Amazon funding can help Amazon sellers grow quickly and increase profits. Find out how, with Rob Stanley and Don Henig from AccrueMe! In today’s episode, we are going to explore everything you need to know to fund your Amazon business! Find out the qualifications for AccrueMe, the benefits of funding your business, and which funding platform is right for you! Rob Stanley is a former founder of two successful 7-Figure online eCommerce brands. After selling both businesses in 2018 Rob’s eCommerce and marketing background was a perfect fit for AccrueMe where he assumed the role of Chief Marketing Officer. Don Henig was born in Brooklyn, NY and started quenching his entrepreneurial thirst at the ripe age of 12. Don has built successful companies in various industries from finance, publishing, mortgage, real estate, entertainment and now he has developed a unique way to provide capital to Amazon Sellers to grow their businesses.
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Episode: 88
Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Rob Stanley, Chief Marketing Officer at AccrueMe and Don Henig, Co – Founder at AccrueMe.
Subtitle: “If you’re not really sure of yourself, then you probably shouldn’t do it.”
Final Show Link: https://lunchwithnorm.com/episodes/episode-88-fund-your-amazon-business-w-rob-stanley-and-don-henig/
In this episode of Lunch With Norm…, Norman Farrar introduces Rob Stanley, Chief Marketing Officer at AccrueMe and Don Henig, Co – Founder at AccrueMe.
AccrueMe is a company that provides Amazon lending to help Amazon sellers grow quickly and increase profits. In this episode, Rob and Don discusses everything you need to know to fund your Amazon business.
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Norman 0:01
Hey everyone, it’s Norman Farrar, aka The Beard Guy here and welcome to another Lunch with Norm, The Rise of the Micro Brands.
Norman 0:20
Alright, so for today’s show, we’re gonna have two guests, Don Henig and Rob Stanley from Amazon funding platform, AccrueMe. So we’re going to be talking about just Amazon funding, the advantages, the disadvantages, how to grow quickly and scale your business and increase profits. So we’re gonna cover a ton of stuff. But before we do that, how about we get Kelsey in here?
Kelsey 0:44
Hello, Happy Monday.
Norman 0:45
Happy Monday to you, sir.
Kelsey 0:46
Alright, so let’s get right into it. If you guys are new to the show, you can find all of the information, all the replays, all the highlights on our YouTube channel, just search Norman Farrar, you’ll be able to find it and we do have a couple fun things going on right now. Yes, smash the like button of course and share the video. But we do have a great giveaway, we are giving away a pair of Airpods. This is for US residents only. But if you are interested, all the information is in the links wherever you’re watching, whether that’s from Facebook, LinkedIn, or YouTube. As well, if you guys are interested in writing a review, I’ll put the link in the comments and if you guys write a review, we’ll read it out to you guys just to say thanks. But it looks like we have Fatiha joining us, welcome. We have Marina and Simon. Yeah. So we have two weeks for the Airpod contest is running from. So you got lots of time to do that and we’ll announce the winner on the podcast on our special fan episode on the 22nd I believe.
Norman 2:04
Okay, very good. So, as Kelsey was mentioning, if you are hearing this podcast, and it is on a replay, just skip ahead, get rid of all this house cleaning, whatever we call it. Anyways, skip ahead. Just get right into the meat of it and you can also go over if you’re listening on my profile page over to a.k.a Norman Farrar The Beard Guy, and you’ll get the whole episode, you’ll get content, you get video content and all that good stuff. So let’s get right into this. How about we sit back, we relax, we have a cup of coffee and enjoy the podcast. Alright. Hey guys.
Speakers 2:51
Hey Norm.
Norman 2:52
Hey, I was hearing a second ago, just a big hum but it just went away. I’m not sure what that was. But anyways, I’ll let you know if I hear it again. Maybe it’s just Rob humming a tune. I don’t know.
Rob 3:08
Don’s fans going out on his laptop.
Norman 3:10
Oh, okay. Alright. Yeah. So guys, why don’t we tell the audience a little bit about yourselves and a little bit about AccrueMe.
Don 3:20
I’ll start off, Rob?
Rob 3:21
Yeah, go for it Don.
Don 3:23
So this is Don Henig guys. I’ve been an entrepreneur. I’m not an eCommerce guy. I got into this industry just a couple of years ago, after retiring for the third time, took five years off the last time and got excited about Amazon and Amazon sellers and one of the things I love to do is help small businesses and help people, especially young people get into their own businesses and grow businesses. So this just seemed like such a great opportunity and got me out of retirement, which has been exciting. I’m working my ass off. I’m having fun. We’re doing great things. We’re helping people every day and it’s just really a lot of fun. So Rob, maybe you go next.
Rob 4:08
Yeah. So I’m Rob Stanley and Chief Marketing Officer of AccrueMe and gosh, my background is pretty long as Norman probably knows, but just kind of simplify it. I had eCommerce businesses for over 20 years. Amazon business in 2013 and I sold in 2018 sold my other eCommerce business in 2018. So two seven figure businesses sold in 2018. As people may know, I was also Chief Marketing Officer for Feedbackwhiz up until a couple months ago when I decided to make the jump over
Norman 4:39
That was the quickest.
Rob 4:41
I know. Well, because if I give you the long version, we’re gonna be here for a while.The intro, I love the intro man. I’m stealing that from my Stream Yard. That was a great intro. I gotta get that going.
Norman 4:56
Oh, very good. Thanks. My other son wrote that. Oh that’s great. Alright, so let’s start talking about this. So talking about Amazon sellers, it’s all about cash flow, right? You don’t have the cash flow, you really can’t grow anywhere. So how can utilizing, and sir, I don’t want to be specific to a service like yours, but going out and finding additional funds helps an Amazon seller.
Don 5:27
Well I’ll jump in first. Anytime you see a company that is profitable, if you’re profitable, it most likely makes sense to leverage your capital, and to get more capital, and just grow it. If you’re not profitable, that’s the last thing you should do. So as a general rule of thumb, if you’re profitable, and getting more capital can help you be more profitable, such as I can go out and create more products, I can find more inventory, I know what I’m doing, then you should absolutely go ahead and do it.
Norman 6:02
But is there the sweet spot when you should, when you shouldn’t, you can be on the fence, right? It could be the worst opportunity of your life. Or it could be the best opportunity of your life, can you get into that a little bit more?
