How do you turn a crisis into a premium acquisition?

hey everyone welcome back to fundraising demystify today we have the king of Swag Jeremy Parker with us who was the founders swag.com welcome to the show Jeremy thank you so much for having me it's great to be here you ultimately grew this 40 million in sales and sold it to custom me which I believe is probably one of the biggest in the in the space how did you take it to 40 million what was a secret sauce that was in 2016 to 20121 2022 y pretty rapid growth rate what would you account for that success yeah so in in the early days 2016 we had no Tech platform it was just me and my co-founder we were uh working out of a Wei work you know several offices before Wei work you know his apartment building pool room and all these different things we were traveling salesmen so our early days it was all just about um trying to make sales it wasn't about the revenue it was about learning so that was like 2016 was who are the customer let's talk to as many customers as possible let's frankly show up at their office and the worst I could say is get lost and we did that and because we were member of wework we had the ability to walk up and down the hallways of all the weworks we would knock on doors and people would say not interested not the right time but eventually somebody would have a conversation with us and we would either learn a lot from those conversations or we would make a sale and our first year we did 350,000 of sales which to us two people are pretty amazing no platform a swag.com coming soon landing page before I continue with the revenue I want to just say one thing why we got swag.com and why it was so important the key Insight early on was you could be showing somebody an ad of a pair of shoes on Facebook in January and it's an impulse purchase they they'll buy those pair of shoes right or a t-shirt or jeans if you show an ad of of Swag you have to find the person at the exact moment when they want to buy thousands of dollars worth of Swag for their company the odds that you're going to get person exactly at the right time is very unlikely so we want to get people whenever they see our ad and then remember the swag.com name you know seven months later and then go directly to the browser we wanted to turn these offline conversations to online purchasing seven months later you start talking with your co-worker about Swag and and it triggers oh swag.com let's go back into it I said it worked on us yeah exactly it works so we bought this domain name in the early days we didn't have any money to buy this name uh we worked at a deal with the owner where we would license it we license the name and we give the person a little bit of equity in the company worst comes to worst the person gets their domain name back plus payments for the time we rented it best case they got the amount of rent we also ended up paying the full price of what they we agreed on pre- negotiation and they were able to keep equity in a growing company so it was like this win where the worst case the guy gets his domain name back and some money for the monthly rent so we get this domain we start making sales second year 2017 we launched the first version of our eCommerce site honestly 500 plus conversations with the potential buyer so when we were building stuff 90% of the stuff we built it was like we knew it was going to work because it was being told to us exactly what the problems were and how to solve it and we used these people as like a soundboard it was like 10% new ideas that we threw against the wall there 10% of new ideas some of it worked some of it didn't work but the 90% we felt so confident that we're spending money developing it's going to work because we had these conversations so 2017 we launched the first version of the site we went from 350,000 to 1.1 million keep learning to three million keep learning to 7 million every year was doubling we got into covid covid hit 2020 and we had to Pivot obviously as you can imagine there's no trade shows there's no events there's no reason to BU swag no one's in the office so our whole industry dropped off a cliff even our sales we were going from 800,000 a month at the time to like 50,000 it's like March April and May were like hovering 40 50,000 it was nothing and obviously we had a big team at this point we pivoted really fast and quickly we're very lucky we know this that if everyone's working for remote everyone's disconnected everyone's feeling that let's pivot and become like the remote first company and how to engage your remote employees even when no one's in the office so really try to build out this platform where you could buy swag on our site we'll Warehouse it and then they can individually distribute swag to all their remote employees and we built out this robust platform for individual distribution after that our sales went from 7 million to 15 million it scaled up because no one else had that everyone needed it and we were frankly the only game in town to be able to do this remote distribution and then that kept scaling to 30 million then we got sold to custom in so I guess the short answer is we learned a lot from our customers built the right things we're obsessed with the product like really obsessed with with the product to make sure it's exactly right that's one part the second part is we figured out what traction channels work for us at different times early days we had no money me and Josh were traveling salesman that was our first year the second year we made a little bit of money so then we started investing in Google ads Google brings you a lot of customers but it's not necessarily the most optimized and we're maybe overpaying but then we got more customers in the door then we started figuring out well SEO makes more sense for us so we actually only focused on one traction