this guy makes $2 million a month with a business idea many Overlook sour candy and I am someone who loves sour candy and hates a lot of things about the sour candy industry I feel like I'm someone who had a lot of self-doubt I had like a 2.5 GPA in high school you know my whole life has been a whole bunch of side hustles I still run this business and make YouTube videos and work on the clothing company my best advice to go all in your side Hustle is to have kind of a strategy around
the risk you say yes and you figure out how to do it after in today's episode we are revealing what it takes to turn simple ideas into tens of millions of dollars I never thought that I would have a life that was anything beyond normal this is the first time I've ever said this but the American dream is real if you have an idea you don't need to have everything planned out you just need to start Max we're standing in front of what to me looks like a beacon of Hope in the neighborhood it is
so bright but it's a gorgeous home thank you before we talk about what your wealth has bought you the toys and everything tell our audience who you are and what do you do today my name is Max tuning I am a YouTuber entrepreneur boom dog [Music] dad that's the most important one and what kind of business do you run today I run a sour candy company actually that's the biggest Focus do a lot of YouTube a lot in the entrepreneurial space but uh the new business that we've been running for about four years sour strips
who was Max as a young kid and how did you get into the business that we're going to talk about today I was actually surprisingly more annoying back as a child I was a Class Clown I was always trying to make people laugh I was always getting in trouble I was always getting kicked out of class for running my mouth so I feel like I lived a very you know traditional life grew up went to college graduated got a full-time job and then the entrepreneurial Journey started hey Paul why don't we uh go check out
the house let's do it yeah gorgeous place thank you what was your childhood like dude like what was the most uh impactful moment you think that contributed to just you being an entrepreneur a hustler doing all the right things you know I grew up in like the literal Woods I grew up in a place called ronic Virginia which is I call it the boonies I don't know if that's a real word but it's like the in the middle of the mountains on a whole bunch of Acres um rck Virginia very small town most of my
childhood was spent outside running in the woods with my dogs my brother you know spent a lot of time with my with my family and the thing that impacted Me growing up from things that I took as a child is I was a candy fanatic if you were to ask a lot of my my my my parents my family what I was like as a kid that eat a lot of candy they'd be like yes so it just makes sense that it kind of transcended into uh what we're doing now oh my God I love
sourer candy more than anyone on this entire planet it looks like dude needs a little bit of sugar boost so why don't you take us to your current Warehouse that's where the sugar meets the road right yeah show our audience uh all the stock that you have and maybe we'll just dive into trying some candy so I'll follow you out so we're at your current Warehouse yes uh why don't you give us a quick tour before we get in tell us quickly a little bit about it how many square feet how long you've been here
and so on Yep this is 15,000 square ft 13,000 of Warehouse 2,000 of office we've only been here for a year and a half and I thought this was going to be the end all Warehouse we never outgrow this ever in a million years and we are expanding into something like three times bigger like right now so we're in the middle of a transitional period but uh let me show you this bad boy and then we'll show you the big bad boy later on so many Bad Boys Hey man dudes everywhere he he goes where
we go he does yeah so we have our our our lobby we have a custom mural hand look at all those hand painted on there it's not even a sticker no way I thought it was a sticker which is unfortunate because uh now I've spent all this money and then when we go to the new Warehouse I thought I was cutting the wall out you could do that yeah and then any suggestions on how to save this bad boy comment below the main meat and potatoes of this yeah is right through those doors out there
let's go check it out come on dude well actually dude's going to stay back right yeah D stay back here sanitation we got food in there so sorry dudo how many total boxes of candies do you have in this Warehouse so far at any given time we will have over a million units worth of candy in this Warehouse what is the retail value of that Max what do you think uh retail value like $4 million million about3 to $4 million and that number is going to grow cuz you're going to expand to that what 60
plus thousand ft Warehouse so is the idea is to to have even more inventory right you look at it as a lot of candy sitting in the background I look at it as a lot of money sitting in the background every pallet is x amount of dollars so finding that sweet spot which is you're not going to know that right out of the gate so don't think you will um there's going to be times where you have to exp shipping and it's costing you a bunch cuz you didn't store enough and AIT bunch of like
POS came through and there's been times where oh I shouldn't order this much and you know we have a lot of different flavor so managing all of that is definitely a tricky situation but we're learning did you have any side hustles before sour strips you know my whole life has been a whole bunch of side hustles you know about I left my corporate job in 2016 to work or to go all in on my side hustle which was social media and my clothing company what's up Dave eating family number 50 what's up guys finally shirts
