On today’s episode we discuss the challenges of Founders. We look at the most common challenges entrepreneurs are dealing with and advice on how to get through it. We also discuss the change of consumer trends during COVID, and the rise of the health & wellness industry. Yadin Shemmer is the Founder and CEO of Intrinsic, an acquirer and accelerator of Amazon-focused health and wellness brands. Before founding Intrinsic, He spent 15 years building and running consumer health businesses, including Mango Health, and Everyday Health, both sold in 2019 and 2016 respectively. Yadin started his career in finance as both an M&A advisor and later as an investor.
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Episode: 241
Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Yadin Shemmer, Founder and CEO of Intrinsic
Subtitle: “The Biggest Challenges For Business Owners”
Final Show Link: youtube.com/watch?v=3fLOyE_xXAA
Back on Lunch with Norm…Today we discuss the challenges for Founders and entrepreneurs. We also discuss how consumer trends have changed during COVID and the rise of the health & wellness space. Founder and CEO of Intrinsic Yadin Shemmer spent 15 years building and running consumer health businesses. Now he focuses on acquiring and accelerating Amazon-focused health and wellness brands.
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Norman Farrar 0:02
Hey everyone, it’s Norman Farrar, aka the beard guy here and welcome to another lunch with Norm the Amazon FBA and Ecommerce podcast.
Norman Farrar 0:21
Look at that I think we started every show pretty much on time in 2022. And that’s our goal this year is to keep it on time, no, five or 10 minutes late, unless we have something wacky going on with our equipment. And if I do, then I’ll just blame Kelsey. But anyway, today, we got a great show I will talk to you about. On our Wednesday show. We’re gonna be talking about challenges for founders, we all have them we’re going to be discussing today and the rise of the health industry. So we’re gonna get into it. It’s not just a specific health industry. It’s how the rise of this industry or how this niche is taking place, and it’s very similar to many other industries. So we’ll be talking about that. Our guest today. First time on the podcast is the founder and CEO of intrinsic and inquire and accelerator have Amazon focused health and wellness brands. Before founding Trinsic, he spent about 15 years building and running consumer health businesses. So he ran a consumer business at every health, everyday health, which sold for not a small bit, but around $467 million. So we’re going to be welcoming Yadin Shemmer to the show just after the word from our sponsor. I wanted to give a quick shout out and say thank you to global wired advisors for sponsoring this episode of lunch with Norm. Global wired advisors is a leading digital investment bank focused on optimizing the business sales process. For more information, please call Chris Shuffling and his team over at globalwiredadvisors.com. Okay, so where is the man? The myth or the boy? The man.
Kelsey 2:12
It’s me. Hello. Hello. How are you?
Norman Farrar 2:14
Good, good. So I guess I would be Batman and you would be Robin or Batgirl?
Kelsey 2:22
You know, I’ll take it. I always like Robin. So maybe All right. All right, so. So welcome, everyone. Welcome to today’s show, we can start off by smashing those like buttons, giving us those thumbs up on social media, we’d really appreciate it. If you aren’t already, please subscribe to our YouTube channel, as well as if you’re watching from Facebook. Follow us, as well as hit the three dots in the corner and push those notifications that will get you those updates as soon as we go live. And we get started. So we did have a great episode today. We have a giveaway as well. So I already see some people are throwing in some we’ll have Kelsey. So that’s great to see. And want to give a shout out to Jessica rabbits. Welcome, welcome. And Jeff Lasseter, and I’m, I got to be sure this has got to be Marsha. But it’s great to see everyone. Hello, Radd, how are you? Yeah, we can kind of just jump in today’s episode. We’re three episodes in a row on time. It’s great. Great. You’re going to start off 2022. And yeah,
Norman Farrar 3:28
I had to incentivize you to get this going on time every time. But but now we are. Yep, there we go. Okay, so if you have any questions or comments, throw them over into the comment section. Before we get to the guest. We’re all entrepreneurs, if you’re an Amazon or you’re selling on Walmart, if you’re an E commerce online seller, you’re an entrepreneur. What have been your biggest challenges we want to know. Okay, so now sit back, relax and grab a cup of coffee. Enjoy the episode. Welcome.
Yadin Shemme 4:12
Thanks, Norm. Hey, there.
Norman Farrar 4:14
How’s it going?
Yadin Shemme 4:16
It’s going great. Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Norman Farrar 4:20
Yeah, you know, this is gonna be a topic that I really I really love. So and we’ve got basically two topics today, but I’m really want to talk about, you know, challenges that founders have just won. Also, three times in a row. I’ve had a frog in my throat since 2022. So I don’t know what it is. But if I don’t hit the mute button, man, I’m so sorry. I coughed in your and all the listeners. Okay, so before we get going, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and what you’re doing?
Yadin Shemme 4:57
Yeah, we’re intrinsic and We are a health consumer products business for the 22nd century. That’s that’s how we like to think about ourselves. We are out there looking for exceptional health and wellness brands that ideally address an unmet need in health. And we try to acquire those brands and get them to the next level, scale them. Unlike the big healthcare CPG companies of the past few centuries, you know, companies like Johnson and Johnson and GSK, and Abbott, maybe even p&g, who basically launch their own product to do a lot years of r&d years of market research and hope that the products work, we we take the view that the brands of the future are going to be born and raised online. We think Amazon and Shopify are the nurseries for those brands. And we use those marketplaces to basically scout for brands that have done a good job serve a consumer well, and grow up grow the portfolio that way. So that’s, that’s what we’re up to. And you know, we’re less than a year old, we’ve acquired a bunch of brands that that are just amazing at helping folks, you know, deal with health issues. And we’re on the way,
Norman Farrar 6:16
so intrinsic is specifically health related, correct?
