Start stupid. That’s Don Henig’s motto when it comes to everything, including hopping on the Amazon train. A serial entrepreneur, one of Henig’s success stories is AccrueMe, a company dedicated to helping Amazon entrepreneurs grow without interest, monthly payments, or loss of ownership. Because financing is key to growth and growth is key to success. Just remember, you’ll never be successful if you never start. So stop waiting, and start selling today.
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Don’s Story
To call Don an entrepreneur would be an understatement. Don’s launched many profitable ventures, including (but not limited to) a successful mortgage company, a mortgage broker franchise, a publication, and even an entertainment company that’s produced eight feature films and a Broadway show.
Several years ago, Don and a longtime colleague began discussing Amazon sellers and their immense potential. He always loved helping young and hungry entrepreneurs and Don realized that he could help Amazon sellers differently than anyone else in the financing game.
Wake Up To Success
You can’t build and sustain a successful venture if you don’t have a healthy mind, body, and spirit. Don cultivates his wellness with a consistent 3-hour pre-work morning routine. Do you have a morning routine? If not, it’s never too late to start prioritizing a healthy lifestyle and setting yourself up for success each and every day.
AccrueMe
So let’s chat financing. As wholesalers, cash flow is our number one roadblock. Don created a system that allows wholesalers like us to double our capital with no interest rate, no monthly payments, and no release of ownership. AccrueMe loans you money in exchange for a small percentage of your profits (revenue from Amazon – cost of goods sold – all Amazon fees including PPC).
Why? Don believes in Amazon sellers. And he only listens to ideas that start with, “Here’s how our sellers can make more money.” Not to mention, Don knows that we as wholesalers are more confident on the phone with suppliers when we know we’ve got the capital to back up our pitch.
Overall
If you’re waiting to start selling until you think you know it all, you’ll never succeed because you’ll never start. Dive in and you’ll learn to swim pretty quick. And when you do hit a rut, if you’re willing to work, mentors like Don will always be there to help dig you out.
In fact, when you sign up on AccrueMe, mention Todd and Amazon Seller School and get $500 free. You’ll also get a free phone consultation! And for more Amazon questions, shoot Don an email at Don@AccrueMe.com.
So start stupid, start selling, and start growing.
As always, happy selling everybody.
Resources From This Episode
- AccrueMe
- Get Funded (& Get $500 free)
- Pat Flynn
- Don On LinkedIn
- Email Don
Outline Of This Episode
[00:37] Todd’s introduction to this episode
[01:38] Don’s background
[14:35] Why you need a morning routine
[21:36] How to double your capital
[33:02] A few logistics
[47:14] Snag $500 in free capital
Transcript
Don (00:00):
Start stupid. You’re not going to know everything. You’re just not ever going to know everything. So if you get frozen by trying to understand and know everything before you start, you’ll never get gone. So just get your feet in and start, jump into the water and you’ll figure it out.
Announcer (00:20):
Welcome fellow entrepreneurs to the Amazon Seller School podcast, where we talk about Amazon wholesale and how you can use it to build an e-commerce empire, a side hustle or anything in between. And now your host, Todd Welch,
Todd (00:37):
What’s happening everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Amazon Seller School. We have a really good one for you today. Today I have on Don Hennig. He is the co-founder oAccrueMe. He’s the president of proxy as well, which is a real estate application. He’s got a bachelor’s of business administration and finance from Hofstra university. He’s built the sixth largest wholesale mortgage lender in the nation. He’s been responsible for over $150 billion in mortgage financing easily. He said, so he’s got a lot of history and a lot of knowledge on financing businesses. And that’s what we’re going to dive into in this episode is financing your Amazon business because as we’re growing, it can be very difficult. So, Don, I really appreciate you coming on the show. Why don’t you dive a little bit more into your background because you’ve got a lot of stuff going on.
Don (01:38):
Sounds great, Todd, thanks, man. I’m excited about this and by the way, I love the name of your podcast. I think it’s fantastic. Appreciate it. It is an adventure being an entrepreneur. It is big time. Yeah. So, you know, uh, I started in the business world in banking, but I was bored. So I studied the stock market and I studied, uh, estate planning and I did all different things that you would want to do. If you were a financial planner, I did it all on my own and I became a licensed financial planner, uh, and started my own business and built it pretty big, you know, bought my first house, first new car, all that kind of stuff, which was great. Uh, you know, but then I saw an opportunity was happening. It was one of the first refinance booms in the mortgage industry. And I started getting asked questions about real estate mortgages, which I didn’t know.
Don (02:28):
So I went out and I learned them and I studied it and I started a mortgage for a mortgage company and I built it, uh, to one of the largest in New York state at the time and sold it 10 years later, uh, I quickly jumped into another business I had started, which was a mortgage broker franchise. It was never done before. And we built it to 765 companies nationwide and sold that. Uh, and I took some time off and decided, what do I want to do next? Well, I love being on the fields with the kids. You know, there’s nothing better than that. So, uh, I, you know, my son and daughter were into soccer at the time. So I started a soccer publication and became the official publication for the New York state soccer, uh, which we built it to a hundred. And when I say we, I was the only employee, the only guy 165,000 copies of a full newspaper.
