Pod Insights My First Million From $300k to $35M+ Selling Dog Ramps with Ramon Van Meer, CEO & Founder at Alpha Paw About this episode Ramon Van Meer (@RamonVanMeer) joins Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) to discuss why he prefers to buy businesses rather than build them, his best tools for new business research, how to make sure you’re not buying a lemon, learning to code in a week, and much more.
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Show Notes:
* (00:56) - How to write a viral tweet thread
* (06:40) - Why buying businesses can be better than building them
* (14:58) - Ramon’s soap opera gossip website
* (28:05) - How to make sure you’re not buying a lemon
* (38:15) - How Ramon learned to code in a week
* (42:50) - Shaan and Ramon play “would you rather?”
* (49:30) - Shaan agrees to a boxing match with Sam
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Links:
* Centurica.com
* Helium10
* Alpha Paw
Transcript 10,120 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Shaan Puri? There was a cup on the table. I remember we were drinking water, a little paper cup. We were at this burrito place and you were like, if I could buy this cup for five cents and sell it to you for seven cents, that's my passion.
0:22 Shaan Puri? Ramon, he is back. The guest from episode two, which was one of the best episodes ever of this podcast. And then it was taken down for a bit. I don't know what happened. There was something, get to take it down, make a little edit. People started hitting me up. Hey, what happened to Ramon's episode? That's how much people cared. They wanted to know that people were just keep a track. Is that episode still in the library? Something happened. Some people noticed, which was amazing to me. And now you're Twitter famous.
0:49 Speaker 01 Yeah.
0:50 Shaan Puri? As of today.
0:51 Speaker 01 Well, because of you and Sam, yes, because you and Sam retweeted me and I got like almost 8,000 followers overnight. I went from 2,000 to 11,000 within 24 hours. So.
1:05 Shaan Puri? Wow. Well, it's not just because we retweeted. I retweeted a lot of stuff. You told a great story. I'm just actually gonna, I'm gonna find the hook here because you did a good job. Did Sam write this for you? Or did you have him edit this? Because this was so well done. I felt like you can't, this can't be your first thread and you started off this good on your first thread. How did that happen?
1:24 Speaker 01 No. Well, it's Sam dripping off the whole tweet. So Sam actually helped me. Okay, this will would work. This is the concept. This is a little bit like how you format it. Then he gave a little bit like, I would start with this. I will do with this and I will explain that. Then of course I explained it. I sent it to him and he said like, yeah, this, this looks great.
1:45 Shaan Puri? How would you have started it normally? And then I'll, I'll show, I'll read what, what the end result was. What would you have normally said? Or what do you remember what your V1 might have been?
1:53 Speaker 01 Yeah. Well, like you, you and I are friends. So you also know me personally. Typically I would not start off with like, I bought something for just little X and now we're doing Y. I would not.
2:07 Shaan Puri? Too braggy.
2:09 Speaker 01 Yes, but you know, Sam said like, no, that's you need to do that. And you know, it's true as well. Right. So why not just explain it? That's what people get people interested. And now I think we have 7,000 likes and a bunch of like a thousand plus tweets.
2:29 Shaan Puri? He said, two and a half years ago, I bought a dog ramp business for $300,000. Already interesting. What the heck is a dog ramp business? Since then, I've sold $35 million of dog ramps. Boom. That's the the hook, right?
2:41 Speaker 01 Yes.
2:42 Shaan Puri? Did this little thing turned into a big thing. And then the promise, why you should read this thread? I'm going to explain why I bought it, how I scaled it, and why I bought a business versus starting from scratch. But first, dog ramps? Question mark. And then that is, and then the little hand pointing down like, come read more. That is, you didn't take my power writing class, but that is exactly what you would have been my star student in this. If you had done this as the example, because it has all three elements, right? The what I call the frame, I bought it for 300K and I've sold 35 million. So that's the wow factor. Why should I pay attention to this? And why do I stop scrolling? Right? So you have a scroll stopping number, $35 million of dog ramps.
3:22 Shaan Puri? You have a curiosity gap, which is what the heck is a dog ramp? And how did this guy do it? And then you have a promise, which is, I'm gonna tell you A, B, and C. But first, dog ramps, which is like, you gave them a lightweight entryway that they have. Even if they don't want to know how you bought it, why you scaled it, all the operational stuff. I do need to know what the heck, dog ramps, what the heck? And so beautifully done. And then you tell the story and the story is kind of amazing. Because people know that I don't talk about what my e-commerce business is, but they know that I have an e-commerce business. What they don't know is that it started because we were hanging out in your backyard. And we were talking, and the whole time we're talking, your phone is just going cha-ching.
4:04 Shaan Puri? It's like the, and I didn't even know what this was. This is the Shopify. Shopify is like notification sound and you didn't even notice it because it's always just normal to you. Your phone is sitting on the table. And I was like, do you need to get that? Like, what is that sound? And you go, oh, sorry. That's like sales. And I was just like, you know, people love this idea of make money while you sleep, like passive income. Oh, make money while you sleep. That is a sexy idea.
4:26 Speaker 01 Yeah.
4:27 Shaan Puri? This was, this was even better. It was like, you were just chilling and having fun and money was just being made for you on the side and just like a little ta-ching every five minutes. And it was literally in that moment, I was like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to start an ecommerce business because I can't sit here and just let Ramon have all the fun. This is too good. So you inspired me to do it for sure.
4:45 Speaker 01 That's awesome. Yeah, I had to turn off that notification because it drove me crazy. Eventually like ta-ching, ta-ching every time there's a sale. But it was fun in the beginning, almost like that, you know, endorphin release each time.
5:00 Shaan Puri? Exactly. And if you're on YouTube, if you're watching the YouTube channel, which is just, I don't know, what is it? YouTube.com slash my first million, I think, or HustleCon, something like that. Just search my first million on YouTube. You'll find it. But you can see the ramp behind Ramon. So he's got the, all the products behind you. So the company's called Alpha Paw. That's your thing. So we're going to talk about a couple of different things. I thought it'd be fun. Have you on your substitute teacher for Sam. And like any substitute teacher, the class always has more fun when the sub comes in. So, so that's what we're going to do. I think we're going to talk about a couple of things. I want to talk to you about kind of buying and selling, buying businesses rather than starting businesses. So how you do it, and we'll go through some examples, maybe of what's out there. And then we'll jump back and we'll dig into kind of like your story.