Yadin Shemme 6:20
Yes. Only health and wellness.
Norman Farrar 6:22
Okay, and would you consider yourself an aggregator in the business?
Yadin Shemme 6:26
I we do not. I don’t like that word. I know folks who use it because it’s easy to understand. But for us, aggregation is a means to an end. It’s not the end, the end is having a large healthcare, consumer products business. And aggregation is just the way we do that. It’s not who we are. So you know, folks understand that we use that term here and there as well. But really, we’re building a CPG. Company.
Norman Farrar 6:48
Okay, very good. I would just wanted to establish that. Okay, now, let’s talk about some challenges. I love this topic. Like I said earlier, what do you see some of the most, what are the most common challenges you see today, with online sellers or for online sellers.
Yadin Shemme 7:07
I mean, there’s, there’s so many, we can focus on the big ones. I mean, folks have issues with finding good quality manufacturers that can make a product cheap, they have huge amount of supply chain issues, especially in this, you know, day and age, the last 12 months, folks perennially have issues with money, they just don’t have enough capital to do marketing and to get inventory. So working capital is always an issue. But I would say the biggest challenge that we see in the brands that, you know, we we talk to day in and day out, is what to do beyond Amazon. A lot of folks start on Amazon, Amazon’s an awesome launch pad for brands, they can get a brand from nothing to, you know, a couple million bucks of revenue. And then what happens next is kind of the big thing we see. And what I tell people, you know, half joking half not is Amazon’s a great place to grow up as a brand. So really tough place to grow old as a brand. It’s kind of No Country for Old brands. It’s a very competitive, dynamic place. And so brands are always you know, at the next stage, what do we do? How do we get off Amazon? How do we grow the brand off of Amazon? How do we diversify the Amazon risk. And if you don’t do that, what we see happen to a lot of brands is they they’ve done well for a few years, and then they get, you know, they get their market share taken away slowly, slowly, by various new entrants that have come into their market and are excited by their success. And many of those new entrants don’t play fair. And so it just becomes becomes very hard.
Norman Farrar 8:45
So do you think a lot of sellers are specifically on just one plant, let’s say Amazon, and they’re not diversifying enough? Or should they stay on the one platform and just become excellent on that platform?
Yadin Shemme 9:01
I think a lot of them are on one platform, and I think many of them are on Amazon, because Amazon just makes it easier than anywhere else to bring something to market and to find your consumer. But the challenge remains of what I described, which is you’ve done it now you’re three to five rolls around, you built your brand, it’s you know, call it a couple million bucks, and it’s doing well. It’s hard to defend on Amazon. And because it’s such a dynamic place. And so at that point, a lot of sellers the challenge they face is okay, what do I do? How do I get my brand in front of more consumers without being completely hostage to Amazon for the eyeball. It’s not only more expensive to keep those eyeballs because the cost of PPC goes up all the time on Amazon, but it’s just in a very competitive place. So you can stay on Amazon. And you can do you could try to defend your position on Amazon. But how do you find your consumers in other ways? That’s the challenge.
Norman Farrar 9:58
Are you seeing A lot of people kind of going off straying off to Walmart or Shopify and trying to build an audience there as well.
Yadin Shemme 10:08
I see a lot of folks trying most folks have a Shopify site. Most folks have tried to get on Walmart and list there. And I think what a lot of people discover is, it’s easy to set up, it’s hard to get the consumer there. And it’s very expensive to drive awareness and traffic to those places. So people get stuck.
Norman Farrar 10:33
You know, that’s an interesting point, because within the Amazon environment, you have PPC, and you can do other things like Amazon posts, or Amazon live. And I mean, it’s built into the platform. And then when you go over to Shopify, or if you go over to Walmart, this whole external traffic thing kicks in. And although you need it, and we preach this over on Amazon, you know, start driving traffic from all these different avenues. You know, Blitz, we call it a traffic Blitz, right? With Shopify or with Walmart, you’ve got to know those, though, that I mean, Amazon, Walmart’s PPC? Absolutely 100% sucks right now, you know, so you have to drive your traffic somewhere, unless you have a really great optimized listing. But you still need to have those ads coming in. I think, personally, I think one of the biggest issues out there, if you are trying to diversify, is that you’re not spending enough time you’re thinking Amazon mindset, oh, it’s a captivated audience, people are gonna be there, they’re gonna show up if I’ve got a great listing, if I throw up a little bit of PPC, and it’s not there on these, you know, on these platforms. So I’m not sure about you, but you know, how much extra money or time would you spend trying to get that external traffic over to these listings,
Yadin Shemme 11:58
I would spend a lot of time and effort on it. And again, what I see, what we see a lot of folks doing is initially they spend most of their time and focus on Amazon. And that’s smart, because you can go from zero to 60, on Amazon pretty fast. A couple of years, you can build a nice little business on Amazon. But then you run into the kind of ceiling, which is it gets harder competitors come in, you got to pay more on PPC, you got to lower your prices and start discounting and the margin starts eroding. So at that point, I would spend a lot of time thinking about it, of how do I diversify my sources of audience away from just Amazon, and build my own audience somewhere else. And you can do that in a bunch of ways, none of which are easy. You could do it with influencers, you can do it with affiliates, you can do with publishers, you can do it with other marketplaces and distributors into potentially brick and mortar retail. You can go into the healthcare channel proper if you know what you’re doing. And those are all the things that that we’re set up to do it intrinsic and why we built intrinsic because we think you have to go suit, you have to know a category well, and know where the consumer is in that category in order to really build a durable brand.
