Be the Shark: E-Commerce Success Simplified | Robert Nikic DSH #1188

That proudly.

A lot of entrepreneurs really don't embrace failure, don't leverage failure, don't really want to recognize that is a good thing.

I personally love when bad things happen.

Wow.

When I get a phone call with the worst news,

I wake up.

If there is nothing bad happening, whether it be at the office or in life in general, I'm not content.

All right, we got Robert here from Why Unified.

Thanks for joining us today, man.

Hey, thanks for letting me be here.

Absolutely.

What's new with you?

You know, for the most part, LA is a really big adjustment with the weather because I'll never understand.

In Florida right now, we just hit close.

I would consider it sub-zero temperatures, but it's less chillier in LA and actually in Vegas than it is in Florida.

Really?

What's up with that?

Damn.

Wait, so you moved to LA?

Well, no, no, no, I didn't.

I'm just saying, you know, in Vegas in itself, it's just, it's not as, it's less chillier here than in Florida.

We just got in snow.

What?

Yeah.

Where are you at in Florida?

Or in Tampa, Florida, but most of the panhandle had snow.

That is weird.

It's crazy.

It came to Vegas, and I'm just like,

why is it warmer here than Florida?

That doesn't even compute in my brain.

Snow in Florida.

That makes sense.

What the heck?

Why'd you choose Tampa?

You know, for the most part, I don't think there was a particular reason.

It's just, it wasn't Miami for the most part.

You know, it was a fine balance between

Miami.

Well, that's state tax too, you know.

Yeah.

No state tax.

For the most part, yeah.

That's why I chose Nevada.

One of the main reasons.

I was in Cali, man.

Oh, my gosh.

How was that?

15%.

And the weather is amazing, but just like the lifestyle is not that.

It's only gotten up, though, right?

It hasn't gotten any better.

No, it's gone up.

Yeah.

And networking is good, but you could get that networking in other cities.

Yeah, that's true.

But it's also dangerous for you, too, because you know, people always fly over Nevada one way or the other.

So I'm sure you're capturing a lot of your audience.

Oh, yeah.

I don't struggle to get guests out here at all.

You know, you flew in today, you know, almost everyone did.

So talk to us about why unified.

What's new there?

Well, you know, for the most part, we became a top 50 company, grew rapidly over the last, I'd say, two years.

I mean, you know, for the most part,

what's really important to understand on why we grew is, you know, a lot of people,

you know, have to ask themselves, why do they want to get in business?

You know, there's a lot of inventors out there.

There's a lot of...

you know, entrepreneurs out there, but a lot of them are getting into business the hard way.

Look at this from an investor's perspective, right?

So when an investor is evaluating whether they're going to invest in a company or not, what are they doing?

They're trying to see, is this a proven concept?

When I put money into it, is it going to make me money back?

Right.

So a lot of entrepreneurs out there are trying to build businesses.

They're trying to invent new ideas.

And, you know, at the end of the day, if you look in your kitchen, most of the products that

are already proven, that are already selling are right in front of you.

So what we did is we materialized that.

We took that entire concept and brought mainstream and actually selling brands on marketplaces.

So we partnered up with a lot of actual large brands, got the authorization, the licensing, and we extended that opportunity to thousands and thousands of store owners.

So now we've given entrepreneurs the ability just to start

essentially franchise stores that are licensed to sell these brands on marketplaces without competition and so forth.

So it brings me back to the point of, you know,

how do you build a business that's shark tank friendly?

You know, and you have to ask yourself,

do you actually want to be the shark or which side do you want to be on?

Personally, I'd want to be on the side of I put money into something that's proven it's working and I receive money back.

Right.

You know, the days of actually creative entrepreneurship, I don't want to say that they're gone.

It's just, you know, it's 2025 now.

There's, there's shortcuts.

You know, why not utilize them and why not take a concept that's working and

make it work for you?

It's a safer route, right?

Much more so.

I mean, let's think about what goes into building a business.

At the end of the day, when you're building a business, you have to create the idea.

If you're an e-comm, you have to find the product, create the product.

We're talking about significant upfront manufacturing costs.

We're talking about the risk.

We're talking about work, hard work, countless hours.

At the end of the day, not a lot of people are in that position to put that type of capital, time, and risk

upfront.

Definitely not.

Plus the knowledge itself is pretty hard to obtain when you're starting out.

Tremendously.

So it can take years.

So at the end of the day, you know, entrepreneurs should really kind of take that route of,

why don't I take the investor standpoint?

Because look at it this way.

All the products that our actual platform offers to our store owners, their parent companies are all listed on the stock exchange.

Wow.

So think about it.

Investors are putting, real investors, we're talking about credit investors, are actually putting money into

these actual organizations, their parent companies.

And why not take advantage of that and piggyback off of it, right?

Why go through all the treacherous factors of actually building a business

and all the risk when you don't have to?

Yeah.