5:43 Shaan Puri? So how the heck you got started. But I first want to give the, the people and myself really kind of a crash course on this process of buying businesses. Cause I was amazed when you told me you bought this business for 300,000. And did you buy this off of Flippa or Quiet Light? Or where'd you end up buying this?
6:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, I bought this on a similar broker like Quiet Light. They're not around anymore, but it was a similar broker, not as Flippa, but it's, it's more of a broker.
6:10 Shaan Puri? And when you bought it, I was sort of like, what the hell, like, who does that? I didn't even know anybody who does like off these like random websites. Like, I can see you buying something for a few thousand dollars, but 300 grand, I thought, was a lot. And I was like, dog ramps, what the heck? And you had told me then that you're like, yeah, the business is doing good. And the person really wasn't doing any marketing or they didn't run any Facebook ads, I think, was the case. And so you just saw like a clear growth lever. So break it down, like, why do you do this? And then how do you do this buying businesses thing?
6:37 Speaker 01 Yeah, me personally, I think it's also like, what's your personal preference? What's your skill set? Some people are really good at going from zero to one are really builders. Others are really good at going from one to 10, and those are, you know, scalers. I'm not really good at building. I'm better at scaling. And so I like to buy versus build because it gives you a lot more speed. It gives you history and data. And it's similar like real estate where I try to find crappy houses that you need to fix up, but in a good up and coming neighborhood, if that makes sense.
7:13 Shaan Puri? Right. So good market.
7:14 Speaker 01 Yes, good market. There's a market fit. You know, if this house was amazing, you would be able to rent this out for two, three, four times more than the current owner does. It's the same with with websites. So I look for websites that have a good product mix, product fit, has history. It doesn't have to be, you know, going really well. I'm not looking for websites that are overly optimized. So I tend to not buy websites from other internet marketers. Because they already did all the things that I probably would do for it. So it's not really room for growth.
7:51 Shaan Puri? What was the person like, or what was the business like when you bought the dog ramp business? So describe kind of what you saw and what made you decide, yeah, I'm going to buy this one.
7:58 Speaker 01 Yeah, it solves a real problem. I wasn't aware that this is actually a problem. I have a dog, but I have a pit bull. I don't have a small dog. Ben, so there's a real problem for a niche audience that you really can target on Facebook. Those were the good old days that you really could niche target still on Facebook.
8:17 Speaker 01 It had not a lot of competition at that time. Not a lot of people were promoting ramps on Facebook, Instagram, or even Amazon. The website was a very crappy website where I knew that if we switch to Shopify, if we increase or improve the copy, the pictures, et cetera, the conversion rate would most likely increase. This case, the two founders were not doing any Facebook ads. There was no paid acquisition happening at all. And even though they had a decent site customer database, they were not emailing even existing customers, let alone trying to capture, you know, a card abandonment.
8:58 Shaan Puri? So this was a good market, which is pets.
9:00 Speaker 01 Yep.
9:00 Shaan Puri? It's, you know, a house that you said, okay, if I renovate the kitchens, the floorboards, the countertops, which is like redoing the website and the branding of it, the copywriting. And then lastly, they're not even trying to rent it out. They don't rent, they don't post it on Craigslist. They don't have flyers out in the neighborhood saying, come rent my place, which is they weren't doing paid advertising to get customers. So you saw it, you bought it and you grew it. What's another example? So let's walk through some real examples and then you tell me kind of like what you like or dislike about some of these businesses. Cause I know you did some research on, on what's out there today.
9:34 Speaker 01 Yeah. So for example, there's one out, it's sort of a crossword puzzle website. So think of when, I think a lot of people play these words with friends games or Scrabble games. And then there's a website out there apparently that you can just put in your letters and it will give a bunch of words recommendations.
9:55 Shaan Puri? Cheat codes website, yeah.
9:56 Speaker 01 Exactly. And I kind of love it because it's so, there's no, nothing to do. Like you, I think there's probably a database that's already pre-built that you can buy. You build it basically once and then it's just trying to get SEO traffic, you know, to your website. So for example, there's one for sale now for $9 million. They started it in 2017, does 3.5 million in revenue. And because there's no really team needed, it's like, it's almost all profit. It's like three, around $3 million of profit. And it's just, you know, printing money, basically. I like these type of niches where.
10:35 Speaker 01 Not a lot of people think about, but there's definitely a huge search volume.
10:39 Shaan Puri? What would you do? So give me two, two pieces on that. So the first is with something like this, would you, how would you try to grow it? Or would you, would you not buy this because you say, I don't know how I would grow this where I get a faster payback on my money. So what would you do? How would you think about the growth levers for this one?
10:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's a good question. I will personally not buy it at the moment because the price tag, typically I only buy things in a couple hundred thousand dollar range, not millions. Without knowing too much of the current business model, I definitely would try to increase RPMs, meaning how can we squeeze more advertising dollars out of the same traffic? They get like tens of millions of visitors a month. And I looked at a couple of similar websites and I think there's a huge opportunity by placing ads differently just to increase RPM. Similar, if you have an ecommerce, you want to increase conversion rates. If you have a content site, you want to increase RPMs, meaning how to get more people to click on the ads
11:40 Speaker 01 or things like that.
11:42 Shaan Puri? Right.
11:42 Speaker 01 So I would do that. Secondly, I would look and do research like for sure if there's a huge segment of people that love Scrabble, what is this like? What other games do they like? And maybe that build a sister website that does, I don't know, like what's it called? Sudoku?
12:02 Shaan Puri? Right.
12:02 Speaker 01 Or whatever. So that's, that's the two, the two things that I would, if I would buy this type of website.