Norman Farrar 13:12
Right, right. So you’ve we talked about this just on Wednesday, about really getting to understand your customer and your audience, and how to how to market to them. I’m, I’m kind of curious. This is I ask this to a lot of people who are acquiring companies, the average business that you’re looking at? Is it $50,000 a month? 100,000. quarter million? And I’m gonna lead to another question in a second. But where the where’s the sweet spot for you?
Yadin Shemme 13:44
The average for us has been about 4 million of revenue and about a million of profit. Okay? That’s an average, the average is a bit misleading. We’ve done much bigger and we’ve gotten smaller and averages out to that. But as a rough ballpark, that’s kind of the average.
Norman Farrar 14:00
Alright, so let’s say they have 4 million gross. Okay, so top line revenue $4 million. How many people on average are working that business?
Yadin Shemme 14:10
Great question. Most of the time, we will see one or two time, like founder owners of that business. Often it’s just one, right? It’s a true solo entrepreneur, somewhere could be in America could be abroad, but they have typically a bunch of people either freelance virtual assistant or agencies wrapped around. And so you if you really wanted to figure out how many people are spending time on a brand, you would have to fractionally look at all of the folks that are working on a part time and try to add that up into a person. My estimation is you have typically one full time entrepreneur. And then you probably have between all the other folks that are touching the brand. You probably have another two people working on it on average.
Norman Farrar 14:57
Wow. I mean, really what other business Can you do that with so little,
Yadin Shemme 15:04
no little human capital? Yeah, and so efficiently. But as these brands get bigger, and we’ve seen much bigger brands, and we’ve seen brands that are 1020 30 million of revenue, as they get bigger, that number gets bigger. Also, it it doesn’t stay that lean.
Norman Farrar 15:21
Okay, so before I get to the next questions, just wanted to let everybody know, we do have a really great giveaway today. Why don’t you take it away and let everybody know what we’re talking about?
Yadin Shemme 15:33
Yeah, we’re gonna give away consultations for free. For anyone who’s listening to the show, especially, I think it would be valuable for folks who are building brands in the healthcare space, we’ll sit down with you the entire team at intrinsic, and talk to you about how to build the brand both on and off Amazon.
Norman Farrar 15:50
That’s fantastic. That’s a really great price and price. And like you can hear, I think, you know, your stuff, I think intrinsic knows their stuff. So you know, if you could sit down with a group of these people, and you know, have a 30 minute consult, or however long it takes just think what you could grab from that. So hashtag, we’ll have Kelsey, tag two people, and you’ll have a second entry. And we’re gonna just continue on here. What are you seeing? When you’re looking at companies, and you’re looking at their books? Or you’re looking at them as people? What do you see that their mistakes are?
Yadin Shemme 16:29
The biggest is, I think what I said up front, which is an over reliance on Amazon, where you kind of become hostage to that platform. And it’s never good when you own a business to have too many eggs in one basket. And most folks put most of their eggs in the Amazon basket. I think the big the second biggest issue that we see would be my biggest piece of advice to anyone listening building a brand is people haven’t thought about how to build something that’s defensible. A lot of folks just take a commodity product, put some new lipstick on it, or a new brand. And you know, try to grow it on Amazon. Oh, yeah. But there’s nothing really different about it. There’s no defensibility, it doesn’t have any unique IP, it doesn’t have a unique marketing channel, it doesn’t have a unique supplier that no one else can get. There’s no moat around that brand long term. And the implication of that is down the road very quickly. Copycats come in, and it’s hard to start to defend. And so my biggest, you know, advice to folks is really take the time upfront to think about what is going to make your brand defensible in a couple years time.
Norman Farrar 17:40
That’s great advice. The The other thing I want to talk about, and this kind of creeps up on you. So you think you get into the business and you’ve got enough capital put aside, then it starts to take off. And sorry, guys. Too many cigars over the holidays. All right. So then it starts to take off, and all of a sudden you’re there with your pants down. You don’t have enough capital. Any advice for people that are just they think they’ve got the proper capital product takes off, it goes from first base to third base. And now they have capitalization problem. And that’s what I don’t know about you. I think that’s what kills most online sellers is when something takes off, and they just don’t have the capital to maintain it.
Yadin Shemme 18:36
Well, if if the business is working, and it’s healthy, and it’s taking off, that’s an awesome problem to have. That’s the problem every every entrepreneur wants that problem. And the answer is find a capital source that can support you. And I think the good news is in the past three years, the world has woken up to how interesting these businesses are, even though they’re small, they’re interesting. And there’s a lot of money out there. There’s a lot of debt capital out there that’s pretty cheap and somewhat flexible, that can help you finance that growth. So our advice is, you know, go find someone like that they can help support the growth. But make sure that the real bottleneck is not just money before you go borrow a whole bunch of debt, be really sure that that’s not the only thing holding you back and that your supply chain can keep up and that your customer is going to be there on the other side.