Channel exclusively it's like only sales in the first year only Google the second year and only SEO in the third year and then once we met understood each of those different driving factors then we combined forces allowed it all to work in the fourth year and the fifth year and then adding no Partnerships things that you couldn't necessarily do in the beginning they felt confident with us so we just really kind of adding new traction channels to allow us to grow yeah I think this is an incredibly valuable point for all founders to to hyperfocus on a single Channel I see too many Founders especially their pitch decks of their preed and Seed like they put their go to market strategy of SEO pper click social media and they're like oh yeah you're going to accomplish all of those successfully in your first year first time trying to Market and I think what you guys what you just subscribe there of that hyperfocus one channel get to a certain amount of Revenue validate it and then before you graduate to the next one is advice I would give to any founder that is in that kind of zero to one stage You' seen the startup world people buying swag you cover just about any and all types of Swag what's what's a wild story of where you kind of sat there and was like this company bought what and how many of it we have a lot of those we had a client I can't say but they were a big gym company they wanted to reward all of their executives so they bought really premium amazing bicycles for every single executive and for us it was just like such a cool order every bike was I believe a little over than $400 and 300 of them and it was like fully custom the the whole thing was like really custom beautiful and different types designs that was a fun project to work on we had a client who bought cast iron skillets which I've never seen before I never thought that somebody would want cast iron skillet with the company logo on the base of it but they did people come up with different ideas to stand out and to uh really make an impact and that's what we pitched at swag.com it was all about the quality there are the classics the t-shirts the notebooks the pens the mugs but some people go a little bit different and it works for them and so we just want to be the partner to really help them you know get exactly what they want bicycle got be pretty cool thank you for that so let's let's talk about swag.com how did you come up with this idea of building swag.com and what ultimately let you to yeah so somewhat of a long story I'll try to condense it I was a documentary filmmaker in college that was my passion that was my background I was 19 years old I made this documentary film called 1% that one the veil Film Festival I was on the top of the mountain in Vil Colorado and I thought maybe this is g to be my career this be my life I asked myself two questions at the time is it really smack me in the face moment do I love what I'm doing do I truly love it and am I that good because question I see this future I'm 18 years old 19 years old and I'm thinking is this going to be my life I be a filmmaker at that moment I decided no know and I wanted to pursue something else so I went back to college I was a junior at Boston University I had one more year of film so I had to graduate I finished and when I graduated college I didn't know what to do my background was film so I thought maybe I can use some of the skills like telling stories filmmakers all about telling stories and building Brands maybe I could use that skill set for businesses I started my first business out of college called teas and tats it was a highend uh T-Shirt Company when you think about it you're learning how to manufacture and how to Market yourself how to build Commerce site this is pretty Shopify days like everything was frankly more difficult I launched this t-shirt company and it had some early success but this was 2007 the recession so everything was going under and no one wanted high-end t-shirts and so I kind of failed I guess you could say that my first startup but I got the bug of like loving to build things and figuring out that you know I was good at some things and not great at other things and I started a business with my brother called tipped media we basically partnered up with a YouTube stars and major celebrities and we help get Brands into their YouTube videos so now it's like the most common thing product placement right every celebrity is doing product placement in their videos but back you know 15 years ago when we were starting this it was very wild west no one was doing that and we would partner with Brands like State Farm Colgate Verizon and get those Brands into the YouTube Stars video and make these YouTube Stars Millionaires and then our idea became what if we actually got major celebrities like the biggest celebrities in the world what if we own their rights on their Twitter and Facebook feeds this is still very early pipple for example had 4,000 followers on Twitter and now he is like 40 million we didn't know any celebrities so we partner up with a guy named Jesse ller who your audience might know a founder of Marquee Jet private jet company EO cocine awarder owner of Atlanta Hawks and we started buying the rights to different major celebrities Twitter and we basically own their Twitter and Facebook feeds so early so if you combine this YouTube idea of building these relationships with brands and putting into YouTube videos and now the major celebrities that we own getting Brands and putting in YouTube videos it was a really exciting thing to kind of own and we were thinking at that time to start like a Groupon like idea where you could go to a guy like he wasn't a partner but LeBron James for example and you say to LeBron give me your 100 favorite products like what do you truly enjoy what you truly love let's say he