12:09 Shaan Puri? And, and basically when you buy something like this, most people say, I don't have nine million dollars. And I think when you started doing this, when you first started looking at these websites, you also didn't have enough money to buy one of these. So tell, tell the story of like how you first started going to these websites, even when you didn't have. Enough money to buy, buy one of these companies.
12:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, I've actually bought and sold websites that started with buying something for $500 and sold it for, you know, $1,500. I started on Flippa 12 years ago. And, you know, I bought an piñata website that sells piñatas. You can send a picture of Sam and
12:50 Shaan Puri? It makes a piñata of him.
12:52 Speaker 01 Yes, a company in Mex- in Texas would make a piñata and then ship it directly to the customer. So I bought that for $5,000 that I scraped together, improved the website traffic and made my money back in two and a half months and then sold it a month later for 22,000, right? So it's not huge numbers, but those really, you know, helped me to grow a little bit and really get a lot of experience. When I started Soap Hub, I actually saw a similar website for sale on Flippa that was for sale for $100,000. Was in the daytime TV era too, and the topic was about daytime TV.
13:33 Speaker 01 Of course, I didn't have money. I had like a couple thousand dollars. I was not able to buy that. But what I did is like, hey, let's see if there's something there. Let's do a small test. Build a fan page, see how the engagement goes and then see if there is something there and then grow from there.
13:51 Shaan Puri? I guess we should explain. You created, if people have listened to episode two, they know the full story. We won't go the full story again this time, but your claim to fame, that what episode two is about is telling the story of how you created a soap opera content site, like a soap opera website. That was basically just saying, hey, you're watching Days of Our Lives or you're watching, you know, I don't know, The Young and the Restless. Here's the recap. Here's the spoilers of what's coming next. So you kind of built like a spoiler site for daytime soap operas. With like, who the heck thinks of that? And then you ended up selling it for nine or $10 million cash. And that's like an amazing, amazing exit. And this is from a guy who has never watched a soap opera episode in his life. So I think people loved that because it was so, A, random, but B,
14:37 Shaan Puri? Interesting and relatable how you did that. And it sounds like one of the ways you were getting business ideas was you were going on these websites. And you said, I think you had told me at the time, you're like, I saw a website for sale. That was also in the daytime TV niche. That was like a hundred thousand dollars for sale. And you were like, cool, like, I don't have a hundred thousand dollars. But if this is worth a hundred thousand dollars, maybe I can make something like this. And then you went through this process where you said, okay, how can I test these ideas? Cause when I met you, I was like, all right, what's your passion? Now Silicon Valley style. And you were like, you know, what problem you really want to solve? What topic, what industry you're really passionate about? And you were like, there was a cup on the table. I remember we were drinking, we were drinking water, a little paper cup. We were at this burrito place and you were like, if I could buy this cup for five cents and sell it to you for seven cents.
15:22 Shaan Puri? That's my passion. Like, I like to buy things and sell things for a little bit more. And I'm basically an internet marketer and I don't care if it's cups or dog ramps or soap opera spoilers. It doesn't matter to me. I love the process of like business and selling things. And I was like, that's amazing. You know, I love the, the sort of self-awareness and honesty. And then when you were testing ideas for, for, before you created the soap opera site, you went on Facebook. And if I remember correctly, you basically made like 30 fan pages or something like that. Cause at the time you could promote a page, a fan page on Facebook for like cents. You could go get a bunch of likes of your Facebook page. And a lot of likes weren't worth too much, but you could kind of test what topics are people most engaged with?
16:07 Shaan Puri? What topics, if I post content in this page, will I get a bunch of likes for? And I think it ended up being like the top three were something like, what was it? It was like right wing politics, like soap operas. And what was the last one? It was like wrestling or something like that?
16:22 Speaker 01 Yeah, wrestling was really popular. Soaps and politics cars were also pretty, pretty high up.
16:30 Shaan Puri? Right. And then you were like, you know, I hate politics. I don't want to do politics. What's the next best one? Soap operas, okay. Hire this woman in the Midwest to write blogs every day about soap operas and then drive traffic, baby. So let's go sell some paper cups.
16:44 Speaker 01 Exactly. And I just didn't really overthink it. I didn't wrote a business plan. I just like go and went on upwork.com. Hey, looking for writer that can write soap opera spoilers. Put a very simple blog up just to test to see would people go from Facebook onto a blog and write a story. And that's how it basically started. And then, you know, started with 10 cents a day from making from Google AdSense and then a dollar a day and then $10. And that's how it grew.
17:14 Shaan Puri? Right. Okay, let's look at a couple more deals and then we'll jump around again. So give me, give me another one that you saw before you came on the pod that you want to talk about.
17:21 Speaker 01 Yeah. So this, this is one I just saw an hour ago. I just thought it was interested, interesting. It's a goat milk soap website.
17:30 Shaan Puri? Goat milk soap. What the heck is that?
17:33 Speaker 01 Yes. So apparently goat milk soap is better for the environment and it's better for, they say it's cruelty free because apparently a lot of soaps, the traditional soaps, they do testing on animals, et cetera. So they claim and like, forgive me for people that, you know, know about goat's milk soap. I, this is the first time I heard about it. And that's why that intrigued me. This could probably be a product that people that use this are very passionate about it. Same like, you know, people that are into keto are super passionate. Or, you know, there's tons of these examples where it's a pretty small niche, but people are so passionate that they, they will spread the word for you. So this is why website, you can
18:18 Speaker 01 find it on Flipper. Just search goat milk soap.
18:20 Shaan Puri? And I'm looking at the listing. It says, four years old, monthly profit, $20,000 a month. It's got a 29% profit margin and it's selling at a 1.8x multiple, right? So, okay, so what is that? So let's say 20 times 12. We don't do public math, but we do type things in. 240, 240 times 1.8. So it's selling for 400 something thousand. Is that right?
18:43 Speaker 01 Correct. 425 is the asking price.
18:46 Shaan Puri? Right. Okay. Amazing. So walk me through, how do you think about something like this?