Don (03:22):
This is, you know, just when the internet was kicking off. And so 165,000 copies per month, I sold every ag, got every picture I got every article, did everything. Distribution made a lot of money with it. And I sold that. Uh, so a lot of different things. I started a, uh, uh, I got back into the mortgage industry and built the six largest wholesale lender in the nation and the fifth largest direct to consumer lender in the nation. I started a, uh, um, uh, entertainment company at the same time built, did eight feature length films with the biggest name stars from Tom cruise on down. Uh, and, uh, plus the Broadway show rock of ages, which I believe we ended up as the 26th longest running play of all time, which was a lot of fun. Yeah, it was pretty cool. Uh, you know, just did a whole bunch of things, got into the fixing flip world and bought 300 houses and flipped them all in 18 months, a whole, whole bunch of different things.
Don (04:24):
And a couple of years ago, I was talking to a friend of mine from the mortgage industry from 30 years ago. And we started talking about Amazon and Amazon sellers. And, uh, this just leads into the beginning of a crummy. And then I’ll, you know, I’ll shut up and see where you want to take this. But, you know, we started talking about it and I love helping entrepreneurs grow businesses. I especially love helping young entrepreneurs grow businesses and mentor them. So really caught my interest. I was retired for five years and now, you know, I had no desire to get back in, but this looked like too, too exciting, an opportunity. So we came up with this idea of a crummy, which we’ll talk about in a little bit, and I came out of retirement to do this. Uh, it’s that exciting? So I’ll stop for now.
Todd (05:13):
Yeah. Very, very cool. A lot of great things that you you’ve done in your past. Uh, I’d like to get your idea or your opinion on cause a lot of people say, you know, you gotta stay focused on only one thing. So do you agree with that or do you think it’s okay to do lots of different things? Did you do one thing at a time? Tell us a little bit more about your thoughts on that.
Don (05:42):
The most part I did one thing at a time and for the most part now I’ll give you a controversial, controversial thought on this. I believe men really should stay with one thing at a time, but women can do multiple things. It’s just the way it is. I’ve seen it too many times. Women can, you know, multitask and men, you know, I don’t know why, but I know I can’t can’t do it. But what I found Todd is that let’s say I’m running two different businesses. As long as I focus on this one in this issue, whatever it may be at this time, I’m good. And then, you know, uh, you know, box it, if you will. And now at noon, I’m going to flip over to this other company and I’m not looking at this company at all. At that point, I’m now a hundred percent focused on whatever the topic is there.
Don (06:32):
And you know, everybody will know my schedule at that time. And, uh, you know, we know when we’re going to talk about this topic or that topic, and I am not going to talk about this and that at the same time, because it gets confusing and I’m not going to be good. And I like to be creative. I like to think about things and sit back and say, how can we do this differently than anybody else has done? You know, and that’s really a crummy. We came up with that, but I’ve done that through my whole career. How can we do this differently? How do you start an entertainment company with very little money in it with just one partner, myself and a partner and build it to eight feature length films, again, with all the biggest names, stars and a big Broadway show starting from scratch. How do you do that? You just start. And I, my, my statement on that, Todd, and that you might appreciate this. I bet you, a lot of people will appreciate this. The statement is very simple, start stupid. You’re not going to know everything. You’re just not ever going to know everything. So if you get frozen by trying to understand and know everything before you start, you’ll never get gone. So just get your feet in and start jumping into the water and you’ll figure it out.
Todd (07:48):
People in the Amazon world have that problem that holds them back because they’re like, okay, I want to start selling on Amazon. And then they’re like, but how do I run advertising? How do I optimize listings? And how do I get exclusive agreements? It’s you haven’t even started selling yet. None of that matters learn the next step, then the next step, then the next and the next it just keep building on top of it.
Don (08:15):
Exactly. And speaking of that and speaking like the wholesale model, you know, well, I, I called 10, 10 suppliers and all said to me, they don’t want any more Amazon sellers. Oh, what am I going to do? No call 10 a day, you know, you know, and be focused on this, if it’s difficult, that means that’s where the gold is. So go and do it work harder than anything and stay focused on that one thing, because that is the goal, as you know.
Todd (08:45):
Yep. And, uh, are you familiar with Pat Flynn? I am not Mark passive income. Um, definitely check him out. He’s pretty awesome. Smart, passive income dot, but he’s one of the guys who kind of, uh, helped me, you know, he doesn’t know who I am, but his, uh, podcasts and stuff, uh, gave me motivation, motivation and things. And one of the things that he talks about is, uh, I don’t know if he calls it the 80, 20 or 75, 25 or something, but he’s like, you know, work on your primary source of income, like four days, five days out of the week, and then take one day to work on something that is an interest that may or may not work. Uh, but that gives you the kind of, you know, you can shift your thinking for a while, work on something else, that shiny object, so to speak, uh, but then get back to put all your attention on your primary.
Don (09:42):
Okay. I love it. Ben, how many times will that shiny object become your primary focus at some point in time, if you give it that shot and give it that, you know, that focus for that one day, if you will, uh, you may find that that is so much more exciting than the one that you’re spending five days on. Yep. I love that. That’s great idea for sure.
Todd (10:04):
Sure. Uh, I’m curious though, how did you go from mortgage and finance to making movies?