Don 6:18
I think a lot of it also comes down to who you are personally, and what you’re comfortable with. But when you’re looking to grow your business, and you have a model that already works, and you’re already making money, and you can see the opportunities in front of you, I talk to people all the time, I have this opportunity, that opportunity, and multiple. I have guys that have new products on their board that go a mile long, like 70 new products that they need to roll out, but they don’t have the capital. So, we’re helping them grow their business in ways that they couldn’t. Others where your husband and wife team that retired and all of a sudden their retirement went away and they started their Amazon business, and after a year, doing well, but they didn’t have the capital to grow it and now they have the capital to grow it and they increased in one year, they increased their revenue by six fold and their profit by April and they never could have done it without us and I can proudly say that. But if you’re uncomfortable with growth, if you’re uncomfortable with taking that leap because you’re using somebody else’s capital, it can be uncomfortable. If you’re not really sure of yourself, then you probably shouldn’t do it. That’d be my two cents.
Norman 7:45
Yeah, a lot of Amazon sellers, though. This is either their first business, or this is their, I should say their first entrepreneurial adventure, right? So they are a little nervous moving ahead with getting somebody else or using somebody else’s cash. I love using somebody else’s cash, give me cash all day long. I love it. But you do have to have to get into that comfort zone. But there’s good debt and bad debt, isn’t there? Yeah. So why don’t we talk a little bit about that?
Don 8:20
Well that’s really what got us into this, and how we came up with this whole model. So you know our model that will double your capital, with no interest, no required monthly payments, and no loss of ownership. It’s revolutionary. It’s never been done before, and how did we come up with it? We looked at what the options were for Amazon sellers and we did the analysis and we didn’t like anything that we saw and the main reason and this is exactly what you’re asking about is that the monthly payments were so high that the seller couldn’t make any money and you don’t necessarily know that when you’re borrowing that money. So we did all the analysis and we said, Holy cow, how do we change this, and we came up with the idea of, let’s temporarily partner with the seller. So we’re their partner for a short period of time, however long they need our money. We don’t own the company, we only get a percentage of profits. So there’s no interest rate charged, and there’s no required payments. So if you think about it, when they’re flush with cash, they’re going to pay us and when they’re growing by leaps and bounds, they’re going to use every bit of the money and the last thing they want to do is send us a check. They’re gonna want to use all that money to grow when they have the opportunity in front of them, typically in q3 and q4 for most sellers.
Rob 9:41
Let me jump in there. Yeah and let’s talk about also what the requirements are to get funding from us because I think that’s important to put it up front before we start jumping into like, how it works and everything. So what we’re looking for is people that have been in business for a minimum of six months, selling on Amazon FBA specifically at this time, that will be coming up, and we’re looking for at least 10,000 in capital. So you have to be at least 10,000 in capital and profitable for at least six months, you need to be an LLC Corporation in the United States. Now, if you are outside the United States, but selling in the US marketplace, as long as you have a US LLC, and a tax ID or EIN number, that’s fine also and obviously, one of the other things that actually we keep forgetting to mention Don is, is you can’t have any other loans. So you have to make sure that we’re the only people and I hate to use loans because we’re not a loan company. We are growth partners, we think profit share, we’re there with you to help grow. So if you’re not successful, we’re not successful, right? So I want to make that very clear. So people understand, we are going nuts right now Norm. I mean, we are getting tons of signups right now and it’s just proving that our model is definitely the way to go compared to some of these other traditional loans that are out there by these other services.
Don 11:02
What I love is so many people who come over Norm, and say, this is brilliant. But, the one thing that Rob said about if you don’t make money, we don’t make money. That was really important this past year. Because going into the year in 2020, everybody was making money and doing well. But then come March, April, May, we had a number of private label sellers, and all of a sudden fell off the table. They couldn’t get their products in, they weren’t making money and literally said, If I had to make payments right now, I would be out of business and we hung in there, we made no money, zero. No bank was gonna do that.
Rob 11:44
Norm, to answer your question about good money and bad money, right? I didn’t mean to skip over that question. When you’re investing, there are good ways to invest in their families. If you take our money and just stick it in the bank, that’s bad. That’s a bad way to borrow money. If you take our money and you buy more inventory to grow with it. That’s a good way to do it and there’s a million other scenarios. I’m not going to get into all of them. But yes, there are definitely different ways you can take that money and not be successful with it if you don’t use it to make money and like you said Norm, every big person out there that always talks about using money to make money. There’s definitely good ways to do it and bad ways.
Norman 12:23
Right. So first of all, before we go on, I just wanted to give a couple shout outs here to David, he just joined us. Darwin’s back. Oh, Victor’s back. How are you, Victor? Oh Sharon Evan is back. We just did a podcast with Sharon. I think it’s probably the number one or number two downloaded podcasts so far. So Hey Sharon, glad to see you’re here. Oh, wow. All the way from Israel. Alright. Now, the other thing I wanted to mention to everybody, if you are new to the podcast, we’d love it. Absolutely love it if you would just hit that like button, as Kelsey says smash it. He should have said it by now. But he’s got one job to do and he just didn’t do it. But smash that like button and subscribe to our channel. Okay, let’s talk about the differences between the different business models. Okay, so you’ve got AccrueMe over here, you’ve got all like there’s a bunch of other different types of funding services. What’s the difference between Amazon funding? What’s the difference between going to your local bank and doing it going over to like a seller’s funding and ping pong, those two types of funding, and then to yours? So all great ways of getting money, just what’s the difference?
Don 13:42
So I’ll jump in first Rob, and then you can hit cleanup today. But basically, what we did right from the start was we analyzed everything that we could find that was available out there for growth. So if you need money to just go from month to month, and survive, we are not the ones for you. That’s not for us. But if you have opportunities and you want to grow, then we are absolutely the best for you. Because you can use all the money instead of taking money out to make payments, you could use all the money to grow. So if you think about it, if you just use Amazon as the example again, nothing wrong with Amazon. They actually came in second in our analysis behind us as far as the best funding source for growth. They didn’t come close to us, but they still came in second, which is pretty good. But think about it. If you took out a loan from Amazon right now, $100,000. By the time you got to q3 and q4, when you really need the money, how much would you have left? Maybe 30 grand. So you’re not having the money when you’re growing with us. You take out that 100 grand, you use it as you need. You pay it back as you as right for your business, when it’s right for your business and then when you get to the times when you can really grow, and you can knock it out of the par, like q3 and q4, not only are you not making payments, so you have more money available, but we will actually give you more money, we will help you during those growth periods to grow even more. So it’s phenomenal, it’s never been done Norm. It’s very flexible. It’s totally different from anything else and it’s really only for growth, it’s not for working capital. Rob, you look like you’re chomping at the bit.
