Mina Elias: From MMA to Millions: Mina Elias on AI, Agencies & Amazon Domination | DSH #1519

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I was like, dude, earlier this morning, I was getting punched in the face and choked by like a guy who was on top of me. Like, this is fine.
Like, this is not that bad. You know what I mean?

All of these things from MMA, like 100% translate into life and into business.

It was very like a foundational building block of like, I could handle failing and failing and getting rejected and all this shit because it's like the exact same thing that you've gone through for so many years.

Okay, guys, Mina Elliot is here today. We met at an event about a year ago, right? Yeah, yeah.
It was a year. I think we it was at Barbara Stripes Streisand suite, right? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.

Fun time, man. You've been doing the same thing though, e-commerce? Yeah.
E-commerce agency.

We actually, I started, you know, investing in software. So I built a few

software companies since then.

I mean, I've always kind of looked at people who've built software companies and it's like, dude, I want that skill. I was always afraid of it because it's like, you need to learn coding.

You need a CTO. You have to be dependent on CTO.
But ever since AI and shit like that, it's been way easier to like, you know, get into software.

So I actually developed my first software with like $6,000 only. Wow.
And we were already profitable.

Nothing crazy, right? But it is something, you know, again, Neil Patel, you know, he has Uber Suggest. And I always looked at that.

I was like, fuck, this guy's a genius, bro, because he built something that people really want and they're willing to give their information for free and to get that thing.

And that was like a massive lead magnet for him. So I was like, if I did something similar, I could do that.
I have a massive list, you know, nothing crazy, right?

I mean, again, this is like brand owners. So like 25, 30,000 brand owners on this list, e-commer e-commer brand owners.

And I was like, if I could get them into software, which is like, you know, whatever, anywhere from $10 a month to like $100 a month to even like free freemium model, a lot of that could then lead into like an upsell into the agency, which is like average $4,000 a month.

You know, it's a much bigger ticket, but at least I could get way more people in.

And so when AI came out and like lovable and, you know, like being able to develop with the cloud and things like that, I took advantage.

I was like, yo, yo let's like build something and i was able to get something pretty cheap off the ground and then go from there that's solid yeah i feel like software companies get higher multiples too right yeah yeah if if you're tech enabled so a typical agency will like sell for like three to four x maybe five to six x if you're like doing five million or more net profit or ibidah um but if you're tech enabled i've seen ones like get 10x or 12x multiple offer yeah that that's how high like i've seen it honestly it's bullshit but like when they look at it like if you think about it you're the person who's buying the the company if you're the pe firm or whatever that's buying the the agency you're like cool what sort of tech makes their them like have ip or makes them better and so when they see like you know a regular let's say account manager can manage like 10 000 a month and or 20 000 a month in revenue retainer right and then with tech they can do like 40 000 or like i give you the perfect example i built a software part of like the tools of the the ai software that we have is

you can put it into uh like a listing you could put an amazon listing and it will scan the entire listing and then it will use every audit that i've ever done on a listing to tell you how to improve it and then it will go in and create a creative brief on on exactly like how you can improve the the images so my creative director used to take an hour to do to do a creative brief that she can pass on to the graphic designer yeah creative brief will have to take into account like what are the selling points of this product what makes it better than everyone else you know kind of selling you the product with ai now it takes her 10 minutes and so now she can do six times more so i think that's what you know pe firms and and people buying an agency will will look like.

Okay, cool. With the software, your one employee is now worth way more or like you're, you know, you're way more leveraged or you're way more secure.
And so I think that's why the multiples go up.

Yeah. AI is just saving everyone time and money, basically, right? 100%, dude.
And the way that we've been doing it is very simple. Like, I'm process mapping everything in my agency.

And I'm like, okay, cool. Let's take the sales process, for example.
The sales process used to be, you know, a lead comes in.

And then from a lead, we're like looking at the lead, like building in kind of enriching the information, like who are they? What's their brand?

How much money they they make uh and then from there like getting the setter to like try to get them on a call and then qualifying them and so we looked at the process like okay what can we replace with ai and you know for example like one thing could be enriching it so as soon as the lead comes in you know if we push it to ai and say like hey can you do deep research like perplexity is great you can you do deep research the thing about perplexity is unfortunately you can't connect it with zapier and stuff like that but it's like you know can i just have instead of my social coordinator or social you know sorry my sales coordinator or my sales admin instead of her doing all the manual research, can she just plug it into Perplexity and say, hey, can you do deep research on this, you know, brand and tell me, you know, information, whatever.

Now, instead of her taking like, you know, 30, 45 minutes, it takes her five minutes with AI. And then it's like, okay, cool.
What's the next thing?

You know, like you get it on a, on a calendar, on a, on a closer's calendar. And then what about like the reminders? What about showing up on the call?

And so when you, you can kind of inject AI wherever you can, it's not going to fully, I know people are like, dude, AI is going to replace your company.

I'm like, bro, it's not going to replace your company.

It's just gonna make you way more efficient and so with the exact same team that you have now you can do like 10 times more but i don't think it's gonna like i have a friend that keeps hitting me up saying yo ai is gonna replace human he's our business is gonna be like no longer useful i'm like bro what what do you mean like it you can replace certain pieces of your business with ai but like an ai that does everything like that if we get to that point bro we're all chilling like we'll ais will be our slaves they'll do everything for us and we'll do nothing and we'll fucking having an amazing life yeah and then it develops consciousness and goes haywire.

Yeah, what is it called?