Don (10:13):
You know, I had invested in a Broadway show and when the Broadway show was closing, it was a great show. It was a lot of fun. We really just enjoyed the whole experience. When the show was closing, I was standing out on Broadway and one of the main producer came up to me. We were standing next to each other and he said to me, Hey, Don, would you like to invest in a movie? And I was making a lot of money at the time, many millions. And uh, I said, sure, that sounds like fun. I’ll do that. And I said, well, wait a minute. How do you make money? And, and before he could answer, I said, I’m guessing that as a producer, when I invest in this movie, you’re getting some percentage of that. And you know, you need to get me to invest in more movies so that you can put food on the table and pay your rent.
Don (11:00):
And he said to me, these were his exact words. He said, I can’t believe you’re saying that, but you’re absolutely true. You’re absolutely right. So I said, so why don’t we do it differently? And again, it’s freezing called, we’re standing out there with a hundred other people, you know, it’s like a family, you know, our, like our last meal. I said, why don’t we do something different instead of me investing in the movie, how about I invest in you? So what do you mean? Well, instead of me putting this amount into the movie, how I, I put like five times that amount, or 10 times that amount into an account, and this way you get paid every week, you never have to worry about your rent and putting food on the table. And we start a business, but we never asked somebody to invest in something, unless we, we firmly believe it’s going to be gold. And he said, that would change my life. And I said, well, let’s change your life. And he and I are still good friends and you know, we’ve worked at, and he’s still in that industry. I’m not. And, uh, it was great, great experience. Loved it. A lot of fun.
Todd (12:02):
Yeah. Those are the kind of fun things you can do when you have success. Right. Uh, getting it’s true will be industry and things like that. It’s a, that that sounds like it’d be a lot of fun.
Don (12:14):
It was a lot of fun. I have to tell you, it wasn’t very profitable. Honestly, we did big things. We met all these fun people, you know, sitting next to Tom cruise, re reviewing what we just did and all of that is a lot of fun. Um, but more than all of that, the parties that they throw in the entertainment world. Unbelievable. Ridiculous. Lot of fun. Yeah.
Todd (12:38):
Yeah. One of my passions is a horse racing with the funds that I make from the business. Some of them I’d like to eventually buy into a horse and, you know, go for the Kentucky Derby and stuff like that. You don’t necessarily make a ton of money in horse racing unless you do really well. But it just be so fun to pursue that passion, you know, it’s exciting. That’s fun for sure. All right. Very good. So yeah, definitely sounds like you’ve had a very enjoyable life with lots of different experiences
Don (13:13):
And it, and what it enabled me to do, Todd is meet tons of people from different parts of the world, if you will, and you know, different industries that they wouldn’t normally cross over. And it’s just exciting. I’ve learned an awful lot and, uh, I’ve just had fun through the whole thing.
Todd (13:32):
And that’s what it’s all about. Right. We work hard so that we can have a lot of fun doing it and whatever we really want to do, basically.
Don (13:40):
Yeah. And I’m still friends literally with a good amount of the people from the, my first company on and every single place I’ve ever worked in every single company I’ve built. I’m good friends with just about all those people. You know, not that I’m not friends with anybody, but some would just lose touch with, but, you know, I love that. I think that’s the best thing in the world,
Todd (14:02):
For sure. For sure. Life is really has a lot to do with connections and relationships. And Amazon wholesale is all about building relationships with brands and suppliers and things like that. I love the wholesale model. Absolutely same here. Now, before we get into funding, uh, the wholesale model, uh, earlier, before we started recording, we were talking about morning routines and the importance of having a morning routine. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about your thoughts on that? Sure. I see
Don (14:35):
I’ve always had a little bit of a morning routine, but about 10 or 15 years ago, I started, um, a specific mortgage morning routine. I get up at five 30 in the morning. I grabbed my coffee. I come to my desk. I’m not looking at email. What I do is I put pictures of my parents who have passed away my grandparents, some of my aunts and uncles, you know, people that are my in-laws, who have also passed. And I put them on my desk and I have my own little conversation with them. And I think of each one of them. And I’m, I it’s very easy to do is look at each one and think of something you’re grateful about. And you start thinking about memories from when you’re four years old, as crazy as that may sound well. When you’re 10 years old and thunk things that were just fun in your life and this uncle who used to do this, and then, you know, and you can look at them and just say, thank you.
Don (15:26):
And it starts the day off wonderfully. And then from there, and I just keep it on my desk is, I don’t know if you can see this, but the five minute journal and you know, so in here, all my pictures and a five minute journal is just a simple way to organize it and make it easy to, you know, have a, uh, a morning gratitude session. So it’s three things that you’re grateful for, three things that will make today. Great. And a statement I am. And that could be, I am excited for today, or it could be I’m a little flat, but I’m going to work my off to get back up, you know, whatever it might be, or, you know, I, I’m not happy with the way that this week has gone so far. So today’s going to be my best day yet, or I’m kicking and I’m going to continue to kick, whatever it might be.
Don (16:15):
It could be just like, I’m happy. I love my life, whatever it might be. It’s a statement. It takes a few minutes to do. It’s wonderful. And the book just keeps you organized with it. And it’s just wonderful. And so from there, I do some, maybe 15 minutes of stretching, yoga kind of stuff. And then I either go to the gym and I do hit training, you know, high intensity interval training or at home, I have a, uh, uh, a, um, uh, infrared sauna. So I’m either going to the gym or I’m in the sauna and in the sauna, or I’m listening to a podcast and learning something in the world, whatever it might be, whatever hits me that day. So for the first three hours of my day, it’s mind, body spirit. And then I come back in ready to go and I dig in, I’m excited for the day. I can’t wait for the day. It’s not like I’m starting off slow. I’m starting off fast. So it’s, that’s my morning routine. It works.