Rob 15:35
Norm, as you noticed, I think it was within the last week, there were a couple of posts about Amazon making some changes to their loan, one of them being personal guarantees. So to keep this really recent and new. We do not do personal guarantees, you do not do background checks, no personal guarantees, no monthly payments, no interest. So people are probably thinking, Well, that’s crazy, right? Yes, it is. But that’s why I say we are partners with you in this and we’ll definitely go over a full scenario. But I wanted to make sure that people kind of knew what sets us apart and Don’s absolutely right, we’ve run the numbers, we’ve looked at everybody’s scenarios, payability, sellers funding, both options from payability, sellers funding, and Amazon and and they came in a lot lower than we were, we are the best option out there and that’s why we’re getting inundated right now.
Don 16:27
The issue is Norm, just to add on to that and again, nothing against any of those guys, they’re all good, and they’re all good for certain purposes, the difference is that they’re typically pretty short terms. So I don’t really care what the interest rate is. But when you have a short term, you’re going to have a very high payment and that’s what hurts you in growth. So if you can imagine you go out and buy a house for $500,000, you get a mortgage for 500,000. Okay maybe your payment is going to be a couple $1,000 a month? Well, if you had to pay it back in six months, you wouldn’t ever be able to do it, you’d be dead. It’s the same idea, your payment just gets so big and yeah, that’s one of the big negatives for growth.
Norman 17:13
Right? Why don’t we explain for those who don’t know what a personal guarantee is?
Don 17:20
Sure. So typically, every loan that has ever been done, you sign personally, and if something goes wrong, like you don’t make any money for a few months and can’t make that payment, they’re coming after you. They’re going to come after your business, and they’re going to come after you personally and they’re going to file a lawsuit against you, and then they’re going to go after your personal assets and that’s just reality that’s lending. We look at this as a business transaction. So we’re not looking at personal credit, we’re not looking at the individual, we’re looking at the inventory, and how does the inventory return and how’s the profitability on that inventory? That’s really all we’re worried about, what we care about. We’re not going after people personally.
Norman 18:07
This is a very different business model. It’s a very different business model and what am I missing?
Rob 18:20
Let’s run through a scenario so we can kind of make sure everybody understands it. Yeah. So what you could do is go to our website, I want to mention there’s a really cool calculator that you can use in there that you can put in different numbers and see how it works. Literally on the left hand side, as you’re entering numbers, the right hand side charts and graphs will start moving and you can put in what specific to you on how much you’re looking to pull out every month for paying your own bills and everything, to you know how much growth you’re looking to do. So let me do that. Click on the button to make sure you sign up and fill out our three minute form, we will instantly tell you if we will find you and for approximately, we’ll give you an estimate of how much we’ll find you for. Okay, so let’s just say Norm that somebody comes in, they proximately have 100,000 in capital. Okay, that’s not unrealistic in inventory, maybe a little cash in the bank, you got 100,000 inventory. Let’s say we go ahead and approve you for that $100,000. Okay, you have up to $100,000 doesn’t mean you need to take that full amount. You could start with a small amount, and work your way up as you need it. But let’s just for the sake of the scenario, let’s go with 100,000. You decide you’re going to take that whole 100,000 to increase your inventory, increase the growth because you got a couple products that are just screaming right now. So what essentially we are we’re now a 50-50 partner, okay, we have 50% being that 100,000 you have 100,000 in capital. Okay, so what we’re asking for on the net profits, let’s stop for a second and talk about net profits. Net profits are after the cost of goods sold. After all the Amazon fees, after PPC. Okay, that is what we consider net profits, we would ask for half of what we are in the business. So we are 50%, we would ask for 25% of the net profits. Remember, you just made an extra 25% on that money we gave you backing up the scenario slightly, let’s say you only took 50 of the 100,000. We’re approximately now 33% partners. Okay, so we would ask for half of the net profits being about 16.5 ish percent. So it’s always half of whatever we are in with you. So we’re 33%, we want half of that, if we’re 50% and we want 25%. That’s the basic scenario. Here’s the thing.
Don 20:46
It changes monthly.
Rob 20:48
Absolutely, yeah, you could take 20,000 1 month, and then come back and need another 10 and we will adjust that percentage as you keep eating more to keep growing.
Norman 20:56
So this is like a rotating line of credit.
Don 21:01
We don’t call it that. But it does have some of those characteristics. Okay, yeah.
Rob 21:07
Here’s the thing that makes it different Norm. Let’s say you took that full 100,000, or that $100,000 and you have 100,000 in capital, let’s say at the end of like, approximately three months, you’ve sold through all that inventory. I mean, odds are, you’re buying it before you run out. But let’s just use this for the basic scenario, there’s a couple 100,000 in there, and you have an extra, say 30,000 in profits that you make. You have the option, again, we say no monthly payments, you have the option to not pay us, take that full 230,000 and buy more inventory with it and then do it again and then do it again, and keep going or keep building the business. That’s where we are very different. That’s why we say there’s no monthly payments. Now, of course, at some point at the end, if you decide you want to pay us some as you go great, and that’ll pay it down. But also, as you keep rolling it, it will naturally make you have a higher percentage owner than us. So we actually go down, the more times you roll and you could get all the way to I think Don has a great story to tell you about somebody who used our money and just kept building it and they’re looking to just basically sell and pay us when they sell. But that’s the basics of it.
Norman 22:18
So you’ve got a sliding scale on the percentage?
Don 22:23
Yeah, so whatever percentage we are, we cut it in half, and it changes every month. So this way, the seller cannot lose, there’s only one way a seller can lose with us. With a bank or a loan, you can lose every which way. But with us, there’s only one way you can lose is if you take out money and leave it in the bank, because then you’re paying us and you’re not getting any extra value. But you’re always making money with our money.
