is so important. Then I’m gonna. I’m gonna focus on it as a current operate like business operator, which is you should run both cash based accounting and accrual number one, accrual is going to help you show the status of your the health of your business month over month.

Josh Hadley 00:19:08  But the cash basis has two advantages from my perspective. Number one, when is cash coming in and out. Now there’s obviously a cash flow statement, right, that you would have in regular accounting documents. But like it helps, you know, like, oh, this month was bad because we up fronted a bunch of inventory or a bunch of masterminds or whatever that you’re paying for. Okay. But number two, here’s my biggest like hack or strategy is as it relates to how you pay your taxes okay. It is more advantageous. And again, this is this is not, consulting or legal tax advice, but it is more advantageous to file on the cash basis because guess what you can do. Make sure in December You pay for a bunch of inventory up front if you want. Number two, any big insurance premiums that you need to pay for. Make sure they get paid by the end of December. Any big masterminds that you’re joining or any big expenses? Right. I make sure that I pull anything forward from anything that’s going to be spent in January to March of the following year.

Josh Hadley 00:20:05  I pull it in to December of that current year, and then that way it reduces my tax obligation by all of the amount that I just expensed. Now you’re perpetually kicking the can down the road. But go ahead Pat.

Pat Yates 00:20:17  No. Any plans for cash. But I think it’s a great idea. The only thing that people need to think about is a lot of times when they talk to me about financials, they’re scared to death of the things they’ve done like that and then personal things they put in it. Don’t concern yourself with all that. Just give them raw. Because what’s interesting, Josh, the way you did it is great. A lot of people will probably. And the funny thing is the people out there listening, if you don’t have a good advisor, what Josh did will cost you money. If you don’t understand it in your evaluation. Because if he wraps all those expenses in and he basically puts it on his December PNL for the next year, he’s accelerated his expenses at a level that he shouldn’t.

Pat Yates 00:20:44  Whatever he paid out is against the multiple he’s losing. But if you talk to an advisor and we add that back because we explain exactly what it is, we can flip cash to accrual on paper. We don’t have to do it on the books. The goal here is that your taxes match the PNL with some methodology in between of how you arrive at the two different numbers, meaning okay, I paid because I got a discount. I bought $30,000 worth of product my vendor ahead of time. They gave me a $6,000 discount to pay the money. Now in December that’s allocated. Then we use it as an add back. As long as it’s there, buyers get it. It just has to be documented. The four things the four pillars of a sale risk, growth, transferability, and documentation that one falls under documentation. We can fix anything if you can explain it, but if you have to uncover it as a buyer and diligence, it’s a big problem. Get ahead of it and make sure that it’s lined out and you can explain anything you’ve done with your financials to any buyer.

Pat Yates 00:21:26  They’ll be fine with it. They just need to know how you did it.

Josh Hadley 00:21:28  Yeah, and I love that. I think like there are things that you can do in your business that will be added back as a add back to enhance the valuation of your business. So.

Pat Yates 00:21:35  Well, two months back situation. Let’s hear it. You had a content site for a kitchen thing. She remodeled her kitchen and did it as a write off on her taxes, and it went through on her taxes. And she did it as an add back when she sold the company and she got the ad back. Amazed that the second one on the ad box is out of stocks. If you’re in a heavy selling season, you go out of stock for 4 or 5 weeks. Document it because we will go back and analyze those, those periods of sales, and we will explain why they would have been there due to supply chain. We will add that into your monthly bill because you’re out of stock. Those are things to think about.

Pat Yates 00:22:01  I had one company that lost about a million won in sales due to out of stocks. We put it back and the person had a portion bought it out. Times the multiple is about $1 million difference in price.

Josh Hadley 00:22:08  Wow. That’s massive. Amazing. And that’s why you work with an adviser like yourself. You know, all these little nuances.

Pat Yates 00:22:15  I don’t know. I’m like a I’m like the king of useless information. Josh, I got more useless shit than I know something. My wife was mad at me. I cussed on the podcast again. I’m in trouble now.