Norman Farrar 19:30
Yeah, that would suck getting a big, you know, a loan or something. And then all of a sudden you’re you’re stuck in this supply chain issue and your your sales at the end of the day suffer. But the other thing that I found really unusual. Tell me if you see this. At the end of the day, the biggest cash out is when you sell your business. Have you ever seen like I know and Greg and Roy, I’m not going to say that company. I know if you’re listening, these guys, when they cashed out, they cashed out big. And they’re sipping on, you know, umbrella drinks and you know, eating bonbons on the beach. And they’re loving it. But I also know a bunch of people who get completely depressed. After they sell their business, they all of a sudden, their mental state goes from high energy high octane down to depression. And I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that, like with with entrepreneurs, and if so, you know, what, what advice can you give them?
Yadin Shemme 20:40
Yeah, it’s, I think it’s pretty common, actually, I think the building a brand is a rush, there’s ups and downs. But at the end of the day, it’s a rush, and it’s a mission, and you wake up every day, and you’ve got something that you got to do. And I think once you’re on the other side, you’ve sold it, people imagine that they’re just going to be happy playing golf and drinking drinks. But a lot of people find like, that’s, that’s empty, and they want something else. So the best advice I can give is a don’t squander the money. You know, make sure you’ve got it saved away and invested responsibly. And be find something else that gets you excited about everyday, it could just be doing it again, like a lot, a lot of the brand owners that we buy, where we buy their brands, they’re gonna just turn around and do it all over again, right. And that’s awesome. And sometimes we’re involved in, we’re helping them on the other side. Because we built a relationship with them, we trust each other, we can bring them a lot of value of how to grow their brand. And we hope that we get the call when that brand eventually comes, you know, to market for sale. So you just got to find what the next thing is.
Norman Farrar 21:46
Yeah, one of the things I would say two is continue to learn, you know, get in there continue to learn for me, I’m an adrenaline junkie, I want startups if I don’t have that rush, like I love developing styling, my sons will tell you that I just love it. I love jumping in the hot seat, doing it. That gives me my adrenaline. That’s, that’s my bungee jump. So, but I try to do this on a regular basis, I got to learn about it. And to learn about something completely new, I think I’ve probably had more jobs in different niches than anybody I know. But I’ll go in, I’ll learn the new job. I’ll take that hour a week. I tell Kelsey all the time, spend an hour a day, just learning something just an hour a day, and you’ll be an expert at the end of the year. But, you know, just get into something, do something to keep your mind busy. And enjoy your money. So
Yadin Shemme 22:41
bungee jumping is a cakewalk next to doing a start up, at least when you bungee jump. You got a rope?
Norman Farrar 22:47
Yeah, well, sometimes. So I think Kelsey would probably cut mine. But anyways, so we’ve we’ve seen a lot of trends happening right now because of COVID. And looking at 2022, what do you think some of the trends will be for founders?
Yadin Shemme 23:07
I can talk about our category where obviously, it is, is is transforming a lot of stuff and help, I think, you know, when we when we think about the big trends in healthcare, that are impacting everything, not just CPG companies, you know, some of the big ones are, number one, because it COVID There’s this push to remote care and care in the home, having less folks come into the hospital or a clinic and trying to manage and take care of people remotely. That’s a huge, huge trend. Number two is just healthcare is getting more expensive in America. Everyone’s premiums, deductibles, co pays are going up all the time. And so I think people are constantly looking for better, cheaper solutions to their health care, that don’t touch their health insurance. And there’s this other just like inexorable trend, which is the aging population in America each year. Sorry, each day in America 10,000 people aged into Medicare turn 65. So huge aging population. And all those things, I think play well into what’s happening on E commerce and healthcare as a whole, where folks are looking for cheaper, accessible solutions to their health challenges and solutions that they can get to their doorstep tomorrow versus waiting around the health system to figure it out. And solutions that address an aging population are constantly interesting to us and I think have a big market.
Norman Farrar 24:39
What do you are? People fail. You have your first product and you could fail. What do you say to people entrepreneurs that have failed the first time out there?
Yadin Shemme 24:54
It’s it’s a part of the it’s a part of success. You cannot divorce it from success. And it’s only a failure if you haven’t learned from it. So if you’ve learned why it failed, you are better set up the next time to get it right. And most people will fail a couple of times before they hit a successful business or product. It’s not just in the Amazon ecommerce game, it’s true of kind of everything. You have to you have to fail, and you have to embrace failure in order to eventually get to success. You know, we, we, I encourage like my kids, to not think of failure as a negative, but to think of it as just a stepping stone onto the path of figuring out what works. And the same is true of business.