Norman 22:50
So I wanted to talk about the net profit for a second. So Rob, you were talking about includes PPC, would it also include a rebate campaign?
Rob 23:03
Don that’s probably on you there.
Don 23:05
It’s a good question. I’m not really sure of the answer. We’d have to go back to our team on that. Okay. I really don’t know the answer.
Rob 23:14
For sure the cost of goods sold, any of the Amazon fees, and PPC costs is definitely included and again, right now it’s FBA, we will be expanding FBM shortly, but FBA sellers in the US. That’s the thing we can definitely guarantee but that question, feel free to contact AccrueMe and we can look into that.
Norman 23:36
I would love to know that. The other thing you mentioned at the beginning, that you had to be an LLC, do you just mean you just can’t be an individual, like a sole proprietor they either have to be an LLC, S corp, or C Corp or is it strictly LLC?
Don 23:55
It’s strictly LLC and there’s a reason for it. Yeah, there’s a reason for it. We’re trying to work with the lawyers to open it up to S corp or C Corp. But right now, it’s just LLC for a specific reason, that by not taking ownership in a company, but still for lack of a better word, owning a percentage of profits for as long as we’re in, you can’t do that with a corporation. With a corporation, we would have to own a percentage of the company and it gets messy and so many people, so many sellers have said, Guys, you’re not going to take one or 2% ownership and we say no, we don’t want to own your company, we want you to have all that benefit. If you use our money for two years, don’t make any payments and sell a much bigger company for much better multiple. You just give us our money back and our accrued profits, you keep all the upside.
Norman 24:45
So there’s no equity play here?
Don 24:47
There’s no equity play. People are saying we’re crazy Norm.
Norman 24:50
Well, my next question was gonna be, first of all, I really want to make it clear that I don’t have anything to do, we don’t usually talk about a company or a system that a company has. We are talking about AccrueMe today. But I don’t have anything to do with AccrueMe. They’ve asked me if I wanted to be an affiliate, I don’t want to, I turned it down. I just want to provide another option. These guys know. Tim Jordan, who’s involved with seller funding is a partner of mine in the Centurion Group, and he’s been on this podcast as well. It’s just another option to give everybody. So that’s why I’m doing this and anyways, next question. Probably the most important question for you guys. I don’t get it. How do you manage risk?
Rob 25:43
I’ll go over that. I’m gonna go over that and just real quick Norm. I mean, everybody knows Tim Jordan, he and I were friends too and there is always a different solution that’s right for somebody out there and I just want to address that we are right for certain people, but we may not be right for others and seller funding or payable, those other options may be perfect for you. Great and good luck and joy. So I just want to make that clear. Because Tim is a friend of mine, too. So yeah, let’s go over kind of the bad. Okay. So like we said, we are a partner with you. So that 100,000, $200,000 scenario, we get to the end of that three months and let’s say you only made 10,000 profit, and we only get 25% of that 10,000, you made 30,000 profit, we only get 25% of that. Let’s say you just got back your money, you made zero profit, which is crap, right? It hurts, it’s not fun. The reality is, all we are going to get back is our $100,000, we get no profit. Let’s go one step further. Norm, let’s say out of that $200,000, you only get back 180,000, we will ask for 100,000 first and you will get the 80,000 that’s leftover and anything down from there. So that is some of the drawback and that’s why we say we want you to grow, we’re a partner with you.
Norman 27:05
But I’ve run into many people that are just very poor business people and they eat through cash, like there’s no tomorrow. Just not good decisions. Just they just might not, it might be the first business that they’ve ever done. So they chew through 100,000 bucks, and they spend it the wrong way and that could just leave you out on alert, right? On a limb.
Don 27:34
Yeah, we would see that pretty early on and probably cut it off pretty early. Okay, we’ve done this with many sellers, and I got to tell you, maybe there’s a couple that have been really pretty poor, one that just never seemed to make money and when we parted ways, it was all good. We got our money, he was understanding and not only that, but at Christmas, I got one of the nicest Christmas notes from anybody from this young man because he appreciated all we did and all the advice and all the help. Yeah, well, we’re not just in it for money to be totally honest with him. Like with him, it was a lot about motivation and about trying to teach him how to run a business and build his business a little bit better. But we talk to our sellers all the time, which is really important and our doors are open. If we can help with my background with Robby’s background with our other partners’ backgrounds, we’re gonna help them because again, we only make money when they make money. So if we do well Norm, that means they killed it. If we do poorly, that means they just did okay. So we want them to kill it. Yeah.
Norman 28:49
Yeah, for sure. Okay. So Kelsey, there’s questions correct?
Kelsey 28:56
There are. Okay, so the first question was from Victor.
Norman 29:01
Your mic is cutting right out.
Kelsey 29:03
Okay.
Norman 29:10
Now, we’re not hearing anything.
Rob 29:14
So Hey Norm, let me jump in while Kelsey fixes his mic and just say, it’s a risk reward, right? I mean, it really comes down to risk reward. When I first heard it, and had gone on the podcast. I was like, there’s no way I’m giving up 25% of my profits. But the reality is, you got to switch your mindset and say, I just made an extra 25% by using Don’s money, right? It comes out of Don’s wallet by the way. He’s got $100 billion, come take some. Come on, everybody get over here.
Norman 29:50
Okay, so Kels, have you fixed your mic?
Don 29:58
I can see the questions.
Norman 29:30
Okay. You know why I have Kelsey read these questions? Because I have such bad eyesight. I can’t read the bloody thing.
Rob 30:10
Let me do it. So Victor, what if you have an existing Amex working capital facility? Is that considered another loan for AccrueMe and Victor, I would have to ask, is that something that you are against the business? Is that a lien on your inventory? That they have UCCs, things like that or is it basically a credit card that you have access to that you’re able to go out and buy more product at all, which in that case, 100% is fine. I would have to ask you another question about the UCCs. If they have UCCs on your business, then that would count as a loan.
Norman 30:49
Okay. Hopefully Kels can get us to another question and I guess not. So we’ll just move on for our time. Alright. So just a couple of things. Like when you’re doing a profit analysis, or when you’re analyzing a product, can you give us a couple of tips, which will lead you towards this looks like a great I want to partner to this sucks.