are in orders are done perfectly fine with me my room is a complete wreck look at this this is what happens when you run a shop and ship out hundreds of shirts you know 3 years later in 2019 I started sour strips and now I've been trying to balance you know running the clothing company running my myself as a brand not only for my own YouTube audience but all the brands that I represent that I'm been working with for a long time and starting this new company so it's really finding the perfect balance of giving
enough time to to each one and now sour strips has become the most financially successful Venture that I've ever done by a dramatic amount so you know I still run this business and make YouTube videos and work on the clothing company so I don't really know what the side hustle and what's the main hustle yeah that's cool dude so we're going to go and take a look at your new space which is over 60,000 Square ft quite the leap I mean you're you're tripling it almost quadrupling it so let's go check it out let's do
it all right ladies and gentlemen I give to you the new sour strips headquarters dude this place from the outside is just absolutely massive I'm going to switch gears a little bit about your YouTube channel when you started 10 years ago plus when did it start making serious money quote unquote how much were you making for the first two or three years it really wasn't anything substantial I was making a couple hundred a month and then eventually maybe got up to like $2,000 a month it wasn't really until the social media kind of Boom happened
where you start working with a lot of Brands and people are paying for spor sponsorships collaborations so but that's why it keeps me around because I started making for fun and then making money was a byproduct of just enjoying to make content well let's fast forward to today are you willing to share your numbers for just the YouTube side of things what what are you bringing in yes I Encompass everything into just like social media world so that's brand deals promotions ad Revenue sponsorships all that uh last year was a million dollars this year pretty
much about the same that's awesome so you guys can keep watching follow us wrong door because this thing is massive like light on and [Music] what this is the newest expansion of our warehouse and distribution center we are standing in a combined warehouse space of 56,000 sare ft this is just one half of them by the way yeah so we have two 28,000 warehouses divided by a wall with a bunch of doors so we can go back and forth between one's climate controlled one's non-climate controlled so one will be for all the the Candy products
and one will be for packaging supplies what do you do for marketing for a shower strips company walk across you know Facebook Instagram anything that you want to talk to so we are running ads on Facebook and Tik Tok and Instagram as well social media right we'll spend about $1,000 a day on ads at the moment to drive new customers to our online store but generally the bigger that we grow in retail the less people are going to keep coming back online because they now can just get in the store so the online is really
just for new customers we don't spend any on influencer marketing so we don't pay any influencers to promote our products oh my God oh my goodness heck yeah wow we just give it out for free at scale and that's kind of the spend that we do so it's product costs and then we've recently started getting into a lot more um Presence at events so we'll go set up a booth just give out candy we don't even sell it there we just give it out for free any sort of events we can set up a booth
we're starting to do that more if I had to estimate what we spend a month in marketing cost in terms of free product and uh running ads probably say $50 to $100,000 a month and spend product cost mainly uh yeah probably half that's probably product cost cuz we give out a lot of a lot of product at scale so for somebody who has very little to know money how hard is it to start a cpg company walk us through maybe the five four three practical steps that I could take today you guys watching to make
it happen yeah the first step is just it it's it's about solving a problem you're not necessarily you don't need to reinvent the wheel um a lot of people can you know completely innovate in a space but some people think that Innovation means invention right inventing a new a new product a new a delivery mechanism but you're just trying to solve pain points for people and that could be you know even the delivery mechanism how it's packaged the easiest why I look at as starting any business is look at the products that you consume or
like to enjoy and what are one or two things you wish were different about them could be a food product could be clothing um and it's just you know what do I wish was different and I promise you there's a lot of people out there that have that same mindset of you of love something wish it was different so you take something that kind of exists put your spin on it of how of your improvement and put it out into the world so I think finding a a problem and creating a solution for that is
number one and then from there it's creating kind of like your I want to say a business plan but I am not a very business savvy guy in terms of I didn't sit down and You Know sketch out the exact plan of here's what I'm going to do and you know little lines and graphs going everywhere it's just about starting so number two is like you just got to start and then it's it's thinking of what does the brand represent right so what would you is someone who is a Avid lover consumer of this space
this product you know what would you like from a brand what would you like the packaging to look like what would you like it to to to feel like what would you like the experience to be because you need to be passionate about what you're doing or I don't think you're going to have longevity in it and I someone who loves sour candy and hates a lot of things about Sour the sour candy industry so that's where I came in and was like I think I can solve a lot of these pain points for people