Norman Farrar 25:39
Right? So I’d like to hear from the listeners. And I know, we’ve got a bunch of comments that came in. Fantastic, thank you. But if you’ve had a failure, and if you’ve had that failure, how did you overcome it, okay. And to tell you the truth, I don’t even call it a failure. I call it the Phil to succeed, you know, because you got to fail to succeed. But anyways, I’d like to hear from our listeners, if they’ve had any obstacles overcome and how they did that. Okay, so at this point, Kelsey, get your finger ready to go on the button, because I know you mess up half the time when you do this. We’re gonna go to a sponsor right now. Thank you Z CO for sponsoring this episode of lunch with Norm. Are you looking to take your ecommerce business from local to global, you can with the help of z and their brand new app. That’s right, you can track live shipments with push notifications, get detailed lead times for each stage of your shipment, and store all compliance and VAT reclaim documents in the palm of your hand. All while listening to lunch with Norm, ready to expand your E commerce empire. And take your Amazon FBA business global. Use the link in the description to learn more about Z’s new app that’s now available on desktop and mobile. That’s z.co z e.co. Okay, Kelsey did a great job, you’re, you’re back on my favorites list. Okay. Now, let’s just stick on this failure thing for a little bit. Like you said, every brand, sometimes you just right around the corner from it with Amazon, I call that paying your Amazon tax, you might have a great product, you might not have priced it properly, he might have just put 30 points on it. And then you figure it out. Well, Amazon’s gonna take 27% or whatever it is. Maybe you didn’t drive any external traffic cheap, really cheap clicks, maybe you didn’t understand your audience. But all of this leads up to just your Amazon tax or your Shopify tax or your Walmart tax. So don’t be surprised if you don’t make it. And the other thing is, you probably see this all the time, perceived value, you might launch your product, and you’re going out there as a bottom feeder, you know, and the bottom feeder makes a quarter, same product is being sold different packaging quality packaging person spends 50 cents, and they’re making $10 More, and they’re getting the same traffic. So there’s a lot of different things that you can do when you launch a product that you can learn from. And one of the other things is the first launch is usually not a failure. When you when you see your launch, and you’re not selling or something’s happening, and yeah, maybe it sucked, you didn’t get the sales, you thought, look at the reviews, and see what people are saying. And like you were saying, maybe it has to do with changing up the product. If you’ve got a plastic shoe stretcher from the same factory that seven other people do. How can you change it up and constantly look at what the reviews are saying good or bad and improve, improve, improve, try to constantly improve? It could be as simple as your insert, or you know that 15 to 25 cent packaging, but you’re doing something that’s different to change the customer experience. And I think that’s important. Any thoughts on that?
Yadin Shemme 29:19
Yeah. 100%. And I think there’s, you know, we see, I would say there’s a lot of ways to classify the types of brands and products that are out there. But you can think of it in one way of products that are revolutionary versus products that are kind of evolutionary, some products are brand new, they’re creating a whole new category, and trying to address a problem that that no one else has addressed before. Some products are just improvements on other things that exist already. And those two paths tend to be different. If you’re just improving upon something that’s out there, then what you’re saying is 100% Right. I mean either case you have to look at the reviews, because that is basically crowdsource market research on the fly from the biggest platform in human history for commerce. So that is the lifeblood of any builder on Amazon is what are my consumer saying? And what do I need to do different in response to that, if you’re building something that’s brand new, and has never been introduced, before we bought one of these brands, the game is kind of different than if you build something that’s marginally better than some some other product that exists today. In both cases, you’re looking at reviews and trying to figure out what to do next. But in one case, it’s like, hey, this person launched a product in a category that never existed, they created this whole category. And so there are real pioneers, and it’s kind of harder to read the tea leaves in that situation.
Norman Farrar 30:44
As a founder, what do you see the most exciting things happening right now? On on? Well, I’m talking about in business in general.
Yadin Shemme 30:58
There’s so much that’s, you know, that’s happening, you know, this, what we’re talking about now, in the space that we’re in, which is ecommerce is one of the most exciting things happening, which is why I did this and why we built intrinsic, because I think the distance between innovation and consumer is shorter than it’s ever been. And that’s really why Amazon is such an exciting place. There’s a ton of other stuff happening beyond our world. That’s tremendously exciting. I think there’s innovations now in biotech, and genomics, that are going to transform the way that we treat diseases. Things like gene therapy, are just like the most groundbreaking innovations. Maybe since the discovery of antibiotics, right? The biggest the biggest leap forward in medicine, maybe ever we’re on the cusp of, wow, there’s things like quantum computing, sure, gonna just change the amount of power that mankind has to compute and automate. Big stuff like that.
Norman Farrar 32:03
It gets me a little nervous. But so let’s talk also about as a founder, what do you think about going to events? Networking? Do you spend a lot of time doing that? Or do you spend a lot of time working within your business?
Yadin Shemme 32:20
We do we do a mess, I would say that we’re like 80%, in the business 20% of networking, meeting folks outside just about intrinsic, not related to a specific deal. And the most valuable networking that we’ve done with it is stuff that tends to be kind of one on one and organic, not going to a trade show and setting up a booth that that’s been hit or miss for us.
Norman Farrar 32:47
Yeah, I can see that a lot of people. I’ve seen them at trade shows. And they Well, first of all, they’re in the wrong trade show. That I mean, I see that all the time, don’t you think? What are you doing in this trade show? You know, so that’s one thing. And then with working a booth, I I like it and I hate it. If I’m working a booth, I’ve got to be like, I’ve got to be working in the booth. I can’t be sitting back. Have you ever seen this, you go to a trade show? And maybe there’s not a lot of action. But you’re sitting there and you see this guy that’s just working. There’s their cell phone like catching up on their texts. And all this traffic is is walking by right? Oh, yeah, going there? Oh my gosh, like, what are you doing? You set up your booth, you spent 10,000 bucks, and you’re sitting in the back eating Bom bonds. Yeah. But anyways, I just got off the bat, because it’s something that I love when I when I look at these. Oh, and the other thing you want to know a little go down another another rabbit hole is if I give information. So I I don’t carry anything. When I go to a trade show. I don’t carry anything except my cell phone. And if they I’ll go up to somebody that I’m interested in. And you know, hey, take a scan, I have a digital card and follow up with me. Do you know that probably less than 10% of the people that I asked the follow up, follow up with me. And he’s crazy. And you’re probably going wow, this is a whole different tangent. And if you’re saying that you’ve never watched the show before?