says I love Lays potato chips and then we go to L and say LeBron James truly loves you can you do a deal with LeBron where he would post it to his social media fans and then every time somebody buys a bag aays he would split it with you kind of like a Groupon likee deal but promoted through social influencers we ended up selling that company to the guy Bob sillman's publicly traded company was very early on it was about seven months after we launched we built the company got a lot of these celebrity contracts and then flipped it to Bob San's company then after that I had a failure a three-year failure I started a social media company called vouch it was like a social networking app democratized in Oprah's Favorite Things for everybody so you could vouch for your favorite stuff see what your friends vouch for and like discover new things spent about three years doing that and it didn't work I raised a lot of money for that how much did you raise for that close to Six Million I believe at the time so it was significant it was the most We've Ever Raised or I've Ever Raised at that point and then after you have a failure and to me that was a lot you know we took family and friends money we lost investors's money people I didn't really know that well it's a horrible feeling I came up with swag right after that because my mindset was I had that experience with building something and it didn't work I spent three years building something it just didn't work the model was designed that it had to get really scale for it to ultimately work like social media is the hardest business to type of start and I thought I just want to start something that is I'm gonna make money from day one it doesn't have to be the biggest idea I could just start selling something it's a physical product I'm gonna make money and I just went all in on swag.com when I was 30 years old this was in 2016 and I had a key insight when we were starting I didn't know what exactly to build like every entrepreneur you have an idea and then you obviously pivot a lot and you change at the time I was 30 years old so I was going on dates a lot and a lot of the girls that I would meet honestly were these like office managers they were working at companies and they were buying swag I was thinking to myself the person who buys swag today is so much younger than they probably were in the past they used to be a 40 50y Old office manager now that's a much younger person if I had to get my mindset into the mind of of a young person when they're giv this budget for 10 $1,000 of their company money what's going to make them decide to choose one company or of another company and I started going down this rabbit hole and I started me and my co-founder Josh at the time we were calling hundreds of marketing teams and office managers and different people who we think at the company who would be in charge of buying swag and frankly even in the beginning our idea initially was let's go after the marketing teams because they have the biggest budget it could be a 10 person company but you can be buying millions of dollars with a swag technically if there's an Roi so let's go for the marketing teams because doesn't matter how big of a company they are you know employee account wise this all came from going on dates no it was a combination dates and tender dates that you're going on and these girls are like complaining about their job you're like that's an opportunity yeah no it was that it was just talking you I was 30 years old I had friends who were younger even my friends who were 30 who were in charge of this uh role of buying swag or they knew like who the I asked them who's the person at your company who buys swag now there's so many things that I learned in hindsight now I'm thinking I just had an exit and we'll get to that and I'm thinking about what I'm going to do next well what was amazing about the swag industry that I could do again like what aspects of it were so amazing and honestly all the things I write down we could get to this I didn't have any insight of that when we started like in only in hindsight it's like oh my God that's an amazing thing for example when somebody comes to buy swag they have an inhand date already in mind it's not like a long sales process it's like they have to buy something they're either going to buy it from us or somewhere else but they have an event coming up that's an unbelievable thing swag you don't have to make it until somebody pays for it it's a crazy business where somebody pays you up front and then you pay from the suppliers to actually produce it and that could come you know net 30 net 60 so the cash flow is unbelievable it's a business that literally every person I talk to knows somebody is the person at the company who buy swag or knows somebody or works at a company that buy swag so literally every conversation in everyday life it just leads to this conversation fourth thing it's the most fragmented industry there's 20,000 people in the industry that sell swag that seems overwhelming to entrepreneurs why why would I ever start a swag company but that's an opportunity if there's 20,000 clearly there's a model clearly there needs to be some you know automation or streamlining of that business so there was just so many things that frankly I didn't even know when I started all I knew in the very beginning was there's probably the person who buys swag is a little bit older this is all I knew honestly was a little bit older and now they seem to be younger and that mindset is different maybe they want to buy online maybe they don't want to talk to anybody maybe they want to focus on the quality aspect and not necessarily about counting pen so all these things just went into my brain of what could possibly be different if it's a younger buyer versus an older buyer and then I started doing a calls