Todd (17:11):
Yup. Yeah. I’m right there with you on the morning routine. My mine’s relatively similar. I, I get up about five 50. I want to move that to five 30 slacker. Yeah. Yeah. So I get up around five 50, get my coffee, go sit by the fireplace and read a chapter in whatever book I’m reading at the time. And then I also do about 15 minutes of yoga and then about 30, 40 minutes of some kind of exercise right now, I’m into this boxing routine and stuff, which is a lot of fun. Um, and then, you know, from there have breakfast, take shower, all that great and get to work, and it really does make a difference. It just really prepares for the day you feel good, you’re motivated, you’re ready to go. Your body is good. And it makes a huge difference. And I really wanted to talk about it. You brought it up and I thought it would be great to talk about because you know, it’s really hard to build a successful business. If you don’t have yourself straightened out first and have some kind of game plan going on and some kind of routine.
Don (18:21):
Absolutely. You know, my mother, before she passed you, you know, for many, many, many years, you know, I would talk to her pretty much every day. And she would, you know, I had all these different businesses going at different times. She never knew what I was doing. And she would, you know, she would in inherently know when I was stressed, you know, as all of our parents would know when we are stressed and, you know, being an entrepreneur, there’s a lot of stressful times. So, you know, she would say to me, what are you reading? Have you worked out and how should diet, what are you eating these days? And she would just ask me these simple questions, and then she’d always finish up with, take an extra vitamin C, but it was great advice, you know, read something positive, reads something that’s motivational for yourself that you’re going to learn.
Don (19:09):
So get your mind going, you know, are you doing, are you working out or you’re exercising? Cause if you’re not, the stress is just going to keep building. You gotta, you gotta do those things and you have to eat healthy. If you’re eating like, like typically, you know, if you’re stressed and you’re working too hard, what do most people do? They drink more coffee, no, cut back on the coffee, change it, cut back on the coffee. Coffee is not going to keep you up. That’s just going to make you jittery. There’s better ways to do it. And you know, so anyways, that’s the advice my mom would give you.
Todd (19:43):
Yeah. It’s super important to have that in your, in your lifestyle and, and working on yourself as well as your business. And you might sound like, well, you’re doing all that stuff and you’re losing like three hours in the morning that you could be working. But in reality, you get so much more done when you feel better,
Don (20:02):
You really do. You know, so stay with that. If anybody has that thought in their mind, try this exercise. It’s very simple. You know, email email is the easiest example. So if you sat in front of your computer for three hours in the morning, you know, from nine to 12, answering all the emails, reading this article, answering more emails and so forth, that’s what you would get done in three hours. But if you didn’t do that and you came back at quarter to 12, 20 to 12, and you only had 20 minutes to do it, you would get it all done in 20 minutes. 100%. I guarantee you get it all done probably in 10 minutes, but you’d probably, I’m giving you 20. So you wasted two and a half to two hours and 40 minutes. Uh, really just wasting it, you know, on, on stuff. That’s not that important. So try it yourself. And I guarantee you that works.
Todd (20:56):
Yep. Task will expand to the time that you allowed.
Don (21:00):
That’s exactly right. You’re a hundred percent, right? You said it much better than me.
Todd (21:04):
It’s like in school, right? You got to report to do. And you got two weeks to do it. You wait until the last day and then you just get it all down real fast.
Don (21:11):
You get it done. You, it always gets done. So, you know, I say that to my wife. Well, you know, we have this, this, I said, relax. It all get done. Not a problem. Okay.
Todd (21:24):
All right. Very good. So, uh, crew me, tell us more about, uh, what you guys do and how it can help me grow my business. Sure.
Don (21:36):
This is kind of mind blowing for people. I have to tell you that people, you know, when they hear this, it’s something different that they’ve never heard, but it’s my prejudice way of thinking. It’s the best way to grow your business and to gain capital, to grow your business. So here, just think of it this way. If I told you I will double your capital with no interest, no required monthly payments and no loss of ownership, you’d say, come on. What’s the catch. This is crazy. It’s insane. You know what people say is it sounds too good to be true. And we laugh every time because it does sound too good to be true, but it’s all true. So what do we get? We get our small percentage of profits for as long as you use our money. So you can’t lose. We set it up so that you can’t lose.
Don (22:27):
So we’re not looking at your credit report. We’re not digging your credit report in any way. We’re not looking at your financials. We’re not asking you to sign a personal guarantee. So wait, who’s taking the risk here. We’re giving you the money. We’re not charging you any interest. We’re not requiring you to make monthly payments. We’re not taking any ownership in your business. Kind of reverse the risk instead of like a bank loan where you’re taking the risk, we’re taking the risk. And so you’re able to use our money to grow your business. So why would we do that? Very simply we have the belief in Amazon sellers for the most part that you’re going to do great. And if you had the capital to grow, you would do even better. And then even more, cause we’ll give you more money. We’ll keep giving you more money as you’re growing.