18:50 Speaker 01 Yeah. So first, I will do a little bit of research about the product. Does goat milk really work? Is it more of an gimmick? Or is it actually solve a problem? Or are people really, you know, interested? Is there a need for this? And again, if it's a gimmick, that's fine too, right? This is not like, oh, the answer is no, will not buy it. It's just important to know.
19:12 Shaan Puri? Right. Back to the, to the piñata example.
19:15 Speaker 01 Exactly. How many, because it's very important to for like, not all ideas have to be a hundred million dollar idea. Like, I think. A million dollar a year business is amazing as well, right? So maybe goat milk soap is, you know, a very passionate niche product. I will do research like, okay, how many people in the US search for it? You can use Google Trends or you can use all kinds of search volume trackers that you can see how many people are searching for this keyword. I will look on Instagram, are there like, is there a rabbit fan base? You know, like goat milk, you know, fans or Facebook groups? Then I will also look on Amazon. Is this sold on Amazon?
20:00 Speaker 01 If yes, how is the trend and what is the sales? And then you can use a tool called Helium 10 to see how much revenue a listing is doing. It's, by the way, a really amazing tool to do research. I do the same for pet products. You know, I look what is trending on Amazon? What is, you know, blowing out of waters for sales? And then I will do research if we should also start selling that. Then I look, of course, on the business stuff, like business, is the, is the trend up or down or flat? And also like, most of the business I've bought were either flat or down. Because that's how, you know, you get, you know, a good deal.
20:41 Speaker 01 So even if it's flat, even if it's not trending up, I still would, you know, potentially buy it. What is important are the traffic channels diversified? Is 100 or 90% coming from just Facebook? Or is it just emails? Or is it just SEO? That could be a little bit, you know, risky, especially if it's all paid traffic from Facebook. Because all the e-commerce founders or listeners on this podcast will know, you know, Apple can make an update and suddenly, you know, the paid traffic landscape changed. So I'm looking for diversified channels. Then, of course, I look at revenue profit margins. So you can really calculate like, okay, if I pump.
21:26 Speaker 01 Is this going to be more of a skill where I can pump more money into Facebook? I put a dollar in, I get three dollars back? Or is this more like of a long-term play where I have to create SEO content? That, you know, is less costly, but it's a longer game. And then also what's important to understand what you're buying are the trademarks, are the patents? Is there email subscribers? So in this case, they have a forty-three thousand email subscribers. There's thirty-three thousand SMS subscribers. I think there's a social media. All these things, in my opinion, are valuable. Because that's the same with when I bought Alpha Ball.
22:11 Speaker 01 Had a huge Instagram following, a huge Facebook following. They had an email list. They had trademarks and patents. All that was, you know, included in the sale.
22:22 Shaan Puri? And if you, those are great, those are the assets. And so let's take a business like this. Let's say it's four hundred thousand dollar listing. How does it work? You know, if you don't have four hundred grand lying around, you know, in a briefcase like a, like a, you know, evil, evil genius. What do you, what do you do? How do you buy a business like this if you don't have four hundred grand lying around?
22:40 Speaker 01 Yeah. So you can use SBA loans to buy internet businesses. SBA loan is basically a business loan, small business loan, that I don't know when they started a few years ago, where they now also fund internet businesses. And you can borrow up to ninety percent. So technically, you can buy something that is for sale for four hundred thousand, and you only have to put down forty thousand dollars. And the interest rate is, is pretty low. It's anywhere between five and seven. So it's, it's higher than a mortgage, but it's much lower than a traditional, you know, a business loan for people like us.
23:23 Shaan Puri? Right.
23:23 Speaker 01 Then the second thing you can do, when you see an asking price of four hundred thousand dollars. You can always, there's a cash upfront offer. And then you can offer like, hey, I will pay you $250,000 cash upfront at closing. The remaining 150K, I will pay you spread out over the next 12 months, interest free. So every time I buy a business, that's never 100%, 100% cash on closing. I always have 60 to 80% cash on closing and the remaining is either seller's note or an earn out.
24:02 Shaan Puri? And that keeps the seller, you know, helpful because they're, you know, they, they need to help you out. Plus it lowers the amount that you have to loan. So let's just say, let's just do a little loan calculator. So the SBA loan is what 10 year loan, something like that?
24:13 Speaker 01 Yes.
24:14 Shaan Puri? So 10 year loan. So let's say you did the full amount, no seller financing, just for simplicity, simplicity here. So you put down 40K, you're going to take the other 360K as a, as a SBA loan. And let's say you're paying 60%, 6% a year for 10 years. So your monthly payment on that loan is going to be $4,000. This business makes $20,000 a month of profit. So you take the $20,000 a month of profit, you pay back your loan for four. You're left with 16K of profit every month right now. So you could buy this today and be making money. And so that, that difference, let's say 16K, you only put down, you know, you only put down $40,000. So it only takes two and a half months for you to get all your equity back.
24:56 Shaan Puri? And then you're, and you're profitable every single month and you could reinvest some of that into growth. So that's like a pretty sweet deal. And that's more than most people are making at their quote unquote, safe job.
25:08 Speaker 01 Correct. And SBA, the beauty with SBA loans, they, of course they look at your personal credit history and et cetera. But they really look and make a decision, the lenders on the business. So they will never fund you if there's too high of a risk, right? If they think like, oh, if we cannot, you know, the, the borrower cannot pay the, the interest month over month. So it's amazing too. Actually I spoke with Joe Valley from Quiet Light Broker today. And he told me a story, there was a woman, she bought a business for 1.25 million with an SBA loan two years ago. And just closed and sold the same business for 5.5, I believe it was in the five range,
25:53 Speaker 01 but put only 10% down. So she only, she didn't even put 200K down, but her return was, you know,
26:01 Shaan Puri? Four million, yeah.
26:02 Speaker 01 Yeah. So if done right, you know, SBA loans is a really great tool, a good leverage tool to get into internet businesses or buy a business.
26:12 Shaan Puri? Amazing. Uh, yeah.
26:13 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:14 Shaan Puri? Is one of the tricks. Now, uh, what do you give people a sense of how do you make sure you're not buying a lemon?