Skynet. Then it becomes Skynet.
Yeah, we'll see what that happens. Yeah, I hope that I'm loving it though.
I'm using it daily, dude. Yeah, what do you, what are you using it on?

Researching podcast guests, finding good restaurants. I'm uploading my health scans to AI and asking for advice.
I'm asking for relationship advice, friendship advice.

I'm asking for legal contract advice. I mean, legal, dude.
Let me do everything. Crazy, bro.

Like, honestly, that's the one thing is like, it used to cost us so much time and money for like legal stuff and now it's like a fraction and i i remember this i i was going into like this uh legal thing with my landlord and in my last place and i said okay i have to respond with a legal like whatever uh like a legal response or something so i fed it into chat gpt and like it you know said hey this is what's going on like can you help me blah blah blah and it drafted and then i sent it to a lawyer that specializes in these cases and i'm like hey this is what i was going to send them is there anything you you think we should add blah blah blah he's like dude this is perfect i can't add anything and i'm like yeah it was i was like like, that's when I was like, dude, like, this is fucking crazy.

Yeah. Any contracts I get now, I upload it there.
I say, how can I get screwed over in this contract? Dude, I would do the exact same thing. I have my assistant do that.

Like, now I no longer even read them. I'm like, I send it to my assistant.
I'm like, yo, first, you know, pull all that stuff out.

And then I'll do a quick scan and obviously skip over the indemnification and all that kind of like, you know, the templatized stuff. And this is go into like the, how do I get paid? Or

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And it really, it saves a ton of time, bro.

And it allows you, it creates like leverage. Like anything that you can, like, for example, this is how I've used it in my business.
I have 90 employees, right?

And there's all, they're always asking me questions.

So I created an AI like that took every single YouTube video, every single SOP, every single training video, anything that I've, that's been me on it, where I've kind of added value.

And I fed it, it's Cassidy. It's called Cassidy AI.
I fed it into Cassidy AI's knowledge base. And the best thing about Cassidy is like, it's a closed system.
So ChatGPT is like open.

It'll get you information from anything. Cassidy, I said, no, I want it to be closed.
So only from the documents and the transcripts or whatever that I upload. I like that.

And now I, and I connected Cassidy into my Slack. So there's a Slack channel called Mina AI.
And anytime someone has any question, they just ask Mina AI first.

And then it's like, it gives them this full response that I've like stress tested. It's pretty good with links to the certain like, okay, go watch this video.

And at minute 12, 13, Mina talks about, sorry, Mina talks about how to optimize your listing or, you know, Mina talks about how you can increase your bids if you want to show up, like things like that.

And then I tried it again with like sales. So I took every single sales call I've ever been on.
And now I'm asking it questions like, hey, you know, I'm, I'm about to hop on a call with this client.

This is their information. Like, what has Mina done in the past to convince clients like that to work with them? And then the answers were like really, really good.

Like I was like, damn, dude, like, this is pretty solid. I need to set that up for all my podcast episodes.
Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, there's so much, but you can, you can literally pull like all the transcripts transcripts out and then every time you have a guest you can say hey based on like you know previous questions that have maybe performed well on socials too um like what do you think i should ask them and like stuff like that yeah that's sick dude yeah i'm pretty optimistic about a i know my last guest was uh basically very doom and doom but um i like it yeah i don't think we'll go crazy i think it's like kind of the next version of the internet like it's you know we've had the internet since the internet came out and then I think the first like evolution was like Google and then Google came out and it's like yo finally, you have an internet that's searchable.

Like imagine what it was like before, bro. I remember like, I think before Google, you only could only have like the URL.
If you had the URL, great. If you didn't have a URL, like you're fucked.

You know, like, how are you going to find anything? Yeah. There was no like a browser.
Like there was no like search like Google.

Then Google came out and then the internet became like way more useful. And I think this is just the next step in evolution is like, okay.

taking everything to a next level on the internet is like not only is it searchable but now it's like intelligent you know it's it's helping you it's optimizing according to like your patterns and it's trainable too i've learned more in the past year from ai than my whole life of school dude 100 like i i've been asking it like for example this is this is one thing like i did recently i was like i was wondering if i pumped and dumped the market with all like the shit that's happened like tariffs and all this stuff because i saw the tariffs coming and i didn't i didn't like 100 know how it's going to affect the market because i'm pretty young in the market like i've only been investing in stocks since 2020.

like as soon as covet hit i was like yo this is the perfect time to buy like carnival cruise lines norwegian cruise lines yeah american airlines opportunity yeah and i was like for sure they're like they're either all going to go bankrupt or they're going to come back and i i kind of bet on them coming back and they did and it's still so far my best returns like percent wise but um I was like, yo, let me build this scenario.

I'm like, can you tell, like right now, this stuff that happened with the tariffs, Trump announced the tariffs, the market took a big dump. I said, can you like tell me exactly when has that happened?

When was there a market pullback in the last 10 years? And then it listed every single time, like there was like a, I think an Ebola thing. There was like COVID.
There was like,

you know, some a bunch of like other like political stuff, geopolitical stuff. So then I'm like, okay, cool.

If I invested $50,000 a month into the market, you know, for five years consistently buying the S ⁇ P 500 versus if I invested 25,000 a month for five years and every single time the market hit a dump, like I'm back testing, every single time the market like went down and pulled back, I bought, I took all the money that I had and, you know, the other 25,000 and bought the market at the bottom.

What would the difference be? And after five years, the difference was like a hundred thousand. Wow.
I know. I'm like, dude, we're trying to time the market, bro.