Don (23:18):
So why would we want you to pay us back every month and hurt your growth? Monthly payments is not going to help you to grow. So we let you keep that money and we’ll let whatever portion of the profits we earn. We’ll let it accrue. So if we give you $10,000 and we earn $500, you could pay us the 500. We’re happy with that. Or next month where we, our investment is 10,500. Okay. That’s very simple. And then, yeah, so here, if you think about it, if you’re in a growth mode, you’re going to be able to grow your business because you’ll have the funding to do it, but then what happens? We all know how it works. You’re going to end up, you know, for some months to be flushed with cash, because they’re not going to be months where you’re going to be growing rapidly. So when you have cash sitting in the bank, kind of makes sense just to pay us down. So if we earned $500, pay us the 500, we gave you a 10,000. Maybe you’re going to send us $2,000 and bring us down. So we earn a smaller percentage of the profit and you have more money to grow. And when you’re ready to grow, it’s very simple. Just works. That’s what we do.
Todd (24:33):
So I, I think probably the biggest question out there is like, okay. Yeah, it all sounds great, but what are you going to do? Take like 50% of my profits.
Don (24:41):
Yeah. So, so imagine this, let’s say you had $10,000 and you were earning a 20% return. Okay. I’m just going to use that as a number and I don’t care what the number is. It doesn’t matter. So $2,000 and now I gave you another $10,000. You could, you know, pretty reasonably, you’ll earn $2,000 on that, right? Yeah. That’s reasonable. So what would we get? So we’re equal partners, right? You have 50, you have $10,000. We have $10,000 with 50, 50, whatever. Our percentage of capital is cut it in half. So we get 25% of the profit. You get 75. So there’s now you are in $2,000 on your own with us, you earn $4,000. We got a thousand, you got 3000. So your ROI just went from 20% to 30% with no additional risk on you. You didn’t take on any district risk. It’s not a bank loan.
Don (25:39):
It’s not debt. You didn’t lose ownership, but you just literally went from 20% to 30%. That’s it. If we represent 20% of the capital, so you have $8,000 and we give you 2000, right? So we’re 20%. We get 10% of the profit and it changes every month. And we monitor it. We have a system that does it, and you’re gonna be logged into the system. You see it every day. And that’s the way it works. It’s really, really basic. It’s very, very simple, but you just haven’t heard me. And I say you, but you know, people just haven’t heard it enough. You know, lending has been around for 2000 years. If I said to my, uh, interest rate is X and my payment is, is that my term is this. You don’t understand here. It’s a little bit different. It’s much, much better. Again, we’re taking on the risk, as opposed to you.
Don (26:35):
We’re giving you the money to grow whenever you want to grow, whenever you can grow and, and you pay it, pay us when it’s right for, and your business not pay us when it’s wrong for you. But so I’ll give you an example. Let’s say you took out a loan today. You know, nothing gets to Amazon. They’re, they’re great with as far as their lending and everything, not a problem, but let’s say you took out an Amazon loan today for a hundred thousand dollars and you’d pay it back roughly $10,000 a month. It’s like $9,000 a month, but we’ll leave it at 10. Come September. When you want to grow, you’re going to have like $30,000 left. And when you’re trying to grow, you’re still going to be taking money out of your profits and sending them $10,000 a month. When you need to grow your business.
Don (27:21):
That doesn’t make sense to me with us. If you took a hundred thousand dollars from us and then like, let’s say three or four months from now, you might say, you know, we’re flushed with cash. Here’s $20,000. That’s great. Terrific. But now, or you have growing and growing and growing. You’re not taking money out of your business to send to us and come September. Your business is not, you don’t have a hundred thousand dollars in your business now, because remember we gave you a hundred thousand. Now you have $240,000 because you have these big profits in your business. You can keep growing and you don’t have to take money out. When you need to need to grow. You’re going to have a big, big, big business, much quicker than you ever could on your own by far, not even. There’s nothing else that can come close to this. Nothing. And I’ve done. I’ve run all the numbers.
Todd (28:12):
Yeah. A lot of people are afraid to take money and things like that. But a lot of times it can be very beneficial to grow your business. Like you said, if you’re in, if you’re growing super fast. Yeah. A lot of businesses fail because they run out of money. Not necessarily because they’re not doing well, they’re not profitable, but perhaps they’re just growing too fast. And they run out of cash to be able to keep paying the bills
Don (28:41):
All the time. And so, you know, with, with wholesale, you know, I’ve heard this from so many people and I think it’s, it’s true and you’ll know better than me. But when you start in wholesale, you have enough money to start. Whatever that number is, whether it be a thousand dollars or $20,000, whatever the number is, but it’s enough money to start, but you don’t have enough suppliers. You don’t have the product. So now you’re out there working your off and you’re figuring out and you start getting the suppliers. And before long, it might take four to six months. You have enough good suppliers, but now you need more money because you, you can’t fulfill these orders and you have the opportunity all over the place, but you need the capital to grow. That kind of a seller is perfect for us. And so go back to your thought that people, you know, are sometimes concerned about, you know, taking money, additional money. Well, this is different. Again, if you’re borrowing money, it’s scary.
Todd (29:42):
I don’t care who you are. You, if you using credit cards or you’re borrowing,
Don (29:46):
You know, that bill comes every month. And when you have bad months, that’s really, really rough wherever you’re using your credit cards. And now, you know, your husband or wife says, uh, you know, Christmastime, Hey, let’s take the kids to Disney. Uh, the credit cards are maxed out right now.
