Ep. #902 - Entrepreneurship: Amazon Style

00:01.40

Andrew Morgans

What’s up, Hustlers? Welcome back. This is Andrew Morgans, founder of Marknology, here as today’s host of Startup Hustle covering all things e-commerce, Amazon, beyond Amazon, entrepreneurship, you name it. Before we get into today’s episode, I want to give a shoutout to our sponsor, Wix. Our friends at Wix know a thing or two about turning a scrappy startup team into a global organization that serves millions of people. And they want to share what they’ve learned with Startup Hustle listeners in their new micro-podcast series called Ready for Takeoff by Wix. This is super cool if you guys know what Wix is. Wix has been helping people become better creators with websites and all kinds of things. And when you tune in to Ready for Takeoff by Wix, you get to hear from Wix founders and company leaders. They share super short lessons to help you build better programs and teams faster. That’s something I can get behind, so subscribe and follow Ready for Takeoff by Wix wherever you listen to this show. Now, without further ado, Chad Rubin, welcome to the show. I’m so glad to have you here. Yeah, this is actually our second take on today’s podcast. We really let down some fire last time, and I think we had a power outage or connection issues or something.

00:58.59

Chad Rubin

So happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

01:12.67

Andrew Morgans

The episode didn’t come through, so we’re hitting round two. And it was such a great conversation. We wanted to circle back up, and Chad’s so gracious with his time to get back on here for you, listeners, to learn really what he has to share today. He’s in a remote location. I’ll let him decide if he wants to tell you that. But he stepped aside to tell us this. I want to get back into Chad’s story, where it all kind of started, or at least the entrepreneurial journey. So, Chad, take us back again. You know, where you really first started thinking about entrepreneurship or how’d you get into this. Like was it college? Was it like being raised in an entrepreneurial family? Where does it start?

01:51.19

Chad Rubin

Yes, I would say that I lived in it, growing up with my family. My father owned a vacuum store and struggled, so that was my one glimpse into what being an entrepreneur was. And I really wanted to know part of it, so I was a third-generation college grad. I decided, okay, let me focus on what my parents’ deficiency is, and went into finance. Then I went out to Wall Street. Then I got blessed covering internet stocks of all things, which is where I discovered Amazon. The Amazon Marketplace was blowing up, and I started helping my parents start selling their wares on https://amazon.com as a reseller.

02:14.88

Andrew Morgans

Boom.

02:29.43

Chad Rubin

And then I survived three head cuts on Wall Street. This was in the great recession of 2009, and I was fired. It opened up a massive door for me to start my journey. It was a blessing.

02:39.44

Andrew Morgans

Okay. And during the time on Wall Street, you were reselling on the side for dad. I think you glanced over that, but you were kind of like taking their products may be from the vacuum industry that kind of like in the early days of Amazon and putting them on or what was happening there.

03:03.26

Chad Rubin

Yeah, they had a lot of access to inventory, and I was just helping them list on Amazon. My mom was doing customer support. My dad was doing the fulfillment, and it was when times were a lot different back in the day. Um, I mean that was like a one generation selling activity.

03:15.50

Andrew Morgans

Um, yeah, ah yeah, no, I’m trying. That was really early. I honestly was in a band full time.

03:21.82

Chad Rubin

2007 2008 2009

03:30.69

Andrew Morgans

The professional band at that time. Yeah, I was getting paid to play guitar, and I didn’t have a vision of e-commerce. I think it was 2012 before I got in, so um, quite ah, quite a bit early, and I remember even in 2012 like Amazon was.

03:32.90

Chad Rubin

And

03:47.70

Andrew Morgans

Like whispers compared to eBay, at least like it seemed like it, and a lot of people were focusing on eBay doing big stuff on eBay, but like Amazon was like you had to have UPCs. It was kind of difficult to enter, so you were early, and yeah, and they wouldn’t even call it a gold rush then but.

03:53.21

Chad Rubin

Moon.

03:58.77

Chad Rubin

This is like the pre-gold rush. Yeah.

04:06.35

Andrew Morgans

So one thing I think what’s interesting about that was somewhere along the way while you were resisting entrepreneurship or resisting business like you really had it in you and in regards to knowing what to do? Um, so early that you take on like I’m just going to China’s new marketplace. I’m trading stocks, and I’m working on Wall Street, and I’m going to go. Helped dad. It makes me think of Gary Vee, and you know, something that makes something that resonates with me is I talked to a lot of guests on the show and a lot of them that grew up. Um, or I would say not all of not everyone that grows up with an entrepreneurial family. Some of them are like I grew up in an entrepreneurial family. I knew this was my thing from day one.

04:42.66

Chad Rubin

No.

04:45.37

Andrew Morgans

I hated it. I didn’t want to do it. Ah, you know I I was gonna run and do anything from business and for me as growing up in a missionary family that was me I did the church religion. No, thank you. I saw it as eating my family apart as far as the work of it and finances to finances were.

04:57.23

Chad Rubin

Mo.

05:03.90

Andrew Morgans

If you’re in a missionary family, finances are not something you care about. So I ran the other way too. So I resonate with that. Um, so thinking back to that time because I know, so I know your history already. So I’m trying not to jump the gun, and I want to make the story go along there. Um, how’d you go from there?

05:15.45

Chad Rubin

And

05:23.15

Andrew Morgans

How’d you go to the next step? How’d you go from kind of just reselling and and and that was a side thing and um, you know getting fired from your job and then you’re just like okay I’m gonna do this next thing. Okay.

05:30.31

Chad Rubin

And yeah, yeah, so I think entrepreneurship is all about digging into problem-solving and understanding what those challenges are, and so we were merely just resellers, so we had, I mean yes, in the early days, there was just maybe one person competing against us, and we would get the buy box. 7% of the time, but as more and more people start to discover this, the buy bots percentage starts going down, and the next question is like, well, what’s the next layer of this, and so it’s like Alibaba going direct. This was already happening, by the way, at that time with bonobos. Crucial memory, if you remember, I started circumventing Compusa and circuit city and selling their stuff. Direct. So the world was like going direct to consumer, and the question was, how can I go direct to consumer on Amazon, which is now known as the private label business on Amazon right.

06:14.99

Andrew Morgans

Um, the.