26:19 Speaker 01 Yes, that's, uh, I get a question a lot. So when you go to flipper.com, I would be careful because flipper.com is a marketplace. Anybody can just upload, you know, their listing or their website and basically claim whatever. It's on you to do the diligence. If you go to a broker like Quietline Brokers, they basically do all the vetting for you. They will look at the business. Is everything legit? So the risk is much smaller, but regardless, if you're new to this, if you are, you know, it's your first business, you can hire a due diligence company. Centurica is, centurica.com is one.
26:59 Speaker 01 I think those are the biggest, uh, well-known. You pay, you know, it depends on the listing price, but it's as cheap as a couple hundred dollars and it goes up from there, but they do all the due diligence for you. They look through all the traffic. Is it legit? Is the revenue legit? Is whatever, everything they claimed, is it all legit? And then they can come back to you with like, well, we looked at all the data, all the numbers. You bought it for 1.2, but we think it's actually worth 900K because these are the reasons. So definitely recommend going with a due diligence company like Centurica.
27:35 Shaan Puri? Gotcha. Okay. And give, okay. So these are businesses you could buy. What was the first kind of like, how the heck did you become you? Right? So how are you figuring out how to do this? Give people kind of the, Not, not, you don't go deep into any one, but just describe kind of the journey and then I might poke into some that sound interesting. So, okay, you're, you're Ramon, you're born and I don't know, I don't know when you got your entrepreneurial start. What was the first kind of like entrepreneurial venture? Were you, were you in your teens or twenties or what?
28:04 Speaker 01 My first real business was a construction business. I've done things before that, but it were like nothing really significant. But I think the way how I started the construction company is really my DNA, if that makes sense. Because if I look back, a lot of other companies, I started basically the same. I didn't know anything about construction. And, and the story, I will keep it very quick, but I think it's maybe could be helpful for people that maybe are overthinking steps or overthinking things. I was out of a job, was 20 years old, had to pay
28:44 Speaker 01 my rent. Coworker of my mom said, I need a painter to paint the inside of my house. I can pay you X. I forgot the number, but it was like a month's worth of money that I made in three days. So I thought, oh, this is amazing. I can, you know, be my own boss. It's a lot of money. The harder I work, the more money I make. That was really what intrigued me, right? Like if I can do this in one day, I'll actually, you know, have make the same amount of money than in a whole month.
29:10 Shaan Puri? So you got paid on your output, not your input?
29:13 Speaker 01 Correct. And, and as you know, like in my high school dropout, right? So there was not, that's
29:20 Shaan Puri? What, what year did you actually drop out?
29:23 Speaker 01 Officially 15, but I stopped really going when I was 14.
29:26 Shaan Puri? Okay. So that's basically ninth grade, right? That's US ninth.
29:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, I don't know.
29:31 Shaan Puri? What it is there?
29:31 Speaker 01 Okay. My mom actually got a letter from the board of school to, with an official waiver, like, okay, your son doesn't have to go to school because in Holland, you have to go to school mandatory to 16. They actually gave me a pass because no high school wanted to accept me. But it's a different story. So
29:49 Shaan Puri? Such a good guy.
29:52 Speaker 01 On Sunday night, she paid me out. I said, this is amazing. So on Monday morning, I came up with a name, house improvements or home improvements, one of those two, built some, designed a couple very ugly business cards, made a one-page website, and put an ad out on the Dutch version of Craigslist. And I thought, you know what? Let's just not do only painting. Let's do like, we do everything. Construction, like remodeling from A to Z, whatever.
30:23 Shaan Puri? And you don't know how to do any of that, by the way?
30:26 Speaker 01 No, no, I don't know anything. I barely was able to paint.
30:29 Shaan Puri? So what gives you that confidence to say, I'll, I'll renovate everything A to Z, and yet I don't know how to do anything A to Z?
30:36 Speaker 01 I think that's the naive thing part of me that I still have is like, let's just see first if I can get a job and then figure out like how to solve or do the job. And so an hour later or two hours later, I got an email from a guy saying, hey, I'm looking for an electrician and I am rewiring the whole building, blah, blah, blah. I said, sure, no problem. I will see you tomorrow.
31:02 Shaan Puri? I'm a ninth grade dropout. I'll be there in three hours. I got this.
31:07 Speaker 01 I went out to buy an official construction outfit. So I really looked like a construction guy or like, you know? And I went there the next morning and disclaimer, of course, I will not have done things that will, you know, potentially kill people, but I just wanted to see like, you know, I don't know, like maybe it was something simple. So he gave me, he gave me the tour and it was like, I couldn't even understand the words he was saying, like, oh, we need to wire this and we need to do, and the floors were open and the walls were open. And I was still playing along, but in my mind, I was like, there's no way I can do this. Plus it's dangerous as fuck. So he went out to run some errands. I waited for him because I didn't want to be like, you know, an asshole, just go left.
31:53 Speaker 01 So waited for an hour. He came back and I was like, listen. I'm gonna be honest, I don't know shit about the construction company. I don't know shit about Electra. I just started yesterday. I want to build a construction company, but I don't know anything. And he was, because he was an entrepreneur, he laughed his ass off and he actually gave me work. He said, like, you're hilarious. Um, just help me with, you know, getting, you know, supplies.
32:22 Speaker 01 Yeah. And he paid me the same amount of dollars or euros, uh, hourly rate than, uh, he would have done before. I think also, by the way, if we have young listeners, I think it's so important to do those things when you're young. Because if I would do it now, I'm forty years old.
32:39 Shaan Puri? Not endearing.
32:40 Speaker 01 I don't think, it's not endearing. It's not like, oh, I appreciate your hustle. No, it's like, hey, you're a con man. Yes. So if you're young, take advantage. You know, Sam was also really genius of doing that as well, right? Like, you can't just get away with so much more of showing hustle. But also, like, I think he appreciated that I waited for him and just be like, honest, like, hey, listen, I don't know shit about this. But he gave me a really good tip. He said, in order to own a construction company, you don't have to know everything or do yourself. If I were you, find freelancers, you focus on getting the projects and then you outsource it to freelance.