Like just buy, buy the market consistently and like time. Dollar cost average.
Yeah, dollar cost average. And that's like, that makes so much sense.

Like, you know, how many like experts have talked about dollar cost average and just keep buying and like at this point like you're either a day trader, which I know, you know, friends who are day traders that are making millions a year, but dude, like they're like day trading, you know what I mean?

And then I know like everyone else who has active income, like me, like a business, whatever, and doesn't have the time to day trade.

So they're just putting money into the market and bidding on the U.S. economy.
Right. Yeah.
There's interesting advice you give. I even asked for business advice on scaling revenues to ChatGPT.

It honestly gave some good advice. Yeah.
Yeah. I feel like that's sometimes a little bit too generic.

Like I've, that kind of advice I've gotten has been generic, but like I think research stuff, I've gotten really good stuff, you know, looking at documents, evaluating risk, building like

business plans.

Honestly, like what it could do is it could take your information and then it could, it could like expand it and make it like, how many times have you seen like someone respond back with an email and it was like, dude, that's like such a nice structured email.

And you know, like they put it into AI. You put it into AI.
Yeah. Yeah.
100%. You still doing any fighting? I know you were a fighter in the past, right? Yeah.

I, I, um, I, no, I stopped competing and fighting, but I've been fighting since 2013.

You know, did a bunch of jiu-jitsu tournaments, smokers, fights.

And then, you know, COVID hit and I, you know, obviously everything shut down. I started getting a little bit of weight, you know, kind of like there's really not that much training.

And then after that, I got lung surgery. I got COVID and then turned into pneumonia and I got lung surgery.
Yeah. Holy shit.
So that took me out for a bit.

And then by the time I was like fully back, and I bounced back to, it took me a year post-surgery. So it was like maybe end of 2022 when I fully bounced back.

And I was back to like the same level that I was before. And by then I was like, dude, okay, I'm, I'm like so much in business.
I'm, I'm doing all this stuff.

And it takes a lot of discipline to like compete because you really, you have to be about it, bro. Like you can't be going out.
You can't be, you know, eating bad. Like you have to be super strict.

And then now that I'm in Miami, I actually have like a private. like a private instructor.
So I've been like

utilizing that to like get better faster than just like regular training, but I probably won't compete. I might do some jiu-jitsu tournaments and stuff like that, but that's it.

Yeah, it's good to have that confidence and that health. Dude, I think that fighting is the absolute best sport in the world, bro, especially for like business.

Like I feel like I am so much further ahead than most people in business in like the same amount of time, mainly because, and, and I didn't do anything that popped off, bro.

If you think about it, I did like all the hardest shit. Like my first business was an electrolyte supplement, which is very successful still.

You know, second business was a women's supplement. Third business was an agency, a marketing agency, Amazon marketing agency.

And if you think about it, like those are not easy businesses, you know what I mean? And so it's not like, yo, I did some shit in crypto and it popped off and I was lucky.

It was like, I did the hardest shit.

And I think it's because of like, you know, MMA and fighting and like having, you know, all of my company's score values are basically like, you know, fail fast and fail forward, which is comes out of MMA.

Or, you know, I hope you guys are enjoying the show. Please don't forget to like and subscribe.
It helps the show a lot with the algorithm. Thank you.

you know uh also like full accountability and full ownership extreme ownership i know you know you hear it a lot in like the military and stuff like that but with mma you learn like bro like who can you blame are you gonna blame your coach you're gonna blame your your diet what are you gonna blame it's 100 on you once you step in the cage if you lose it's because of something that you did it's because you're not good enough you didn't train hard enough you you know didn't sleep 100 you didn't eat 100 you you know fucked around you missed training so you know there's just so many of those core values that you learn in mma that apply into the world of business, you know, like having that like thick skin, like for, you know, so many times, bro, like there's fucking shit hitting the fan in my business.

Like my entire finance team quit like a month ago, right? And then my wife looks at me. She's like, how was work, whatever? And she also works in the company, but she's not involved in everything.

And I'm like, oh, like, you know, I'm just like dealing with the finance team. They all quit.
You know, there was only like. two or three of them that all quit.
They were like bad fits, whatever.

But she's like, she's like, yo, like you're, you're always like so chill. I was like, dude, earlier this morning, I was getting punched in the face and choked by like a guy, like, who's on top of me.

Like, I'm, I'm like, this is fine. Like, this is not that bad.
You know what I mean? And I think all of these things from MMA, like 100% translate into life and into business.

And like, you know, always being calm under pressure. And I think that, like, that was a huge addition for me.

Like, it was very, like a foundational building block of like 2013, I started MMA, 2018, I got into business. And like, by then, I was like, very, very very weathered.
You know what I mean?

Like, I could handle failing and failing and getting rejected and all this shit because it's like the exact same thing that you've gone through for so many years.

And in a physical way, like in a physical way, you get punched in the face. In a physical way, you get dropped.
You know, you get choked out. You get so humbled.

You know, like you show up in the gym, bro, and there's a 52-year-old dude with white hair, gray hair. That, you know, you start like, you know, sparring with or rolling with and you get destroyed.

And you're like, yo, I fucking suck. You know what I mean? And like,

it removes your ego and it like removes all of those negative things that kind of can hurt you in business. And you're left with, like, okay, I can handle anything.
I'm calm under pressure.

I'm going to keep moving forward. I'm always going to get up.
And I think, honestly, that's like one of the biggest reasons I'm successful. I agree.

I noticed the top dogs in business, they all have really good mental resilience. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, dude, business is like, it's brutal, bro. Like, I mean, it's so brutal.
Yeah.