06:26.20

Andrew Morgans

I love it. Ah, I wasn’t actually part of the Amazon community when I learned about private labels as well. I was working in the car parts industry, and it was my first e-commerce. Um, first e-commerce gig, and they were like, hey, we have all these distributors and parts figure out how to put these on eBay and Amazon um. And no particular order, and we just kept getting shut down by certain distributors, and my boss was kind of snaky like really I mean he was he ended up in prison so to put that in perspective not with me but like later on and because he was just he would do different things, and so he was always trying to like lower price below the map and. Um, I really learned how to do what I do now by working for someone that was making us bend the rules, you know, and it was um, you know, it was things like tonneau covers and like ah big ticket items like that where if we lowered the price we would. We would get a bunch of sales bushwhackers.

07:08.95

Chad Rubin

So.

07:20.99

Andrew Morgans

Stuff like that, and then he was like, well, let’s go to China and just do our own. We can do our own things. He’s kind of one of those like the real alpha type of guys and, um, definitely not the approach I would take today, but it was something that was just like you can just go to China and just create a brand, and you know when you’re not. Ah, guess you don’t grow up around brands or something like that. It’s completely different to think about. Um, so you’re solving problems. You’re sourcing your own brands, ah it’s taking off like how did you know about like branding I know you knew about like vacuums and parts and selling stuff like that and list products. But how did you start being like, I’m going to package a brand?

07:42.90

Chad Rubin

So.

07:56.26

Chad Rubin

Ah, you know, well, I mean, it’s hard to build a brand when you’re selling vacuum filters and Coffee filters and air filters. Ah, I would say that it was just, you know, I was helping my father at a very young age with his store which I would work there on the weekends, and that’s.

07:56.55

Andrew Morgans

And do this thing.

08:16.50

Chad Rubin

Kind of thinking about how I got that creative spark. I would actually help him build windows like help him display in the window various different things and change the assortment pattern of when people walk in how they come into his store, so I was just exposed to that at a very young age and you.

08:21.40

Andrew Morgans

Okay.

08:34.83

Chad Rubin

When I discovered this problem of okay resellers, direct consumers. How do you solve that? It just came to me, right? It was like, okay, how do I build something substantially better than whatever exists today, and can I solve this problem? Do I have the do I have it in me, the experience in me to solve it and? I was super duper early, so it was kind of being at the right place at the right time and being lucky and putting forth the effort to make it happen, so margins back then were like 90%. I’m not going to lie like it was like software margins back then.

08:59.73

Andrew Morgans

I Get um.

09:10.66

Chad Rubin

And that’s not what’s happening today.

09:11.41

Andrew Morgans

Yeah, it’s gotten harder. Um, okay, so from there, you’re getting parts. You’re getting great margins. You’re like, this is working. I guess I do have it in me. I’m early, like wow, this keeps going going going. Um, inventory. Software nothing like that existed for sellers at that time. Um, you know, it very archaic was it was uploading spreadsheets with tracking numbers sometimes if they were coming over from distributors that way it was you know waking to set my alarm at 2 am m when I was at that startup I legit had to get up at one am to enter tracking numbers. Um, go back to Ben for my boss.

09:30.24

Chad Rubin

So.

09:47.91

Andrew Morgans

Um, how do you start solving some of these things early on?

09:51.75

Chad Rubin

Well, I’m going to give you a bad example which is like building muscle, right? and so you build you build, and finally your body looks good, and your body has some muscle memory too on top of it from like when I was younger, and so I just had a. Very ruthless focus and obsessive focus to make this work and to make it happen. So initially, we had our own warehouse. I had roughly about one employee in the warehouse where we were using an iPad. We tried every inventory software out there, and that’s where I came up with the one new idea, which was okay. Rasa and Amazon were selling on eBay at the time we were on evolution, then we went to Magento, then we went to Shopify. I’m dating myself now, and ah, yeah, and so it was like okay, well.

10:38.45

Andrew Morgans

Now Magenta was discussing.

10:49.21

Chad Rubin

There’s no software out there that can actually like them all. A lot of them are point solutions. A lot of them can’t work with my transaction volume unless I spend $1000000 and go with something like NetSuite, so I started thinking about building Steuben, and we started building from that point on, like running a product business. Building a software business simultaneously at the same time.

11:10.40

Andrew Morgans

And now it makes you feel like you’re absolutely losing your mind, at least me when I’m working on these projects and jumping between the different things, but it’s like I need this to get this and it kind of just all starts happening as you start plugging holes. Um, you know we’re standing up in a warehouse, and that’s. That’s all life I’m living. Thankfully there’s some software that already exists out there because of, ah, you know, leaders like Scubana, um, but it’s still like okay, what’s the next thing, and you don’t know the next thing until you’ve done it before you know you don’t know what the next thing is and you just start getting in this mindset of like well no one really knows what the next thing is when you’re innovating. Ah, you’re just you’re innovating and whether you’re innovating in your own little business. You’re innovating like in an industry. I think the same things apply. Um, so like ah ah.

11:53.71

Chad Rubin

And I think that’s interesting, right? Because I like innovation. Yes, you solve a problem, and then you come across one mover advantage that has a short, ah very short window for you to execute on because like there’s always somebody that’s behind you that wants to replace you.

12:08.45

Andrew Morgans

M.

12:12.30

Chad Rubin

So like in the product business, I just knew that there was a short shelf life and even in the inventory space, right? Like we had competitors come out after us, and there are constantly competitors around and even with my newest venture, which I’m sure we’ll talk about later. Um. I’m ready, thinking, like okay, I got to move quickly, I got to innovate, I to keep Moving. We had a hustle. We got to push, and that is really what I’ve been doing my entire career.

12:36.26

Andrew Morgans

I know, and ah, and for me and on a personal level taking that one step further like even understanding that you’re at a retreat right now and doing a lot of mindset stuff. Um, for your health and like for me, it’s been push-push-push my whole life like I mean I’m from the dirt. Ah, I Bootstrapped, played my way through college, and bought my own car like all that kind of stuff you know you’re pushing. You’re working hard um in entrepreneurship. It’s been like, okay, I’m on this Amazon thing early, even being in it eleven years. There are people before me, and there are people after me, right? and um.