Don 31:22
Yeah, so we basically look at two things and we built a system to do it. We use the available sources that everybody uses, and then we built some of our own and we have data scientists that did the analysis and the algorithms for us and what we’re basically looking for a very simple, is we want to see upfront, that your inventory is turning over on a regular basis and that you’re earning a regular profit, and we do something pretty simple, we think of 10% per month, as a break even spot break it. So, nothing crazy and if the products are turning over some, obviously, within three months somewhere after that, some are earning 10%. Some are not, that’s okay, too. But upfront, when we’re coming in, we just exclude those products. So if you have a product that you’re selling over four months, you can use that. We count three months of the inventory towards your capital, the next month of inventory, you keep 100% of the profit and as it turns to cash, that goes into your capital and increases your capital decreases our capital, or gives you the ability to take out more money. Okay,.
Norman 32:43
Now, what about the team. You’ve got an experienced team? I mean, Don is your brain.
Well, you too Rob. But would you help a company help better their product if you see an area that they’ve got a plastic shoe stretcher and the spring is causing them problems? Like would you give product recommendations on how they could increase their profit or better their product?
Don 33:14
Well, the last thing anybody would want is product advice from me. I’m extremely colorblind, number one and it’s just not my way of things, doing things. But with Robby, with his background, he’s going to be able to give great advice and then we have a whole team behind us with tremendous Amazon experience and eCommerce experience and they do all the research and yeah, so we say to everybody, we’re happy to give you a second look and you have ideas, we’ll do the research as well, you have to do it on your own as well and then we compare, but we then in the end, we let you make the decision.
Norman 33:52
Okay, very good. How long does the approval process take?
Don 33:57
Norm, it doesn’t take doesn’t take long at all. As Robby said, initially, you fill out the three minute form. I’m telling you three minutes is a max, and you’ll get an instant response. Then from there, we asked for access to your account, the MWS token. So we can pull your inventory and we asked for your cost per unit and that’s it, same day. So if it was today, you filled out that form, you’d get the immediate response, you’d give us access to the account, we’d pull it down the information into our system, we’d ask for your CPUs, you’d probably give them to us, let’s say worst case tomorrow and then tomorrow, we’d be back saying let’s get on the phone. Here’s the offer. Here’s a detailed proposal with something we call a key points document, which is everything that’s legal, that is in plain English, in bullet point form. So this way we can get on the phone and make sure you understand everything. We know this is new. We know this is different. We don’t want to take shots that says Okay, you just can’t understand it. No, we want to go through it in detail. Make sure you understand it completely before we go forward. If you say yes, We’ll find you within probably about five days.
Norman 35:13
Wow, that’s quick.
Don 35:14
Yeah. So somebody was today, by the end of this week or early next week, they’d be funded.
Norman 35:19
Alright, so it looks like Kelsey was flashing something there. Oh he’s back.
Kelsey 35:26
Yeah. My AirPods we’re having a little bit of trouble.
Norman 35:31
Not the ones we’re giving away, though. That would be perfect.
Kelsey 35:36
Alright, so you guys handled Victor? I’m guessing.
Rob 35:40
We did. Yeah.
Kelsey 35:42
Okay, perfect. So we’ll go right over to Darwin. What are some things that can cause you guys to deny the loan? For example, I’ve been out of stock regularly, mainly because demand is increasing.
Don 35:55
Yeah, well, first off, it’s not a loan. I know, it seems like a loan, but it’s not a loan and what ends up happening is sometimes in situations like that, we’re gonna offer less money than you would have thought because we’re looking at the inventory we’re making, trying to make heads and tails out of it and if it hasn’t been selling we do go back, I think nine months. So we do see what it was, and we make some good decisions there. But now we send you in, let’s just say we send you an offer, and use whatever number $20,000 you think it should have been $40,000. We get on the phone, let’s talk about it. We’ll see what you’re suggesting, what you’re saying as far as your inventory, what the problems were. How this money is going to cure that problem and we’re going to come back with another counteroffer. It’s probably another day, we’ll reanalyze everything and come back, typically at a much higher amount.
Rob 36:52
So, let me just add in that we have actually turned people away that their margins are just too small Norm. As we know, you can get hurt if we fund you and your margins are too small, all we’re doing is taking money from somebody who’s just not making enough, we’ve absolutely turned people down when their margins are just too small. So that’s not our goal. Like we said, our goal is to help you grow and we want to be a partner with you. We don’t want to come in and give you money, that just hurts you.
Norman 37:22
But on that point. If you do see somebody that has the plastic shoe stretcher, and their margins are really tight but there’s the ability for them to like, all they’re doing is playing with bottom dwellers. I don’t want to go there. But if there is a way like you would you advise them that Hey, look at your competition is 20% higher. Why aren’t you competing there and now you’ve got those small profits or small profit margins increasing to be more competitive?
Don 37:52
Yeah, absolutely. We have to see that and we have to capture in our system and how we’re going to enter in the views. But when we do we absolutely get on the phone with the sellers and we go through what we see, and we give them a printout of what we’ve done through print out data on what we’re seeing in their inventory, and where their issues are, and where their positives are and you could drop these three products, and you’ll make more money. Here’s the way you look at what you’re doing and we love having those types of coaching sessions. So yeah, it happens. It doesn’t happen all the time. But it happens in certainly if we’re ever asked 100%
Norman 38:36
Go ahead, Rob.
Rob 38:38
I was just gonna say, any of the products that we don’t include to fund, those are yours 100%. Like in any money that comes in let’s say it’s kind of a slow mover Norm, which that happens. If we exclude those from funding, those are yours, any money that comes in for that is not included in the growth capital we’re giving you. You get 100% of that and by the way Norm, it’s so funny you mentioned shoe structures, mine were wood and that was about five years ago when it was still a good one to be in the shoe scratchers
Norman 39:06
That’s just a crazy story. I had a guy with a plastic shoe searcher that came to me and saw that there was only a search volume of $3,000. I told him he should go over to wood because it was $100,000. There was only a little bit more one was like, yeah, at 50 cents. The other one was like a buck 25 or something like that. But there was a $100,000 difference in monthly revenue, and the guy, he rejected it. He wants to stick with plastic shoe stretchers. I am not kidding. But anyways Kelsey. Oh, do have another question about other platforms. So we’re trying to get Shopify on some of the business development people or eBay or to give the audience another view. Okay. Another platform to work with. Do you guys find people on other platforms?