You've seen like the people who are getting screwed in COVID.

And I think the problem, you know, is, is like, there's so many things that you have to be amazing at. So I hate the people that always say like, oh, dude, just find whatever you're not good at.

Go find the best people in the world and hire them. And I think that's the stupidest thing in the world, bro, because it's like, imagine, imagine this.

Imagine you going to the mechanic and you're like, yo, my car is not working. So it opens up the hood and he's like, hmm, yeah, like, dude, you're this, that, and this is broken.

And this is, so it's going to be like $3,000. Because you're an idiot and you don't know shit about cars, you're going to to get scammed.

And it's the exact same thing when you have that mentality of like, yo, I'm not good at this shit.

Like I'm going to be like a pussy basically and not fucking learn anything and, you know, go and hire the best people in the world.

You need to be like really fucking good at that thing before you can ever hire an agency or an employee or anything like that. Because how can you keep them accountable? You know what I mean?

How do you know? How can you even have a conversation with them?

Imagine if you didn't know shit about finance and then your CFO or whatever that you hired, a partial CFO, your accountant starts telling you, hey, man, like, are we doing accrual basis accounting or cash basis accounting?

Well, okay, we got this money in. We have to pay it out.
Like, do we put it as a liability on the balance sheet or not? And you're like, like an idiot. You're like, well, I hired you to be the expert.

So it's like, oh, okay. In my opinion, as a fucking accountant that has never owned a business, this is what we should do.
And it's like, dude, how is that? Like, how is that possible?

You know what I'm saying? Like, that's not a way to run a business. So my strategy is.
If I don't know something, I need to be at least better than 95% of the world at it.

So I'll go and find like a consultant and be like, okay, cool. Like, I don't know shit about finance, for example.
What are the basics that I need to know in business?

Okay, you need to understand your P ⁇ L. You need to understand income and expenses and cash versus accrual basis and this and that and like whatever, you know, all these things.

You're like, okay, teach me. So you learn, learn, learn, learn, learn.
And then at that point, you're like, it doesn't take that long, bro. It takes like maybe like 20 sessions with a consultant.

And at that point, you know, someone who's a master has downloaded like a lot of his brain into your brain. And you're like, okay, cool.
Now I understand this shit.

Then you go and hire people and you're most likely going to get fucked at least the first two times. I have like a rule of three.

It's a weird number, but like every single time I've hired a role, the first role always fails. Second role is like better, but rocky.
Third role hits. And

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I wish it was faster, but my theory is like in the first role, you don't even know what you're doing. You don't know what you should be looking for.
You don't know what their KPIs are.

You don't know what you should be checking. And so it usually doesn't work out.
It's usually like, you know, like you don't know. Like you come in, you bring this role.

You're like, okay, what's my KPIs? How, you know, how can I give them a raise or not a raise or whatever? You don't know.

After that role fails, the second one, you're like, okay, at least I know what I'm looking for now. So I'm, I, I know what I'm not looking for.
I'm not looking for X, Y, and Z. I'm looking for that.

You're still not fully 100% with the KPIs, all that kind of stuff. You look for the second role, you hire them.
Again, it doesn't work out.

And usually the third one, you're like, I know exactly who I'm looking for and I know exactly what they need to be doing.

And I'm good enough now, you know, and you have enough information from whatever the consultant and working with the last two roles.

And it usually works works out i love that approach because a lot of people hire for stuff they know nothing about and they get taken advantage of right yeah i mean how else can you do it if you don't know you know what you're doing if you don't if you're not if you're not at least competent in the subject like how can you keep anyone accountable

you had a an exit already right yeah i had one brand that exited it was um a women's supplement brand that process teach you a lot about uh future exits and structuring everything yeah 100 so that brand um i mean the reason that that i initially started thinking about an exit was

I partnered with two people and now I learned a lot about partnering. I hate partnering, right?

And I partnered with two people and it was like very, like, I was decent at business. I actually at least had an Amazon skill, right? I knew how to grow brands on Amazon decently.

Like, you know, this was back in 2019, 2020. So I wasn't a master like I am now, but,

you know, I partnered with two people and

a certain point, I was like, okay, I feel like I'm wasting my time here. The brand is doing well, but like these people are not carrying 33% of the weight of the business.

I feel like I'm carrying 75, 80% of the weight of the business.

So I think it's better off for me to just sell and, you know, cut my losses, take my energy and put it into my business or other businesses.

So the, you know, the first thing is I, I, um, I learned that like, when you're coming from a place of you selling versus someone asking to buy, you're way weaker.

And I remember listing the company for like, I think 230,000 or something.

That's what we thought like we could get. And like every single conversation, like they would negotiate me down and down and be like, you don't have this, you don't have that, you don't have this.

And I also didn't come from a position of strength. I was like, yo, listen, the company's solid.
It's going to grow. So yeah, I could hold off.

But part of me was like, yo, I just want to sell to get, you know, get out of this partnership.

And the other part of me was like, I'm the one who's going to sell versus like them coming to me saying, yo, this is an attractive asset.

So that was the first lesson is usually when you're the one selling, you're in a weak point and and you're going to kind of get bullied a little bit.

When you have an amazing cash flowing asset that you don't need to sell, that's when you get like better multiples. And then I started learning a lot more about like deal structure.

Like some people came in and they said, I'll give you like all cash. Other people said, you know, I'll give you a total better exit, but part of it's going to be cash.