and then you need to Source manufacturing which can be difficult it took me 6 to n months to Source a manufacturer because in certain industries there's a lot of big players in the game that control the space I bet and they probably aren't going to give you the time of day if someone wants to just try out a new business in the space um so just because it's difficult doesn't mean it mean it's impossible to Source manufacturers and from there the final step is putting it all together and just executing you know getting a good
brand name getting a good um you know way you're going to execute into the market space and then it's just close your eyes roll the dice pray for the best yeah yeah and and deal with the big boys and because they all they want to do is squash you probably right you know space is big I think if if everyone that uh started a business that was so worried of these conglomerates these Giants are dominating the space how can I make an impact then no innovation would ever would ever happen and you really need what
you need to to understand is that a lot of these big brands in the cpg space for them they love the entrepreneurial world because what they're doing is people like myself are creating the uh you know new markets to see what do people want and so instead of the companies having to dump millions and millions of millions of dollars into research and development and you know whole new uh Department in the in their their business they can be like let the entrepreneur find problems in the industry start a whole brand and see if it works
and they're essentially then you know potentially they could come in and maybe acquire them but a lot of these Brands want this Innovation and they accept it with open arms I think because you know people are looking at it through a different lens and and seeing what's maybe some pain points cuz if any people have been doing something for a hundred years one way that doesn't mean that's the only way it can be done yep it is a challenge to make a living from your passion but it's easier with kajabi a powerful tool for creators
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a 30-day free trial to start your own business if you go to kajabi.com upflip that's kjab bi.com upflip go to kajabi.com upflip to earn more doing what you love so what were some of the major obstacles in the process of idea to launch of this business it's just figuring out all the logistics of everything you know when I when I first started is how do you make a barcode where do barcodes come from you know where do I find a manufacturer how do I get in the stores who do I to what do I price
it at how how much do I need to make it what is a good margin um and I think it's just overcoming all of these I don't know this and just diving in and it was all Google for you all research on your own mentors and here's the biggest here's the biggest tip okay not everything is found on the first page of Google sometimes you got to go to page two but you never go past page two then it's just into the abyss of Google such a good point though cuz I never go to page
it's not they're like it's it's not on the first page it doesn't exist all right Max let's do Blitz guys thanks for submitting your questions first one's from Ivan when would you consider selling your business and what would be your next challenge as far as a business possibly I am not interested in sing robot it wasn't me I at the moment I'm not really interested in selling I mean the the business is cash flow positive I am such a passion for this business that I think that if anyone else took it on that it wouldn't
go in the direction that I want it to so you're in it for the long haul I'm in it for the long haul but never say never you know someone comes hey here here's a billion dollars like okay good luck take your and run this is from Tracy what are your best times of the year and how do you capitalize on Seasons like Christmas or Easter great question so the our best holidays are actually Valentine's Day Easter and Christmas at the moment Halloween is not for us because we don't have smaller pack sizes so people
aren't going to want to give out if you come to my house you do but if people are going to want to give out you know three $4 bags of candy and and that's just you don't know what those H the best holidays are until they they they come around but planning for them and learning from the the previous years to increase your increase your inventory is key this is from black media how did you manage to push through in the beginning of your business when things were small and it all seems so daunting take
it day by day you know you you you celebrate the small victories and you learn from the small losses and hopefully they don't turn into large losses and it's it's it's really just one foot in front of the other even to this day I'm learning every single day every new retailer that comes into our uh kind of like our our network of of people we we sell to I'm learning how to how to deal with them so I you know I don't think you have to know everything day one I definitely did not and uh
just wing it sounds good what's your favorite actually I'm going to give you the the biggest piece of advice you say yes and you figure out how to do it after what's your favorite flavor of Sour strips my favorite flavor is actually our least popular flavor tropical mango is so slept on I think it is the best but our number one selling flavor rainbow because I think people are like what does a rainbow taste like and ours does taste exactly like a rainbow so okay awesome what is one thing many don't know about you online