Josh Hadley 00:22:24  Hey. Well, Pat, I’m curious to flip the script now to focus more on maybe, like, the growth levers of the business. Right. That’s one of the things that you touched on to say, hey, go back and try to boost back up your revenue. Right. Like, it is not good for you to be trying to sell in a downturn. So what were the actionable strategies that you shared with people to say, hey, here’s how you can become a either more profitable or increase the overall sales and revenue for the brand.

Pat Yates 00:22:49  That’s a great question I think. Business we talked to are so different. Like one day I’ll talk to a SaaS company that’s software driven, another day an econ business and other content. So it’s why it varies so widely. It’s hard to give one piece. I think that what I try to tell people is look at manage growth, make sure you’re not throwing good money at bad to try to raise the top line when you’re not anything in the bottom line. If you’re introducing products, you’re making changes to the business that are significant. Like Chuck talks about this, you don’t want to fix everything in your business. Like if you have an opportunity to grow something people look at as a growth lever and they may buy it because of that. But if there’s something that you say to someone, oh, by the way, if you only sold 20,000 of these, I know it’s going to hit. Then take the time to do it, prove the model and add it on. Because like if you think you can sell 20 or 30,000 to the bottom line profit, then do it and add it on to the multiple.

Pat Yates 00:23:26  Then explain how you did it. It’s like monetize it before you sell it as the best way to put that if you have upside. But if you’re at the point where you’re ready to sell, let’s just clean this up and make sure it is SOPs, things like that. The one thing, the one overriding thing that I got from entrepreneurs being tired was they try to rush the process. At this point, you’ve done all the tough work, slow down, do the right things, and if you need 3 to 6 months to clean things up and change the trajectory. Do it. The one caution sometimes entrepreneurs aren’t very honest with themselves that so many people two years ago said, oh, you know what? I got to keep doing what I’m doing. I’m going to grow 30% more this year. And they come back at 25% down, and they made a 50% turn on what they do and they’re disappointed. So sometimes being realistic on what you can and can’t do is extremely important. And sometimes, you know, it may be the right thing to say, hey, it’s just time for me to sell it.

Pat Yates 00:24:03  There’s all kinds of reasons why you would do it and keep going. Sorry, my video buckled. Everything.

Josh Hadley 00:24:08  Yeah. No, I think that makes that makes a ton of sense. And I think, like, you’ve got to be honest with yourself. And I think any entrepreneur needs to walk into an exit with the frame of mindset of, like, this thing’s going to take you anywhere from 3 to 12 months, right? I mean, what’s the what’s the standard time when somebody reaches out to you by the time that they have, let’s call it the check in hand.

Pat Yates 00:24:24  Well, let’s put it this way. I think most of the people have had an average, probably 3 to 6 months of work with them before they list. There’s a lot of people that come in and they’re ready. So let’s say they come in and they’re ready and we list. Usually it takes us 14 days to 20 days to put the package this time together. marketing and sales. The business on average is about 94 days, which, you know, that depends on attorneys, which we all know how that is.

Pat Yates 00:24:42  And so it can increase. So the aggregate in there is probably from launch to finish 95 to 100 days, but then there’s a month or so before it. So I, I tell people, you know, it’s probably a 3 to 5 month process if you want to maybe aggregate it. If it’s an SBA deal, it’s probably on the high end of that. It may be a little longer. But you know, again, you want you don’t want to rush the process. You want to be right and hopefully quite late. You know, we try to have a really solid buyer pool, like we have such great buyers that our businesses don’t sit long. We pretty much will know 30 to 60 days in what the deal is going to be and adjustments that would need to be made. So we it’s a living, breathing situation. So we adapt to maybe change price or marketing or whatever we do several times.

Josh Hadley 00:25:12  Awesome. That makes a ton of sense. Pat. I want to also dive into more about like multiples.

Josh Hadley 00:25:18  can you give our audience maybe an understanding of like where do multiples currently stand in the current environment and also like and who the buyers are in the different thresholds? Right. Because from my perspective, and you tell me whether I’m right or wrong here, if you have EBITDA somewhere between 0 to 5 million, you’re going to be somewhere around A3X. But once you cross that 5 million in EBITDA, it seems like you start to hit an exponential curve where you start to hit 6X7X, even ten x, and then you’re working with more private equity deals and things like that. Is that true? Give me maybe like a breakdown of like those different like tiers, I guess.