What we do is we really allow entrepreneurs to kind of be the shark instead of actually.

be on the other side of the sharks right

yeah you're minimizing risk for the average person right yeah for sure i mean you've watched Shark Tank, right?

Yeah, I used to love that show.

I've probably seen every episode up until season eight.

Yeah, and I want to make it clear, we're not affiliated with Shark Tank in any type of way, but when it comes down to it, all the Sharks are there gauging one thing.

You know, is there a proof of concept?

Is there

viability in the business?

If there isn't, if they isn't, they can them.

And if there is, they take it, they take the actual offer.

So, with our actual franchise model, the reason we became that top 50 on the Inc.

5000,

and it wouldn't surprise me if we hit number one this year,

is simply because we've taken the model that's really been out for decades.

There's nothing new about it, and we've really mainstreamed it and made it available to entrepreneurs so they don't have to go through the same exact risks as everyone else does.

Right, you didn't reinvent the wheel, no, absolutely not.

And I don't think the entrepreneur should reinvent the wheel.

I think a lot of them are just, you know, number one, procrastinating on the word entrepreneur is really overused.

It's over, it's almost a negative word.

It is, it is.

I personally hate it.

I use it for just more so, you know, giving context.

But when someone says they're an entrepreneur, what does that really mean?

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

But when it comes down to it, like I said, you know,

just skipping all of the hassle of building a business is

really, really

what our model offers.

Did you have this mindset when you were starting the company?

When I started this company, I mean, I did not have that mindset.

Not so one, any capability.

When I started, you know, we got mocked for selling toothpaste.

I was going to buy crest toothpaste when they can buy it at Walmart.

Right.

Well, guess what?

Amazon started peaking right around that time.

And, you know, they became consumer-friendly.

Now, what does everyone do?

They buy consumable products on Amazon.

Do you remember when they used to have those little buttons where you could put in your kitchen for reordering products?

Amazon sell, you know, it would have like brand names.

It's like a little button.

You click it and then auto renews the product.

They had that.

I never had that.

Well, they tested it for about a year and they canned it.

because it looked tacky, people having all these buttons in their kitchen and so forth, right?

But why did they do that?

Because Amazon knew that they would be the largest consumables marketplace in the world so at the end of the day no not many people do people still go to Walmart and buy toothpaste sure but the large majority is adapting towards purchasing on Amazon it's faster it's cheaper you don't think about it you don't got to get out of your house you don't got to go to the store so

just the mainstream availability of it is uh

really

what enticed me i love amazon i get stuff in two hours Yeah, well, I mean, when we first started it, like I said, no one was doing it.

We were the pioneers, to say, of actually selling toothpaste on Amazon.

Was this before Prime?

This was actually a little shortly after Prime.

Oh, wow.

So you are super early.

Super early, yeah.

This was a little bit after Prime, as far as it goes.

And

from there on forth, we broke those deals with them, with a lot of actual larger brands and

made it legit and genuine.

But you see, now the problem is out there is...

There's tons of copycats.

There's tons of e-comm companies, right?

It's really highly saturated.

Everyone and their mother is selling e-comm courses.

Everyone's a coach.

Everyone knows everything when they really don't.

But there's great coaches out there, don't get me wrong.

But at the end of the day, what's really, really important about our model is that all of our products are licensed to legit.

So when you sell it on Amazon,

you're not just like, oh, I'm going to try and sell this toothpaste or these chips on Amazon.

And, you know, we have major actual deals with all these marketplaces to purchase $10 million worth of product.

So that way there's always availability and accessibility.

Yeah, the Amazon space, a a lot of negativity there with the FBA stuff, a lot of scammers,

the wholesale Amazon space.

For sure.

And the reason why is

none of these actual agencies have the capability or the capital to reach out to brands and actually break deals with them.

Most of them have minimum

PO requirements of a million dollars.

Wow.

Yeah.

And most of these guys are working out of their garage.

So what all they're doing is literally finding a very small supplier.

Hex, I bet you some of them are even going to Walmart and purchasing as much of the product as they can.

And they're literally just selling it on Amazon.

That is not a legitimate way to do business in the space.

There is companies that do a great job in this space.

I can't say that for everyone, but I'd say a large majority of these companies are fly-by-night companies.

That's why there's not a single company in our space that's landing on the Inc.

5000 list,

to my awareness, especially in the top 50.

Yeah, well done on that, man.

Was that the first year you got on that list?

That was the second year.

We were actually in 2023, we were 418, and then we landed on 35

last year.

year I confidently will be heading number one this year that's insane so you're growing even faster tremendously tremendously yeah we've garnered a lot of attention I mean you know over the last just in last year itself I think our growth probably doubled of what it was the year prior whole if not tripled and is that because the rise of e-commerce mainly I wouldn't say it's the rise of e-commerce I think it's because of how we've actually made our model more easier you see we're not really we don't categorize ourselves as in being in the actual Amazon space we categorize ourselves as as actually being a franchise.

So with our platform, you know, anyone can start a franchise.