Don 39:55
Not yet but we will. So we had to pick a place to start, so we picked Amazon for obvious reasons. We picked FBA again, because we can see everything very easily, we had to just start somewhere. So Norm, I think you’ll appreciate this and I think your listeners will as well. I have a theory in business and have a bunch of them. But this goes back to day one, when I was like, 18, and starting my first business, and it’s start stupid, you’re not gonna know everything. So just get in and just start. So what we did was we took our own money, and we gave it out to about a dozen sellers and here’s the model. We think it makes sense. But we don’t know, Will anybody ever pay us? I don’t know, we had no idea. So we went through a year, we had no technology, we had no underwriting criteria, we literally gave money out expecting to lose it, we didn’t lose anything and we made a lot of friends at the same time and we made a lot of money for people and we did okay ourselves. From there, we built the system and we got into the whole thing and built the company. We went out and raised $100 million to invest in sellers and so that’s how that’s how we actually started.
Norman 41:09
So I was wondering how you could afford Rob.
Rob 41:11
It was easy. It was the best thing we did Norm.
Norman 41:15
Alright Kels. Next question.
Kelsey 41:17
Alright, from Dr. Koz. Hey Rob, you said Amazon came in second as a financing choice? What metric or metrics did they fall short on compared to your product?
Rob 41:28
Yeah, so I’ve actually looked at it. The chart was actually done prior to me coming into the company. So I think Don could probably answer that a little bit better. But the statistic people we have are freaking amazing. Let me tell you that the numbers they run and the way they crunch, it is absolutely amazing. But go ahead Don.
Don 41:45
These are data scientists and basically, it’s very simple. Amazon had a longer term than most of the others, which is a positive. The one negative was the monthly payment. They have very high monthly payments and if you think about it again, if you took out a loan of $100,000 from them today, and in q3, and q4, you’d have $30,000 left to grow, it’s gonna be tough to grow. You’re not gonna have the money that you need, you have to time it and get it done right. But those monthly payments is what kills your growth. So with us, by not having monthly payments, when you are growing is great. When you’re flush with cash, send us a chunk of money, it makes sense. Because now our profit percentage comes down, we earn less, it’s just. It’s like the invisible hand. It just is in your best interest to make no payments when you’re growing and to make payments when you’re flush with cash.
Rob 42:48
I also mentioned Norm, I know there’s probably a lot of people that everybody has different scenarios, right? Like how much they need, how much they want to take from us, what percentage of the cost us and not to keep reverting back to it. But go to the website accrueme.com, check out the AccrueMe calculator, you can put in what’s specific to you, the numbers you’re looking at, because I know there’s probably a lot of questions coming up that what if I take this amount? What if I do this? Take a look at the AccrueMe calculator, and definitely, you’ll be able to put your own scenario in there and see what it looks like and it’ll probably give you a lot better understanding.
Norman 43:21
Okay.
Kelsey 43:23
Alright. Next question. Let’s see. So after a few years at the LLC wants to sell its business, do you also get your percentage?
Don 43:35
We get no percentage. All we get is our money, our money back plus our accrued profits, you keep the entire upside and again, I swear to God, seller after seller after seller, normally the larger ones come to us and say, You guys are crazy. Just take 1 to 2%. Nobody’s gonna argue with your model. Nobody’s going to argue, and it’s going to be a big boom for you in a few years and we’ve made the decision. We don’t want to be in your pocket. If you do well, we’re going to do very well, we’ll do better than a bank. So that’s what we want to do. We want to do really well, we want to see you kill it. But we don’t want to get in your pocket when you’re selling your company and we will help you. We’ll help you get there. Between Rob, myself, our partner, Eric, all of us, the whole team has bought and sold multiple businesses, many businesses, we can give you some advice, first hand advice on these things as well. So we’re happy to help you. All we want to see is you be a success. That’s it.
Norman 44:39
Very good. I think Simon’s got one.
Kelsey 44:41
Yep. So Simon, let’s say we use the $100,000 example and 50-50 split. If in one year we generate $1 million in sales and 100,000 that you get the principal some plus 25,000 right?
Don 44:56
Yeah, it actually goes down. It’s less than that Simon. So if you think about it, in the first month, we get 25% because we are 50-50, right? But now just think about that, in the second month, you’ve earned more than us, you are earning 75%, we’re earning 25%. Assume that you leave that money in and we leave our money in. In month two, you have much more capital than we do. So maybe we’re not 50-50, maybe we’re 46-54 and we get 26% or 27%, I’m sorry, or 22% of the profit and then in the third month, it goes even further, and so forth. So over a year, if nothing else changed, and we started at 50-50 and we both left all the money in. By the end of that first year, we’re probably down to about maybe 30% of the capital and 15% of the profit. So your thinking is 100% correct. But it’s actually better for you over that period of time.
Rob 46:06
Yeah, keep rolling that money. That’s what I was talking about earlier, every time you roll that money and keep buying more inventory with it to grow, your percentage, our percentage goes down, which means you make more and keep one.
Don 46:18
Who would do that Norm? Who would do that?
Kelsey 46:24
Okay, we got just a couple more, but three more. But this is from your Yasar, can you support the accounts that’s breakeven, and with your funding would help grow further? The reason I say breakeven is because being out of stock for the previous three months, and working back to the top of PPC.
Don 46:43
We would have to look at it. Truthfully, I don’t know. That’s kind of an individual situation. But if you sent it in, and if you went on our site, and you fill out that three minute form, there’s a section there for notes, give us the notes, send Rob or myself an email and we’ll look out for it, we’ll know that it’s flagged and we’ll go to take a look at it. Both of our emails are very simple don@accrueme.com or rob@accrueme.com and we’ll both respond.
Norman 47:18
Very good.
Kelsey 47:20
Okay, from Fatiha, because she just needs some clarification. So say we borrowed $60,000, does this contract with the AccrueMe end when we repaid you $60,000?
Don 47:33
It ends whenever you want it to end. So you may want us to stay there for two years and never repay that 60,000. You may want to start repaying it right now, because you’re flush with cash, you may want to then increase it and grow in q3 and q4 when you’re ready to grow. Although some sellers have their products or most in demand in the summertime, let’s say. That’s when you’re going to need more money. We’re going to be there with you and we want to grow with you. But it’s really up to you. We don’t tell you there’s no prepayment penalty if you will, when it’s right for you, you’re gonna come to pay us.