everything here's the thing filmed literally everything for the past decade of of My Life um I think the the biggest thing that people probably don't know is that I'm actually I feel like everyone says this but I'm actually like an introvert if I go to a party where I only know the person I'm with if then they go in the bathroom I'm against the wall kind of like on my phone I I don't do well like talking to random people that I've never met before at like a party or something so I'm very much a
a homebody and an introvert hard to believe you're really well on camera all right best part of being an entrepreneur freedom I mean the the ability to do you know what I want when I want but I think that's what it started with and the biggest uh thing that I love being an entrepreneur now as the business has grown is giving opportunities to people and providing jobs for so many individuals that now hopefully they continue to work for me and like the the longevity of you know they buying a car they buying a house was
because of you know an idea that I had it's cool to make an impact in other people's worlds cool what is the worst thing of being an entrepreneur cash flow managing cash flow I me it's just always being on I mean the the clock never stops with being an entrepreneur and and balancing that and learning how to live a normal life and you know spend time with your loved ones and still grow a business um is a is is a challenging thing for sure last one what's one or two celebrities who absolutely need to try
sou strips today Larry David Slim Shady there you go thanks for submitting your questions you mentioned losing your dad pretty early on how how many years ago now you're 34 right so I was uh 15 at the time it was 2005 wow tell us if you if you can be vulnerable a little bit about how that was for you as a young kid and how did that build character today you know it's a really kind of an interesting thought when I remember you know that point in my life cuz even at 15 I I think
I'm old enough to kind of process what's going on on but when um you know ALS which is a l gar dis ALS you know ice bucket challenge uh you know it's a disease that just rips the person apart and um from when he got diagnosed to when it took his life was a very short period of time only a couple years and I I didn't really process what was happening at the time I remember my mom came in to tell me that my dad had passed it oh wow it really I I don't know
if I was in shock or it was just I just was like okay I understand and it really didn't impact me um until I got older and I started remembering the memories of my dad and you know we were we were separated cuz my parents split up when I was an early age so the second half my life after 10 years old I was with my mom so I wasn't with my dad as much and you know then you started having regrets of I wish I had spent more time you know when it was in
the hospital and you know just being more traveling back to where he was and it's one of those things that really impacts me a lot now as an adult because it just makes me realize how short and valuable life is and how you know the people that you you see every day you take for granted you know you never know what's going to happen to them so um absolutely yeah it's something that that definitely shaped me as a man and it it's something that I every memory that I have with my with my dad is
something that I want to make sure that I instill those same values into the you know the children that I hopefully have one day mhm you quit your corpor job so that you can focus full-time on your side hustle and everything else you were doing back then when did you know it was the right time because a lot of viewers watching have side hustles have a 9 to5 and they're just not sure when to make that leap talk to us about it you'll never know the right time and I was terrified every day when I
was like this is the day I'm going to call my boss cuz I was working remotely at the time this is the day I'm going to call him and say I'm last day and I was like not today not today not today my best advice to go all in your side hustle is to have kind of a strategy around the risk so I tracked my finances for I mean throughout my entire Journey but I said I'm going to track my finances for a year of my side Hustle and if for 12 months I can make
a pretty average consistent amount of money every single month in the side hustle so it's not just one good month you know then it's down to nothing so I consistently tracked for about a year and when I looked back and saw that it was you know give or take within 10 15% each month of you know what was something that I could you know sustain My Lifestyle with I was like it is not really 100% a risk at this point it's pretty proven that I can make money from it make a living from it now
let's go all in and I think think when you're when you're missing out on the opportunities that you can take because your main job is hindering you for me it was networking traveling I had already used up all my you know PTO I couldn't just travel to Texas that you know I was in Virginia um to do collaborations with people because I just didn't have the time I was like I'm missing out on opportunities I'm missing out on the ability to grow my business and I'm financially supporting myself it's the right time but you're always
going to be terrified you're always going to be scared but when you do it I promise you you'll never look back so what surprised you the most couple things about success in general have you ever seen the image online of the like what people think success looks like and it's like this upward trajectory and then it's this squiggly line and backwards and it is so so true I think it's so easy to look at other entrepreneurs and individuals that are doing crazy things and you see where they're at you see where they're started I feel