And what that means is it's two-sided.

Number one, you can jump into an already profitable store.

We have franchises, legitimate registered franchises that are actually aged.

They've been running.

They're actual businesses that have been running for two to three years.

And they can purchase that and literally take over the business.

Everything's substantiated in terms of earnings, claims, documents, and so forth.

And, you know,

the other side of our model allows you to jump into an FBA-like experience where you choose where you want to sell Amazon, Walmart, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

And from there on forth, you select what type of store category of products you want to sell.

You get licensed to sell on that end.

So, you know, I wouldn't really categorize this FBA because we're a licensed and registered franchise in Florida and we're currently expanding our registration across all 50 states.

Got us.

You've just made it really easy.

Really easy.

And, you know, I'd say more credible too.

I mean, look at all the agencies in the FBA space.

They're fly-by-night companies.

I mean, genuinely, I'm not saying that, you know, myself, I consider myself young.

I'm 32, but at the end of the day, a lot of individuals in the space are far younger, and that's okay.

I mean, there's far younger individuals that have done much greater things than I ever have, and there will be for sure.

And at the end of the day, when it comes to it,

there's just no credibility behind the model.

There's nothing to protect the actual businesses that are joining the model at any capacity.

You know, our particular company, we're a licensed franchise, registered in the State of Florida.

There's

extremely large legal requirements that need to be met and need to be followed in terms of every store's claims being 100% accurate.

I mean, let's be real.

On e-comm, everyone throws claims around.

Oh, yeah.

It's a bunch of bullshit.

So, um, it genuinely is.

And then a lot of people come out and call it out.

But at the end of the day, our model with our franchise model, it just adds a lot of legitimacy to it.

I love it.

Yeah.

FTC is cracking down on some of those guys.

And they should be because a lot of them are money laundering operations.

A lot of them are fraudulent Ponzi schemes.

Plain and simple.

That's what they are.

The intent from the very beginning is to be a fraudulent operation.

So, you know, in comparison to our actual company, in contrast to our company, you know, we've taken the appropriate actual steps to grow the company for the concept to actually work.

Most of these companies,

they don't have the intent of making the concept work.

They don't want to improve their model in any capacity whatsoever.

So I can't say that once again for everyone.

They want to categorize the entire space under that label.

There's great companies out there.

There are some competitors of ours that can say great things about it

but a large majority of them and what the FTC has done, I think it's a great job.

And I think it's a job well done.

I think it needed to be done.

Yeah, they're getting them for the false money claims.

That's like the big one.

For sure.

And, you know, that's that's it's very important.

And that's why, you know, our with our company, we wanted to head towards the franchise model because we want to add legitimacy to the space.

We have our earning claims document is 300 pages long.

Damn.

So all fully substantiated, all available online.

Because at the end of the day, I don't understand why any other agency agency doesn't have it either.

You know why?

And I've asked this question to counsel like, why are we the first?

Isn't that strange?

That's one of the questions I asked, right?

And they're like, nobody cared.

That's why nobody cared.

They just don't care.

They take the money and they leave.

I'm like, but why?

The concept is proven.

It works.

Actually, the

substantiation is.

Do the brands sell and do they make money?

Can you historically prove it?

Yes.

How many times can you prove it?

Can you prove it favorably across hundreds of clients?

Yes.

Is there bad cases?

Yes, of course.

There's unsuccessful cases.

And that's fine.

And

that's why, you know, at the end of the day, the actual products themselves, like I said, they're listed on the stock exchange.

The parent companies.

They sell.

They have a history of decades of sales.

Not a lot of these companies care.

They really don't care.

They're just pump and dump operations, in my opinion.

Short-term versus long-term picture, right?

For sure.

And, you know, speaking of legitimacy, it brings me to like, we actually

had the congressman's son, I'm not going to name which congressman, you know, actually sign up for our company

and start our store, start a store with us.

And at the end of the day, you know, the intent of actually a congressman's son wanting to do that just shows the legitimacy behind our model.

That,

you know,

the government, I would say, because once you're a congressman's son, you're meddled and you're involved in the government in one way, shape, or form, whether the public wants to admit it or not.

That's my opinion.

But when it comes down to it, it gives really a lot of legitimacy to the model of,

you know,

that it works.

But you see, in this particular case, you know, what a lot of entrepreneurs understand, everyone fights this rat race.

They want to become a top 50 fastest growing company.

They want to make millions and millions of dollars, right?

Is that the repercussions that come with it?

Once you enter the territory of crossing that top 50, I mean, your revenues have surpassed 50 million plus 100%.

And at the end of the day, there's a lot of scrutiny that comes with it, too.

Really?

You know, in this particular case with the congressman's son, you know, the trust factor and him actually choosing our organization, believing in our companies and our platform is excellent, is great.

But you see, what came with it was really mouthful, bad intent.

And, you know,

what ended up happening was an entire orchestrated scheme to actually

really just

defame defame our organization and cause tortious interference with our clients happened.