Yadin Shemme 34:28
No, we got these trade shows and we try to follow up but I could see how that would happen. And anyway, your bigger point is networking is important. Yeah. Especially in the space. You can never really the world is surprisingly small. I’m always reminded of that, and you never really know. Like how a person that you meet that you might not think and can be helpful or relevant to your business ends up like somehow coming back around and being someone that is important.
Norman Farrar 34:58
Absolutely. Yeah, it is. So Important. Okay, so we talked a lot about different areas. We’ve talked a bit about the health space, do you want to talk a little bit more? Now, I understand that the majority of the people that are listening right now, may not be in the health space, but it is similar to other businesses. Let’s talk about what you see as the trends in the health space for this year. And how that could be associated to like somebody that’s in the not only the health or fitness or pet, pet, pet, what am I trying to say? Pet niches, you know, what are you seeing?
Yadin Shemme 35:40
We’re seeing, you know, all the trends that I mentioned before, it’s kind of big macro healthcare trends, those are huge trends which push impact everyone who’s in healthcare, whether you’re on the CPG ecommerce side, or whether you’re in like, the prescription regulated side of healthcare. So aging, for example, and healthy aging is a huge trend. And there’s infinite need for better solutions and products to help seniors, whether they’re in the home or outside of the home, age in place and age, you know, healthfully and with dignity. That’s a huge trend. And there’s a lot of products and innovation happening there. Another trend that we’re seeing a lot is just broader wellness and mental health. And I think COVID was a massive accelerant people became, I think, really aware of how stressed they were and anxious. And there’s a lot happening in the space both on the reimbursed regulated side, as well as the E commerce product side around anxiety and stress and calm. We also see a lot of really interesting innovation. In the women’s health space, we’ve done a lot in women’s health, we’re very excited about that as a category, there’s huge amount of unmet need in various pieces of women’s health, whether it’s fertility or gynecology or labor, breastfeeding, hormone health, there’s almost infinite unmet need. And we see a lot of innovation happening there that we get really excited about.
Norman Farrar 37:11
And I hope I was hoping you were gonna answer it that way. Because the reason why I answered or asked the question was, you’ve got the the health care and the health and wellness side. And you just talked about all the spin offs that people can start targeting you we’re talking about elderly and health care there. And okay, well, what are some other spin offs, you know, that you could provide to those people that aren’t necessarily in your business? That Amazon can, you know, help? Like, just take a look at, okay, you’re elderly, maybe you want to pet okay, you probably want a better pet bed or a better pet product, or you’re starting to see more raw foods that come out for pets. Okay, let’s go down that avenue. It’s just not the health and wellness side of things. If you look at it, look outside the envelope, and see what can be associated with this hyper growth industry that you can take advantage of. That’s what I wanted to pull out. And I mean, you nailed it. Okay, so anything else? Let’s talk a little bit about intrinsic for a second. Let’s see how well how does intrinsic compare or differ from the big CPG companies, and other aggregators.
Yadin Shemme 38:28
So the other aggregators are generalists. And they don’t really have any sort of category focus, we focus only on health and wellness. That’s all we do. And the reason that matters is we think if you really want to grow a brand, on and off Amazon, you really have to understand the category and the consumers in that category. So that you can understand their path to purchase and their shopper journey, and then try to meet them across that journey, not just try to intercept them on Amazon. If you’re not really deep in a category, it’s very hard to do that. So these other aggregators, they tend to be masters of none. And what they tend to be good at is mostly buying companies, and maybe Amazon operations a little bit, but they’re not really we think, good omni channel brand builders, which is what we think is the right way to approach this business. So we’ve built everything here to try to get an advantage in the healthcare category. And to be able to take a brand that has started and grown up on Amazon and help bring it to a much larger audience of consumers wherever they are, whether that’s retail, whether that’s online, whether that’s abroad, whether that’s in the healthcare channel, proper in hospitals, and clinics, etc. And so that’s the major difference between us and the other aggregators. If you think about us versus other CPG companies, the biggest difference is speed and flexibility. The big CPG companies move very slowly. and they are limited in what they can do and how they can market to consumers. For example, one of the limitations they have is because they built their business over the past 200 years, and they focused mostly on physical retail as their main channel, they’ve got legacy pricing that might work on the shelf. And they’ve got relationships in retail that sometimes inhibit them from doing things on the E commerce site. Right, they can’t take the same product and price it differently on E commerce because they’ve got it on the shelf at Walmart, and Walmart will be angry if they do something different on Amazon, and vice versa. So we have, we can move a lot faster, we can be a lot more flexible than the big CPG companies. And we can be a lot deeper in the category and be we think stronger marketers versus the aggregators, because all we do is health and wellness.
Norman Farrar 40:51
Yeah, I was privy to one of the aggregators, portfolios. And they showed me what they had purchased over the last year, and it was I don’t understand it, they, why did you purchase this company and this company and this company, they were completely 100% different, like, completely different spectrum altogether. Right. And I love what you’re saying about just having that niche, like you understand your market. And I’m hoping I’m gonna see a lot more of that. Because I don’t know. I would think as an aggregator, and I’m only talking about, I can’t talk about everyone because there’s really incredible aggregators out there. But there’s also like 100 aggregators out there that just have money that are buying up everything, and I don’t understand it.
Yadin Shemme 41:45
I don’t either. I think they are making a play for speed. And just saying, hey, I can buy a lot of stuff really fast. Yeah. And it’s a financial play, but they’re basically an inch deep and a mile wide. And if we’re, you’re really trying to build brands, we think that’s a tough approach.