33:21 Speaker 01 But that's what I did and found an electrician, freelancer, plumber, you know, everything you need, a whole crew that you need. And two weeks later, I got a second job and I didn't do anything. I just had my.
33:34 Shaan Puri? Sent it, dispatched some of there. Yeah.
33:37 Speaker 01 Yeah. I sold it for ten K. My cut was like around five K. And that's how I basically grew the construction company. And within a year, a little over a year, we were like a twenty to twenty-four people, depending on how many projects we had. And at that time, we did close to a million dollars or million euros, sorry, um, a year, uh, in revenue.
34:02 Shaan Puri? And you're like nineteen, twenty years old, something like that at that time?
34:04 Speaker 01 Yeah, twenty, twenty-one when we, you know, were a year, a year in.
34:08 Shaan Puri? And so what happened to that? Happy ending or sad ending to this story?
34:11 Speaker 01 Well, very quick, maybe story about how I scaled. The scaling part, I think it's also could be helpful for people is that.
34:19 Speaker 01 The big problem with construction is every like the job is two weeks and then you have to find another job. The job is four weeks and you have to find another job, right? So it was really hard to keep the guys busy and really, you know, make sure that the the projects align, if that makes sense. So I thought, hey, who can I find? What can I do so I don't have to find jobs anymore? Real estate investors, they buy apartment buildings all at once. They all need to be renovated at once. So I went to local real estate meetups. That was actually horrible because I was A really out of my place. I was way too young. I was like, you know, a blue collar guy with
35:01 Speaker 01 all these fancy pants. But one thing leads to another that I met the biggest real estate investor in my region that I lived. And he was like literally buying apartment buildings at the foreclosure every month between twenty and a hundred buildings at a time. So now he became my client and he was my client to the end, basically. I never had to search for a new customer. So that was all the good news. Then I made a bunch of mistakes. Cash flow projection was one where construction, you really, it's a similar, a little bit similar like with e-commerce. I think you could grow yourself into bankruptcy,
35:42 Speaker 01 if that makes sense, making, for example, you with a construction, same with e-commerce, you have to put a lot of money upfront. I have to pay every Friday the the crew. I have to buy the supplies, but I only get paid all the way at the end when the project is done. So the faster you grow, the more projects you have, the more money you have to put out in open and you have to wait for it. So that started, that was really, and I was just not good at cash flow projections. Well, I just didn't do it. And another thing that really was bad was growing too fast that I have to hire people that I normally
36:23 Speaker 01 would not have hired and really lost grip of the business, if that makes sense. And, you know, it started to break. And I had to close the company after three years, more or less.
36:36 Shaan Puri? And our mutual buddy Sully was at my house this weekend and he said something like, I don't know, maybe you already, maybe this is the guy you already talked about, but he said, he said you had some like mentor kind of help you early on, somebody who really changed the course of your life. I don't know. Is he talking about that guy that who gave you that first kind of insight to hire freelancers? Or is there somebody else that he's talking about?
36:56 Speaker 01 No, this is a different story.
36:57 Shaan Puri? Okay, tell that one.
36:59 Speaker 01 All right. That story was before my construction company. I was almost 18 or around that time. My mother kicked me out the house. You have to, you have to figure your shit out. So I have to pay rent. So I had to find a job at a local Best Buy, the Dutch version of Best Buy. Couple of weeks in, I said, like, this sucks, right? Like long hours, whatever. And there was a guy coming in, in a nice expensive suit. He wanted to buy something, was not in stock. He gave me a business card and said like software solutions. And I didn't know anything about software or programming or whatever, but I knew.
37:39 Shaan Puri? Or solutions.
37:40 Speaker 01 Because it, or solutions, whatever. I didn't know anything.
37:45 Speaker 01 But I just knew like, okay, hey, there's a lot of money to be made and a lot of opportunity in, because this was like the early internet days, right? Like, you know, I'm an old fuck, right? This is like before 2001, before the internet bubble, if people remember. And so I didn't know what he was doing, but it was something in software and solutions.
38:06 Shaan Puri? And that's. You knew it was good because he came in a fancy suit? Or you separately had been thinking about the internet?
38:12 Speaker 01 Separately been thinking about, because I always was like trying to, you know, oh, let's buy this type of product in Germany and then try to sell it in Holland. Like I was always trying to build these, doing these schemes, legal of course, but internet was just like this whole new, like for me, my, like, this was like amazing. There's so many, so much opportunity. And so I knew that. I just didn't know like exactly what, how to get started, how to even, you know, write a line of code or whatever. So I started stalking him as a hey, and this is again the benefit of being young. Like, hey, I wanna get a job at your company. And he said, we're not hiring.
38:57 Speaker 01 But I kept stalking him respectfully, but I did stalking him for months, like three, four months. To a point where he said, you know what, I'm so sick and tired of this in a good way. Let's make a deal. If I'm gonna give you a book on Friday, we have an internal exam for programmers. If you pass that exam, I will hire you, the company will hire you and give you a six month internal program to become a Microsoft developer. But you have to promise me if you fail this exam on Friday, you have to leave me alone for the rest of your life. I said, okay, let's do it.
39:35 Speaker 01 They know what it was expect. He gave me a book about Microsoft Database Access, Access Database Programming. Study that if my life was depending on it, did exam and I passed. I didn't pass A plus, but I passed enough. And so they gave me a job and for six, the next six months, they trained me. I was able to become a Microsoft software developer within this company. They gave me a lease card, they gave me a laptop, they gave me like a phone, like it was, it was insane. So this guy really changed my life because I think learning how to code really is helpful also in other ways in, in your life, like because it really, you analyze problems and
40:18 Speaker 01 situations just different if, um, when you know how to code, if that makes sense.
40:23 Shaan Puri? And you, but today you don't consider yourself like a coder, like let's say for your, your e-commerce website, you're not the one going and making changes. Is, do you do it like sometimes or early on before you hire people? Do you just do stuff yourself or no? You're just saying, learning it back then and. Using it back then and learning how to think that way was helpful.