Pat Yates 00:25:53  Your methodology is good. I think that, you know, maybe the numbers wise, I mean it’s it’s agnostic. It depends on the, the vertical, you know, like in SaaS and content, it really accelerates multiples because they don’t have protocols. So you know, the the net margin is so high in that kind of business that, you know, like in content businesses you’re talking 80 or 90% net margin.

Pat Yates 00:26:08  It’s it’s like you can throw gas on that. It’s harder to grow, but it’s a great business. So those you get a little more aggressiveness. But so let’s talk economics is where most people are going to sit. I mean we deal with a lot of our average transactions a little bit over $2 million in a transaction, and usually it’s probably 4 or 5. But the reason that quiets lower is because we’re very philanthropic with smaller businesses, will list two and 300,000 businesses, which takes the average way down. But some of those. So let’s let’s walk through in the $300,000 mark. Let’s say that you have your brand and it’s like a couple hundred thousand dollars. You’re doing sales. It doesn’t have a lot of runway. If it has trademark and maybe patent or other protection has a moat around it, you’re probably talking that two seven, 5 to 3 range you could get in plus your inventory now quite like we don’t include Germany. A lot of people give you monthly, like, here’s your monthly multiple.

Pat Yates 00:26:45  It’s meant to sound huge. It’s like whatever 12 times the number. So if I’m three x on a year, they’re going to say 36 x on a month. It’s like sounds like it’s huge, but it’s just semantics. So to me you look at, you take the business and if it’s like at that number, it’s a little risky because it’s got lower sales. If it’s lower SKUs like skinny number of SKUs 3 to 5, let’s say that’s really low. You’d have to ding the business there. If it’s at 300,000, it might only be two and a quarter, two and a half because of the skinny SKUs. If you have huge seasonality, like with my Happy feet slippers business, it might ding at a quarter of a point and it might go to three and a quarter. Okay. So then let’s assume that’s the baseline. If you go up from there and you get the $500,000 in bottom line profit, that might go to 3 to 3, two, five on the same businesses. When you get to a million, you’re probably talking 32535375.

Pat Yates 00:27:23  When you get to one and a half, it’s going to go about a quarter point more. When you get above 2 million, you start to see some private equity interest. But it still needs to go up a little bit. And that’s what people call EBITDA. So that would be a business probably listed in the 6 to $8 million range. But that starts to creep up at 353754 area. If you’re talking software and content at that level, it might be 4 to 4 and a quarter. Now some e-com can eclipse four, but you’re talking about businesses making three, four, $5 million a year and maybe have a growth velocity. If you throw 20 or 30% growth on the top line, it’s going to accelerate all those. So I would say that probably the E-com range right now on the lower end, less than $500,000. Businesses probably like depending on structure two two 5 to 3 two five if you’re at 500,000, I like in that two seven 5 to 3 two five range or three and a half.

Pat Yates 00:28:01  And then when you get to a million, you’re probably talking at the minimum three two, 5 to 3, seven, five. So those layers move up a little bit by those increments. A lot of times we go through our old sold businesses in the last few months to kind of get the comps like you would with a house. So we use some general knowledge of what we have going on to try to get to it. But again, it’s it’s it is a little bit of a wild ass. Guess it’s best way to put it. It’s an educated guess, but we try to go through methodologies, a plus and minuses to the business and legitimately hit a plus for like this much and a minus for this and a plus for this a minus. And we try to get to something. But the biggest thing we try to do is hit the market at a price where it’s going to have a chance to sell immediately. When you lower something or you take it off the market, it says something that’s unsaid and you don’t want that conversation.

Pat Yates 00:28:34  So I hate reaching back out to buyers saying, hey, by the way, are you interested? This we just lowered it 50,000 because we went out too aggressive because the entrepreneur thought their business was worth more than it was. So we try to manage those expectations and set the multiple in a way that we can be conducive to a sale versus problems.

Josh Hadley 00:28:46  Yeah, I love that. I think it makes a lot of sense. That gives a good lay of the land. Yeah. Pat, as we wrap things up, is there anything that you haven’t shared that you think you know, these seven figure business owners need to know in the e-commerce space as they look to grow in 2025 and beyond? Yeah.