Really?

Trying to frame, put us in bad and negative light using

allegedly the congressman's resources to accomplish that in order to gain a win in a re-election attempt.

What?

This is 100% true.

And, you know, once again, this is all my perspective and my opinion on this matter on a personal level, but I do want to say that, you know,

that's a lot of what a lot of entrepreneurs don't see.

That's what a lot of people don't paint the light of in entrepreneurship, everything that comes with it.

Everyone paints the great picture.

Everyone paints, oh, you're on a boat, you're on a jet, you know, no one actually shows the behind the scenes of what happens, what consequences they are, and how politics can even meddle into an actual private business at that type of level.

I mean, I won't comment further on it, but I will tell you that a federal lawsuit will address this and really just paint a full picture of how

certain members of the US government are involved in

a large level of fraud.

And

not just for our particular organization, but

many others also too.

We have one of the largest law firms in the world representing the case.

And

it'll be released pretty soon.

So it'll really paint a really good picture of why, you know,

our company has received kind of the backlash that it has.

You know, we have a lot of successful, successful, successful stores.

That's why our page RFTC actual earning claims doc is 300 plus pages.

That's why we opted in to be a licensed friends.

We don't care.

We know what we do is right.

But at the end of the day, you know, There's special interests out there that once you reach the tippity top or you're about to break through that really want to use that to their advantage and get an easy win in their pocket for re-election.

That is nuts.

Well, if it's out when this episode drops, we'll link it in the video at the lawsuit.

Yeah, I can't tell you when it's going to be out, but it'll be out pretty soon.

So I'd definitely like for you to link that in there.

I mean, people know within Congress, I mean, look at the stock trades.

I mean, they know there's some fraud and BS going on.

For sure, for sure.

I mean, there's many cases that I've seen where, you know, a congressman and family members are involved lobbying for special interests.

You know, daddy signs the bill.

And then from there on forth, the money goes straight into the son's pocket.

So, you know, interestingly, I've actually heard about whistleblowers too that, that are making a lot of money.

That are really making a lot of money about it on it too.

Wow.

Yeah.

I've spoken to a few.

That's scary, man.

Yeah.

It goes up to the highest level, too.

It's scary.

It does.

It just gives you a good perspective of entrepreneurship.

A lot of people don't see, you know, what it really takes to start and run and grow a business.

That brings me right back to the actually square one in itself is,

do you really want to?

Some people are made for it.

They're built for it.

And you know know what?

If you are, you'll know.

I talked to Ty Lopez about this, actually.

It's like finding that sweet spot so where you're not a target, right?

So like once you start making tens of millions, you are a target.

For sure.

So he tells people like, make a few million a year.

Like you won't be a massive target.

For sure.

For sure.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

It's a game that you really don't want to get into unless you're built for it, unless you're really designed and born for it.

So, you know, and I've just learned that all through my life, really, because of honesty, failure, failure, failure, failure, failure.

Throughout my entire life, I've failed.

And I say that proudly.

And a lot of entrepreneurs really don't embrace failure, don't leverage failure, don't really want to recognize that is a good thing.

I personally love when bad things happen.

Wow.

When I get a phone call with the worst news,

I wake up.

If there is nothing bad happening, whether it be at the office or in life in general, I'm not content.

Because, you know, I look at them as opportunities.

And many entrepreneurs should look at it that way too.

Oh, you know, this happens.

You You lost $100,000.

What did you learn for it?

How are you going to take that $100,000 loss and turn that into actual an opportunity, revenue, whatever it may be?

How can you now take that and

duplicate it and grow it?

You know, that's the mindset that a lot of entrepreneurs should have.

A lot of people don't speak about their failures publicly.

I love to, in any type of case, because.

Everyone just paints this perfect, perfect light when it's really not.

Not at all.

And it makes other people want to get into entrepreneurship and e-comm also because it looks so easy

when actually starting and building a legitimate business is very hard.

Super hard.

I get, I get asked a lot, like, should I get into

entrepreneurship?

I usually say no to people.

Yeah.

You know, if you have to ask, I don't know if you're really designed and built for it.

You'll know.

Yeah.

You'll be so driven and you'll be that nothing can stop you for it.

You don't have to ask the question.

You don't need that.

You don't need to be on.

I didn't ask anyone.

Oh, no, him and himself wouldn't have to ask the question.

You know, he would be, he would already be doing it.

That's what I'm saying.

So, but for those that it isn't actually, they're not built for it.

That doesn't mean it's a bad thing.

You know, it doesn't have to mean that you don't get into it.

It means that

you need to just jump on, have the same mindset an investor does and say, hey, okay, I'm not designed for actually starting building business.

Maybe I don't want to.

Maybe it's too late for me right now.

I don't think it's ever too late, but maybe it's just not an appropriate time in life.

How can I just go ahead and take an investor's approach and say, why can't I just jump into something that's kind of already working?

Don't actually be the one going in front of the shark.