Part of it's going to be on a payout. And I started learning a lot about that kind of stuff.
And now I like fully understand like how businesses and buying businesses and selling businesses work.

And at the end of the day, like you have to look at a business as a, as a, like in a cash flowing asset or a car. Like if I'm selling a car, you know, if I sell the car, the car functions.

You can get in the car. You can drive the car.

The more status it gets you or the faster it goes or whatever, like whatever like kind of the benefits are of a car.

the more you can sell the car for with the businesses the same thing like if it can run without you if it uh can grow it without you if it's like uh positive cash flow if there's low risk you have to think of it as like is it you have to think of it as like if i'm gonna go buy this thing what's like the chance that it's gonna make me a good amount of money and it's stable and it's going to grow and it doesn't need the owner of the company.

And so then when I started building my businesses, I was like, okay, you know, at the time, like, it was very heavy, me driving the whole business. Now I'm like, okay, cool.

How do I build a business that like is turnkey that you can hand over to someone that will continue to, you know, grow and make money?

And it's ultimately like when you can become independent of the business. So being able to like acquire customers on demand, right?

Without you being the face or without referrals or, you know, depending on your like relationships, all that kind of stuff.

The second thing is you definitely should have a CEO in that seat and someone at least with a track record of like, okay, over, you hired a CEO and over the last 12 months, the CEO has grown the company by X percent and you were just on the board and you were like not really the operator of the business.

This way, when you sell the business. Now the business is not like, oh, you know, great, bro.
Thank you. I'm going to buy your business.

But also part of the deal is you have to stay on for two years because I have to make sure that the business runs. You're like, yo, I'm not part of the business.
I'm just on the board.

I can stay on the board for two years if you give me five percent but i don't i no longer need to be involved and then it's like understanding like what are all the risks of the business do you have key man uh like risk so like for example if your entire sales team will crash and collapse if one guy goes and you know you're closing like you know let's say 80 000 a month in revenue and all of a sudden if this guy goes you're going to close 20 and you can't quickly replace him or you know can't replace that level of talent then okay that's a big risk so identifying like where are the areas of risk in the business and as the more that you can remove them, the better.

The more that you can put automations and like reducing human errors, the better. And obviously profit, like at the end of the day, bottom line profit's going to matter.

There are some add backs that you can add into the business. So like, let's say right now you look at the profit of a business, it's like a million in profit.
But like.

Let's say I spent like $5,000 like trying to sponsor like a podcast and $20,000 sponsoring a conference and doing all this random shit that like did not tie back to like actual revenue.

It was testing. I could technically add back all of that profit.
So, but at a certain level, you're like, okay, profit after add back. So you're going to get your total profit.

And that's what you're getting evaluated on. And then it was also understanding like who is the buyer.

So if you have like a 500K net, uh, you know, profit business a year, you're probably going like someone who is like very, I wouldn't say wealthy, but like high earner W-2.

So like, let's say like a really strong lawyer or, or someone who's like, or maybe even a doctor. And you're like, yo, I'm done doing this.
I want to own a business.

And so you're kind of like probably transferring to that kind of person.

When you get into like one, two million range, you're probably buying to a company that does you, that does what you do or like something complementary that is much bigger.

So let's say a company that does 20 million in profit a year will look at my company, for example, if it's doing one or two million and say, okay, cool. I will buy you.

You'll be a nice arm to the business. I can put more clients and I can immediately make my money back.
And also like by having that extra profit, their multiple is going to get even better. Right.

Then, when you get into the $5 million profit range, then I'm like, okay, those buyers are now more like private equity.

Like, they are people with a lot of money, like they have a fund and they're looking to buy businesses that run on their own. And they know like that they can strategically grow them.

Like, but also they're not too worried because once they have a cash flowing asset, they can also lump it with other cash flowing assets.

So, for example, you know, they could buy an Amazon agency and a Facebook ads agency and a Google agency and an email agency, like a bunch of agents, TikTok agency, and all of them are serving e-commerce clients.

And when they put them together, yeah, there's cross-selling opportunity and stuff.

But now, if each one of them is doing one or two million in profit, five of them are doing 10 to 12 million in profit. And now that becomes a very strong, you know, business.

And they bought me for like a three to five X multiple, but when it's 10 million in profit, you can sell for a seven to eight X multiple. So they immediately have that arbitrage.

So, I mean, I learned all of that stuff pretty much. Is that the goal for you to sell the private equity?

You know, certain businesses, yes. So, for example, the,

I own a MetSpa, you know, and we're opening a location in Santa Monica. And the, the beauty of the, of that business is that it's very like replicable.

The hard part about it is getting talent, acquiring talent. Now, I've been able to acquire talent on demand pretty much in my agency.

And it's a way harder business to acquire talent because it's like Amazon hasn't been around that long. Nurses and, you know, that kind of business has been around for much longer.
So,

you know, that's kind of one of the beauties of that business is my agency, I'm trying to get clients from all over the world. So I'm like, I'm marketing to everyone.

With a Metzpa, you're marketing to like a three to five mile radius. So if you can have success with one location, you can just keep repeating it again and again and again.

So the goal with a business like that is set it up completely. We're completely removed from the business as owners from the beginning.
Everything is documented, like every single part of the process.

You know, we have funnels for marketing and getting clients or patients. Like the every single nurse operates the same.
Every single location operates the same. Everything is the same.

And then once we have like a substantial number of locations, sell it to private equity.

Same with the software. Software, the goal is the same thing.
Software, there's an inflection point. Like it starts off being like difficult.
Then it gets easy for a while.

