Secrets of E-Commerce Success and Family Fulfillment
Show Notes
Ever wondered how to build a business empire without losing your mind (or your family time)? Join us as Neil Twa, CEO and Co-Founder of Voltage Holdings, shares his epic journey from a corporate suit at IBM to a digital dynamo in the e-commerce world. Over the past 17 years, he’s launched five personal brands, raked in tens of millions, and mentored over 1,000 businesses. Talk about a hustle! As the co-author of Almost-Automated Income with FBA, Neil’s got the secret sauce for turning Amazon FBA into a money-making machine—almost on autopilot. And did we mention his “As Seen on TV” strategy? Yup, it’s Shark-approved and helps brands predict what customers want before they even know it.
He’s got five game-changing breakthroughs up his sleeve to transform any FBA business into a brand powerhouse. Want to know how to grow your biz and still have time for family dinners? Neil’s got you covered. Tune in for some seriously fun, no-nonsense advice from a guy who’s mastered the art of business and family balance!
Show Transcript
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00:00:03.105 --> 00:00:09.503 Hi everyone, welcome to the Juggling Entrepreneurship Podcast, and today we have an awesome guest called Neil Twa.
00:00:09.503 --> 00:00:22.989 So Neil Twa is the CEO and founder of Voltage Holdings, a company specializing in launching, consulting, selling and acquiring brands with a focus on the e-commerce channels, such as Amazon, fbla and multichannel.
00:00:22.989 --> 00:00:28.268 We have an incredible guest who is a true master of scaling businesses on Amazon.
00:00:28.268 --> 00:00:39.063 With over a decade of experience in building multi-million dollar Amazon businesses, he helped countless entrepreneurs unlock the secrets of success in the e-commerce space.
00:00:39.063 --> 00:00:47.475 He's also a parent and an amazing entrepreneur, so today we are going to hear his story on this episode.
00:00:47.475 --> 00:00:49.043 So welcome, neil.
00:00:49.826 --> 00:00:50.146 Welcome.
00:00:50.146 --> 00:00:51.210 Thanks for having me Appreciate it.
00:00:52.661 --> 00:01:00.475 So let's, I gave a higher level overview about you, but do you want to add anything?
00:01:02.960 --> 00:01:03.762 Yeah, we'll go.
00:01:03.762 --> 00:01:04.605 We can go a little bit deeper.
00:01:04.605 --> 00:01:10.650 Just for the context here, I am a father of four daughters whose ages are 11 to 16.
00:01:10.650 --> 00:01:15.304 We have them all in four and a half years, so for the better part of a decade my wife and I didn't sleep.
00:01:15.304 --> 00:01:21.558 We're actually getting some good sleep now, which is awesome, as they are all now a little older and the youngest is 11.
00:01:21.558 --> 00:01:24.527 So it's a little easier to kind of manage life and do life a little differently.
00:01:24.989 --> 00:01:27.555 We travel as a family unit anywhere we travel.
00:01:27.555 --> 00:01:29.641 Really, I don't go to things by myself.
00:01:29.641 --> 00:01:42.144 I take them out to two events a year in which we are part of a group called the Wealth Without Wall Street and Apex Coaching Group that partnered with Voltage to provide e-commerce opportunities to their individuals.
00:01:42.144 --> 00:01:54.129 And those are the only live groups I go to each year and take my 16-year-old daughter to the last live group with us to help her with her entrepreneurial journey, because she has published her own first book as a novel.
00:01:54.129 --> 00:02:01.415 She spent writing the last year and she turned 16 in June and we had it published right as her birthday went out.
00:02:01.415 --> 00:02:04.822 So she's working on her publishing empire as a part of what we do.
00:02:05.683 --> 00:02:09.248 We homeschool our girls on 50 acres here in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri.
00:02:09.248 --> 00:02:13.974 So we balance the work, the life, the homeschooling and the adventures together as a family.
00:02:13.974 --> 00:02:22.487 They're currently at their homeschool co-op theater event today where they're starting a new play in three months, and so they are starting today on that journey.
00:02:22.487 --> 00:02:30.637 This is the third one they've done now with their homeschool co-op as part of their adventure, so it should be pretty fun to watch that come out.