13:11.58

Chad Rubin

And

13:15.70

Andrew Morgans

You’re in a silo, and you’re like, okay, I’ve got to why? This is a thing I’ve got to push before Gen Z is here or before the next Gen or before, um, and I think that you can go your whole life. This is something that I’m constantly learning. Ah, you think you learn it, and then you, you’ve got it for a year, and then you forget it. You got to relearn it.

13:20.33

Chad Rubin

Yeah.

13:31.43

Chad Rubin

So yeah.

13:33.92

Andrew Morgans

You know, but it’s like pushing is not the way, right? Like it’s like you track the right things to you? Um, so like being a pusher out of survival mode and then trying to learn to like more, So let things come to me that should be meant for me. Ah, versus like versus pushing, I think there’s a fine balance to it. I would love your thoughts on that.

13:50.86

Chad Rubin

Yeah, yeah, let’s talk about that. It’s really interesting. So growing up, I had nothing. I think we had a very similar experience. Maybe somehow a little bit dysfunctional, or we were missing something in that experience as a child during our adolescence and so I. Ah, I came from this scarcity mindset and the scarcity mindset is playing to not lose, and now I have 3 sails under my belt which is really nice.

14:10.17

Andrew Morgans

No.

14:24.39

Chad Rubin

And in this specific business with Profasee, I’m trying to build something back differently and better with a mindset of how I play to win, like what playing to win looks like, not playing to lose, and having a much more abundance mindset and I think that comes with like doing a lot of the self-work and the coaching that work that I did with. It is helping me, and like I constantly need more reminders of that, and as you said, you learn it. You lose it if it’s like riding a bike you get back on, and sometimes you just need a break away to really bring like bubbles up inside of you to bring that back into your consciousness.

14:59.15

Andrew Morgans

Wow, I Just, um, that just hit me, you know, playing to not Lose. Um, I’m sure I’ve heard that before, but I’m not. I think it just hit me today. Um. And just thinking about that, I mean I’m just racking my brain about the difference in a strategy between playing to win and playing to not lose, um, and in so many areas of my life, I play to win. I really do. I play to win. I don’t even think about losing. I don’t think of it as an option, and in other areas, I’m playing to not lose um and why.

15:21.74

Chad Rubin

And

15:28.32

Chad Rubin

M.

15:32.22

Andrew Morgans

You know what? That’s a difficult or scarcity mind. Whatever the cause is that that forces on some areas and not in others is, um, something I’m going to have to think through. But maybe we found the title to our episode because I think there’s a lot of meat in that. Um. You know whether you’re one mover. That’s always been my advantage because I’m the David versus Goliath smaller character. By the time the big ones come, you know I got to be out in front, I got to be out in front. Um, or I’m going to get smashed by the crowd. I got to be out in front. I gotta hit this guy first because if he hits me, I’m done I’m skinny. You know, like that kind of thinking. Um.

15:55.00

Chad Rubin

Ah.

16:05.64

Andrew Morgans

And I think that it’s that transition phase. Um, you know you’re in a stage if I can speak plainly that’s like you’ve sold 3 exits now, which is like I met you at Prosper, which we haven’t mentioned yet, but that was how I was introduced to you as one of the original founders of Prosper and then.

16:13.25

Chad Rubin

Yeah.

16:23.43

Andrew Morgans

We started talking. I learned about scuba, so you know that kind of thing. Um, now we’re talking about Profasee, and I think you said 3, so there’s another one in there. Um, maybe it was the Amazon business. Okay.

16:34.39

Chad Rubin

Yeah, I had an agency, I had an agency, I had an agency wholesale business. I still have my Amazon Ecom business, and I’m using that as like, ah, it really dog foods and incubated new ideas, which is pretty cool.

16:45.46

Andrew Morgans

I love that. Yeah, I have one too. That’s like people, my apparel company is an e-commerce business that you know honestly it’s under none. It’s always been under a million dollars a year. Ah, but it’s something I just get to test all my stuff on, so that’s ah, that’s a brilliant idea. Um. Okay, so where do I go from here? Because honestly, you derailed me. I think that’s just a thought that I just want to keep thinking about. I’m like, I need to move on with chatting. But we’ve talked about um Stubana. Let’s talk about Profasee a little bit just because that’s part of your I think that’s part of creating the industry that we’re now talking about. Um.

17:19.62

Chad Rubin

Yeah, so I am running my e-comm company. I had an awesome advisor at Amazon. This is back in the day when you actually had people you could talk to, like real human beings that wanted to enable you and empower you.

17:22.95

Andrew Morgans

Talk to me about how that happened along the way.

17:39.51

Chad Rubin

The platform was James Thompson, so we stayed in touch. I actually talked to him today, and we stayed in touch, and I was like, hey, I’m building this new software, and I know you sold a lot of stock at Amazon. You were very early at https://amazon.com, and what do you think about joining. And joining the seed round as an investor and being helpful as an advisor, so he is like, oh I’m in, and then he’s like, well I’m working on something pretty interesting too. I want to start this conference for Amazon brands and merchants. You know, I was like I’m in, and so it was just staying in touch and and and. Having him part of my network and part of my community and really ah, I would say like the way that we’ve always worked together was I guess you can frame it in this way when you go to a party, right? There are many types of people. There are people that come to the party and say where’s the beer, and there are some people that come to the party and say I brought the beer.

18:31.19

Andrew Morgans

Um.

18:36.75

Chad Rubin

And so I was always trying to deliver value and like how can I help you? How can I be supportive? How can I help you flourish as a person? I think we just aligned in that way and built really some great stuff together in this ecosystem.

18:52.49

Andrew Morgans

No, I love that, and that’s so true. There are people that I mean there are givers and takers. You know there’s givers and takers, and you start to realize that whether it’s in your relationships or in business or in, you know, whatever it can be, I was thinking about.

18:57.52

Chad Rubin

I yeah.

19:10.00

Andrew Morgans

Just my own journey and your journey being a couple years behind you but a lot of times we all go through the same things just in a different order, I feel like, and you know that’s why it’s great to have great friends around you because they might have done it None ars before and you might have done something you might have made a mistake two years before them that you can help them with and um, you know it’s give take. And you don’t mind taking if you’re also if they allow you to get you to know, and that’s probably what James has been for you, and I’m thinking about just Profasee, right? I’m thinking about Profasee and probably, um, how exciting it is to go about this with experience because you feel like in some ways there’s a little less fear when you know what you’re doing, ah, you know and.