like a lot of times you think success is reserved for certain individuals and you think that like that couldn't that can't be me that's that's those types of people that's the really smart people you know like oh no I couldn't be me and once you realize that success is this crazy journey to get to the end result I I think that's such a valuable trait to remember and you're a guy who doesn't know anything is just figuring it out I joke about it a lot and I think people think it's like my stick of saying
like yeah I don't know what I'm doing every day but I I really don't and I think you know a lot of times I sit down the computer and I've answer I answer a couple emails and then I go I don't think I have anything else to do and a lot of people are like you know you see online they're like I'm working 13 you know 17 hours a day grinding never sleeping waking up at 4:00 a.m. guys I I watch I watch the office at night with my girlfriend you know I we watch movies
on the weekends I'm not I'm not working 24/7 but you there's times when you need to hustle and there's times when work life balance is going to help you succeed even more because you can kind of d-stress a little bit and you know meeting my girlfriend was actually one of the the craziest things that help me separate myself from the business a little bit and I think it's helped me elevate my business talk to us as much as you can and I'll let you speak a little longer to this as far as building the influencer
network like what are you doing today what do new entrepreneurs should do to build the influencer for their product my number one piece of advice to grow your brand or your product in the influencer space is to give away your products for free as much as possible the marketing spend instead of trying to run ads or early on try to get it into these micro influencers or just anyone that will respond and my number one tip is to not ask for anything in return you hope that they're going to post about it you hope that
they're going to tell their friends but if you have a good product and a good brand and nowadays you really need to create if you're in the cpg space you need to create a product or a service that is instagrammable which wasn't a word forever ago right you need to make it that people want to post it they want to they want to talk about it it's cool it's content nowadays a lot of creators are looking for things to create content around and if you have a product that fits into that Niche or something unique
people are going to post about it but you you never want to ask for anything in return you just kind of cross your fingers and hope and we've sent our products to thousands and thousands of influencers celebrities many have posted us many have not posted us I I think if you have something good generally the influencers will kind of come back to you go hey I really like that can I can I can I get some more and at that point you say absolutely I would love to send you some more and you don't say
we would you know here's the line items you need to do if we give you another product you go casual you say we'd love to send you some more product and and if and if it's not too much to ask we'd love it if if if you loved it if you could give us a mention on your story we'd really appreciate that again very kind of gentle after the initial cont that's when they're coming back to us like hey I love the candy can I have some more I'm like you sure can but you know
would you mind would you mind a little Instagram story it's not it's not a requirement you're just like it'd be great if you could and in return n times out of 10 these people are going to say yes and when you organically send out this product and and you start building up this awareness of your brand and of your product then the people that follow all these individuals maybe they didn't buy off your website when a big influencer post that's why I wouldn't recommend paying for these huge ones because we've had some massive names that
you don't see a single Spike like you think you would you'd be like oh this rapper or influencer posted about us let me go to the Shopify wait no wait where where where are where's the influx of sales you know so that's why I think Focus your efforts on maybe smaller influencers and the hope is brand awareness I'm trying to smother the world in my brand not trying to immediately convert a more long-term picture so that when these influencers are continuing to post about the product then the people that follow them and they're walking down
the the aisle and they're like oh that's that that's that candy that so and so post let me try it out right oh my God I love it you know so that's the goal but you can't track the ROI on it you can't look at the data the analytics of the the post conversions I don't do any of that we just we're like it's out in the world it's out in the world give it away and don't ask for anything in return initially unless they come back to you there you go $24 million I think
most of us can't even imagine what that number is like so what does it feel like to bring in that much revenue for that company honestly just what what what what does that that feel like I don't even know what 24 million feels like because it's that's not what's in the bank account you know right that's the truth that's reeven Revenue but it is wild I I think it's one of those uh Pinch Me moments every time the business continues to grow because I feel like I'm someone who had a lot of uh maybe self-doubt
of what their potential could be because again I I was I had like a 2.5 GPA in high school like applied to one school and college got denied from it went to Community College which is great but at the time I felt it was very kind of like shameful uh it was like you know you weren't smart enough you you couldn't get in and I just thought that I had this very tra very average life kind of planned out for me so when these big things happen I'm like to me to with to me no