Pat Yates 00:29:00  You know what? It’s just I think they need to refocus themselves. They’re in a point where they were just worn out from last year. Well, it’s time to be optimistic. If you have challenges in your business, you know, find a new project they get excited about. I think that’s where people have been a little mundane.

Pat Yates 00:29:10  One day I was just bored and I decided I was going to go do all my descriptions in chat to be SEO friendly. I was like, help me build some SEO on my site by just changing this up, use some emojis, do all these things I did and I read it every one of us and actually found a way to invest in my product, I think. I think if entrepreneurs are tired, find a way to get passionate. If they’re looking to sell. Get the right information, email me and look. We can do all of it via email. Someone says, Pablo, I listen to a podcast and I’d love to have valuation. Don’t have time to get on zoom, but what do you need? I have a simple email that shows a QuickBooks report that I need, and I send back one of the most detailed financial reports you could ever see, and it’s going to give you an idea of where your pricing stuff is going to be, and that’s great information to work from.

Pat Yates 00:29:41  It’s like I think people out there are sort of wondering where they’re all the time, and they’re scared to ask the right question. And the biggest thing is entrepreneurs really rely on their own knowledge. Open up your knowledge to a network of people. Have them help you get growing. Find out what you’re having problems with and network and find a way to make it exciting. I think the biggest problem I see with entrepreneurs are just kind of worn out. It’s been a few years. It’s been tough for e-commerce.

Josh Hadley 00:29:59  Yeah, I agree it has not been easy, especially with Amazon increasing their fees. There’s margin compression going on, but that’s not going to change. I mean that that is the environment. And Amazon is going to remain a very competitive marketplace to sell on. And so as we wrap things up today, I’d love to leave our audience with three actionable takeaways from every episode. So here are the three takeaways that I noted. You let me know if I’m missing something. All right. Action item number one.

Josh Hadley 00:30:22  I’m going to throw this out here because we started off the podcast with this is if you believe that your product appeals to a broad audience, Shark Tank should be something that you should consider setting your sights on because as you mentioned, like, hey, what would you do to put your product in front of 8 million viewers for free? Like, that’s what Shark Tank affords. Let alone what you talked about, Pat, is like. There’s like alumni groups for people just going through, Shark Tank and like the business owners, the network that you create there, I think can be game changing. And then whether or not you actually get money from any of these sharks. I think the interesting thing is what you talked about with Robert Herjavec is like, he opened the doors for you to get the licensing deals that you needed to get. And so I see that as an opportunity. It is a growth lever for the right brand. So something worth noodling on.

Pat Yates 00:31:04  Yeah. I encourage anyone that has interested in the Shark Tank.

Pat Yates 00:31:07  You can reach out to me about the process. It’s difficult, but it’s not impossible to navigate. I think the year that I did it, 2014, believe it or not, they had 39,000 applications and I think they took like 90 companies. So it’s really, really hard. But it’s a process. It’s worth it. There’s a lot of shows out, there’s a lot of things you can do, but you know, building, you know, a presence around your brand. That’s definitely a great way to do it.

Josh Hadley 00:31:22  Yeah. Excellent advice. All right. Action item number two is I would recommend running accrual books and cash basis books for all of your accounting. Whether you’re doing your accounting internally and you have a higher team member or you’re outsourcing it to an accounting partner, even when we had our, our accounting was outsourced originally and we had that accounting firm was going in and running accrual books and cash basis books for us. And we have been filing our taxes on the cash basis books for all of the reasons I previously mentioned, namely tax purposes.

Josh Hadley 00:31:52  And I cannot reiterate how important this is because so many people, if you don’t kind of move forward and claw in all of the expenses that you’re about to have in early Q1 of the following year. Number one, you’re paying taxes, right? The percentage of tax that you’re paying is on all of that income that you generated from that previous year. If I can move expenses forward, yes, I know I’m kicking the can down the road. However, what I am doing is I’m saving more of my cash and sitting on it for another 12 months, rather than necessarily letting the government sit on it. So I think strategically.