Just be the shark in itself and do what they do.

Sure, you don't have to to do it in a large scale of millions of dollars.

You can start very small and grow into it.

And that's exactly what our actual franchise platform allows you to do.

So we're the only actual online franchise that allows you to start a franchise for up to $8,000.

So there's no other franchise model out there that allow you to do that.

Every other franchise model, you need hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Super expensive.

You need huge net worth requirements.

Okay.

But here's the problem.

You know, that's the fancy red tape that's there is there for a purpose, right?

It's there for qualification.

You're running a business under their brand.

The problem is there's the net gains are over a five-year period.

They're not here

over

a short-term period.

And a lot of entrepreneurs that aren't really designed for it, that want to jump into a model, they need something relatively sooner than later.

Right.

Right.

To actually validate that investment that they made.

Yeah, you got to be careful.

Certain franchises are fads, right?

For sure.

Like the yogurt one.

For sure.

Frozen yogurt.

I didn't hear about that one.

Tell me about it.

Well, frozen yogurt was big in America probably when I was in high school, but a lot of them went under.

Really?

It was like a dessert trend, I guess.

But yeah, there's a lot of franchises where it's around a trending food or whatever.

Right, right, right.

And then it dies off.

Was it an MLM or?

No, that one wasn't.

But yeah, there's MLMs too.

Yeah.

No, that's all silly stuff at the end of the day.

The 4X1s.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, those are nasty.

That's silly.

You know, what I never understand is why people still believe in that.

Yeah, MLMs, you know, they get a bad rep unless you're at the top.

You know, that's what it brings me to is a lot of people aren't built for entrepreneurship.

So they rely on these

little scams at the end of the day.

And

what I don't like about it is

they know going into it that it's not the right thing to do right they know the odds they know the risks and at the end they play victim about it yeah i think 90 of people lose money on them something crazily and it's it's publicized you know so at the end of the day and they come out of it and they say oh i was scammed you know they and at the end of the day sure many of these people truly were but that's how you can take that how can i like to take okay i failed i lost tons of money what what am i gonna do about it am i gonna be here and sit here and cry about it no Okay, great.

I lost $28,000.

I really depended on this money.

My family depended on it.

Whatever I expected to do this.

How am I going to take that learning lesson now and amplify and make sure it never happens again?

That's how you really need what they need to do.

And actually, learning, leveraging failure.

That's what's worked for me.

That's the only reason I've actually built this company because way before I even got into the model we're at right now, we used to do drop shipping.

Drop shipping is a complete fucking scam.

I used to do it too.

Yeah, it is.

I mean, on the large, like like I said,

on the mainstream model and how it's being advertised

in 2025, it is not the way to make money, build a long, sustainable business at any circumstance or any case.

So, but it's still being backpedaled and pushed every single day, which is crazy.

Just because there's a few winners, and there's a few winners because they built the business the right way.

They built relationships with suppliers that are credible.

They've vetted the products.

They've seen the warehouse.

They've done QA on the products.

The products, maybe they've actually tested themselves.

Maybe they even created the product themselves at some R D on the other side of the world, right?

They put actual effort into building a business.

And then, sure, it's drop shipping because they're fulfilling the other side of the world, but they took those extra steps.

And now it makes it seem like drop shipping is this whole entire business that can make multi-millionaires, which it is not, in my opinion.

At the end of the day, the same core values of business apply in every single business in every single case, right?

So you can't just ship products from China that you've never seen, never touched, never vetted from a supplier whose name you can't pronounce you don't know you don't know who he is you don't know if it's a real you don't know while the product's even being shipped sure yeah tracking number cost them 39 cents to send an e-packet what's in there and at the end of the day guess who pays the price you do

stripe comes back processors come back start blacklisting you put you in a tmf list no more selling for the next five years

So that wasn't the business model I wanted to be involved with.

Yeah, it's in there, done that, man, all of that.

No, absolutely not.

That's why I exited the space entirely, because if I couldn't build a relationship with the supplier, vet the supplier, have a trusted relationship with them, I didn't want to be in it.

And most of the actual suppliers are fly-by-night companies overseas.

And,

you know, you're in U.S.

territory dealing with U.S.

laws, working with overseas

suppliers who have no accountability for any actions that happen.

And you're the one that pays the consequence.

So that's why the entire model we have now with our franchise models in the United States as a whole.

And it is more legitimized than.

anything that there is out there right now.

I love it.

Yeah, I remember all the dropshipping courses.

Now they're all teaching AI courses.

Yeah.

You know, they're on to the next.

Yeah, and the FTC is cracking down on that too.

AI courses.

Yeah, for sure.

Not even the AI course itself, but how the word AI is actually being used and leveraged.

I mean, our platform uses a lot of AI because when you see, when you start a franchise store with our actual platform, you connect your seller, your seller account.

Depending on what plan you are on, your plan you're on, you connect your actual seller account to our platform.

From there on forth, everything's done for you.