and had conversations and I realized that theory was correct I was wrong about the marketing teams that was my initial idea going after the marketing teams but after speaking to them I realized everyone goes after the marketing teams how am I is swag.com going to cut through noise and it was really the office manager at the company who had the keys because they didn't buy thousands of pieces they bought a 100 pieces or 10 pieces or five pieces they bought for their company but if they're buying it they're giving it out to their employees and now every employee has powered by swag.com on the inner label of the T-shirt or swag.com on the bottom of a mug it's basically introducing swag.com to all these other divisions that could buy swag so it's like our Trojan Horse to get in no I think it's fasing how you kind of took that one Arbitrage point of you know like there's a disconnect here in terms of because I I remember I've been buying swag since 2008 and it was always a pretty crappy experience and I remember you guys we ended up buying from you guys I think in 8 I think or 2019 as a customer and then again into 2020 and a couple other times so you're likely having trouble raising money or selling your company personally I've had four exits and I've raised over $145 million if you want a free coaching session with me just like subscribe and leave a comment down below letting me know what you think of today's video for a chance to win a free coaching session with me I'll select three winners every single month you just have to like subscribe and leave a comment down below for a chance to win now on to the video when it came to deciding when to raise money because ultimately raised you know a little over 3 million over the course of your business which you know to get to 40 million in sales is phenomenal a business which you kind of talked on the cash flow management side which I think probably enabled you not to have to raise as much as say a tech company but you know what trigger like when did you raise money why did you raise money and and kind of what was your strategy for raising money yeah so I think I made a mistake here people have different strategies and obviously there's different businesses that make sense to raise for I found myself raising for the wrong reasons and what I mean by that is as an entrepreneur I've had some previous successes I sold the company and I've had some previous failures frankly more failures than successes before swag.com it's a very lonely game to be an entrepreneur even with a co-founder because most people don't think you have a real job until they start to see it be super successful so you're kind of working in this weird phase of like is this ever going to work unless you really surround yourself with fellow entrepreneurs which I have some friends who are entrepreneurs but you're in a world where it's not real until it's real so you start to look for outside validation I think I did that for myself and how do most entrepreneurs try to get this outside validation you get press or you get a VC fund to to believe in you and I honestly believe that I probably raised money because that was what I thought you're supposed to do versus what we actually needed we didn't need that much money even 3.8 million that we raised it's a lot for me that maybe not doesn't seem like a lot for some of your audience there's different amounts but I probably could have built this into what we did for 500,000 if I'm being honest we never really needed the money in the early days it was about well we might want to grow a little faster and this or that let's raise them but then ultimately we raised it it was more of a safety net versus actually using for driving growth and I would say for myself the next time I ever start a business I'm only going to raise money if I really know the use for it if if I could take that money and put it directly to driving the business let me Che there with the the safety blanket methodology do you feel you would have made decisions differently do you think you would have hired differently or been less aggressive on certain marketing despite you're not actually using the money but knowing that it was there did it change your you feel it Chang your psychology honestly no and that's the problem in the early days it was me and my co-friendly we only had about five employees and we were doing over $3 million in sales the cash flow of the business was great we collected money up front it was an e-commerce so people Facebook would go to our website and pay $10,000 on a credit card and we would collect that and then our suppliers didn't need us to pay so we ordered from suppliers they printed it and they drop shipped it directly to Facebook that was kind of our model we were the middleman and we curated the best products the best vendors that was a heavy lifting to make sure it's quality but we didn't owe our vendors for 45 60 days we had insane cash flow we never were like we were as aggressive as we wanted to be because we had all this money up front that's how the model worked some of these orders could be a $100,000 order on the credit card our average order size was $4,000 in our industry the average size is $700 our average order size was $4,000 it was so much larger and they were paying up front which is not necessarily common in our industry the model made so much sense because who we were going after the premium nature of our products it was really high quality it was curated it was more honestly it was quotequote safety blanket but we never really touched it I never even CH I was always aggressive maybe if I raised a lot more money I would have been way more aggressive you know like and that's maybe people getting traps you know if you raise a lot of money you start doing a lot of different things and and you're less focused so I