no no no like that's that should be like for the the people who know what they're doing I'm just a goofy guy who had like some random ideas so it's it's very surreal and very humbling um every single time we have a big success because I think it just goes to show of you know you you don't have to have everything figured out you don't have to be this Guru of a person you can be a normal person with a good idea you have good intentions good morals good ethics and you just apply yourself and
you see what happens well we live in the United States one of the greatest countries uh I'm an immigrant as well so I think that contributes to it but what does It ultimately speak to do you think you know you're not perfect in school you don't have the college degrees and yet you're still making it happened what do you think that boils down to there's no blueprint to success I think that anything is possible and um what I that's why I love the fact that I've been documenting this on my YouTube channel for so long
is because if you came into maybe my journey or my life now you might have this perception of me and and my upbringing and and how I've gotten to this point but go back and look seven eight years ago I mean I'm you know driving a car with sagging headliner I'm replacing the AC unit in in my driveway on video and you know in a crappy house with like roommates and stuff and then you know I it's like everything was because I I worked and I and I built my my my successes up and um
I also didn't live outside my means to be able to continue to afford things but it's a great Testament to show that anything is possible and you know something like this is the first time I've ever said this but the American dream is real I think if you apply yourself and you I I think it comes down to just be a good person have a good idea and like do right and good things will happen to you yeah so Financial hardships have you lived through any as a company for South strips and how did you
how did you get through it what was it specifically if you could share yeah this is definitely something that's more kind of like internalized that I just had to deal with it wasn't something that I you know let all my employees know so they think the the ship is running fine when really there's an iceberg kind of coming you know straight for us and in the cpg world and you start getting into retail where 80% of our sales now are in the retail channels so it's not as much of the you know cash you're getting
in one day two days from online at high margins you're getting lower margins with payment terms which means they place an order when they get the the the candy in my situation they have you know anywhere from 15 30 60 90 days to pay you for that right so you need to float that amount of uh cash before you can start getting paid and there were times early on when we first got into our national account with Target um and we had some other promotional events going on at the same time there was such a
need for an influx of product because we're rolling out and they need these large kind of like uh initial POS that are going to you know probably be larger than when you get into the normal flow of things but it's to kind of build up inventory and so if they want it in a certain month you have to buy that product you know months before to get it all ready to get it all packed you know in the formats that they need to ship it out and then once they receive it it could be another
60 days so I mean you're talking it could be four five 6 months from when you first bought that candy or product before you're actually going to get paid for it so managing your cash flow is going to be so important especially in the cpg world when you get into retail when you have all of these all of these payment terms you have slotting fees which a lot of people don't know that when you walk down the aisle of any grocery store or retail store every product or brand that you see on the aisle whether
it be in the chip aisle or the candy aisle those companies have paid to be in that spot and are planned to be there and you're paying a certain amount of money per item that you have in there per store so you could be spending tens of thousands of dollars if not a$ hundred, dollar or more as a fee to just get in there so not only did you have to pay for the inventory way ahead of time get it all ready send it out wait for that money to come in the money that's coming
in is actually going to be a good chunk less because you had to pay the fee to get into the store so the fee is separate from the profits that you're waiting on correct so instead of you know if if it's $20,000 in fee for a one time getting your product into the store right cuz it could be $15 per flavor per store and if you have you know two flavors like let's say two flavors of candy it's $30 a store and if you have 2,000 stores you're going into you know do the math but
instead of you writing a check for that amount of money they will just deduct it from what they pay you at the end so not only were you waiting for this cash for so long and having to stretch your money and keep in mind that's not the only business that you're running right so you have these one two accounts that are you know you had to build up you had to launch you had to wait for the money your business is still running in that time so there's other orders that are coming in that need
product there's other costs that are going out so there was a time when I got down to the last you know you know not exactly but you know last couple pennies in the account where it was depleted I knew the cash was coming in right but it's just like how do I weather this storm and it's very easy for maybe the employees to think that everything is fine but I'm looking at the bank account being like guys we need to be really strategic with how we're spending our money cuz I know it's coming in but