19:46.18

Chad Rubin

And

19:49.13

Andrew Morgans

Um, for me, as someone that did a lot of these things on Amazon early Seo agency stuff like you know now there’s like one of the agencies after us doing the same thing. Um, and learning those things at the beginning was super exciting for me, learning how to rank products and learning how to like them. You know, intentionally getting your PPC ah like you know, raising rank and things like that just these little nuances of it has always been my I love it. I’m um, I’m the actual nerd, so to speak, and um, I’ve been working a little bit on these different off Amazon funnels and like you know. Influencer plays and like some of that kind of stuff, and it’s been a lot of fun recently for me as someone that’s been trying to just work on scale and build the team and kind of all these processes to then be creating again. Talk to me about Profasee because, um, I think our listeners deserve to know what’s out there and what’s coming. I actually spoke about Profasee in a call yesterday. Because pricing came up, and I said there’s actually some really great stuff out there and um, kind of explain some of that where it’s not just about the buy box. It’s about like understanding where your price fits in the market, and um, someone’s asking if we could do that, and I said well, there’s some software that does that, so I gave you a little plug yesterday. Um, yeah, but.

21:00.15

Chad Rubin

That’s awesome. Appreciate that. Thanks.

21:02.23

Andrew Morgans

Tell me about Profasee and tell me about what it feels like, you know, with those projects done like tabled clothes sold now being able to focus on this one and kind of really innovate again. You know how that feels.

21:12.00

Chad Rubin

Yeah, so let me start with what Profasee is then, and I’ll back into maybe how it feels and even some of the mistakes and how I’m looking at this business going forward. So Amazon Expedia uber hedge funds. They use dynamic pricing all day, and they optimize every. Penny a profit and so starting a Profasee now we’re giving Amazon brands that same superpower. So as you know, Amazon shoppers leave behind a lot of clues about their behaviors, their preferences, their searches, even their reviews, and I guess how i. Thought about this as well. I have 500 private labels to use on Amazon. I have a thousand listings. How do I know that I’m not leaving money on the table, right? and so I started experimenting and saying, oh, like, let me shift the price up, like how do I consider my reviews of my competitors and the quality of the reviews and the quantity of the reviews in the recency of reviews.

21:58.21

Andrew Morgans

Okay.

22:10.93

Chad Rubin

And are they FBA or not FBA, and what if they react to my price, but I didn’t look at it on the previous day? So there’s like all these crazy things that need to happen from a human being to try to actually price the perfection to do it constantly. So instead, I was like, okay, how do I actually solve this at scale and do it appropriately and so we started building a. True algorithm, and I’m saying true because there’s a lot of software out there that is pushing I would say like just logic that’s mastering as AI. It’s not true. AI. It’s not true data science which really is crappy, but it’s been happening for a long time in our space and so.

22:38.52

Andrew Morgans

Who?

22:49.36

Chad Rubin

Prophecies Ai analyzes all these data points, and I just named a few but also brings in your competitors in real-time, combines machine learning statistical science and behavioral economics to pinpoint the optimal price, and so with Profasee, you naturally optimize your revenue.

23:02.70

Andrew Morgans

I love it.

23:08.35

Chad Rubin

And improve profit contribution without sacrificing bar automatically with our platform. So yeah, I’m super excited too.

23:12.89

Andrew Morgans

I love it. Well, tell me now, tell me how it’s telling me how it feels to like create something that’s authentic, and that’s like taking kind of all the experience that you’ve had before you wouldn’t be able to build Profasee from the beginning you know I I have no doubt like before you have done everything else to get here. Um, see that you can think about all of the different areas that play into that. Um, what’s it feels like innovating again and really kind of being a frontrunner.

23:39.44

Chad Rubin

Yeah, so a few things I’m coming from a point where I have a cushion now, which is different than I’ve ever felt in my life. So that’s very different. I still have the feeling of failure but not failing from that, like losing everything but failing, perhaps even in front of my son. Ah, and yeah, I’ve talked to people about that, and one of the things one of my takeaways is that it could be good for my son to see failure, right? Like maybe he shouldn’t see just half fluence and abundance all the time. Um, I know I’m going into a little bit of detail on that. But so I’m openly sharing with you, right? We’re having a very open conversation about it.

24:05.26

Andrew Morgans

Yeah.

24:13.23

Andrew Morgans

No please do.

24:18.82

Chad Rubin

So like at stubana, it was two thousand days over two thousand days, so it wasn’t like an overnight success. It was 7 years ago. Some days were painful, and some days were magnificent, and there were a lot of high highs, and there were a lot of low lows. And um, one of the things I started doing was journaling around the mistake framework or like what mistakes I do not want to make like how do I want to build back differently from a different place from a different mind space from a different heart space from a different space in general. Um, because like. In the last business, I had everything to lose. I had invested my own capital, $2000000 I raised from families and family and friends. I had a lot of pressure to monetize this platform, and I still feel pressure but self-inflicted pressure, and I think that’s a very.

25:09.33

Andrew Morgans

Ah.

25:14.55

Chad Rubin

Delineation. So but anyway, so saas just I mean products is a hard business. But I think SaaS is probably one of the hardest businesses you can run because you’re essentially building, selling, building some more, selling, and acquiring customers. It’s not just you buy low and sell high. And so ah, as it came with a lot of costly mistakes, and some mattered more than others. But at the end of the day, I’m using those mistakes as a framework to build this differently. So one of the things I did when I sold stubano is I took. I call it the great reset. I took some time to just come into my body and come into myself to spend time with my family. I hired some coaches. I think I might have shared that with you on the last first take we did together. I hired one coach or something crazy. I would say, what’s the one thing that can be the highest ah ROI to myself to come out of this differently and better than before? If I just go and start another company right now, I will not be. I’ll be unchanged; I won’t be different from the person that turns you on us.

26:23.76

Andrew Morgans

It’s like being in a relationship where you know you get heartbroken, or you know it ends poorly or even ends great, but you have, and you jump right back into another relationship, right? Like there’s no time to reset and like to find yourself and like.

26:33.90

Chad Rubin

Go for it.