Pat Yates 00:32:25  We push everyone to be on a accrual basis because we feel like that’s the best way to sell it. But there’s a lot of ways to get there. The way that you’re talking about, it’s a great tax man. Like I’m gonna brag on you. If anyone wants to understand structured credit cards and their business, Josh is the guy to talk to these guys. First of all, your presentation is incredible.

Pat Yates 00:32:36  We’re going to be a BDS in And Iceland again. I can’t wait to hear it again. But. Or whatever you work on. But I brag on you from that, so I think people can really learn a lot from you and the way they structure things financially. The tax thing is really important, but anything we need to flip to accrual if you want to take advantage of what Josh is talking about on cash, your taxes do it. We just have to have the link back to be able to explain it to buyers, why the methodology was there and what the real valuation is, because you’re leaving money on the table from the cash basis methodology. We just need to make sure that we draw that back in.

Josh Hadley 00:32:59  Yep. Awesome. Well, thanks for the shout out, Pat. Your five bucks is in the mail. All right. last the third and final action item that I have for you is focus on growth in your business. I think the biggest summary that you, you talked about as you’ve been speaking with all of these brand owners is like, they’re coming in, they’re tired, they’ve been there, they’re seeing a downturn in their business.

Josh Hadley 00:33:18  And they’re like, I just want out, right? And you’re saying, no, that’s that’s not a good time for you to be trying to exit, like try to go grow your revenue. And as you stated, Pat, like one of the important things is like, you can see that just by having a 20% year over year growth rate, that can add an extra 0.2 5% to your multiple right and more right, the higher that growth rate becomes. So with that being said, as the CEO of the business, I hope all of the listeners, your number one priority should always be focused on the growth in the business. Once you cross seven figures, it’s easy to get caught up in the weeds of business, right? It’s easy to get caught up with, oh, I’ve got a bunch of emails. I got a bunch of conferences to attend. I’ve got a bunch of, you know, I gotta manage this team member. I need to hire that team member. That’s fine. However, growth and sales beget all in the business, and there’s nobody better to focus on the sales and growth than the CEO themselves.

Josh Hadley 00:34:06  So focus on that. Look for those retail channels. Look for the tick tock shops. Look for those distribution channels that you can leverage to grow your sales.

Pat Yates 00:34:15  I mean, I think that, you know, people are smart about their bottom line and their expenses, and they work smart to turn the top line. They can definitely be there. The biggest thing is to make sure that you’re on the right revenue run. If you’re on a 15% drop for six months straight. Let’s figure out how to get that to a 3% growth rate for four. So you look like if you turn the tide, that’ll impact the multiple. All you want to do is sit down and have someone look at the financials and give you the best advice. If you’re thinking about an exit the next year or two, and then set your sights on it and you can achieve it all like SOPs, things like that you do concurrently if you need to build them. And we help you figure out all the things you need to do to get prepared.

Josh Hadley 00:34:41  That’s fantastic. Excellent words of wisdom, Pat. All right. Pat, as we leave the audience, I’d love to ask the following three questions. So, number one, I know I didn’t preempt you for this, but I’m going to ask you, what is your your favorite book that you’ve read and why?

Pat Yates 00:34:54  Oh, you know what? I’m probably the best book I’ve ever read. was Delivering Happiness. Tony is saying the guy that started Zappos. If you’ve never read a customer service book, it’s one that I just couldn’t stop talking about. It wasn’t the most actionable book. It wasn’t the best book I ever read. But Tony Austin’s book Delivering Happiness read that if you’re a customer service person, it’s like an old school version of now new school stuff. He was way ahead of his time on that. I don’t really, I’ll be honest with you. My reading is is down to 400 emails a week, it seems like. Or 500 emails a day. It seems like I don’t know what the number is, so I haven’t read as many books.