40:40 Speaker 01 Yeah. And at that time, I had to learn Visual Basic. That language doesn't even exist anymore. So it's like, I know how to read PHP and HTML and, you know, I know, I know how to do it, but I'm like, I never do it. Basically, I think it's more of breaking down what was so frustrating as a programmer is like finding bugs. So you have like, you know, a 10,000 line code and there's one thing breaks. You have to go through like all the codes, but it really trains your brain like, okay, how to really try to narrow down what it could be and where the problem could be. And that mindset you can use in all kinds of other, you know, real life situations.
41:26 Speaker 01 So I don't program right now. No.
41:28 Shaan Puri? Okay, fair enough. And we got five minutes left. You had a game you wanted to play at the end. Let's do, let's do the game.
41:33 Speaker 01 Okay. So I wanted to ask you, it's very silly, but I was.
41:37 Shaan Puri? And why did you want to play this game, by the way?
41:39 Speaker 01 Because I think your audience would like to know these questions like, would you rather? So to root your rather.
41:45 Shaan Puri? Give the people what they want.
41:47 Speaker 01 Yes. All right. So here's the first one. Would you rather be the CEO of Apple or the president of the UFC?
41:54 Shaan Puri? Oh, okay. President of the UFC, like Dana White, too much travel. I'm traveling. I'm on the road all the time. Dealing with all kinds of head event planning. Like when I threw my wedding, I was like, this is the only event I'll ever throw like this. And for the UFC, every weekend they throw, you know, a mega wedding. So no way I'm doing that. I also wouldn't really want to be the CEO of Apple. So I'll take the job. I'll go buy your company for half a trillion. I'll buy my company for half a trillion and then I'll peace out.
42:25 Speaker 01 All right. That's awesome. I saw this on a meme, actually. Would you rather have dinner with Jay-Z or take $500,000 in cash?
42:36 Shaan Puri? $500,000 cash. Easy. What would you do? Would you take dinner with Jay-Z? I feel like you might be a, I want a unique experience person. No?
42:44 Speaker 01 Yeah, I will take the cash too. There was, there was all debates, like people saying like, you should take Jay-Z because he's.
42:50 Shaan Puri? Let's say, let's say $50,000 cash. $50,000 cash, I think is a closer bet here.
42:56 Speaker 01 Yeah. Then I will, in the situation I'm right now, I will take the dinner. If I have no money, I will take the cash.
43:05 Shaan Puri? Right. Yeah, yeah, I'm in the same boat. I think the dinner is most likely going to be kind of lame, but you know, I get a good story. Who knows? Maybe, maybe we hit it off. Maybe he's interesting. 500,000, that's, you could go buy your charity dinner with Jay-Z for, for 90,000 and have the rest left over for, for goods after that.
43:24 Speaker 01 Or you can buy a goat milk soap website.
43:26 Shaan Puri? Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's the question. Would I rather have that goat milk business today or this dinner with Jay-Z? Tomorrow, I'll take the goat milk business today. Thank you.
43:37 Speaker 01 Yeah, let's do, would you rather, would you rather bootstrap a million dollar business? Or VC back 10 million dollar a year business?
43:48 Shaan Puri? I think I would rather have a VC back 10 million dollar a year business. I'll tell you why. I think that once you can get a business to 10 million dollars, I think the odds of you being able to get it to 50 or 100 are quite high. I think zero to 10 is a lot harder or more likely to, to, to round down to zero than 10 will stay at 10. So I think 10 million, really what you're saying is, hey, just stick with it for a little bit longer and you'll be at 30, 40, 50, 70, something like that million within two, three years. So I think that's the case. And then I'm, I'm actually, a lot of people think VC means you're VC forever. And that you're in this endless chase. They're like, well, the VCs say you need to grow. The VCs say, you know, you'll have to raise your next round.
44:31 Shaan Puri? My experience with VCs has actually been quite different, which is VCs give you the money. They might want you to do something, but it's your call what you do. And like, you can raise one round and never raise again from VC, or you can raise one round and grow at the pace you want. They might strongly advise you to do something, but it's on you to say, look, are you going to fire me? Do you have the power to do that? Are you going to fire me? If not, then I'm going to need you to, you know, shut the fuck up and stay in the backseat and like, let me do what I'm going to do here. So I think the 10 million dollar business is just better than the bootstrap to 1 million.
45:03 Speaker 01 Then a very quick for the listeners that have an idea, but not the capital, would you tell them to try to get VC money or try to get the company started, get some revenue and then do the VC route?
45:20 Shaan Puri? Or? Yeah, I mean, this is going to sound cliche, but it's true. And whoever is doing this needs to hear this, which is the raising money is not the is not the goal. Like, so a lot of people are like, hey, I want to talk to you like I'll invest in a company. And they'll say, I want to talk to you about, you know, what metrics we need to do to be able to raise an A in nine months, or, you know, we're starting planning for our series B. I want to talk to you about what metrics we need to do to hit the B. And I'm like, I understand what they're saying and it's good to be thoughtful and plan. But there's a sort of implication that raising money is the milestone. And it's like, oh, what business, what does this business need to do to be able to achieve this outcome? And it's actually the opposite. It's I have a business outcome I'm trying to get to.
46:04 Shaan Puri? I'm trying to get to 10 million in revenue with 20% EBITDA. I'm trying to get 20% market share in this market or 5%. I want to grow 20% a month. You have a business outcome in mind and then you just say, do I need more money to make that happen? Yes or no? Money is the fuel. It is not the destination. It is not the it's not the point of the journey for raising money. And so I would just say like, yeah, when you start, when you have the idea, the goal is, okay, well, I need to get like one customer, 10 customers, 100 customers, 1,000 customers. You start doing that. And then at some point, if you get stuck because you lack the money, meaning you truly, you need to go buy inventory or your paid ads are working. You just need to spend more to get to the next milestone, then you raise the money.
46:49 Shaan Puri? Don't raise, don't raise as your excuse to go do the business.