26:39.68

Andrew Morgans

Okay, what do I learn from that, and what do I want ah the next one. How am I going to be better for the next one? And yeah.

26:44.44

Chad Rubin

I spent a lot of time working on myself. Ah, also, it’s like being the CEO of myself. I’ve been the CEO of the company for stakeholders and investors for employees, and this was just a purposeful time for me. And it was awesome. Yeah, it was great, and then when I was ready, I discovered them. Definitely not a stay home dad. I was ready to jump back in the rain. So I sold in April and resigned in October.

27:04.50

Andrew Morgans

I Love that.

27:22.29

Chad Rubin

And in December, I started up at least a little bit of money for this new venture, and then just recently, last week announced the None in seed funding.

27:35.27

Andrew Morgans

I love it, and I’m glad that we got the retake because we got to, you know, announce it that’s huge, and did you raise any funding for the other software or the other businesses before this one. Okay.

27:45.99

Chad Rubin

yeah, oh yeah yeah, I mean Stuana, I put in my own money 2000000 plus I put in I had friends and family I didn’t have the track record that I have now and so gave up a lot more equity and friends and family again. Oh yeah. Some of my best friends and best family members came in to invest, and so even when I had holiday dinners and celebrated hallmark days together. The question always was to chat about what’s wrong with Youbaana, what’s going on, what’s happening, and there were some really dark times at Trump, and there were some.

28:21.74

Andrew Morgans

Um, yeah.

28:22.30

Chad Rubin

Amazing times and we sold at an amazing time, and this time I just have 1 investor, and ah, he’s, and he’s the same investor I had from did our Series A at Stubana, and he came in his name is Neil with http://defi.vc and doubled down in this business.

28:39.22

Andrew Morgans

I love it when people you know get one look at Profasee.

28:43.33

Chad Rubin

So, by the way, a lot of people think it’s Profasee. It’s spelled P R O F a S E E and essentially is predicting the future with some level of Certainty. We have a massive Beta list right now, which I feel very grateful for and blessed to have. But you just store the website request access and fill in the information, and so we’re bringing batches of people out of time into the Beta, So There is a waitlist ah by like we’re not nice.

29:12.97

Andrew Morgans

I’m on it. So I think I signed up for the one time, so I’m somewhere in the middle of that list.

29:19.95

Chad Rubin

So we’re rolling out batches over time, and you know they’re dropping probably every two weeks, I would say, and they’re rolling applications are rolling, so you know you request access. You’ll still be considered in a later batch.

29:28.15

Andrew Morgans

We’re gonna.

29:33.64

Andrew Morgans

I love it. I love it. It’s something that honestly I just want to give some to our listeners like, and this is something that I have friends in other industries, and they compliment me on. I don’t really even think about it like that. But I notice because they tell me that you know it makes me aware of it. But I spend hundreds of thousands of dollars testing software all the time to figure out what’s best for my clients. What’s best for my customers? What’s best for my team because there are all different types of software. You know how we get more efficient, and there’s no way you know unless you’re just out there. You know, spending money to try stuff and you have to test and innovate and fail and test, innovate and fail and um. You know, for people thinking about trying it, for people thinking about getting involved and like you don’t know what you don’t know, and you know I think a lot of a lot of brands will be like oh Amazon is too expensive or too cheap for my products or I can’t raise our price. Oh my god, look at our competitors, or you know yada, yada, yada. But basically, like you, you won’t know the effects of something until you try it, and it’s something I’m pushing all the time when I’m talking to Amazon sellers is they get very comfortable if they’ve found success doing something a certain way but you gotta try something new Profasee is a new um a new look on Amazon selling that I don’t think we’ve seen before.

30:45.78

Chad Rubin

So yeah, so I just want to double-click into that. The one thing is that every seller is trying to figure out what their aros is, and they’re spending money to try to drive more revenue. Maybe they’re cutting some expenses because, like right now, we’re in this that would say like the darker period for Amazon.

30:47.20

Andrew Morgans

And be really awesome.

31:05.14

Chad Rubin

Like e-commerce, in general, has gotten a lot harder than it was, so like right now the 1 thing there’s ah, only a few levers to pull and like the smallest lever swings big door doors, and that is pricing.

31:06.70

Andrew Morgans

Ah.

31:23.42

Chad Rubin

Amazon changed their price, but I forgot what the status is exactly, and I can look it up on Amazon. I just recently read this. They’re changing the prices on its products about every 10 minutes so essentialize none times a day. So on average, the practice cost will change about every 10 minutes, and so Amazon is a massive commodity marketplace, and you have conversion windows, high conversion windows, or high session windows that you can be changing small increments of price to maximize an arbitrage. Price differentials and maximize profitability, and really, that’s what we’ve been able to do in our cohort of results. We’ve been able to show at least one increase in profit which is amazing, especially for Amazon business right now that’s getting crushed.

32:10.50

Andrew Morgans

I Love it.

32:16.69

Chad Rubin

None more of profit like if you’re doing $100000 of profit and 10 percent that’s $10000 you annualize that that’s the one point two million profit or sorry, not none a profit you apply a 3 to 4 x EBITDA force multiplier on there. And like that increases enterprise value. So anyway, I’m really, really excited about it. Um, as you said, I think it’s white space. Nobody’s been able to do this, but I really want to focus on a very hard problem, and so far, it’s working.

32:46.50

Andrew Morgans

I love it. I’m honestly like very excited this is, you know, as a full-service agency as someone that actually cares about this stuff as someone that has sold myself as I’m not just a PPC agency like if I improve your supply chain if I improve your conversion rate if I improve your in-stock rate if I improve yours. Brand referral fee discount because like you are driving Facebook traffic without knowing that you could have this 10 percent there, you know you shrink their pack sizes or double their pack size. Get one profit on all these moves, right? that any advanced Amazon seller knows they all play into the game. Amazon’s a bunch of dials. And you know the more you have them all dialed in, the better they all work together. Um, you tell me when you’re releasing this for Airbnb as well because I could really use a great tool on the Airbnb site. Um, I play with some of the tools; I just don’t think they’re that great. Um, but you know pricing is something that we do as an agency. We just have to do it manually.

33:36.88

Chad Rubin

So now.

33:42.79

Chad Rubin

Yeah, yeah.