Pat Yates 00:35:19  I’m kind of like a little bit less patient to do that. I’m sure you’re shocked at that. Josh. As fast as I move, I can’t sit still and read books. I’m kind of like, it’s weird because a lot of people know this about me. I’m kind of like a weird, anxious guy at times. And I think it’s. I’ve got this weird thing and I actually coach a guy. So I’m doing a lot of business coaching and consulting anymore. And actually, one of my clients asked me to read this, which is called Scattered Minds, which is an ADHD book, kind of like I think that when I was young, I sort of had that vein of something that focused, I struggled with. I’m really anxious to read this because he said it was extremely actionable for people that struggle with trying to focus on tasks. So for entrepreneurs, I mean, you might look it up. I mean, he’s a great entrepreneur called Scattered Minds on Amazon. I plan to read this, but I’m not a huge reader.

Pat Yates 00:35:51  I don’t know, I’m too boring for that.

Josh Hadley 00:35:53  for me, it’s all about audible, right? Picking up to the kids, to and from school, etc. all about the audible books.

Pat Yates 00:35:58  That’s right. Something like that.

Josh Hadley 00:36:00  All right. Pat. Excellent book recommendations, though. Like that. All right, next question I have for you is what is an AI tool or maybe a ChatGPT prompt that you think has been game changing for you that you’re using in your own business?

Pat Yates 00:36:12  Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot that we’re using, some things that are more deep, systems wise that, you know, probably not as much. I think with me. well, I gave you one. I redid my econ people. You’d be shocked. Go in and copy and paste the URL of your item on your Shopify site. Go in and say, I don’t know the best prompt, Josh, I’m not, but write me an SEO friendly description of this product is Disney related. So put some fun puns to it.

Pat Yates 00:36:31  And it cranked them out and they were so cool. And I just had fun reading them as much as putting them in, because I knew that the customers when they read it was gonna be fun. So that was one actual thing that was more fun than anything. I would do it instantly. I use it more a lot of times for business structure and then follow up. So as an example with me, client based company, I will use my recordings and my audio meetings and things like that and notes that I have on email, and I’ll put them in and aggregate the information to put outlines and make sure I’m looking at actual tips for the client. So I’m using them from a structure standpoint of of how to get better for clients as well as in an actual standpoint of the actual Sims. We’re using a lot to mine out good data analytics from stuff we’re getting from. So there’s so many. Josh, it’s crazy. I’ll give you one good example of a small one that I did. I was putting out a SIM the other day for a business at Amazon 100%, and I decided to for the first time, and it seems like we should do this all the time, but it’s like sometimes it’s a little bit of overkill.

Pat Yates 00:37:13  I had him give me read only access to the reports and the business reporting section of Amazon. I went in and it’ll do two years. Exactly. So I didn’t even guess at the trailing 12 months date, I just said export two years on a business report that showed the session’s conversion rate. All this as well as sales and traffic, which if people are Amazon, they know these reports. I took them and put them in a cheat sheet and had it analyzed the year over year numbers like it was a sales number from a session standpoint, from a conversion standpoint, sales in consumer and B2B. And it turned out I found out B2B had a 33%, I’m sorry, 300% higher conversion rate in this business that I listed versus the consumer one, which meant there’s a huge business business. So I might have a good information there via that. I think what it can do for you is expand your knowledge. It’s a little scary because sometimes it’s garbage in, garbage out. You really got to rely on checking the numbers.

Pat Yates 00:37:52  but I’m using a ton like I’m doing. You’re in Riverside, so you understand that it’s got an unbelievable hitting tool to do video. I’m using sheets, which is an interesting one I’m messing with for some Excel workbook stuff. I use Claude every day and some stuff for client, and I use ChatGPT, some of them with custom GPT and things of that sort that I’m trying to put. I am an older guy. I’m old as hell. Josh, I that’s not my customer. She’s not mad. I’m really old. So like I feel like I was kind of behind the technology stuff last year. There’s no joke. Older I get, the less I want to do things. I’m old and jaded and boring, so I really felt like I was behind in technology. But now that AI is here, I’m trying to get on the front end of it, so I understand a little more how I can leverage it. And from a standpoint, for my companies and as well as M&A, I’m just becoming better informed for my clients, which is a big part of that is finding out the information.

Pat Yates 00:38:29  But there’s so many I’m trying out right now, it’s hard to list them.

Josh Hadley 00:38:32  Oh, those are excellent points and I and I think that is the important aspect of AI though, is like it is moving so quick right now that you know, by the by the time this is even released a few weeks from now, right? Like it’s already outdated to some extent.