00:02:30.637 --> 00:02:33.284 So we just, you know we balance things between myself and my wife.
00:02:33.284 --> 00:02:40.831 I really like to joke that she owns the company Twaner Prizes, which owns Voltage and the other assets, and I'm just a worker for it.
00:02:40.831 --> 00:02:43.887 So if anything happens to me, it all gets transferred to her.
00:02:44.207 --> 00:02:47.866 But in terms of life and business, we've spent the last 17 years doing that together.
00:02:47.866 --> 00:02:50.391 We got married in 2007.
00:02:50.391 --> 00:02:56.293 I left my corporate career and fired the man in 2007, went out on my own into new business ventures etc.
00:02:56.293 --> 00:03:05.287 By the time we got married that same year, in March, and I left IBM in June and we found out by September we were pregnant with our first daughter all in that same year.
00:03:05.287 --> 00:03:09.741 So starting the business, starting the family, starting a new adventure was just all part of the package.
00:03:10.764 --> 00:03:17.591 Don't necessarily recommend all new couples who are newly married do that because it puts a lot of stress on the finances and family.
00:03:17.591 --> 00:03:28.175 But if you've got the major pillars of faith, family, finances and the goal of freedom in mind, you know you're normally can be pretty unstoppable if you don't give up Uh.
00:03:28.175 --> 00:03:45.013 And so we worked through that uh and through the challenges and opportunities that have been created as a family, you know, decided that we would homeschool our kids after that process and just kept going and never stopped uh with that and that's just led us to a life now that I feel more blessed than stressed to be a part of.
00:03:45.013 --> 00:03:58.425 And we are just a great family unit and do what we do on the home and business fronts to kind of, you know, team up and combine the activities of the operations and control of our family, our life and everything else, and it's wonderful.
00:03:58.727 --> 00:04:13.652 Couldn't see it any other way so just to correct me if I'm wrong, but you're not only juggling your own business and family, but also juggling the roadmap of making your kids the next generation entrepreneurs.
00:04:13.652 --> 00:04:20.211 And you are an author of yourself and you have a family of author the next generation, your daughter.
00:04:20.211 --> 00:04:26.273 So tell us a little bit about your books and your authorship journey before we hop into your digital marketing.
00:04:26.901 --> 00:04:33.053 So I told my daughter about a year and a half ago that I was going to publish this book and that we were in the process of doing it.
00:04:33.053 --> 00:04:42.391 And as we compiled it and worked with the 15 different individuals who came on my podcast and we pulled that information together and wrote the 15 chapters in that book.
00:04:42.391 --> 00:04:45.274 As each of them was guest, we went through that process.
00:04:45.274 --> 00:05:01.101 She got to see that In part of learning the business of e-commerce and writing and copywriting of the listings and products, she discovered she had more of a personal affinity towards the writing than anything else and so that kind of sparked her interest in writing and putting her creative thoughts onto paper.
00:05:01.101 --> 00:05:08.990 And then you know, in the way we structure our home and kids get up, we got animals, we got chores, we live on a homestead, so that has to be taken care of.
00:05:08.990 --> 00:05:13.389 Daily, monthly and nightly, every day it has to be taken care of.
00:05:13.389 --> 00:05:32.033 But when they get through their schooling and criteria that they do with mom in the kitchen and they get through each of their activities, things they're supposed to be doing, studies, et cetera if they're freed up by noon, one or two o'clock in the afternoon, depending upon which studies take, how long or whatever, they're free to do whatever they want with the rest of their time.
00:05:32.033 --> 00:05:35.483 And with that she set off to start writing and during her free time for an entire year she focused.
00:05:35.865 --> 00:05:38.992 I published my book in January of 2024.
00:05:38.992 --> 00:05:46.012 And with that it kind of led her to realize it was possible I'd help her with her marketing, and so we finished the final components of it.
00:05:46.012 --> 00:06:00.607 I got her an editor and a writing mentor to take her raw talent and just make sure that this wasn't a bad American Idol experience and throwing my daughter on a stage where she squeaks and no one was willing to tell her the truth and she sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard.