Rob 48:17
Norm, I want to jump in real quick. We get asked this question almost daily and that is what about launching new products with our money and that’s not what we’re for. We’re not here to help you take the risk of launching a brand new product, I want to make that clear. But there are a couple ways you can use our money to launch those products. But it’s a little different. So let me explain it, get us in with your current product, start making some money, pull off some of that profits, which you’re allowed to do. Pull off some of that profit, launch with that money, that’s your money that you pulled off, build it up for about two or three months, and then we’ll find it once you’ve proven it successful, we’ll find it. That’s one scenario. The other scenario is if you’re buying more of your current inventory, let’s say you’re buying 50,000 of the current inventory. Instead, take $25,000, leave it in your bank, we’ll drop 25,000 into your current product. So there’s the 50,000 right? 25 from us, 25 from you, but you just instead of having to pay 50 out of your pocket, you get 25,000 back. Use that 25 to fund the new product line, bring it up to speed that will start funding.
Norman 49:25
Okay.
Don 49:26
Sounds complicated but it’s really not.
Kelsey 49:31
Okay, so from Darwin, have you guys ever partnered with the seller after this process, new brand, new company etc?
Rob 49:40
Rob, give them the scenario about the person who was with us and then just sold their company and decided to start it again. I think what’s the whole scenario right?
Don 49:51
I’m going blank, Rob.
Rob 49:54
So Don told the story that there’s been a person that was with us, they ended up selling their business. They came back to us and wanted to use our funding after they got launched again, going to basically just keep building and building and building their company until they got to a point where they could sell that and I think they’re kind of a serial entrepreneur and Don’s told this story many times, but he’s just trying to blame a guy.
Don 50:19
So this is a guy who, similar to the story, or the scenario that Robby was just saying, he has multiple brands, and he has 10 new brands that he started and they’re all really well researched, and really pretty exciting to be honest and very, very exciting. He’s got all the money in the world. But what he’s doing is he’s looking to take, he hasn’t finalized it right now. But he’s looking to take $100,000 from us and on just current brands, take out like 25 to 50 grand to start some, a couple of the new brands, as those get profitable, take more money out, and so forth and he believes that in two years, he’s going to have the 12 brands that will sell for $2.6 million, and never to have used his own money after the first two brands. Once he started with us not to use any of his own money, which is fantastic and very exciting and he loves it, and we love it. He doesn’t really need our money, to be honest with you. But I think what he’s doing is he just loves the challenge of the whole thing and to just be able to stand up and say, Look, this is what I built. I didn’t use any of my own money. So it’s pretty cool. I don’t know if that answers your question.
Rob 51:34
Yeah, to answer that question, you need to be running for at least six months and be set and be profitable. So if it’s a brand new company, no, we’re not getting in. But as soon as you get it going for about six months, show us that you’re profitable, we’d be happy to come in and help grow it.
Norman 51:52
Alright, just winding down. But a couple of mistakes that you see sellers making regularly, can you explain some?
Don 52:01
Rob, you got an idea there?
Rob 52:04
Oh gosh. Putting money in the bank that they get from us. Not thinking outside the box is still keeping expanding new products and then once they get up to speed come in, let us help you grow them. Gosh Norm, I mean the list is huge on different mistakes. But those are just like the quick ones from phone calls I’ve been on in the last month or so.
Don 52:25
I would say Norm one real quick is that I see people coming in still not knowing their numbers too well. I fell back on one quick story of these three partners that came in and the two of them were accountants and they told me that their monthly ROI was 70%. Wow, great products. After we were in business with them, it was 5%. 5%, are you kidding and we showed them the numbers. These are two accountants, two of the three accountants and they go, Oh, we see. So they weren’t looking at it monthly. They were looking at it overall and they had way too much inventory. So it happens.
Rob 53:08
But they’re not my accountant.
Don 53:1
They’re nice guys.
Norman 53:14
So quick a question, why did you say Rob, one of the bigger mistakes is putting the money in the bank?
Rob 53:25
Yeah, let me clarify that. Taking money or loans or funds and putting them in the bank does not help you grow. So by taking that money from anybody, whether it’s sellers funding, payability or us and just sticking it in the bank, that does not help you, you want to make that money, make money for you, right? So you want to get out there, get your products going, do a lot of background research on it, make sure that you’re out there always expanding looking for new opportunities. Norm, there are products out there that are kind of what I’ll call lifelong products, meaning that you could probably keep selling for a long time. But there’s also products out there that are kind of either trendy or they’re going to go through a phase. I know this from selling on Amazon. There’s products that got old, they got stale, or there was a new version of it. You have to always kind of stay current on what you’re doing and then besides those products getting kind of stale, have those new products going building them up. So that’s what I kind of meant by leaving it in the bank and not going out there and either investing it in more inventory, or PPC or whatever it is and just keeping in the bank making what less than 1%. Why bother?
Norman 54:36
So I’m curious about this. So you private label sellers you’ll go out and you’ll work with geez I’m updating one sec. I’m blind as a bat, remind me later. There we go. Did I just reset everything? No, I’m still on live right?
Rob 54:54
You’re still live.
Norman 54:55
Okay, good. So you work with the private label sellers to help fund them. What about wholesale? What about manufacturers? Do you help them out? So I might be a private label manufacturer. So Afolabi and I are starting this bottling facility. If we came to you and said, Hey, this is our plan, we’re selling to private label sellers. Would you help fund that? Or would you help fund these guys that play arbitrage and they’re wholesalers?
Don 55:29
Wholesale, definitely. We have a bunch of wholesale accounts, and we love them. They’re great.
Norman 55:36
That’s great. Wow. Alright. Yeah, I didn’t know that.
Don 55:42
Yeah, we took a shot with one arbitrage account right now and we keep a close eye on him and he’s done very, very well now for about six months. But we haven’t had any other requests. So we haven’t had to make that decision. But typical wholesale, where they’re buying from suppliers, and so forth. They do very well with us and as far as finding a manufacturer, not something that’s brand new. But yeah, so it’s something that we would look at, we are getting various scenarios from people that we never thought of, that our capital works really, really well for and we’ve got an open mind to it. So we’re not looking to do anything stupid or take major risks. But if somebody’s got a good idea, and is doing something good that works within our model, let’s see if we can do it.