think by us raising 3. it wasn't that much it was really about 2.6 million the whole business and then Co hit and we raised 1.2 million that was really probably the only time we should have raised because it was very we went from 800,000 to like 50,000 a month in sale it was crazy I didn't want to fire my team I mean that's what we were being told we were told by everybody around this you got to cut costs you got to fire your team let people go I always felt that Co was a a shorttime thing it wasn't like a forever thing and I didn't want to kind of destroy my whole company just have to rebuild it so me and my co-founder cut our salaries to basically nothing we asked all the employees to kind of cut their salaries in half but they will make it up to them once we hit a r i want to avoid firing anybody if we could and we raised 1.2 million just if this ended being up longer than people thought we would be okay and luckily when we sold the company we had over 1.2 million still in the bank like we we raised in 2020 we sold November of 2021 we still had that amount of money still in the bank so we never actually probably even touched that money that g some flexibility to make decisions without having to be fearful of going under well it's so important one the fact you acted that quick to recognize the problem in the situation but what it came to raising that money was that an insid around from the people that invested in you previously did you go out and find new investors how did you go about sourcing both it was by far the most stressful period of my life at the time my wife was pregnant we just left New York City which was terrifying to be in New York City during Co we're living in my parents house I saw this business that we scaled to 7 million 100% growth you know you know from 2016 I thought we're on a rocket ship and then looks like it's about to crash crash down it was insanely depressing and scary frankly and I was calling everybody honestly every Insider you know most of our current investors did not they were nervous also and I don't blame them it's not like saying I'm like everyone was nervous no one knew what was going on so we probably raised half of that from current investors half of it from completely new people and we gave a ridiculous price the price at the time was when we did 7 Mill I in Revenue I think we raised it at 14 million valuation we doubled to 7 million and we raised it at 18 million valuation we only went up wasn't a Down Round We went from 14 to 18 but if Co didn't exist we would have probably raised like a 30 million plus at that point and we just were we just need the money in we were okay dead losing ourselves it was more about like a security at that point smart decision- making and I also respect that you understand the multiples in your industry and the industry you're in I I talked to so many Founders that are like well we're doubling we should deserve like sass valuations like no not the case but I would say with your Competitive Edge Plus growth rate and to have an outstanding exit not too much later let's switch to the customing journey so how did that come about would they poach did they knock on your door did you run a process you you Bankers what was your process yeah we weren't actually looking to sell at all and I think oftentimes that allows you to actually get the deal over the Finish Line because it's the most stressful process trying to sell a business it's like two jobs like you're still keeping the business running and you need it to grow because if any slow down it's going to make them pull back they and and the other time you're you can't really tell people on your team because you don't want people get their hopes up or start not focusing so you really have to keep in a very small circle on who you tell and and you're dealing with that process of diligence and negotiating all the different stuff with custom Inc our first interaction with with them was I believe end of February 2020 literally three weeks before covid I had a friend reach out and say Hey I want to put you in touch with somebody at custom Inc I know you're not looking to sell but just to be in contact with him you know like who knows what lead right they're a big player in their industry they probably have heard of you at this point it's probably good to just start conversations maybe there's a partnership it wasn't about acquisition at all at that point and we met with them and we had like an hour conversation and it was great they actually invited us down to their office to just continue discussion but it was never about acquisition it's just about getting to know each other as people in this industry and the time we were supposed to go was when Co started they called us back up and say hey guys obviously CO's happening we just delay this for a little bit no one knew how long it would take just put this meeting on pause said okay let's focus on our business and then our business went off a cliff and it was horrible we had to you know I didn't even think about custom make at that point I was thinking about how to survive how to raise some money how to get through it in October of that same year they reached back out to us out of the blue we didn't speak to them for seven months or so can't do in public math but you know several months from that moment to they said well how are you guys doing I guess like a quick check-in how do you guys survive this at that point we pivoted really hard to individual distribution our 7 million in the previous year we were on Pace to do over 10 million we ended up the year at 15 million but we were on Pace at that point in October November and December were crazy we said we're doing great we're up this year the whole industry was down significant like 40% and we were up that was like wow that's kind of crazy so then they started to I