Todd (30:02):
You know, I’ve got everything on inventory. On the credit
Don (30:05):
Cards. We know we gotta stay local. You know, that’s not a fun conversation either. So with us, it’s a matter of taking the money. When you have these opportunities, grow your business, when you have the opportunities. And when you don’t, when you’re flush with cash, it’s in your best interest, pay us down. Our percentage of profit comes down, everybody wins. So we don’t have to tell you to pay us. It’s just in your best interest.
Todd (30:32):
And if you’re carrying a balance on those credit cards, that’ll, that’ll beat you up and destroy your personal credit real fast.
Don (30:38):
Well, you know, nobody starts out thinking they’re going to do that. Everybody starts out saying, well, I’m gonna use these credit cards to grow my business, which makes no sense in my mind anyway, cause you’re using short-term credit for a long-term purpose, but that’s a whole nother story, but they’re all saying, well, don’t worry, honey. I’m going to pay these off every month. And then one month I see that too many times. And I got there as well. At 1.1 month, didn’t have the money to pay it all. So, all right. So w you know, $2,000 in the hole, but I’m going to pay that off in two weeks. And in two weeks I pay that $2,000. Okay, I’m good. But now I only have two weeks to pay this month. It doesn’t happen. And it flows into the next month. And now it’s not 2000, it’s 4,000 or 5,000.
Don (31:27):
And before, you know, it it’s 50 or 60 or 70,000, and you, I don’t care who you are. You’re going to have a hard time sleeping. It’s just the way it is. That’s dangerous, the way we’re doing it is not like that. You know, if, if I’ll give you a great example in everybody’s mind last year, when coronavirus hit and, you know, the deal when Amazon said, Nope, you can’t send that in. Unless it’s, you know, whatever the, you know, specific items, whatever it was, the required items. We had clients, uh, mainly on private label who went from making a really tremendous profits month after month, and then comes March and April and may. And because they couldn’t send any product in, they had no profit or losses. They didn’t make any payments. They didn’t have to take any money out of their pocket or out of their business. And they didn’t owe us anything either we didn’t earn anything. So we’re on the same side of the table as you, when you’re making money,
Todd (32:29):
We’re making money when you’re not, we’re not
Don (32:32):
The end of the story. So w you know, we, we, all we want to see is for you to do. And when you knew, well, we do well. And truthfully from our sellers, the best thing in the world they should do is look at us and say, Hey, a crummy. I want you to do well, because if we do well, they’re killing it. Yeah. Yeah. It’s just so it works. Yeah. For sure. Not like a bank.
Todd (32:59):
So how are you guys going about determining
Don (33:02):
What profit is? Yeah. Great question. Perfect. So the two big questions is what’s profit and what’s capital. So, uh, I’ll start with profit. Uh, so profit is very simple and there wholesale is even more simple than in some other ways, but, um, profit is your revenue from Amazon, less, your cost of goods sold less all the Amazon fees, including PPC. That’s what we consider profit. So if you’re paying your car lease, we don’t consider that part of the deal. Uh, but that’s, that’s that. So if where this doesn’t work is in the sellers with, you know, $10 million a year in sales, and they have their own warehouse with 30 people working in it, all those expenses don’t count. So they typically are not a good client for us, you know, and they love our model, but I know instantly it’s not going to work, but for everybody else, it really works really, really well.
Don (34:04):
So that’s what profit is. You know, I think you’d agree on that capital. You know, what do we consume that their capital? It’s very simple again. It’s what do you have in Amazon, in inventory at cost plus whatever is due from Amazon, add those two numbers together, and that’s capital. That’s how much money you have in the business. If you’ve, uh, if you’ve sent money to a supplier and that money is inbound to Amazon, we count that as well. And that, that inventory is inbound to Amazon. We count that as well. Uh, we count the do from Amazon as soon as it’s due from Amazon. So that changes every day, as you know, and if you think about it, we’re basically providing your money on that. So it’s like that, um, uh, basically getting that money in advance, if you will, you know, that two week gap, we’re basically giving it to you, you know, really for no cost on that time. Yeah.
Todd (35:04):
All right. Very good. So that, that is good. Come on, Todd. Crazy.
Don (35:08):
Yeah. You just got to say, that’s great, man. It’s
Todd (35:11):
Yeah. I love the way the interests align. That’s a really good thing.
Don (35:16):
So, so our first team meeting, when we put this all together, and again, this, this has never been done before. This is out of the blue. This is from scratch. This is sitting over a lunch table, brainstorming for hours and hours and hours, how to do this and how to do it. Right. And we had a simple, um, uh, premise that we wanted to do things where we’re totally in alignment with the seller. And so our first team meeting, we put this whole thing together and we feel really good about it. And you know, we’re excited and we put a team together and we sit down in a conference room and I start the meeting off. And I swear to God, I started the meeting off with guys. I just want to let you know, if you ever come up with an idea and you will, and you come to me and you say, Don, you know, we can make more money. If we do X, I don’t even want to talk to you. I don’t even want to know about it. If you come to me and say, our sellers can make more money. If we do X, then the door is open. Now we want to have that conversation because all we should think about is how our sellers can make more money. We don’t have to think about ourselves. If the sellers make more money, we make more money. It’s very simple. So that’s our premise of the whole company. All right.