Norman 56:36
Okay. Very good. That’s great and Daniel, that’s okay. You showed up and I wanted to welcome Rene back too, that’s great. Alright. So last, very last question. I know we’ve talked about different scenarios throughout the podcast. But can you give us just one great example of how you took this private label seller and scaled them up?
Don 57:04
I’m just going to talk one, and I mentioned it earlier, but it was one of our first sellers that came on board and within a year, they increase their sales six fold, and increase their profit eight fold and when you see success like that, and when they say to you flat out, they said we never could have done this without us and they couldn’t. They were running out of money. They couldn’t have done it and now they’ve got a great income, and we’ve got great relationships, and they go up and they go down, meaning that they take out more money from time to time and times were at 50-50 and at times, they pay us down and we’re just maybe 20% of the total capital. They’ve really learned how to use our system to the best for them specifically, which is what we want. We make less money when they pay us down. We want that that’s the right thing to do for your business. Do what’s right for your business when it’s right for your business. That’s what’s right for us.
Norman 58:07
Alright. Rob, go ahead.
Rob 58:11
I was just gonna say Norm, I’ve only been with the company a couple months. But it was so fun. One of the first people I brought over that was interested in getting funding, we ended up funding them for $88,000 and they were super excited because they’re going to grow their business and hopefully, I’ll come back in maybe six months from now and tell you about how successful they were. But it was so cool, great scenario, great company. I can’t give all the details and stuff, but just amazing people and I mean, it was so fun to watch them get excited about having this money to be able to grow their business. I also want to mention, don’t forget everybody who’s listening, Norm is going to flip the script. I’m going to have him on my podcast in a couple weeks, we get to make questions for Norm. So make sure you tune in and have those questions ready for Norm. Because rarely, as Norm and I both know, I’m not always on podcasts, I’m usually giving them and usually Norm’s given the podcast, I’m not on them. So make sure you tune in.
Norman 59:02
That’s gonna be awesome. Okay, at the beginning of the podcast, just before we got on, you guys created an incredible offer for anybody who’s listening. We don’t take affiliates. So the guys came up with a great offer. Why don’t you explain a little bit about what you’re offering everybody?
Don 59:22
Sure. I’ll take the first shot, Rob. So basically, what we would pay an affiliate is $500. Meaning that when we sign up a new seller and fund them, we would send $500 to that affiliate and Norm graciously didn’t want anything. He just wants to help people. So what we did was we said, We’ll take that $500 and give it to any seller that we sign up. So if you sign up with us and we fund you, we’re gonna give you an extra $500 to buy inventory right there. You don’t owe us that, there’s no fees, there’s no nothing. It’s just $500 for you.
Rob 59:58
You mentioned Norm, you got an issue?
Norman 1:00:03
Beard Nation.
Rob 1:00:05
You’re not getting it and after we fund you, don’t come back and say I saw a Norm’s video, you got to be upfront, make sure it’s in the notes.
Norman 1:00:12
There we go. Alright guys, so just how do people get a hold of you and any other type of contact or information that you want to give?
Rob 1:00:27
Yeah, so it’s rob@accrueme.com which is a c c r u e m e, accrueme.com. Facebook, LinkedIn. I’m everywhere Norm, so just hit me up.
Don 1:00:38
Yeah and same with me. don@accruemen.com or on LinkedIn. I go by my full name, my mother’s calling me for dinner. Donald D o n a l d Henig and I love that. If you do LinkedIn with me or connect with me on LinkedIn, you’ll get to see my background a little bit. I’ve done a lot of things in a lot of industries. It’s fun and right now I’m having a ball with this.
Norman 1:01:04
Perfect. Alright guys. Well, thanks for being on the podcast. I learned a lot about a different Oh, what’s this? Oh, Radd. No Radd. The only funding is through an LLC right now.
Don 1:01:21
Right. But the corporation can own the LLC, so open a new LLC, owned by your corporation.
Norman 1:01:31
Oksana’s on. Oh, I haven’t seen you in a little while. Hope you’re doing great Oksana. Alright guys, so we will be seeing you later. I will get you back on the podcast at some point and this was great. Just another funding opportunity for Amazon sellers. So we’ll see you later. Thanks for being on.
Don 1:01:52
Thanks Norm.
Rob 1:01:52
Thanks Norm.
Norman 1:01:53
Alright, so that was the podcast. I hope you found it interesting. It’s again, it’s just another option. Two different options that are out there. Kelsey, why don’t you come on.
Kelsey 1:02:04
Rob and Don, if you’re listening, just stick around to the end and we can have you. We can talk after the podcast. But if you have to go now, feel free to go and we’ll talk to you another time. But yes, thank you guys for watching. It was awesome. Got lots of people. I think it was great for Amazon sellers to kind of know that they have another option. But we have a great giveaway. If you’ve missed it, we’re giving away a pair of AirPods.
Norman 1:02:37
AirPods Pro.
Kelsey 1:02:38
AirPods Pro. If you are interested, you can go to the links there in every bio that I posted. Just press on the link, the more places you follow us pretty much the more entries you get. So it’s really a great opportunity to really rack up those points and if you haven’t yet, please join the Beard Nation. It’s our Facebook group. The link is also in the bios, just go ahead and look there. Or you can search Amazon FBA & eCommerce Collective and yeah, come and join the Beard Nation.
Norman 1:03:12
One thing that he forgot to mention.
Kelsey 1:03:16
Smash the like button and as always, all of the replays go right over to the YouTube page. So if you missed an episode, or if you’re coming in late and you just missed a bit and you want to go back and look it over again, just go over to Norman Farrar, the YouTube channel there and we got all the highlights. The full episodes are there where you can find it.
Norman 1:03:44
Okay. Well, thank you, sir.
Kelsey 1:03:45
You’re welcome.
Norman 1:03:46
Alright everybody. So join us every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, noon Eastern Standard Time. Thank you for watching. Thank you for really helping build this community out. If it wasn’t for you, I’d be talking to myself. So I hate talking to myself. I do that all the time. But anyways, enjoy the rest of your day. See, I screwed up. I can’t get you a bloody episode without screwing up. I thought today I almost did it but right at the end. Enjoy the rest of your day, guys.