Norman Farrar 42:05
And that’s it. It’s about building a brand, right? Yeah. Okay, so I think it’s about that time to ask a few questions, Kelsey, or add the comments. You want to pop on squire?
Kelsey 42:18
Yeah, for sure. So if you do have questions, comments, let us know. We’ll be answering them for the next couple. Now we do have a giveaway. Yes. So let me start with just a rabbits question. What factors do you consider for purchasing beauty companies? suggestions, advice for starting startup companies? Do you have any preference for country manufacturers formulating specific advertising advice? There’s a lot in there. If there’s one that sticks out, feel free to answer it. But yeah, first question,
Yadin Shemme 42:47
great question. biggest piece of advice is what I said before on the show, which is try to differentiate, there’s, you know, if you’re just launching the number 5000 mascara, it’s so tough to differentiate because it’s so competitive, try to find some sort of point of difference, either in what the product does or how it does it. Now a lot of a lot of folks in the beauty space try to differentiate for example, with natural ingredients. I think that was a big differentiator a couple years ago, I worry that it’s become less and less of an edge these days, and that you need something else. So really focus on areas of difference. What we add intrinsic get most excited about when we look at beauty brands is not just straight up beauty like mascara, but beauty that has a very heavy component of healthcare behind it. So skincare that relates to some sort of skin disorder, whether it’s psoriasis, or eczema or melasma, or rosacea, things like that, where it’s health centric beauty are really interesting to us. And, you know, Jessica rabbits launching a brand in that space, we would love to look at it when it’s ready. In terms of advertising advice, I think it’s, I think for beauty brands, social influencers is basically the most important tactic if you’re spending your advertising dollars, so I would go out and try to find the biggest influencers related to this the niche of beauty that you launch in and try to bring those folks into the business as ambassadors and influencers you might have to give them some equity or some sort of economic upside in the business. But if you get the right folks in, they can be transformational for growing awareness and building the business.
Kelsey 44:30
Alright, okay, awesome. Next from Doctor cars, what is your favorite underrated marketplace?
Yadin Shemme 44:40
Favorite underrated marketplace? I think right now, we would have to say I think it’s probably Walmart. You know, I think their marketplace is it’s very small relative to Amazon. It’s hard to it’s hard to actually make it work. It’s kind of clunky, as you were saying. But when we look at our crystal ball, 10 years out, it’s going to be a major player. So if you plant the flag now, on Walmart, and you build up your ratings and reviews and you figure it out now, you’re going to be very well positioned in a couple years time.
Norman Farrar 45:19
Yeah, another one I like to add to that. And it’s not an online, but it’s the small mom and pop shops.
Yadin Shemme 45:29
That’s an that’s a really good one. There’s a wholesale marketplace called Fair, which gives you access to huge amount of small mom and pop shops, you can do through a one stop shop. The other one that we like that’s health specific that I that I would throw out there is there’s a marketplace called FSA store, which is basically an online marketplace for people to use their FSA HSA dollars. And so that’s interesting place if you’re in the healthcare world. All right.
Kelsey 45:59
All right. Great. Okay, next one. Interesting. From our show, where’s the corporate headquarters are interested in Trinsic? Also, how did you come to work with 20, Robin Robins, I’m betting that will be a great story. I also noticed that on your website to Tony Robbins popping up. Yeah.
Yadin Shemme 46:18
headquarters are in New York City. And we got introduced to Tony through a mutual friend. And Tony does a lot of work in healthcare. It’s one of the kind of three pillars of his work. And he’s even written books, in partnership with doctors about various aspects of health. He’s incredibly passionate about it. And I think he rightly believes that you can’t really be successful in life unless you’re healthy. It’s a core part of, of being, you know, successful, unhappy. So he’s big into this. He also loved the mission of helping helping them the small businesses, the mom and pop founders out there, have a big win financially in a sale, and then kind of taking their brands and growing them. Tony, you know, came from very humble beginnings very, and is, I think, perennially on the side of the underdog. And so he loves that kind of Amazon founder, small business owner mentality.
Kelsey 47:17
Okay, great. And from Dr. Cause, what are your top three? Your three top reasons for not selling your business?