33:43.62

Andrew Morgans

Sellers right? We raise it by a dollar and look at the results. You know it’s slow in that regard. But, um, on the real estate side. My roommate, my best friend, and I have another business in real estate property management and Airbnb beds and bank loans or interest rates or ah refinancing rates or they change. I’m sure just as frequently. You know, it can be like, hey, I had it. We went to look again. It’s changed, um, you take an extra day or an extra weekend to get some paperwork in, and you know it’s changed a couple percent which over you know $300000 home can be a lot of money. Um. So the big ones, the pros, the ones that have had all this data, are doing these kinds of things, and they have been for a long time. It’s going to be cool to level the playing field.

34:24.69

Chad Rubin

I didn’t know you were doing Airbnb. That’s pretty cool. I’m doing some Airbnb work too. So we should definitely collaborate on that.

34:32.49

Andrew Morgans

I’ve been doing it for about, um, four years. So um, have learned and failed and been through a pandemic and came out on the other side and um so you know tried a lot of different things I’ve lost money one month for any investors or myself or whatever. So um, I love it. I love their Airbnb business model. It’s not for everyone. Once you start trying to scale, it is really where I think the difficulty comes in. It’s a little different if you’re just doing 1 or 2, and you know you’re jumping over there. But if you start trying to scale it or be out of the city or um, you know, quality of life like we didn’t talk about that much on this show, but the quality of life has been me. My motivation besides family and taking care of the family for the eight years I’ve been doing this on my own and um, meaning I would love to have an Airbnb in a location. It’s super quiet where you talk to everyone that’s walking on the street, and you’re just there’s no technology and um, you know, I think people would kill for that and so. Um, whether you’re innovating in e-commerce or real estate, Airbnb is the same model as e-commerce, so that, for me, is just a fit.

35:32.42

Chad Rubin

Totally yeah, and I guess I can share with the listeners that you had alluded to earlier that I was on a retreat, so I’m in this area right now speaking to you. It’s called Serene B, so it’s a combination of serenity and to be together on sereneb.com. And it’s a community that really, it’s called an Agra, and it focuses on nature and community together, and the way that they’ve built this place is impeccable. It’s like really just. Ah, the perfect place to come back to your roots and come back to simple, uncomplicated life and connect with other people in a more human way than social media and so on.

36:17.27

Andrew Morgans

I Love it. I did it. Are we just animals, you know? So no, yeah, no, go ahead like just that connecting part is like something we miss.

36:24.26

Chad Rubin

So just like a few examples I’ll share, the front porches are very close to the turf, and everyone has a front porch, and people sit down and have breakfast on it and walk their dogs, and their kids are out in the street playing, and everyone has a golf cart or an electric vehicle. There’s. Ah, the plants on the street are a lot of them are edible plants or medicinal plants and even garbage, even to the point of garbage. So in New York, where I used to live.

36:47.92

Andrew Morgans

Okay.

36:57.17

Chad Rubin

There is garbage on the street. Everyone brings out their garbage every Monday and Thursday, and then they pull their garbage pails back, and the garbage is built into the ground, so they don’t affect the beauty of the magnificent architecture that’s been created on this. Um, this space, so you just like to get into these conversations just they force interaction in a way that’s really just natural here, and you get into these conversations. They’re going for 2 hours, and they’re like, oh my god, I just forgot I had a podcast coming up or a webinar or whatever it is, but it’s a super dope place, and I just encourage everyone to check it out.

37:35.15

Andrew Morgans

I’m trying to picture a trash can built into the ground, and I can’t, um, but it sounds amazing, and I honestly like one of my favorite things is just like, you know, living intentionally and living a life by design and I mean um. You can choose whatever life you want if you grow up in a place that’s like out of this world. Um, in a different kind of way in Africa, and it’s just I’ve lived my whole life knowing that there’s an entirely different way to live even though this is like, you know, the path for us here as Americans are.

38:00.41

Chad Rubin

So.

38:05.67

Andrew Morgans

And to anyone listening is pretty set for us like at least as far as who came before us, but there’s this other way to live and it and I’m there they’re very creative with the way that they make things work. They might make a car door. Be um, you know, ah a tire swing. You know, you just don’t know you saw all these different things being used for different things and. What would the world be if we all just took the time to like to do that in our own personal space in our own world and be like, how can I just be more in touch with nature, more in touch with my friends, more in touch with my family? Um, I have a couple questions I want to round out with Chad that I’ve been saving for us. But before we do, I want to give a shoutout to our friends over at Wix. Yes, the website- and business-building platform. They know a thing or two about turning a scrappy startup team into a global organization serving millions of people. And they want to share what they’ve learned with you in a few new micro-podcast series called Ready for Takeoff by Wix, where company founders and leaders share short lessons designed to help you build better products and teams faster. Subscribe and follow Ready for Takeoff by Wix right now on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to this show. Um, Chad, I think last time we went over, so I’m trying to hold the time here for anyone that’s in their car to listen to our episode. What did you talk about? We’ve talked about Profasee, we’ve talked about, you know, a lot of the stuff you have going on. We’ve talked about um. You know, family and mindset and innovation and being ah being an um being a frontrunner being a trailblazer. We talked about this as a personal question, but we talked about like you know you said you keep focusing on how we failed. Um, you know, I failed a lot, a lot of high highs and a lot of low lows and um. You know, running from entrepreneurship and the fear of failure and doing this one differently from a place of abundance instead of um, you know, playing to not lose and for me um, and I think a lot of listeners. You know, like when I post on social media that I’m angry or I post like. Whatever is on my mind or my heart sometimes, um, seems like I get the most response and I get the most feedback, and I get the most, you know, the most engagement with my posts, and I hate that there’s a part of me that hates that that people are only paying attention when I seem upset or sad or something like that I’m a very positive person. Um. So it’s just something that’s been weighing on me. I think that people like to listen to our failures because it’s something we can all relate to. It’s something that everyone has in common. Um, and speaking about failure pieces and for me, um, when I’m the hardest, you talked about where it comes from. It’s a fear of failure, and it’s mainly self-imposed. Okay, it’s mainly like coming out of my head, and most people wouldn’t care. Most people don’t care. They’re barely thinking about us anyway. Um, for me, it’s like, you know, my dad made these choices to bring me to a war zone to bring me to, you know, a place where there was a lot of danger to take me from my friends or to take me from.