You manage for you.

Your platform literally analyzes your seller's account's health to see where it's at, what products are assigned to your account when.

And a lot of those actions are dictated by AI.

Sure.

Nothing on a huge, massive scale, but

there's definitely a good amount of machine learning behind it.

But you see, a lot of companies out there are actually just using the terminology.

There's nothing behind it.

We actually have the software behind it.

But a lot of people are just saying that.

Sounds very interesting to people.

They're building value, right?

And they're delivering nothing at the end of the day.

Yeah, it's like a buzzword.

Yeah.

So that's why, you know,

what interests me is, and what I think everyone's look at it should be, is all these these Amazon automation companies are literally just getting hammered.

And I hope that's all the illegitimate ones that are.

So at the end of the day, we're one of the top 50 companies in the country.

Why is it that we have not had anyone knock on our doors?

That has to tell you something.

It does.

Other than the Congress.

We're one of the largest actual, like I said, in the entire space.

Yeah.

So, and it's.

not a big secret.

Most of these companies keep their revenue secret until it's listed in the FTC complaint.

So we publicly list it.

We don't care.

So we know our model works.

We know it helps entrepreneurs.

In many cases, like I said, there's cases where it doesn't work for some people.

You can't shoot 100%.

No, you can't.

There's so many factors that are beyond our control.

So many factors.

When you connect your seller account to our actual platform and our platform analyzes it, in some cases, you might not be eligible to sell.

Maybe you've sold in the past and your seller account.

you broke amazon policies it's no matter what what authorization we publish in your account for these products amazon's not going to let us us push out those listings.

Because how it works on Amazon's end is, do I, okay, number one, we connect the account and they analyze,

is this account trusted?

Yes or no?

No.

It has five policy violations, whatever, and they're significant for trademark or IP, whatever it may be.

And then from there on forth, what it's going to do is it's going to see, okay, they're going to be selling a Crest product or a layer's chips product, high volume product.

No.

Or they might list you and be shadow banned.

So in some cases, we don't know when you're shadow banned.

In some cases, we do.

And we just don't even accept it.

Like I said, you as as a customer.

Wow, I didn't know Amazon's shadow banned

for sure.

This is, I mean, they have to saturation at the end of the day.

I mean, number one, what's Amazon's goal?

They want to protect consumers,

and especially on the marketplace that sales, and they have a lot of liability, especially with FBA, they are delivering the product.

They have a responsibility to make sure the product is genuine, not expired, not counterfeit.

So, at the end of the day, if they don't actually screen people on an individual level

with hundreds of thousands of sellers, they carry liability and

they don't want to get caught up with the FTC either.

That makes sense.

So they want to maintain their presence in being number one, right?

So that's what a lot of people don't understand in the space either.

There's a lot of, I don't care what FBA company you choose, you know, whether it's our actual franchise model or whether it's another FBA company, you have to understand that there are so many factors that are beyond their control.

Yeah.

And I'm only speaking for the legitimate actual companies that are actually doing their job because many of them just don't even do anything.

You just pay them and they disappear.

So, but the ones that are actually doing the job, there's so many factors that are truly beyond their control.

So now it's up to them and how they handle those type of situations,

how they identify them and so forth.

But

I think it all comes down to setting expectations.

Absolutely.

And it all comes down to the mindset the person signing up has also too.

For sure.

I was on Amazon yesterday.

So now in the search bar, it says ask a question.

Have you seen that?

Yeah, I did actually.

So you can shop by questions now.

That's so innovative.

For sure, because they're also using AI.

They're analyzing your actual, your actual history, your browsing history what you're doing your your spending habits your shopping habits and you're asking the question for something they're going to pair you with a product that they think you're like you'd be interested in but here's here's the thing it looks so innocent people don't understand that i want to buy a pair of shoes and amazon knows what your average spending pattern on shoes is they know that you're a consumer that is likely to pay more for shoes wow so they're not going to pair you with a with a particular product for a shoe or a listing that's going to be maybe 30 above retail they know you're going to buy it you know a lot of people don't understand that that.

And, you know, and I hate to say this because Amazon, we work very closely with Amazon, not in the official capacity at all, but at the end of the day, a lot of consumers are overpaying on Amazon.

Really?

For sure.

I mean, you know, our sellers on our platform, our store owners have the ability to dictate the pricing of the products in their store.

So, you know, if lace chips are listed for $3.

You know, I've seen so many cases where sellers list them for $6 to $8

and there will be more orders than it would be at a retail price.

It's incredible.

It's truly incredible.

And it'll come from, you know, it'll come mostly from different states.

New York, California, I'll see that a lot.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

So, you know, it's,

it does make sense, but also at the end of the day,

it's like a gray area between price gouging.

Yeah, their algorithms are so advanced, right?

It is, right?

So that question of, you know, ask a question, it looks innocent, looks helpful, but it's really the drive profits for Amazon.

Wow, that's nuts.