think change the conversation in like the end of 2020 to more of you know maybe you guys could be a good fit for us starting those kind of conversations and I was thinking well I never thought about selling we're so early and frankly I was just I was in survival mode and now that we survived we were thriving I'm like why would I sell it this point we just kept the conversations going that wasn't really a mindset early 2021 then something really crazy happened I don't know if it was released that somebody mentioned it or just the timing people were following our journey and realizing that we were growing and this is the time to buy us there's about eight other companies reached out to us unprovoked we had no Banker it wasn't it was like conversations like big really large companies in our space and adjacent spaces saying hey you know we love to have a conversation we think you guys could be a great you know partner with us or acquisition or another one that was the same size as us at the time asked to merge with us there's all these kind of different things in the Woodworks and we kind of asked ourselves like why is it happening right now maybe like we're not going to get this opportunity again where there's so many people who are interested maybe we capitalize on this and frankly we were growing over 100% every single year I was taking very little salary my co-founder was taking very little salary I was having my first kid my my co-founder third kid at this point we were so was like maybe it's the right time to sell for the right buyer and after doing the conversations we realized a customing felt like really the right buyer for us for several reasons we were focused exclusively on B2B at this point we've done about 20,000 companies that buy from swag at the time it was like 10,000 or so but it was only B2B custom Inc was primarily consumer they do some B2B but their business was consumer they had this entire backend process of printing manufacturing and insane buying power insane shipping rates and our feeling is we're not going to be really competing with each other we're going after two different segments but sharing the same back end so the cost structure would be the same and we're going to be actually make a lot more money and and frankly the people at customing just felt like people we wanted to work with you know they were entrepreneurial they were very nice avoided a lot of the challenges that we anticipated we were going to have and so we felt like it was the right decision in August or so of 2021 they sent us to Loi and then we ended up closing in November so things do take time there's a lot of diligence that's involved luckily when we were selling the business we went from 15 million to over 32 million that year of the sale so the sales were keeping the pace of what we were presenting and how we were presenting it so everything just worked perfectly no it sounds like the best timing ever to sell I think in the last 20 years 2021 was the best time for anyone to sell but also just continuing to pump your numbers and it sounds like given your positioning in the market probably targeting a lot of tech companies or Tech forward type companies that thrived in that time period your revenues you know State skyrocketing whereas maybe more Legacy type customers were struggling it's actually crazy in 2022 this is after that you know this it was a turn like the tech was not the best place to be in early 2022 Silicon Valley Bank was one of our biggest customers they went under in March of 2022 they were buying like a lot of stuff you know I mean Yeti Coolers I mean unlimited stuff it was crazy Silicon Valley Bank we had I still have I some Silicon Valley Bank swag in my house as a relic the timing was amazing for us but I still think was a very good deal for custom me because our business is very strong it was still growing it was outperforming the industry and as a whole whether it's a huge growth every single year it doesn't always happen but the world needs swag businesses it's just they buy for different reasons and our Focus was really about quality from the very beginning you don't want to spend thousands of dollars on something that ends up in the trash right it's not good for the environment it's not good for a company so spend a little bit more make sure it's premium quality people actually use it and they'll keep coming back we go back to the custom Meek you had a couple other people bidding on you and people having conversations with you what was the negotiation process like I feel founder always kind of glaze over this part but in the reality when you're in the pits you're having that conversation what was that like what was going through your mind what could you tell your team what could you not tell your team was that great I I didn't tell my team anything I didn't want to distract anybody because I wasn't really looking to sell fully until we had the price that made sense it was flattering right somebody wants to buy you it's flattering but the numbers initially that they were presenting were not the numbers I would ever accept so it was interesting and who knows I kept saying to them it doesn't seem like this is going to work but let's stay in touch that was it I think the best tactic is to really be willing to walk away like have a price in mind we had a price in mind and we weren't going to sell for below that any numbered below even if it sounded like maybe we should come down we weren't super actively looking to sell we were profitable we were grow over 100% year-over-year we couldn't really predict that 2021 was was going to be the top right no one could know that so we didn't think that frankly it was you know it wasn't like a genius of us to know that it was going to be at the top and sell it was just we had a number we knew what the traditional multiples