46:54 Speaker 01 Yeah. And you also see a lot of deals or people approaching you and, you know, me in a little bit lesser way, but I do feel like there's a lot of people think they need money to launch a business, but actually don't. Because they think, oh, it needs to be pretty, or it has to have all these functionalities. But maybe they could just like start with one functionality and just have, you know, a fiber designer, just do it and, you know, do it, at least get started.
47:25 Shaan Puri? Yeah, my favorite people to fund are people who have created a company and like, made all the mistakes, ended up with a small win where they got a taste of winning, but you know, not, not, not enough to go retire on a yacht. Because the next time they start, they're like, not going to waste those six months on design mockups and branding and getting the trademark and all this other stuff. Like, they know what are the traps and they know what, what you really need to do versus what you think you need to do. And there's a big gap there. But usually, even if somebody tells you, experience is the best teacher, because the voice in your head typically, for most entrepreneurs I meet, the voice in your head typically is giving you some bad advice your first, first time through. And it's okay. Like, just go do it, learn those lessons, and then the second time, you're much better off.
48:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, I agree. Then last question, would you rather do a boxing match against Sam or do an Ironman with me and Suli?
48:21 Shaan Puri? Both. I'd rather do the boxing match with Sam because that sounds more fun and exciting than like an endurance race. But yeah, so I would do a boxing match with Sam. I think that'd be great. You know, I've always wanted to like feel what it's like to be in a real fight. Like, I think I got into like one or two little altercations when I was younger, like in high school or middle school. But it was always like, I hit the kid and then he he ran away or like,
48:47 Speaker 01 Yeah.
48:47 Shaan Puri? He hit me and then it got broken up and it's like it never
48:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
48:50 Shaan Puri? It was like, okay, let's do this. Let's get, let's start. No one's gonna break this up. And the point is to actually get in a fight. So I would do it, although Sam is definitely like, you know, on horse tranquilizers or whatever, like horse, you know, growth hormone or whatever he's taking. That guy's built like a absolute monster right now. So, uh, you know, I need a little training period, but I would do it.
49:10 Speaker 01 Actually, a lot of people, because he's been posting videos of me and him sparring, you know, he wants to become a business influencer now.
49:18 Shaan Puri? To hit, to his credit, by the way, he posts, he posts videos of you hitting him and him going down. Normally when people post, they cherry pick what makes them look good. He does the opposite. He posts of you hitting him with liver shots and him falling down over and over again. A compilation.
49:33 Speaker 01 Yeah. And to be also to his credit, he, um, he started four or five months ago. Not super serious, not that he's doing it every day, but he, he actually got really good, really fast. Um, you know, I've been training much longer, but a lot of people on the Twitter comments actually are voting for, uh, you versus Sam. So maybe we should give the fans what they need.
50:00 Shaan Puri? Let's give the fans what they want. Yeah. We need, we need like a Kickstarter or GoFundMe or something. It's like, if, uh, if, if, if certain number of people vote for this or buy the pre buy a pay per view, $5 pay per view of this, we'll do it. We need like whatever 10,000 pre buys.
50:14 Speaker 01 Okay. 10,000 pre buys. That's the goal.
50:17 Shaan Puri? 10,000 pre buys of a $10 pay per view and then we'll do it.
50:20 Speaker 01 Okay. Let's set it up and then you can either come here to Austin.
50:24 Shaan Puri? Give me like, I don't know, four months to, to train and we'll, we'll film the training.
50:29 Speaker 01 Months to train.
50:29 Shaan Puri? Yeah. Or to six.
50:31 Speaker 01 Each one can get one, uh, good trainer, boxing trainer. Uh, do you, do you, what you want to do boxing or MMA or?
50:39 Shaan Puri? No, boxing is simple. I don't have time to learn five martial arts. So we'll get to the point where we're both shitty at boxing and then we'll do it.
50:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, let's do it. I think we should do it and then maybe Sully and I can box do as the pre
50:54 Shaan Puri? Yeah, we should. We should get It's a CEO boxing tournament.
51:00 Speaker 01 Yes, and we stream it and we do it in a really small ratchet like boxing gym here. And also we can go there and then we'll just stream it for for the people.
51:11 Shaan Puri? Right.
51:11 Speaker 01 10,000 pre buys. That's a lot, but I think it's doable.
51:15 Shaan Puri? I think it's doable.
51:15 Speaker 01 Especially if we can get the support of your listeners.
51:18 Shaan Puri? Yeah, we're saying it now. People will just have to see. We'll just have to get them a link and let's get them a link and let's
51:24 Speaker 01 Yes. All right. I can't wait.
51:27 Shaan Puri? All right, perfect. Okay, I gotta run. I gotta do a call with this guy. Ramon, thanks for being on. Where should people find you? So now you're Twitter famous. So is it Ramon Van Meere? Is that your your Twitter handle? Right?
51:38 Speaker 01 Actually, I feel so dumb. I don't know, actually. Let me see.
51:45 Speaker 01 Because I barely used it since until yesterday. Yeah, Ramon at Ramon Van Meere all together.
51:52 Shaan Puri? At Ramon Van Meere. Go buy. If you have a small dog, like I have a multi poo. I have four of your ramps in my house because it's a lifesaver.
52:00 Speaker 01 Yeah.
52:00 Shaan Puri? Otherwise, your dogs get like, you know, injured backs and they're jumping off couches and stuff like that. That's like, imagine jumping onto something or off of something that's three times your height. Right? That's what they're doing. And so these ramps are onto the bed, onto the couch, up the stairs. You know, that's how I use them. So go buy, go buy some ramps from Alpha Paul.
52:18 Speaker 01 Well, thank you for the plug. Thank you. It was good talking and I see you at the at the boxing match.
52:23 Shaan Puri? Amazing.
Previous Dopamine Fasts, Cruise Ship Investing, and Elon Musk vs. Jeff Bezos Feuds with Andrew Wilkinson, Co-Founder of Tiny Next MFM Goes to Jail - Plus Startup Cities, Prospera, Julian Shapiro Building a Ranch, Testing Out Big Purchases, and More Page updated September 28, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