Todd (36:32):
Very good. I like it. It’s a, it’s definitely something that people can use if, especially if you’re growing fast.
Don (36:41):
No, it’s for whenever you can grow, you know, if you’re growing, even if you’re not growing super fast, but are you growing at a reasonable rate? Terrific. But when all of a sudden, so you’re growing, all right, you’re a $5,000 a month in sales, and now you’re growing. You’re 7,000 and 10,000 and you feel really good. But now, because you’ve done so well, this supplier comes to you and says, Hey, Todd, I want you to be exclusive on this product line. Here are the numbers. Any, it’s a killer. It’s a great product line, but you got to buy $40,000 a month. No, you can’t do it. But if you had the money to do it, you could take advantage of those opportunities when they come. And when you’re going to a supplier and you’re saying, look, you know, I don’t have 10,000, I’ve got $20,000 and I’m turning that over twice a month so I can buy, I can buy $40,000 in a month.
Don (37:36):
That’s a different story. Or when you’re thinking about the products you’re buying, instead of buying the, you know, $10 products, now you maybe you’re thinking I could buy the $50 products, which should have, you know, fewer competitors in many cases, better margins. So it opens up new opportunities. Money is the key to this, isn’t it? You know, there’s no question in my mind, you have to know what you’re doing. You have to have good guidance and all of that. But, uh, and you have to work hard. You know, there’s no kidding around here. You know, Amazon being an FBA seller is not like, Oh, I’m a seller. I’m going to make a fortune. No, you got to get up in the morning and kick every day. And I’ve seen, I’ve seen people do it where they thought it was just, uh, you know, a switch and the money comes in. It does not work that way. You have to work hard.
Todd (38:25):
Yeah. And it’s interesting, you mentioned that the 40,000, I have an opportunity that will be coming here soon. Hopefully I reached out to a supplier to buy direct from them. Um, and she comes back and says, uh, yeah, you can buy direct, but you gotta meet these terms where the first order has to be a $50,000 truckload and then at least four purchases throughout the year. And I said, yeah, I can do that. Come in. I don’t necessarily have 50,000 just laying around, but I can figure that out if I need to. And so I’m waiting for the, uh, the salesperson to give me a call. That’s great. Let’s see if we can move forward with that. But yeah, those opportunities come up and if you don’t have that cash in the bank, yup. It can be beneficial to say, maybe reach out to you guys and say, Hey, can I get 50,000 buy this stuff? And I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.
Don (39:25):
Yeah. You better off having a relationship and growing, and maybe you have 20,000 or 30,000 and you take 10,000 from us for a period of time and you get comfortable. Well, maybe it’s even, you know, 10 is the lowest that we’ll go. But, uh, you know, you get comfortable with it and you know, you pay it back if you want, or don’t, if you want, that’s fine, uh, or pay it back when it’s right for you. But then when you have that opportunity, and let’s say you had 30,000 and we gave you 10,000, so now you have 40, and now you have this opportunity you’re talking about right now. And you come to us and say, Hey, we need a 10,000. It would be in your accountant and an hour, literally in an hour. That’s how easy it is. You know, it takes a little bit to get started.
Don (40:07):
Like it might take a week to 10 days to actually get the deal done. But, uh, once we’re working with you in an hour, we can put money into your account. So you can be so confident when you’re talking to the suppliers. It changes the game. You know, as, as, as a, as a seller, working with suppliers, your confidence level is really important. You know, you’re getting on the phone, knowing that you have this behind you, it changes the game. It changes the way you’re going to talk. It changes the way that they hear you. So, you know, I don’t want to beat a dead horse, but that’s just the way it is.
Todd (40:43):
No, a hundred percent. So 10,000 is the lowest deal go. So to get started with you guys, do they need to at least have like 10,000 in inventory or something like that? Or how do you decide what’s too small to get started?
Don (41:00):
So, you know, Todd, I got to tell you, we were told by w we have a hundred million dollars to put out on the street and, you know, to Amazon sellers, uh, and from our investment bankers on down, everybody says, why are you doing anything less than a hundred thousand dollars? It’s going to be too difficult and they’re right. But I put my foot down on it. I swear to you. And initially I said, no, we want to help the small guy. When initially we went down as low as $5,000, but it became a little bit too difficult. So now we’ve increased it just to $10,000. So by 10,000 meeting, you have to have inventory at cost plus money due from Amazon and maybe cash if you want. And if you’re just shy of 10,000, we’re not going to kill you. You know, we’re here to help you. We’re not here to hurt you. So if there’s a compelling reason, just put it on the table, we’re happy to look at it and try to help you. If we can, you know, we want to do deals. We don’t want to, you know, say no. Um, but yeah, that’s, that’s as low as I will go right now. And, you know, we’re trying to help the small guy as well as the big guy.
Todd (42:09):
All right. Very good. Now, is it something that, uh, so let’s say I don’t need the money right now, but maybe I will in the near future, can they get ahold of you guys go through that process, get set up, uh, not take the money now, but when they’re ready, you know, call you guys up and say, okay, I need 50,000.