it's not going to be for two more months three more months and then when you get it it's way less than you thought cuz you have all these fees can you share with us the rest of the revenue streams that you have just briefly at 30,000 ft gross right so sour strips is going to break we we've already broken over 18 million this year so we're on track to do over 20 ever forward my clothing will hover anywhere between 500 to a million each year it's kind of taken a little bit of the back because
sour strips has taken a lot of my focus and then myself as a brand in terms of social media brand deals uh sponsorships everything that encompasses YouTube and everything that goes into that um will be about $800 to a million dollar dude that's solid you've scaled really quickly I think we we've interviewed a lot of other companies that timeline looked very different as opposed to yours so what have you learned about leadership specifically through the that Journey leadership managing people managing a team leading a team is absolutely one of the most difficult things I've had
to learn how to do um I've very very much been a a solo entrepreneur doing everything myself and you start delegating out you know you have to understand that people are never going to care about the business the way you care about the business and you need to understand that and wrap your head around that and every single person on your team is not you so the way that you interact with them the way that you talk to them the way that you joke with them the way that you know you um you know give
positive affirmation some people may need like hey you did a great job not in this you know phrasing but like you know you did a great job today I just want to let you know say like I really appreciate what you did you know today and whereas like I'm someone I don't need any of that I don't need someone patting me on the back giving me affirmations all the time I'm just like yeah I'm doing my job right so you need to learn how each personality of each person is going to you know what why
what motivates them to grow within the company is it just more money is it more responsibility is it you know making reminding them that they're doing a great job and you know you know making it a point to Showcase you know victories with them um but it's it's a learning thing every single day and that's probably one of the hard besides cash flow the hardest uh thing that I've had to to learn is is to be a leader cuz I didn't plan for it I didn't I was just like oh I have an idea I'm
you know we'll sell some candy now we're managing 15 people if you're looking to start scale and grow a business you cannot miss out on tools that help you get there easier so head over to upflip tocom to get instant access now [Music] how important is Fitness highlight on that briefly because you started out the YouTube channel Fitness focused how how important of a role does it play for you in in today I think Fitness is one of the absolute greatest things anyone can do I think every single person as much as you're physically able
to do some level of physical fitness you know because I mean not only on the the physical aspect right you're going to you're going to love the way that your body is going to change and and look and improve and obviously a lot of the health benefits you're going to gain a so much confidence you're going to understand you know structure and discipline because you can't just eat whatever you want you need to focus on certain types of foods certain making sure you're hitting certain macronutrients you have to have a schedule you can't you know
dilly dally and go Miss out in the gym or you're going to waste all the progress that you've worked towards and uh the gym is something that I didn't get into until my sophomore year of college so I kind of was like a late start into it and it was the most transformative thing that I've ever done in my entire life what's your routine today I mean it's probably not much cuz you shared that you've kind of backed away from the hardcore stuff right so for the longest time I was very very into strength training
and powerlifting um got really into the deadlift 650 lb deadlift 501 lb s weighing weighing how much 165 170 that's nuts yeah so everyone watching is probably like this guy doesn't look like he lists he's probably lying I've hit the numbers you know we got proof we do have we do have proof but now as I'm getting older and life is getting much busier and I'm uh looking to kind of you know start a family in the next couple years and settle down powerlifting is not on the highest priority for me so right now I'm
still working out four to six times a week all right well let's switch gears let's go uh take a look at more of the office yeah show you the uh I have a podcast Studio you guys are building that out yeah you want to see it yeah let's do it yeah so this is the home of the new podcast coming in dude don't be sour kind of a spin off of sour strips and kind of you know don't be butt hurt about sensitive topics that's the kind of idea life the the challenges of it exactly
so the podcast is actually a newer Venture about a year into the making so it's an extension of my YouTube channel much different type of content long form it's I've been really enjoying it talk to us about Partnerships you mentioned earlier that you started this company with partners that didn't work out what did you learn from that experience so I started the idea of the company we never really got a lot of traction the main reason why I thought I needed Partnerships in the early stages was because I didn't believe myself enough and I thought
that there's no way that I could figure all this out myself and I needed people in the space and I think it's a bad mentality to be in because although Partners can you know accelerate your growth with their expertise it is so important to learn how to run the business ins and outs and if you're just the face of a company you're not I don't feel like you can have the same level of accomplishment when you have these big Milestones because you you just are like uhuh uh-huh you know and I'm not saying that there's