40:52.20

Andrew Morgans

I could have had these scholarships, or you know I’ve worked through that. I’ve worked through that, and um, it was something that I lived my life to be like I’m going to protect the family. I’m going to make these decisions that set me up for success, and that set anyone up for success. How there’s this. There’s this fine line of like when. I don’t. I don’t want to have these same things happen, and so for me a lot of times. It’s choosing a business relationship that I shouldn’t have chosen. If you know, I should have been able to tell if this person was not a great person, or this wasn’t a good idea, or this wasn’t the right direction to take everyone’s Watching. Um, and it’s really that little moment of being like, ah. Um, just like the person I wasn’t trying to be, that I think is where that internal dialogue really crushes me when I’ve made a similar mistake that I’ve built my life not trying to make, and I would love just closing thoughts from you on. Um, you know, because those triggers are there with everyone. We all have. You know the triggers don’t go away, and instead, it’s. Muscles that then become how do I adapt and how do I grow from this and how do I push through these things and grow to be a bigger man, and I would just love closing thoughts on On. Um, how you’ve grown through that and how you process you know those failures when they do happen.

42:01.80

Chad Rubin

Yeah, so a business partner once told me my old co-founder at Stevevana said people always deviate back to their norm, and that always stuck with me because I wondered why and if that’s the case. And I think that you have to be super conscious and anchored in your heart to change your outcome. Like you said if you make one mistake in a moment where it has a chance to influence other moments, many other moments. Your life and so being very conscious of like those moments specifically and not making decisions rashly I would say I definitely, first of all, I journal every often. Very often. But I’m in a group with other folks that inspire me, that support me, that help me win, and I think winning breeds more winning. So.

43:16.59

Chad Rubin

This group that I’m in. It’s one person we are forced to journal, and they really go deep and really share family business personal stuff that’s happening and allows for a lot of reflection that really keeps me super focused. And super um, I would say aligned having complete alignment and being able to like manifest this unshakable trust in myself that I’m making the right choice and the right decision. So it’s just coming from a very different place and. Then words coming from previously, and yeah, it’s constantly being surrounded by that and thinking about it and journaling on it and talking about it so that I could have more highlights than lowlights like there’s always going to be low lights always, right? It’s just that.

44:08.47

Andrew Morgans

Yeah, yeah.

44:11.53

Chad Rubin

Is it important to have more highlights and bites, right? That’s so, um, yeah, I don’t know, hopefully, that answers some of your questions, I mean.

44:18.11

Andrew Morgans

No, I have one more follow-up question because this is something that I’ve just become aware of. You know you become aware, and it’s always been easier for me to see fear in other people or to see you know insecurities or things I’ve worked through that I am aware of for myself that I’ve learned through, and I can see it in others. You know it’s just way harder on ourselves. There are almost like these blinders. Um, but I have a supportive group. I have a therapist and these kinds of things, and that’s you know when you’re talking about that the group of None feels like therapy in regards. But I’m not a business person. It’s not that my therapist doesn’t inspire me. You know that’s a little bit of difference in that. Um, she’s there to just give me feedback and things like that. That’s what I was assuming, so that’s amazing. Um, but I’m sure you didn’t always have that. Um, so that for me like with and I have these groups? Um, but I’m thinking about it.

44:55.64

Chad Rubin

Anyway, these are all entrepreneurs. Just so you know, this group is an entrepreneur group. Yeah, like yeah.

45:13.61

Andrew Morgans

For me, it became okay at the high highs. I’m passionate, um, chase innovation. You chase things like this. You go all in, you’re going to have high highs without expecting the low lows which is just ignorant to not think that you know you can have high highs and then what your lows are middle lows. Um, you know you either like risk high and lose like that in that way and so as I become more aware of that. It’s more accepting. Um, but if someone doesn’t have the group, I guess this is for anyone listening that doesn’t have a group like that yet, you know, um, and I’m a Journaler as well. What’s something that they can do to kind of get it out of their head. And into something that they can digest and be aware of and try to move past. Did you have any tips before the group?

45:55.56

Chad Rubin

No, I kind of felt on an island, to be honest, so I definitely didn’t have it and felt like this was a superpower. So if you don’t have it. Should you probably seek and seek it out, right? Like, who are 5 people that.

45:58.10

Andrew Morgans

Um, yeah, yeah, that’s real talk.

46:06.36

Andrew Morgans

Yeah, yeah.

46:14.77

Chad Rubin

Can be in your inner circle that can be supportive that you can be vulnerable with that. You can open up with something that can help you rewrite your belief system, and many times I’ll say I’ll speed on my own behalf. Is that like we have limiting beliefs and we’re capable of achieving so much more like we’re only using 10% of our brains at the current moment right now. So if you think about that like, there’s such a chance to activate further potential and to make such a massive impact.

46:32.34

Andrew Morgans

Yeah.

46:50.84

Chad Rubin

And I’ll tell you that I’m also a happy person, but I have high highs but when I have a low. It’s bad. It’s low. It’s really low, and as I get, I get shaken, right? At that point, you got to go back to the well, and the well is.

46:56.98

Andrew Morgans

Flow. Yeah.

47:10.10

Chad Rubin

Your heart. But also the people that you’re surrounding yourself with like to give you that green Juice shot.

47:16.54

Andrew Morgans

No, I love that, and that’s real talk. That’s great advice, and I think that even just saying that it’s a superpower and that everyone has it and that you were a lone solo wolf is like it is great feedback for people that, um, you know might not see that and not all of us have the same advantages. Like everyone else, we have different advantages and different disadvantages. Some people are like, hey, I’m like I’m an even kill, and you know, and they’re just able to just like keep going because they don’t have those high highs and low lows, and for me, it’s been about um before the groups it was just about surrounding myself with a friend or someone that you know someone that was really um, independent. When I was like, you know I had code-pendent tendencies, ah to latch onto to certain things and I not codependent code-ended tendencies in my opinion but I would get around really independent people, or if I was super uptight I’d get around kind of hippie minded people and for me right now you know you’re at that community and what I thought about was.

47:58.96

Chad Rubin

So.