Then it becomes really difficult to scale. So what I found is like, okay, zero to like, you know, 15 or 20,000 a month in revenue with software is pretty difficult.

Once you hit 20, getting 20 to like 60, 80 is, is much easier because now you have something that's working repeatable. Yeah.
You just need more marketing. The back end is the exact same thing.

Once you hit 80, you know, to 100,000 and you want to get it to two, three, four hundred thousand, it becomes very hard because now it's like, how do you, you know, get that many people in?

And so for me, the goal is to get like as close as much as I can to like that $70,000, $80,000 a month mark and hopefully like sell the software.

And I think software multiples are anywheres like from six to 10X revenue than profit. That's crazy.
Yeah, that's that's so far.

Like I've talked to a bunch of brokers, business brokers, and that's what they've said they've been selling that type of business at. That's recurring monthly revenue, right?

And yeah, they know that to take it from 80,000 to like 800,000, the cost is not much. It's the same cost, right?

It's like, I mean, each additional customer will add a little bit of cost, but that's like data cost.

It's not like, it's the same development team, the same like, let's say five, six people you're using in development.

If you have a hundred customers or ten thousand customers is usually the same yeah so that's why like a big company like you know one of the softwares i'm building is a is a solution for myself so internally this is dude this is the biggest scam let's talk about this right stripe uh authorize.net you know the biggest payment processors in the world you'll notice one thing will happen these people what they'll do is they'll make your payout a big lump sum and when you look at it you're like you know you go look at the bank the lump sum is you know today was twelve thousand six hundred eighty two

They make it incredibly difficult for you to see where that money came from.

So you now have to go into your Stripe account, go look at the payouts, match that payout, and then open up and see what's the description of the payout.

And then take all the fees out, say that's the fees. You don't know which fee is for each client, or you do know.

It's like they, they, if you look at the fees, like if it's four clients, there's 18 different fees or 16 different fees.

So

in my opinion, like, isn't that scam vibes? Like, it's like, why are you lumping all this stuff?

So what I'm building is essentially a way to integrate your, your CRM, which is hubspot for me right now, into an e-signature, like where I can have my legal, you know, agreement where you can sign and billing platform all into one.

So, you know, from the CRM, I'm like, okay, this is the lead. I want to create an agreement for, you know, PPC services, $1,000 a month plus 10% of revenue.

And then creatives, one time, you know, $1,500, whatever. And then click a button.
It sends, it creates a legal agreement, puts the quote in there, sends it to the customer.

They can choose if they want to pay with credit card or ACH, whatever they choose, takes their information in a secure manner, and then puts it into our billing platform.

And then from there, we're using our own merchant processor.

And that merchant processor will deposit every single client

transaction as a separate line item. So let's say like Sunday or Monday, whatever, I can have eight different ones.
They're not going to lump some my payout and say, here's the payout.

I'll see each one and I'll know like this was a $2,000 retainer, but I only got $19.98. Okay, there was a $2 fee here.

So it'll be very easy to identify, you know, let's say six months down the line, I can go back and say, who, who was that customer? You know what I mean? How much did they pay us?

We can find in the transactions versus trying to go back and then look at that lump sum and then go look into Stripe and everything's kind of complicated. And then.

Once they sign the agreement and they put in their information, it shows up in like

a customer management, like billing management software, like that side of the business, where, you know, you could just like see, okay, this customer was if if the email was already there it'll just say add a subscription but if it's not it'll say okay new subscription and then have all the subscriptions and the invoices all tracked in one place that you can easily just map to to quickbooks and now your accounting is super easy it will essentially eliminate like almost the entire role of the accountant like to a certain degree and so what i think i could do is like i could i'm gonna build it for myself it's gonna be super valuable because it's super valuable for me i'm gonna talk to 20 30 40 50 agencies you know i'm in a bunch of agency masterminds get Get them on it because my solution versus like everything on the market is like way, way, way better.

And then go to HubSpot and be like, yo, look at what we're doing. And by the way, like we've already talked to HubSpot, already talked to like Panda Doc and ChargeOver and DocuSign.

And they're like, yo, you guys are fucking innovating. And I'm like.
bro, this is the most basic shit.

Like imagine connecting us, your CRM to create agreements and having the payment information all into one place. And they're calling us geniuses.

And I'm like, dude, this is like, this is so intuitive. So I think I would go to HubSpot and be like, yo, like, you know, you have like whatever, 100,000 customers.

I've already made sure that this works very well in 80 to 90 or 100 of them. Let's, I'll sell it to you and, and, you know, you guys can scale it.
Or like buy half of it now.

I'll continue to, to be like the leader and we'll use your sales and marketing team to get a bunch of these people on and then you can full-on acquire it. Smart.
Yeah.

Solving your own problems leads to good business ideas sometimes, right? Exactly.

But I mean, that's, that's my business concept is always find a problem and then create a solution to a problem that's better than everyone else's solution and then validate demand for that.

So go talk to people like that would be the ICP, the ideal client for that solution and be like, how do you like it? And then get that feedback and have a feedback loop active.

And most people do, they start their business, whether it's a product, whether it's a software, whether it's an agency, and they stop talking to their customers.

Like initially, you know, you created the solution for a reason.

And I've seen it happen where like I've seen agencies that were amazing start to like go down, down, down. And I'm like, dude, I wonder what happened to them.

And it's, it's almost always they stop talking to their customers. The customer five years ago wanted something.
Today they want something completely different.

I remember when I started, most of my customers only wanted advertising. And I was like, okay, perfect.
I'm selling advertising services.