Yeah, I bought a a weighted vest yesterday and it knew which one I wanted without me even browsing.

Yeah, sometimes when you're doing that, just compare the price,

see what actual listing it gives you, and then go compare that price to retail and see if it's the same price.

See, most people won't do that.

No, they won't.

They'll just hit buy now.

Because Amazon's so easy.

Two clips fast.

Yeah.

I don't even price check anything these days.

We've been programmed to that way because we just want it now.

We want it fast.

You know, we don't want to wait.

That's why.

shopping in the store for those basic things is going out the door for the most part.

So, I mean, have you seen Walmart stepping their game up?

I mean, Walmart is actually has the potential to outgrow Amazon.

Really?

For sure, absolutely.

They came in as losers in the game when Amazon stepped in.

And I think that they are currently right now

leveling up with Amazon.

I don't, I can't say on a financial sense, but I can say on

the business sense, they're kicking ass.

No way.

And they could overtake Amazon from just what I'm seeing.

We have thousands of sellers on Walmart.

And believe it or not, they're actually performing better than many of them on Amazon.

The reason why is a lot of consumers are used to buying consumable products at Walmart.

So your chips, your toothpaste, your toilet paper, et cetera, they're used to buying that Walmart silver they're going to buy it.

They're also going to buy it at Walmart.

Makes sense.

Plus not everyone has Prime, right?

So that's true.

That's true.

Wow.

Yeah.

Because I know when they originally launched their marketplace, it didn't do that well online.

No, it didn't.

No, Amazon was a big Walmart was a big flop when it actually started.

Yeah, I heard about that.

Huge, huge flop.

They weren't really technology focused.

Amazon was.

I mean, Amazon's infrastructure is built on you know aws in itself yeah so that's why they have a level up against walmart walmart is a

they're probably on aws they're probably yeah right exactly so they're just a brick and mortar they're used to just transactional situations in person so yeah amazon came out they're like oh we we got to do something or we are closing our doors we're going to be the next uh toys r us

so uh they did it they did it very slowly i they're catching up and it would not surprise me if they surpass amazon in some way shape or form one day wow keep an eye on that one so those are like the big two right now, Walmart and Amazon?

The largest ones, yeah.

Because, you know, Walmart actually introduced something like Prime.

It's called Walmart Plus.

So it's their FBA model for Walmart.

And it's, it's truly doing great things for the most part for our store owners, anyone that is on Walmart Plus.

And you purchase inventory, our actual platform ships it off to Walmart.

It sells the same day.

Yeah.

So it's, there's, there's no question about it.

I've been watching Beast Games on Amazon.

Have you seen that, Mr.

Beast?

Yes.

Brilliant business model.

So they lost a ton of money up front because they gave them a ton of money.

But since they're getting Amazon customers and they know the LTV, they're going to make more than 100 million.

For sure.

Without a doubt.

Such a brilliant model.

Yeah.

I couldn't believe that.

That's going to change entertainment industry.

When was the last time you didn't show an interview with Beast Games?

With Mr.

Beast?

Not yet.

No, I think he'll come on eventually.

Okay, cool.

Yeah.

But that was an interesting model because they lost a ton of money up front, but the Amazon LTV is crazy.

It is extremely high.

I probably myself probably spent 10K a year on Amazon.

The return, the average repeat order rate on Amazon is truly, truly insane.

And that's really what's driving the model for our customers because for actual store owners, because when someone, when our store owners get listed on Amazon, their products get listed, let's say you have 30, 40 products listed on Amazon.

Ask customers you're buying from them, they subscribe to this product.

I need toothpaste every month.

I need to paper every week.

I need this.

I need that.

So the actual repeat purchase rate is huge.

That's what drives the LTV through the roof.

And that's why it works so, so well.

They're actual brands that people trust.

People buy it every day.

There's no question about it.

They see, oh, okay, this is crest.

Great.

Yeah, I need that.

Okay, great.

They're not looking at the price they're shopping.

That's where our actual store owners are making their profit margins.

The subscribe orders, because you save 5%.

100%, right?

But it's marked up by

anywhere between 10 and 30% from what I'm seeing.

They set their own pricing, what they want it to be and their preferences, right?

Wow.

So we just see it on the global scale of what they're doing and

seeing how it's performing.

That's cool, man.

You mentioned failures earlier.

I'm curious what your biggest ones were and how you overcame them.

I'd say failed startups for the most part.

That's where, that's where,

that's where a lot of I would say my perspective comes from.

You know, I've started way before I started YUnified, I tried getting, I was, you know, I've had hosting, I started a little hosting company now.

I was 13 years old.

So I was 13.

What did I know?

And at the end of the day,

along that journey, I've had just so many failed startups.

And I just kept failing and failing and failing.

And nothing worked, plain and simple.

If when I look back now, I'm like,

the timing was right.

And at the the end of the day, it comes down to just, I really didn't recognize, and I got really torn down about it because, you know, the reason I got torn down about it is because

my family came from nothing.