00:06:00.607 --> 00:06:02.942 I wasn't going to do that to her, so I got her a mentor and an editor on a chalkboard.
00:06:02.942 --> 00:06:06.949 I wasn't going to do that to her, so I got her a mentor and an editor and they said, hey, this is actually great, it's raw talent, let's keep going.
00:06:06.949 --> 00:06:08.213 And so that was encouraging.
00:06:12.720 --> 00:06:14.086 If it wasn't her bent, I didn't want to take her down that direction.
00:06:14.086 --> 00:06:16.115 If it wasn't going to be a good, you know, focus of her time and in balance with their studies.
00:06:16.115 --> 00:06:18.141 It's a great learning and entrepreneurial journey.
00:06:18.141 --> 00:06:18.923 But she ended up.
00:06:18.923 --> 00:06:24.870 We got it done and published and ready to go and launched it in June, right ahead of her birthday.
00:06:24.870 --> 00:06:33.317 So she got her book out, because I got my book out and that was part of the leader thing there was to do it together and to see that it could occur, so that she could walk that path too.
00:06:34.319 --> 00:06:37.848 Well, kudos to the next generation of Twas.
00:06:37.848 --> 00:06:38.951 I guess Yep.
00:06:39.399 --> 00:06:39.879 And I find those.
00:06:39.879 --> 00:07:11.814 Next, my second daughter has been really engaged in video and editing and she's been working on looking at creating some shorts and video and promos for the business and for products we have and she's getting stronger and better at that and we're going to figure out how to turn her into a little self-employed media expert, where she's been really enjoying making the videos and combining the photographs and the images and using AI voices and techniques with CapCut and other things to create those videos and there's a little creative spark in her energy and we're going to see where that goes next.
00:07:12.694 --> 00:07:14.935 So one at a time, right?
00:07:14.935 --> 00:07:16.377 Yes, definitely.
00:07:16.377 --> 00:07:24.069 And the way I see it, you are building your own team within your house, pretty much Between the writing and everything.
00:07:24.319 --> 00:07:27.021 Yep, I'm kind of building up a team of who can get involved in the business.
00:07:27.021 --> 00:07:37.966 Right now they're just washing windows and cleaning dishes, but as it comes along, the opportunities for them to grow and learn into the business, as they become, you know, capable and trained, are obviously there.
00:07:37.966 --> 00:07:44.649 To learn how to build that up and the strengths that they find most interesting to them and, and yeah, go ahead.
00:07:49.519 --> 00:07:56.632 Yeah, I honestly think there is one point for sure we want to discuss, based on your experience of raising kids and the next generation of entrepreneurs.
00:07:56.632 --> 00:08:01.732 It's not every parent does it, but it's very unique.
00:08:01.732 --> 00:08:04.535 What you're doing is to recognize the talent Each person is different.
00:08:04.535 --> 00:08:05.821 Each person is different.
00:08:05.821 --> 00:08:07.084 Each kid is different.
00:08:07.084 --> 00:08:25.093 Each kid have their own interests, their own skillset, their own talent and to recognize it as a parent, to nourish it, to support it and to help in whatever way we can in terms of providing the resources, for example, providing the mentors for writing a book.
00:08:25.093 --> 00:08:28.009 It's very unique, right?
00:08:28.009 --> 00:08:35.659 Does that mindset come to you Because you went through that entrepreneurship journey?
00:08:35.659 --> 00:08:48.668 How did your mindset transform when you quit the job from IBM to start your own journey, what actually triggered it and how your mindset changed during the course of time?
00:08:48.894 --> 00:08:55.528 Well, yeah, I lovingly refer to that change as burning the boats and not the bridges.
00:08:55.528 --> 00:09:03.145 I believe that phrase was borrowed from somewhere else I don't remember exactly who said it, but but in essence I understood something in some historical context.
00:09:03.145 --> 00:09:04.620 Let's go back for just a sec.
00:09:04.620 --> 00:09:09.566 I had a you know dad who worked for 28 and 29 years in the same job, same mechanics.
00:09:09.566 --> 00:09:25.115 He didn't graduate from high school, he actually went to the Navy and two tours of Vietnam and was just a tough, a tough guy and, you know, was a strong man, leader, not particularly in the finance world or business world, but he was ethics integrity strong.