you know anything wrong or right but you know I have such a passion and a drive and I wake up every day motivated to work on this business because I remember you know the early days to now and I remember being along on each of those steps but with that said I think that Partnerships can be a great way to like I said accelerate the growth if that's something that you want to you have so many other Ventures and you want this as a side thing but if you're going all in I think it's important
to find people that are just as passionate of you and have Partners maybe that are also going to be in the business like you are while we're on the subject of making good money what are some of your guilty pleasures what was the most expensive thing you bought maybe besides the home oh that would be my my Jeep so I have a over-the-top Jeep JK Rubicon that has every possible upgrade on it the vehicle itself was $30,000 and then I put in about $110,000 into that jeep and you might be like how what could you
possibly do with everything I did everything to it and I also did it myself with some friends so we built companies we can weld on we can weld axles onto Jeep so um it it's a passion project of mine back then and I was able to afford the nicer versions of the junkyard parts I was buying when I was 16 so that's cool oh my God I'm trying to stop it was me holding the brakes the entire time this is so much fun other than that like I I bought a nice bracelet for myself I
bought a cardier juston clue nail bracelet as a gift for my 29th birthday it's just a bracelet just money bit or not a watch nothing like that nope no how much was that $7,000 7,000 bucks but you'll never see me buy a Rolex you'll never see me buy a Lamborghini I'd rather not your thing it's just not my thing first of all I hate getting down into cars like I like getting up into Jeeps but also now it's just experiences you know with my girlfriend we love taking trips we love traveling we want to build
a beautiful home I want to you know have money for my kids and kind of create generational wealth is is really my goal and I don't need a whole lot I I want to go to Chipotle almost every day I want to go to TexMex for dinner you know that's I want to be able to order the large margarita and not stress that I could save two bucks by getting the smaller one so that's luxury and you know kind of like a rich life for me is you know just doing the things I already love
to do without stressing about the bills of them yeah the pleasure in the little things yes for sure makes a difference what did you pay for this place cuz the backyard is amazing you got the pool you got the Open Water uh just curious a little bit about this place as a real estate agent so this is actually my first home and it's also the first home that I even looked at I kind of walked in saw the potential we did a complete uh renovation on this so I managed to get this in 2019 I
believe for 500,000 you bought it the right time dude I did not know that at the time but although I got a great deal it was a actual nightmare to do the renovation on this it needed a lot of work and then when you start going down the rabbit hole one thing leads to another and the renovation budget just went through the roof what did you spend in total as much as I bought the house for so I bought the house for 500 and I put about 450 500 into the house what is the biggest
mistake that you can think of that you've learned something from and maybe you would do different if you can go back probably uh not paying attention as much to cash flow I think as you get into business cash flow is King and understanding your finances is so important and early on if I had enough money to buy a whether it be packaging material or a purchase order for inventory where they had payment terms of you know you can pay half now i' be like no I was going to pay it all now so I can
forget about that money but it starts tying up your capital and uh the intricacies of it start getting elaborate the bigger and the bigger that these POS get so I wish I had a better understanding of managing my cash early on because again being a bootstrap company that I don't have millions of dollars of investors money and not really wanting to put my own money more I would if I needed to you know into it I wanted it to be it self-sustaining and try to run it like a fully self-sustaining business and treat it like
that so you know a lot of companies I think have luxury of being more free with how they spend their money because they have a lot of cash in the bank from you know selling Equity of the company where I didn't have that luxury so managing cash is a struggle and that's still a learning process even to this day because there's no one that's doing that for me guys comment below as far as the mistakes you've made when you've started out in your business Max is talking about cash flow what was it for you we'd
love to hear from you if you had to leave our viewers with one piece of advice what would it be don't be afraid to start I think so many people get the paralysis by analysis they overthink and they overanalyze everything they need to understand everything that has to be set up in order for them to start and then end up never starting or they miss their opportunity so just if you have an idea you don't need to have everything planned out you just need to start and everything else will fall in line you're going to
make mistakes you're going to spend and waste a lot of money but those are the things that unfortunately you have to go through to make you a stronger and better more successful entrepreneur it's been a pleasure my friend pleasure is all mine thank you sir if you're interested in turning your passion into a lucrative business make sure to check out episode 167 with Kevin who turned his love of gardening into a $7.3 million a year business take a second to like And subscribe and thank you for watching