of the industry were and that's what they were trying to lean on that's what everyone who reached out to us was trying to lean on we knew we weren't the traditional model because I said to them every single time what promo company what SWAG company is growing over 100% every year none what SWAG company was growing in covid none everyone was down we grew over 100% so you can't just treat us like a traditional promo distributor it has to be a premium on it what promo company is able to collect money up front and then owe vendors 60 days late doesn't exist what promo companies a 4,000 average order size everything about our model was different so stop trying to treat us like the same I think the mindset for us me and Josh was just let's just walk away if if it's not going to come and ultimately they came to the price that we could live with yeah and yeah I think that's like the fact that you held your ground and recognized your core differentiation and called them out on that and I think that's something that one you got to build a great company first and foremost to have that kind of negotiation you have to have a great company that's truly differentiated but I think the the way you approached it and the conversations you had it sound like you know that ultimately led to you having the outcome that you had and if you would have waited six months later you know don't know it wasn't truly a negotiation and it it's it what it was just something that like I want to be transparent it was more a transparency with them I valued them a lot I think they were great people they're very smart they built amazing business it wasn't like trying to play games it was just there's no reason to continue the conversation unless it got to the place where we felt good because we weren't going to sell and so it wasn't it it was just trying to tell them we are different we know we're different and this is what we're willing to do was it only you and you're a co-founder at the table did you have advisers or investors we had some investors and we had actually one really good investor who was in The Promo industry and he was just a good sounding board he basic said to us and everyone said this to us we had a lot of investors who hated the deal at the time now they liked it we've had investors who were saying to us they're not going to approve it they're not gonna sign it we think it's a bad deal for you we think it's a bad deal for us this could be way more than you're getting I always found the people who were so excited some of these investors were getting 20 times their money what I found is that the the investors that were obsessed over the moon were the smaller investors the investor put 10,000 50,000 100,000 in they were ecstatic it was like we're changing their life I got balls of wine sent to my house during this process people were like this is good to changed my family's life and the investors who put in maybe a little bit more put maybe 400 500,000 in they wanted to keep going because to them that did you know making a couple million doesn't change their life right they're worth tens of millions hundreds of millions in some cases so they just want to keep us going when you take money from investors you really have to be super aligned maybe even have conversations like my next company I start I'm going to be really upfront from the very beginning this is not going to be a multi-billion dollar business this is what you should expect at the best case this is a great outcome I want to make sure we're aligned so that we don't have the issues at the time of selling it was stressful and it didn't need to be this was a great win for everybody and for me and my co-founder we're already stressed out as the deal going to close are we making the right decision internally we had we had doubts maybe we are selling too early when you have a lot of smart people telling you're selling too early you start to think maybe you are selling too early at the end of the day you have to just go with your gut that was it like it was me and my co-friendly was a little high because of 2021 but no one was it we weren't going to sell unless it was a certain price it wasn't a negotiation it was being upfront and honest and wanting to go into this with a good partnership if we're going to do it I want to feel good about it for everybody I think it's really well said and I think it's you that key piece that you brought up about telling people this is not a billion dollar outcome and and being out fir with investors I I talked to so many Founders a lot of Founders don't realize that or they don't they think they have to keep making up a story that has to be a billion dollar outcome to get money I think being honest in the front and then running your business accordingly not trying to raise tens of Millions for your business but managing the business appropriately to be less Capital hungry so I appreciate that I'll say one thing Jason every entrepreneur is different and everyone has their own number of what changes their lifestyle some people might think they need to be a multi-billionaire or they need to build a billion but I'm telling you you don't like there's so many other outcomes for entrepreneurs and and frankly I know Jason you're an investor and I'm sure you're a great investor but just the mentality of an investor is very different than the founder you have to realize you're on the same page to an extent you're really not if in in many ways at least how I felt I had some great investors I want to put great investors these investors are putting 20 100,000 a million dollars into 20 different companies yes they want you to succeed yes they're rooting for you yes they're going to help you but if you fail they're going to have a bad dinner that night maybe they'll have a bad weekend if you're spending seven eight years on your