00:09:25.115 --> 00:09:33.163 He was hard work strong he was, you know, suck it up buttercup, do the job, you know no slackers and let's get out there and put the work in.
00:09:33.163 --> 00:09:37.806 And that's kind of how he learned to do things and he taught that, you that, and built that work ethic into me.
00:09:37.806 --> 00:09:41.635 The challenge with that work ethic was well, he didn't have certain opportunities.
00:09:42.057 --> 00:09:53.153 Through his work and effort I was given the opportunity to do things in business that I couldn't have done through the family and relationships that helped extol that.
00:09:53.153 --> 00:09:59.865 One person in particular my uncle, all of my uncles, were individual self-employed contractors in the construction world.
00:09:59.865 --> 00:10:05.105 I never really realized that until later in life because that's not how I saw them, but because of who they are.
00:10:05.105 --> 00:10:12.957 I kind of saw the way they acted about business and the way they thought about doing jobs and working in that field and taking care of their own business.
00:10:12.957 --> 00:10:31.458 But one of my uncles in particular was very good at building boats and he actually built a boat company out of San Diego and as I watched that boat company grow and go and get bigger and by the time I was 16 and 17, it was a full-fledged business I really got to see the idea and the conversation and it started to change towards the entrepreneurial and the business and the development side.
00:10:31.458 --> 00:10:47.167 And he was gracious enough to let me pick his brain and have conversations with him and got introduced to people and my brand kind of started to expand and expand and he always suggested do your own business, get a franchise, do something, take that opportunity.
00:10:47.616 --> 00:11:02.524 And because of where I'd come from and my mind hadn't fully changed yet, I realized I needed opportunities where they currently were and that's when I personally went to college but I dropped out because I just didn't see where that was going to take me and at the time the internet was coming online, I said, well, that's something I really want to do.
00:11:02.524 --> 00:11:13.360 And academia was not caught up because we were literally just installing computers into labs for the first time and the corporations were catching up somewhat because they were just deploying a lot more capital.
00:11:13.360 --> 00:11:22.586 So I got into the workforce and it actually led me to being on one of the first teams that launched the first mobile phone at Sprint in Kansas City into the market.
00:11:22.586 --> 00:11:23.738 That's how old I am.
00:11:23.738 --> 00:11:26.102 A lot has changed very fast.
00:11:26.102 --> 00:11:28.736 I'm not terribly old, but lots have changed in the last 30 years.
00:11:28.736 --> 00:11:37.922 And then from there, that opportunity and putting in the hard work and learning the phrase it's who you know that gets you there and what you know that keeps you there.
00:11:37.962 --> 00:11:52.157 I've made good friends with a partner from IBM who had come to be on a project with Sprint in Kansas City where I was at that time, got to be friends with him and that opened the doors of opportunities to talk with these individuals who had come from a different location.
00:11:52.157 --> 00:12:02.981 They'd flown in, they had, you know, graduate degrees from Yale and Stanford and Harvard and they were, you know, these guys doing this business and I was nowhere near that level of knowledge and skillset yet.
00:12:02.981 --> 00:12:08.063 But they were gracious enough to drag me along and I just listened and I learned and gleaned and made friends.
00:12:08.063 --> 00:12:17.503 And by the time I got through the you know opportunities that had presented itself in Sprint, they said, hey, why don't you come check out one of these opportunities in IBM?
00:12:17.503 --> 00:12:18.804 And I said, sure, absolutely.
00:12:18.804 --> 00:12:22.721 And I went to Armonk, new York and did the 15-minute interview.
00:12:22.721 --> 00:12:26.559 That took me longer to get there than to do the interview and they offered me a job and I went to work for IBM.
00:12:26.559 --> 00:12:32.964 So by the time I got through that, in 2007, they were transitioning my division into a new location.
00:12:32.964 --> 00:12:44.791 We were doing knowledge management infrastructure and knowledge gathering using artificial intelligence and machine language learning and things that were way more advanced than we even see yet right now in the marketplace.
00:12:44.791 --> 00:12:46.056 So AI is just tip of the iceberg from what I can see.