48:14.80

Andrew Morgans

I’m really trying to get back in touch in this technical world where I use my brain for logic and data analysis and data science and all this kind of stuff in e-commerce where you’re trying to just analyze problems and predict things to get more in tune with my primal nature. You know in my gut and. Um, that animalistic side of us. It’s not always a bad thing. You know it’s ah, it’s a natural thing. It’s ah you know it’s a part of us and so being in a community with nature and that’s why I took this trip to Portugal. I’ve taken a trip to Costa Rica in the jungle, and you’d just be surprised how? Um. That intuition that comes whenever you’re in tune with your surroundings, and you’re where you’re living, and nature. Um, just to me makes me feel very healthy and makes me feel like, um, I can trust myself for whatever comes that’s something that I’m working on is that kind of like um, getting out of that brain. Yeah, we only use 10%, but like, let me out. Let me out a little bit and let me just like feel some things and feel and experience um you know experience the sun smell new things and in a while, we’re hiding from everyone because the world sucks and you know I think it’s a good time to just like.

49:14.62

Chad Rubin

Totally.

49:23.47

Andrew Morgans

Get back in tune with that and trust your gut. So.

49:24.23

Chad Rubin

And a rapper would say that’s the flow state, right? You just disconnect to connect, and you get into this flow state where it’s just like unstoppable rhyming. It just comes to you, right? Just flows through you, and that’s a really special place to be in.

49:27.96

Andrew Morgans

Okay.

49:41.87

Andrew Morgans

I love Chad this is.

49:43.93

Chad Rubin

Ah, I’ll leave you with one last thing. I hosted a dinner recently, a founder’s dinner, and I did it in the Jeffersonian style, and I made a Jeffersonian style dinner. It’s not adhering to every principle of a Jeffersonian dinner. Essentially Jeffersonian dinner is like one.

49:47.75

Andrew Morgans

Okay, so explain that to me. Okay.

50:03.59

Chad Rubin

The topic at the dinner table. One topic. Everyone’s mind power goes on 1 topic, and it has massive benefits, right? I think it’s a lot of time you go to dinners. They’re underwhelming. They don’t activate potential. You don’t leave a better person than when you began there. I’m just seeking something else. I’m seeking a much more overwhelming experience than an underwhelming experience, and I, by the way, and that’s like that this stuff lights me up like community interaction and deep conversations. I live for this.

50:26.32

Andrew Morgans

Yeah, living in it full tilt, as they say.

50:41.13

Chad Rubin

So instead of going to these dinners that are just tired and purposeless, I decide to host one, so I pay for everything and invite everybody. There are a couple people there from the Amazon world, and like people from all over, and ah, I have a prompt right at the dinner. That I shared in advance and that prompt, at least for this specific dinner which I thought was really a good prompt, is the same one that Peter Thiel uses from None to one. It is one belief that you have very few people, and I’m just sharing this because we were talking about high highs and high lows.

51:12.79

Andrew Morgans

Oh.

51:20.18

Chad Rubin

Trust me, I’m bringing a full circle, and by the way, like I’m the facilitator, I’m a very active Facilitator. There’s a great book I read called the art of gathering, which helps me facilitate, and essentially the idea here is like opening our hearts at this dinner table to new ideas Aha Moments Good controversy like heat. Good positive heat and not just preserve harmony, so we want to activate ourselves and be thoughtful and exactly, so we’re like taught to not talk about sex and politics and religion at the dinner table, and this is just stripping all that Away. It’s saying, hey, let’s have, let’s like.

51:48.70

Andrew Morgans

Don’t play to not lose. Don’t play to not lose, right.

51:54.79

Andrew Morgans

And

51:59.52

Chad Rubin

Let’s progress. Forward. We can be polite, but we don’t have to have this unhealthy piece at the dinner table, right? Let’s dig deep. So anyway, this one guy I can share his name with. It is under confidentiality, but he shared the concept, and I was like. Blown away by it. He was like okay, so most people try to at the end of their life when you interview somebody at the end of their life, and you ask them about their life, and you ask them for their bio. They share the high highs and the high lows. That’s their story. That’s like the arc of the story of your life.

52:35.26

Andrew Morgans

Are.

52:36.80

Chad Rubin

Are these high highs and high lows? So what he was saying is that, like most people, we’re sitting here. Maybe we’re trying to find peace. We’re trying to find a place to just be settled and maybe that’s actually not really what we want. And that doesn’t actually define life in itself. What defines life is actually hitting those high highs and hitting those lows, and that becomes the story of your life. I was like, that is so beautiful. I loved it, and it was such a good takeaway for me. He pushes himself to actually reach high highs and, of course, with that comes low lows. Because you push higher, the barometer for failure is kind of coming with you. So you’re failing at a higher low in a way. And he sits to challenge himself and challenge himself and challenge himself. So he can actually hit higher highs and it inevitably comes with lower lows. I just wanted to share that as closing thoughts that I thought were just awesome.

53:38.59

Andrew Morgans

That’s incredible. I think I believe that, and I’ve never put it into words. But I’ve just had high highs and I’ve been like, this is something that I want everyone to have. Or this is something that I want more of and it doesn’t have to be like this. Took a vacation and it was amazing. Next year, we’re going to take another vacation. It’ll be amazing. It was just like I wanted a lifetime of those highs, and how do I get it again. That’s something I’m going to research because I’m sure there are some books on that somewhere out there. About chasing that. But this has been incredible. An amazing way to close the show and to any of our listeners to leave them with that final thought. And to our sponsor, once again, today’s episode of Startup Hustle is sponsored by Wix. Are you an entrepreneur or founder trying to figure out how to successfully navigate the rocketship that is hypergrowth? Want to take over your company’s online presence internally and externally? Well, our friends over at Wix Enterprise can help. Wix Enterprise is a platform that provides businesses with an all-in-one solution for all types of growth and business needs. Create high-performing websites for your business, all of which are backed by enterprise-grade security as well as expert support to help you manage and scale online. Head over to https://wix.com/enterprise for more information. Without our sponsors, we wouldn’t be able to do this show. I wouldn’t be able to get to as many listeners. So thanks again to them. Chad, I had an amazing round two. I didn’t think we could top the first one, but I personally walked away with several thoughts that I know I’ll be soaking in. So I really appreciate it. We’ll see you next time. Startup Hustle, see you next time. Chad, thanks again.

55:12.58

Chad Rubin

Thank you so much, Andrew.