And then all of a sudden I started detecting like customers, they did no longer wanted advertising only. They wanted advertising and creatives.

And then eventually we got to a point where Amazon, the reason is Amazon kept getting more and more sophisticated and we were masters at Amazon and everyone else just kept like backing off and saying, dude, this shit is like too hard for me.

So now what people, when I saw, when I started selling advertising only, people were like, no, you know, we went with another agency. I'm like, why do you go with another agency?

They're like, well, we wanted someone to take the whole thing off of our plate. And I kept looking at my ideal clients, which are like, you know, think of like Bloom Nutrition or InnoSups or like.

you know, like all these big,

my whole thing, like out of the 200 clients that we manage, like 140, 150 150 of them are supplement brands like the health and wellness brands so that's my ideal client and those are like well-branded like omnipresent like you know hillary duff's brand for example she's on shopify she's on uh like instagram she's on tick tock shop like omnipresent that's the kind of people that we want and when i started talking to them they're like dude what am i gonna do with like advertising only ppc only like i need someone to take the whole thing off my plate and i'm like shit And then I immediately pivoted.

Like we found the best like creative partner. We found the best account management partner.
I found like a bunch of partners because I couldn't build the team fast enough.

So I'm like, yo, I'm just going to get some partners and make them subcontractors. Got them in.
I started selling full account management. There was some kinks.
We optimized, optimized.

And then I found the best process. And so it's like, at least I could have my level of service, which is like the gold standard.
Right. And then managing, you know, these other subcontractors.

And eventually I started replacing one at a time. We started replacing creatives.
So it's like, you know, I got a graphic designer, but that wasn't good enough. So we found a creative director.

And then the combination of the two became like really good. Right.
And then I'm like, okay, account management. We started bringing on a couple people.

We trained them under the, the, the like, you know, subcontractor that was working with us. And then we had that division.
And then we kept like adding the divisions internally.

And, you know, starting with partners is great, right? Because it's like, it allows you to move way faster and you can also learn from them. But I've always found that like.

once i have that as a as a baseline i can bring in my team internally and like take that as a baseline and make it like 1000 times better and that's like the the my company trivium that's like the trivium standard right is like everything is super dialed.

Like there's a very high level of quality control. And dude, I think that's the formula in business.

The formula in business is, you know, find a problem, create a solution that's better than everyone else, validate the demand, have a feedback loop, and then, you know, market it.

Yeah, feedback loops. That's how Amazon built their company, right? Dude, actually, that's who I got it from.

Amazon 100% built their company on like listening to the customer and like being obsessive about customer and like feedback and like customer satisfaction. Right.

And so I'm like, dude, I'm going to do do the same thing and honestly like 100 it paid off like obviously they figured something out right which is like you get the shit super quick convenient and if you ever have any problem you can return it and i'm like so fast these days it's like an hour sometimes yeah dude yeah some sometimes i'll get shit same day and i'm like it's nuts dude yeah it's like it must have been in a warehouse right next to me yeah and then you see the opposite of that when you see companies that don't listen and then you know that i feel like uh ClickFunnels, you know, go high level really past them now.

Yeah, I agree. Dude, GoHigh Level is doing some amazing stuff.

like i've seen the a lot of like what they've built and their ai capabilities i do think go high level is definitely now like way way past click funnels yeah because they're listening to their customers yeah i think i mean click funnels at russell like he did something amazing right and and he built like i think it was like what the first of its kind like the whole in integrating like landing pages and funnels with like you know marketing and sales and everything i think he was very smart but That is, I think, a perfect example of when you maybe get a little bit too comfortable.

That's what happens. Yeah.
Yeah. You can't get too comfortable in business, especially now with AI.
Yeah. Yeah.
People catch up quicker than ever now. Yeah, because it's like very easy for them.

I mean, this is honestly what I would do too, right? It's like, let's say, you know, someone had like a software company.

I would just go and rip that software company and then go talk to 20 different customers and be like, I actually, I did this with a product like live on a, on a class I was teaching for Amazon where I was like, okay, cool.

Let's, let's do this live with AI. I looked at an electric diffuser, you know, one of those ones you put like some essential oils and it diffuses at home.

And I'm like, if I want to create a superior product, what would I do? And I went into, you know, AI and I put, I'm like, hey, this is my product.

I'm looking to create an electric diffuser that's better than everyone else. I want it to have all of the benefits of the competitors, none of the negatives.

And I want you to like, you know, analyze the reviews and stuff like that. And tell me how I can innovate to have the best thing on the market.

Then I took an AI review summary of like the top 10 competitors, fed it into the AI and literally, dude, it sped out.

Okay, most of them don't have like um like apps like a software so creating an app where you could time like different things and like have multiple different like settings like a sleep setting or like a party setting uh you know having it also like have multiple uh essential oils that it can go through you so it's like not just one um self-cleaning uh you know being like uh using better materials that don't degrade uh having no no rust no leak uh no wire uh you know a long battery life all these things i was like dude it literally came up with like 20 different ways that you can create a way superior product.

And like, that's what I would do, right? I would go say, okay, let's say I wanted to compete with ClickFunnels. I'm like, hey, build me a, you know, build me a ClickFunnels.

And then from there, let me talk to like the top, you know, hundred people that use ClickFunnels. What do you, what do you guys think the limitations are? Oh, this and that and this and that.

Okay, perfect. Build that into your system.
Now you have a superior product. And I think product market fit.
I was, I was sitting with Eddie. You know, Eddie, right?