Pat Yates 00:38:43  I get so many requests for things people want to work with me on. I have challenged myself this year to stop trying to figure out through someone else that I’m just going to go in and I’m going to start using AI system, and I’m gonna reverse engineer the best way to do it, because I’m not even sure asking people advice on AI is great right now. Not only changes so fast, it’s so new. It’s like people know one thing and then they’re trying to learn things from other people. What I’m trying to do is dive in and say, I’m going to spend five times longer than I should on this right now, but I’m going to learn it from an automation standpoint, so I only have to do it once in the next 20 times.

Pat Yates 00:39:06  So it’s like I’m trying to get better at understanding those workflows and how I can, you know, because I’m I’m one of those people and I’m sure you probably like this. Josh, I know you’re a very busy guy as much as you speak and do things. I’m trying to find time in my day. And if I can find two hours by efficiencies a week, then I’m going to try to do that and I is able to do that. It’s just a matter of finding the right ways.

Josh Hadley 00:39:23  Yeah. And I think the future becomes very, very interesting, with what it will do. Pat, as we wrap things up, final question here is who do you respect or admire the most in the e-commerce space that you think other people should be following and why?

Pat Yates 00:39:35  Wow, that’s a good one. I really don’t know. Everybody’s so diversely different. It’s like, I like some people just because they’re cool and I think they’re cool to talk to. There’s a lot of driven entrepreneurs, I don’t know.

Pat Yates 00:39:46  I have so many people that I’m meeting with, like, I’m talking to a guy next week that, you know, they’re working on social network predictive technology based on your retinas and how you respond. I mean, when you respond, like if you’re happy or sad and, you know, social networks and how it’s going to work your feeds, it’s really some amazing things that I’m looking at. So it’s hard to to figure out what the best one is. E-commerce wise. I mean, you’ve named some I mean, you understand who Kevin King is. We both go to Kevin’s an amazing resource. There’s people out there that do a lot of webinars and things like that. If people are looking for it, look up shows like prosper, which I go to, which is a great system show that you can see in Las Vegas, very inexpensive to get in there and learn how to grow your e-commerce business. other masterminds like does Billion Dollar Seller Summit and things like that are great ways to go out and grow your network.

Pat Yates 00:40:20  We go to a ton of shows. So I think the biggest thing is, is if you have an issue that you need dealt with, network, do you find the expert and don’t be afraid to ask for help. Like I think that’s the biggest thing in the Shark Tank group. Everybody there thinks they have to be the smart people in the room. They’re on Shark Tank. It really isn’t like that. You know, they just. They’re just people, too. And until you sit down and sort of admit that, like, entrepreneurs suck at admitting they’re terrible at things. So admit it and then find out how to get it better. I mean, I think people need to not be as as veiled in secrecy of the problems and open up to the right people, utilize the resources of people around it. I’m happy to sit with anyone anytime, and try to help them increase their business and just utilize the resources around you and then be passionate. A lot of people are beat up and they’re tired.

Pat Yates 00:40:52  Get that focus back. It’s a different.

Josh Hadley 00:40:54  It’s all about the networking, all about the networking, that’s for sure. Pat. If people want to follow you, they want to learn more about you. Where can they do so?

Pat Yates 00:41:02  I have tons of followers on social, so if they want to join me, they’ll have me trending. Josh. I’m kidding. So I’m on LinkedIn, obviously. Pat Yates. I think it might be at age 20 or something. on there you’ll find me quite light and happy slippers, but on social otherwise, you know, my other stuff’s boring. I don’t put any good pictures out. I’ve been married a long time. Do you want me on another social? But, no, but they can reach out to me at pat@quitelight.com or through LinkedIn. It’s easiest way to do that. Yeah. Or pat it by happy feet or happy feet. Slippers business.

Josh Hadley 00:41:24  Awesome. Pat, this has been a great episode. Thanks for sharing your wisdom with us.

Josh Hadley 00:41:28  And until next time.

Pat Yates 00:41:29  Yeah, I appreciate that. Josh, wisdom be a loose word over there?