life and you fail you're not going to get a of bed for months you're going to be depressed it's a different level of scale this is all you have this is your life and this is yes it's their life but they're Diversified you're not frankly Diversified at least that's how I felt so when it came to the decision of selling yes you want to do what's right by the investors we made a lot of money for a lot of investors I felt like I cleared that threshold but at the end of the day as a Founder you should make the right decision for yourself as well I think there's a balance you don't want to do a deal that's bad for invest but if you do a good deal if you feel in your bones that you're getting the right price for the deal and it works for you then you should be allowed to take that deal you put everything into it it's your business I don't that's just how I feel with it I completely agree I think founder need to recognize that but also give them the take the right money when you take the money to know that you have those options on the road it's hard to tell is how you know down the road someone might change your opinion and you know combat you in a particular transaction but you know happened with me and selling well selling a liquid Sky to what was supposed to be to Samsung but because one of our board members got greedy basically blocked the deal lost time deal fell apart for a couple other reasons but that time we lost for him trying to get more money out of the deal against us like behind our back completely Bing the deal and screwing us and putting us into a hell of a turmoil for a year until we ended up selling to Walmart so it's important to always get aligned both with Bard and and investor so I appreciate you sharing that before we wrap up I just wanted to ask you are they parting words for Founders that we haven't covered already that you would want to share yeah I assume your audience is you know seasoned entrepreneurs new entrepreneurs everything all in between you know there's a famous quote says like fear kills more dreams and failure ever could the mindset of like not doing something and I think a lot of entrepreneurs I know this from you know friends with a lot of people who are entrepreneurs I'm friends with a lot of people who are aspiring entrepreneurs everyone has an idea but not that many people do it and because they're fearful of what's gonna happen and I I say is when you start a business you have to have a thesis you have to have an idea but that idea you should be open to changing it you can't be so set on it so really what it comes down to is your idea most likely is not the right idea ultimately it changes million different ways it goes in million different directions just start I say with that mindset being really okay to getting feedback really okay to change your opinion it doesn't mean you're failing it means you're succeeding the more you fail the quicker you fail the more you succeed when we sold swag all my friends said wow I can't believe it happened so fast from starting in 2016 to selling in 2021 seems fast I started when I was 22 years old I sold when I was 36 my other businesses and I've had some failures and successes along the journey entrepreneurship is a lifetime sport the business that you're in today might not be the business that's going to make you right but it might teach you something that will make you be better the next time and that business might not make you but that's going to teach you something the best thing you could is just learn every single time and don't walk away being like blaming other people or blaming time of like we were launching the right time or we too early maybe those are the cases but maybe there was something you learned that you would do differently next time every time I do something I I want to take something that I learn and make myself better my next business is not guaranteed to succeed because of all these learnings and because of My Success right there's ups and downs but I think I have a better chance of succeeding now because of all the things I've lived through and all the things I've seen I know that when something really bad happens at the scale of like a covid there is a way to get through there is a way to Pivot there is a way to figure out a niche and kind of grow and scale when everyone is cowering and and playing in defensive mode maybe that's even the right time to attack I just think for the entrepreneurs go for it be okay with learning be okay with pivoting ultimately you're either going to win or you're going to learn what would be the best way for people to learn more about you or to reach out to you if they interest having a chat with you yeah reach out to me my email you can reach out to me to jeremy. Ian I.P Parker gmail.com love to connect reach out to me on LinkedIn Jeremy Parker and thanks so much for having me Jason that's been a pleasure thanks Jeremy thank you for watching today's episode as a reminder I'm your host Jason Kirby I have built and sold multiple companies with over 135 million in transactions as either a Founder operator investor across multiple Industries I'm currently the managing director and founder of thunder. BC where we help companies and bounders at all stages navigate what capital to raise and who to raise it from and help improve company's odds of raising Capital if you need help reach out to us at help. under. BC if you like Today's Show please share with your friends give us a like or comment down below and as a reminder this show is published weekly and the get notified new episodes and our newsletter be sure to go to our website at join. thunder. BC and if you sign up today I'll send you a few freebies on how to negotiate a term sheet how to get a free list of relevant VCS and much more that's it no more Shameless plugs thank you and see you next week