And we're talking, we're like, dude, what is the difference between like us and the people that like have these shitty companies in shambles?

Like literally, you, you go in, the company is in shambles and they're doing 10 times our revenue, 10 times our profit.

And I'm wondering, and it's like, the answer was they created a product so good, like the everyone wanted it. And I think that's the key.

Like if you're listening to this and you're, you have a business or whatever, if you create a good enough solution to a problem, like that's, that's it, bro.

Like sometimes that's enough and it goes kind of like viral. It spreads like wildfire.
Enough that some of these businesses, like, think about Amazon, bro.

If you've ever contacted Amazon, not on the customer side, if you're a seller, like someone selling on Amazon, if you've ever contacted Amazon seller support, bro, it is a nightmare.

Like everything is templatized responses. The people are all in like third world countries.
They don't understand anything. They can't tell you anything.
I'm like, dude.

Can I talk to a human being so we can solve this problem? Because this is like a pro, like an illogical thing issue that's happening. I just need a human to like think with their brain and solve it.

Bro, You get nowhere. And I'm like, this company is what? Like their market cap is like trillions of dollars.

Like, look at it because they have such a good product where anyone can sell on it. And then everyone who buys from it gets their stuff in two days and can return anything.

Like, who can compete with that? You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.
No one. I mean, no one else can do that.
Yeah. And as a result, they're able to like make all this profit.

And like their company is like kind of the back end is really like kind of a shit shit. Yeah.
And then when someone has a winning product, they just copy it. Right.
Yeah. Exactly.
It's like,

so here's the thing. A lot of people in e-commerce, right?

This is, this is the way that they're operating. They come up with a winning product, you know, call it a winning product or like that electric diffuser that they've innovated and they stop there.

It's like they don't look at IP. They don't look at like, how can I create, you know, intellectual property and defend it in China, you know, defend it at the border.

So like no one can actually come into America with something similar.

And a lot of them also like launch it and they stop.

I'm like, dude, the second that you launch launch your version one and it's on Amazon or whatever, anywhere, you should already be looking at version two.

You know, and that again comes from that feedback loop and already looking at version three. You don't want to get too far where like I've seen some people innovate.

Like I had a client once that did this like powdered ketchup. You take this ketchup and you put it into a container.
It's powder and then you mix it with water and it makes ketchup.

And I'm like, dude, that's amazing. That's super innovative.
It's super healthy. But no one's looking for that shit.
So that's, you know, that's way too much like innovation. You know what I mean?

So there's a certain line and you should always have the like kind of those levels, like V1, V2, V3, V4. But, you know, from there, you're like, okay, cool.
What do my customers want?

Like, let's have V1 and let's be ready because you know, like everyone's watching you. And again, the.

not only is that going to help you, but also like having really strong branding, that helps, you know, also like create some sort of moat because you can have an amazing product.

If you also build like a really good brand and you make people connect with you, then you're tapping into not just the logical side which is you know this is the best product for me but also the emotional side like i you know like um one of the best examples is black rifle coffee you know how like they're super uh military and veteran type dude like if you're a military person or a veteran like what other coffee are you gonna buy you know what i mean nothing you're gonna buy like that coffee because like of that emotional connection with the brand so that's also another thing to think about like one of our clients primal queen they went from zero to 10 million a month in the course of 11 months

Insane growth, like insane growth. Both of the founders already had like successful e-commerce brands.
And when they launched Primal Queen, they scaled like fucking crazy.

And one of the best things that they did was they like what Primal Queen is, is take Liver King's products, right? And they just said, okay, Liver King has a massive following.

Everyone's getting into the carnivore diet. But like, look at Liver King.
Like, he's for men, right?

So they're like, what if we did one for women? Like, and the Primal Queen, it's like for the women. Smart.
And the branding was all women.

And it was like very kind of like, not fully primal, but like primal, but colorful, like a little bit like, you know, pink and green and stuff like that. And I dude, they just hit the market so well.

And I was like, that was perfectly executed branding. That's brilliant.
Yeah. Branding's everything these days.

What are you working on next? Where can people find you and get in touch with you? Dude, working on next, honestly, man, just honing my skills, bro. I'm trying to be an incredible marketer.

I want to be able to acquire leads for any business that I get into because as I get bigger, you know, I'm able to build teams. Like I'm a massive, like I'm an operator, bro.

Like I know how to come into a company and make it like streamlined, efficient, build systems, processes, make it run like a well-oiled machine.

If I can master marketing and like acquiring leads, right now, a lot of it, it comes down to like my organic content being big on YouTube, all that kind of stuff.

But if I can master acquiring leads, if I can master the sales process in any business, if I can master recruiting and being able to hire A-plus talent and retain them, you know, on demand, you know, I already, I think, a pretty solid operations.

I think I can, you know, moving forward, like look at a business and say, okay, this is a good business. I like that business.

Come into that business, make it run like a well-oiled machine, bring the best people in the world, make them work in that company, and then scale like their legion and their sales and essentially like grow businesses on demand.

And so what I'm working on next really is just, you know, honing my skills and becoming like the best in the world at sales, at marketing, at finance, at operations, at recruiting.

I think those are really the biggest, you know, core pillars. And then, yeah, people can find me on YouTube.
Mina Elias is my YouTube channel.

A ton of amazing content if you're in e-commerce or selling on Amazon. And then on Instagram at Damina Elias.
Love it. Thanks for coming on, brother.

Thank you for having me, bro. Check them out, guys.
We'll link everything below. See you next time.

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