Yadin Shemme 47:27
Ooh, that’s a good question. Why not to sell your business, one, you’ve got a partner in the business, it’s not pulling their weight, figure out a way to get rid of the partner, buy them out and hold on to the brand, it’s very hard to find a brand that works, you know, we were talking about failure. A lot of brands don’t work out if you’ve got a winner on your hands. But you don’t have a partner that is making it work or pulling their weight, try to find a better way to sort that than to just like sell the brand. That’s I think one one piece of advice, too, is don’t have enough money. Find a way there’s a lot of capital out there, find a way to like get debt, cheap debt in the business to help you grow, I wouldn’t try to sell from a position of weakness, because you just don’t have enough capital to make it work. I have to think of a third, those are two that come to mind right off the bat. I think it begs the question of what are good reasons to sell the business. And doctor if Dr. Cause will indulge me I will I’ll give you like my list. I think a good reason to sell the business is you don’t have the background or the connections to take it to the next level. So if you’ve gotten as far as you think you can go but you think someone else can really accelerate it that’s I think a good reason. Another good reason is you’re just not having fun anymore. Like if you wake up every day and it’s a grind and you hate going to work good reason. Another reason I think is a good one is if you’ve identified like another opportunity over here that you think is way bigger, way more fun and and a better financial opportunity. A lot of founders we see sell their businesses because they want to go do that. Rather than trying to do two things at once and doing both things kind of badly or half ass. I think that’s a good reasons to say I’ve identified something else I want to go do that. Okay,
Kelsey 49:21
okay. And I know we’re short on time. So we can move over to the we’ll just before we get to that I just wanted to mention some of the challenges that people have said so from Red urging Amazon Help Center and their PPC is our biggest problem. From Jeff getting sources to live up to the ship dates and quality they quote my company for Jessica rabbits see the challenge of becoming an entrepreneur fully understanding I’m running a real business, the initial horror movie failure level with the right hiring for my office, I’ve learned and from Marshall A big one is just to hold on to the vision when the world keeps kicking you in the gonads I’m a woman. I don’t have doughnuts, but I sure know what it feels like to get kicked there. I’m going to see the movie American underdog this afternoon. Yes, I’m taking an afternoon off. Because I know it is the message I need to see right now as founders. We need to know how to fill our cup when the world drains. It’s very true. Marcia love that. Okay, so yeah, we can head over to the wheel. Unless there’s anything else. Let’s spin the wheel. Let’s do it. I want to start it. Alright, so get ready. Buckle up. And here we go the wheel Kelsey. Yo, yo, I’m gonna shuffle these up. And 321 Alright, so if you are the winner, please email me K at lunch with norm.com. And we’ll get you everything you need. You have 48 hours to reply.
Norman Farrar 51:06
Oh, great. Congrats.
Kelsey 51:11
Congratulations. So that is key at lunch with norm.com.
Norman Farrar 51:17
That’s a new winner too. So there you go. You’ve been exposed to the wheel of Kelsey. It was everything I hoped it would be. Yeah.
Norman Farrar 51:29
Hey, thanks so much for you know, coming on to the podcast today. If somebody has a health or beauty product, and they are interested in getting in touch with you, where can they where can they contact you.
Yadin Shemme 51:41
They can just write us directly at intrinsic. There’s a web forum that we respond to really quick. They can also just write me@intrinsic.us. Your Dean Adam trinsic.us.
Norman Farrar 51:50
Very good. All right, sir. Well, thank you so much. I got your look at this. I cut you loose two minutes before. You’re all set.
Yadin Shemme 51:58
Norm. Thank you so much, guys. This is awesome. You rock. Alright, thanks a lot. We’ll see you later. I’ll see you soon. All right, everybody.
Norman Farrar 52:05
So I hope you enjoyed that today. Just a little, you know, view of, you know, the founder and some of the issues that might come up and why stick with it. And remember, it’s always worth sticking with it. The more you learn, even if there is an issue that comes up, you can always get around it. And if it doesn’t apply to your first product, it could be your second product or your second business don’t give up because the first time you know the kick at the can doesn’t go through. But anyways, let’s move on Kelsey, what is the next what’s next? Monday bringing us
Kelsey 52:45
Alright, so I’m actually very excited about this. We got Eric Castle Llano from Amazon lifts. So if you guys don’t know that’s a YouTube channel. And they also have their own company. They specialize in Amazon. Wholesale. So be great be diving into that. I think he sold they’ve sold 135 million on Amazon. So some crazy numbers. So lightweight. Yeah, lightweight Amazon. Let’s check it out. I know Tony was saying that. He’s been big fan of them for years. So super excited about it kind of just reached out to them and got a reply from Eric. So that’s great. So yeah, excited for that. That is on Monday. So that’s 12pm Eastern time. If you have questions ahead of time you can post that in the events section on our Facebook page tells you what
Norman Farrar 53:35
time it is that time is it time for word from our sponsor.
Kelsey 53:40
All right, here we go. That word the sponsor
Norman Farrar 53:45
button. Thank you solarize for sponsoring this episode of lunch with dorm salaries is your comprehensive solution for your everyday business needs. Everything you need to grow and scale your Amazon business is just one click away for more information contact demon his team over at solarized calm and remember solarize is with one our alright and i just noticed that a viewer was asking how to contact you so if you want to just post it Kay at lunch with norm.com Alright, so I think that’s about it. Anything from your end counts before we move on?
Kelsey 54:25
Or it’s if you haven’t done it yet. Please smash those like buttons give us a thumbs up. Definitely loving the group right now. I think we have an incredible beer nation that we’re continuing to grow. So if you do have any questions I saw a couple new people come in and say that they’re brand new and they are excited to learn so let us know your questions that community is for you guys. And and for us. Of course we love to meet you but if you do have questions about your business about ecommerce where to start we have a whole range of experts in that group. So that’s lunch with Norm Amazon FBA and E commerce collective, check it out. And if you’re interested in more in our paid programming, we do have a membership ops option on lunch with Norm calm. It’ll take you through the different tiers, but basically you can get q&a sessions with me and Norm we’re also going to be doing hot seats with the members in there. So we’re going to actually have like, actual device that you yourself can do. But for more information, check it out on the website. That’s lunch norm calm.
Norman Farrar 55:34
Okay, super. So that’s it for this week. Join us every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, at noon, Eastern Standard Time. Just going to repeat what Kelsey said, Look, Ben, you know, just being part of this community. You’re fantastic. We couldn’t do it without you. It’s incredible. If you take a look at our engagement in the comments and the postings that are coming through our Facebook group. This is way more than we ever expected. So thank you so much, and enjoy your weekend.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