Don (42:29):
Yeah, pretty much. Sure. So, uh, you know, the process is, is to go on our website, accrue me.com. And there’s a calculator on there. And the calculator just ask for a few inputs, very simple, and it’ll show you how much money you would make with us versus on your own. And it also shows what our, um, uh, profit participation would be over time. And now as crazy as this is going to sound as your business grows, and it will grow, your business gets bigger and bigger and bigger. We become a smaller and smaller percentage of the business. It’s organically. That’s the way it works, because you get so much more of the profit. Just think about it. If you left 75% in, and all we left in was the 25% that we earned. And that’s at the max, the next month, you wouldn’t represent 50%.
Don (43:25):
You might represent 54% and we’re 46%. So we get 23% of the profit and the next month, less and less as you get bigger and bigger, we’re a smaller and smaller piece. So yeah, you can go on the CR on the, on the site, uh, check out the calculator. There’s a button for, you know, um, uh, get a funding proposal now or whatever it says, it’s right there. It’s obvious at a funding. All it does it get funded. That’s right. And all it does is ask you about 10 questions. It’s simple. It takes, you know, two to three minutes to answer it. And then it automatically sends you back a proposal, uh, with a rough estimate of what we think we can do. And it asks for the MWS token so that we can actually see what your inventory is. We can’t touch it or change it or anything.
Don (44:14):
We just see your inventory. We get your cost per unit. And then we can give you a firm proposal, exactly what it is. And then we go over it line by line with every detail covered. We don’t push anybody. We take our time with people. It’s typically two to three phone calls that we have, because we want to make sure everybody fully understands this. This is new. It’s different. It’s not something that you’ve heard before. So we want to take our time. We want to make sure that you understand that you’re comfortable. We never want you to get involved and then say, Oh, I didn’t know that that’s, that’s not good for anybody. So it’s all about, you know, getting comfortable and that’s it. That’s the way it works. It’s a very simple process. So yeah, if you went through that process and we did everything, uh, and now you, but you don’t need the money today.
Don (45:06):
All right. All the, everything would be signed. Everything would be ready. And now a month goes by or two months go by. We’ll stay in touch with you and you’ll stay in touch with us. But now you have the opportunity and you come back and say, Hey, look, I know you guys approved us for 10,000, but can we take out five? I’m sure we would say yes. And it goes, you have enough, um, uh, inventory and such there. You all right, so you have $10,000. Now you want five. All right, we’ll give you five. And now, you know, a month, two months, three months later, you might need the next five. Well, good. You know, again, we’re here to help. If we can do it, we want to do it. So one requirement, two requirements is, uh, that you’re in business for six months, that you’re doing FBA for six months.
Don (45:48):
And that you’re an LLC. And the reason for an LLC is because as an LLC, we can change the LLC agreement to make us a new member, a new ma uh, type of members. So we can be what we term the profit share member. You are the equity member. So you own 100% of the business. We only earn a percentage of profits. So when our money is out of the business, we are non void. We’re gone. There’s nothing left. So it’s all yours. We don’t have a 1% or 2% or anything like that. Wherever you had a corporation, we would have to own a percentage of the business. We don’t want to get in your pocket. So just last thing on this, we’ve had plenty of people that have an S-corp and all you do is you form an LLC. And the S Corp owns the LLC 100%. It’s very, it takes about two days to do.
Todd (46:45):
Okay. All right. Good to know. Yeah. Um, so you mentioned that, uh, as an affiliate for you guys, I said $500 for people signing up, or I could give that to the people signing direct, but I definitely would prefer to give that to the listeners who do decide to use you guys. So you’re a good man. Can they take advantage of that opportunity to basically get a free 500 bucks?
Don (47:14):
Here’s what you need to do when you go on our site and you fill out the form, which again, takes two to three minutes is a section on comments. It says, Joe, tell us a little bit about yourself. Just mentioned that, that you were referred by Todd or the, uh, entrepreneurs, adventure, venture entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, adventure, either way we’ll know exactly where it came from. And when, when we fund you, we will give you an extra $500 to buy inventory. You know, you don’t have to buy at that moment, but you know, in $500 to buy inventory that you never have to pay back at yours, it just increases your capital in the business. All right. That’s very nice. And we didn’t talk about this beforehand, by the way, just go, everybody listens. Uh, we did not talk about this. We just, I, you know, mentioned it in writing before the podcast and we had not have had a conversation.
Don (48:06):
So this was a nice surprise. Very cool. For sure. For sure. I figured if I can help other sellers out there, that’s why I’m doing the podcast. Other people helped me and it’s great giving back. So you’re a good man. All right. Awesome. So a crummy.com uh, final words of wisdom or things that we should talk about before we wrap up here, you know, um, uh, what I would say to people is look me up on, on LinkedIn connect with me on LinkedIn. I don’t, you know, I’m not one of these people that put blocks in the way of communicating, uh, on LinkedIn. It’s my full name, Donald Hennig H E N G. My email is simple, don@acrummy.com. We’re just go to our site. And when you put it in that Todd referred you, we’re going to look to set up a phone call and I’m going to do everything I can, you know, now I’m going to almost a hundred percent of the time beyond that call and, you know, just reiterate everything and make sure that you’re comfortable. So those are the, those are the things. All right, good, John, I appreciate you coming on the show. I think we got a lot of valuable information in here in a way for people that they get funding when they need it sounds great, Todd, thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity. Thanks. You have a great one. I will. You too.
Announcer (49:29):
This has been another episode of the entrepreneur at venture podcast. Thanks for listening, fellow entrepreneur and always remember success is yours. If you take it.