We came overseas from the Balkan War over there, immigrated to Germany, immigrated to the States here.

So my family really relied on me.

There was a lot of reliance there.

And I was the oldest sibling in the house.

My parents didn't speak English.

So that's the only reason I got up in.

in the startup culture, you can say, or entrepreneurship in general, is because I had to, not because I really wanted to.

Yeah, yeah.

So, and from a very young age.

And

that's where I learned just really just after every failure, just really just capitalize on it.

I come into the office and someone tells me, hey, there's this going on.

I'm like, that's wonderful.

They look at me like I'm crazy.

Like, well, what's wrong with you?

This is very serious.

There's consequences for this and that.

And

great.

Now we're going to, that's happening.

What are we going to sit here and bitch about it?

No, absolutely not.

We're going to take the situation and we're not just going to fix it, but we're going to just blow it out of perspective and make use of it in many different cases and scenarios, right?

That's what a lot of people don't do.

They're people like, oh, you know what?

You know, my advertising campaign is not doing so well.

I'm failing.

I'm going to lose all my money.

And they just sit there in the corner.

They don't understand how to leverage that and take it and turn it into something.

Right.

Every time my phone rings, I'm excited if there's a problem.

When it's too calm, I'm stressed.

They're just not good.

So it is not a good thing at all.

So if things are going great, I'm terrified.

I'm scared.

Actually, at that point, there's singles in my head telling me that

you might fail, but this time, not in a good way.

So I think people need to realize that a lot.

Well, there's that quote, right?

There's no growth without discomfort or something.

For sure.

For sure, it's true, but people read all these quotes and they don't really do anything with it.

Yeah, facts.

So, I mean, I want anyone that's watching this podcast, I really encourage you, the next time you experience a problem, next time something happens, your husband comes to you, your wife comes to you, your boss comes to you, you need to sit there and analyze, okay, this is is happening.

There's nothing I can do to change it.

I can get stressed.

I can get pissed.

I can feel many different types of emotions.

What can I do right now to take this situation, not just fix it?

I'm going to fix it.

Of course I am.

I'm a problem solver.

So

how am I going to take this now?

After I fix it and apply it to make it better, more efficient, and solve other problems along the way.

So that's what, that's the perspective people need to have.

Yeah, turning lemons into lemonade.

100%.

Yeah, a lot of people fold under pressure or tough circumstances.

A million percent.

That's why there's entrepreneurship is just an overused term because

if you can master the trait of not folding under pressure and learning how to leverage failure, learning how to take problems and smile, because you know at the end of the tunnel, it's going to literally generate you millions of dollars, you'll do great.

Yeah.

When we started selling crest,

you know, we had a small supplier years ago.

This goes way back, way before we became top 50.

And the supplier just disappeared.

They dipped on us.

We had customers we delivered delivered for.

We have orders to fulfill.

This is years and years ago.

At the end of the day,

what do you do?

How are you going to get access to millions?

You know, at that time, we needed $20 million in capital to work with the partners that we work with now.

Totally.

How are we going to do that?

So what are we going to do?

How are we going to do it?

If we, that situation wouldn't have happened.

We would never be in the position we are today.

I'm thankful to God that that supplier disappeared.

Wow.

Whoever was behind it, whatever's behind, whatever the reason was, if you are watching this podcast, I thank you from the bottom of my heart because it is the best thing that has ever happened to me.

Because if it wouldn't have happened,

there would be no change.

A lot of people just get stuck in that same cycle, comfort, right?

So, and genuinely, at that time, I was comfortable.

Things were going great.

Our stores were making money.

Our supplier was delivering.

Would we have grown to what we've grown now?

Probably not.

Yeah, it's such an interesting dynamic because a lot of people chase comfort.

100%.

I'll create problems.

problems.

Yeah, but once you're at that comfortable lifestyle, it's almost like, what's the purpose?

Yeah.

From there.

Some people find it.

Some people actually enjoy the actual comfort.

I don't know personally how.

When it's too calm, like I said, I get stressed out.

I'll create a problem.

And then that problem will solve 30 other problems that would have happened.

And it'll make us tons of amounts of money and make our stores tons of amounts of money and so forth.

So you got to fight for what you want.

You got to fight for what you believe.

And that doesn't come with comfort.

Absolutely.

Robert, this has been cool, man.

Been really interesting mindset stuff.

Where can people keep up with you, potentially get involved with YUnified?

Instagram at Robert, N-I-K-I-C.

For the most part, if you want to get in touch with me for Y Unified, just go to YUnified.com.

That's W-H-Y-Unified.com.

And

yeah, you know, be the shark.

You don't want to be on the other side of the actual table pitching your idea to the shark.

You should be the shark and you should jump onto a model technically something that works and

has higher odds than actually just starting a business on your own.

Absolutely, we'll link it below.

Check them out, guys.

Thanks for coming on, dude.

Hey, I appreciate you.

Yeah, see you guys.