00:12:47.341 --> 00:12:49.730 And I realized that I kind of reached the pinnacle of technology career.
00:12:49.730 --> 00:12:52.479 If I just kept going it'd be another job, another job, another job.
00:12:52.479 --> 00:12:56.166 And I was actually sitting around one of the end groups.
00:12:56.166 --> 00:13:06.341 We had like a group dinner at the end of the project and I was kind of towards the last project before I left IBM and we had this group dinner and I'm sitting around looking at these individuals and I think the kind of scales just fell off my eyes for a second.
00:13:06.360 --> 00:13:10.938 I looked around and saw everybody kind of pragmatically realizing that was going to be me in 20 and 30 years if I didn't change.
00:13:10.938 --> 00:13:13.261 And not that they were bad people, it was just the life.
00:13:13.261 --> 00:13:21.562 And they were in a conversation about you know how they're looking forward to see their kids and they were going to get home and I didn't have a family and kids at that point, so I really didn't have that connectivity.
00:13:21.562 --> 00:13:33.787 But in a moment of grace I was able to see something that you know where my future life could have gone and I I basically rejected it, not because it was bad for them, but because it was bad for me, and I just said I don't want to be that person.
00:13:33.807 --> 00:13:40.913 I don't want to be here in 20 years talking about how I miss my kid's birthday, how I can't wait to get home to see them, can't wait to get there because I'm missing all this stuff.
00:13:40.913 --> 00:13:42.260 I'm like I just don't want to be that person.
00:13:42.260 --> 00:13:43.460 I didn't have kids yet.
00:13:43.460 --> 00:13:45.162 I just didn't want that to be my outcome.
00:13:45.162 --> 00:13:51.298 And so IBM was like well, hey, guess what?
00:13:51.298 --> 00:13:52.640 You know, we're moving Argentina.
00:13:52.640 --> 00:13:54.361 And they said well, you get early retirement.
00:13:54.361 --> 00:14:01.969 So by the time I got married in March of 2007, I was, quote unquote, retired with early retirement from IBM, and that set my career off.
00:14:02.009 --> 00:14:09.155 So, it was a series of circumstances that I could have rejected, not looked at, not wanted the risk.
00:14:09.155 --> 00:14:10.518 I could have gone on and reapplied for more jobs.
00:14:10.518 --> 00:14:13.022 I could have tried to like hang on to that whole thing, but in actuality I knew my time had come.
00:14:13.022 --> 00:14:24.085 My instigation really for all of that was that the uncle who had kind of led my mind, opened my mind and given me opportunities to really think very differently about life and business, he died in an ultralight aircraft accident in 2005.
00:14:24.085 --> 00:14:30.501 Two years later, by the time IBM and I was looking at parting, I said I can't stay here, like that's going to be one of the major catalysts.
00:14:30.934 --> 00:14:32.336 I look at where all these guys are.
00:14:32.336 --> 00:14:38.580 I look at the you know mentor I had had, who's no longer there, and I look at where I'm going and I'm like I just better get out now.
00:14:38.580 --> 00:14:41.062 I better run for it and never look back.
00:14:41.062 --> 00:14:55.811 So I fought tooth and nail to stay in my own business for the last 17 years and in time as the saying goes, 17 years to an overnight success I finally reached a place in business where I am stable.
00:14:58.192 --> 00:15:11.139 We've got our opportunities, we've got multiple streams of income and revenue and I've basically been able to put my family and purpose above profit in those businesses and been able to keep them as the focus of everything I've done and stayed around them their entire lives.
00:15:11.139 --> 00:15:19.384 I've flown maybe three times in the last 17 years and been away from them for maybe less than a handful of times.
00:15:19.384 --> 00:15:23.200 Otherwise I've been with them every day of their life and I wouldn't change that for the world.
00:15:25.855 --> 00:15:43.980 I think most of the people don't really understand how much effort, how much time, how much bravery and persistence it requires to keep ourselves going, especially at the starting stages of setting up your own business.
00:15:43.980 --> 00:16:04.784 Right, yeah, yeah, they only look at the final product but they don't look at that sweep and the leap and the effort and the rugging, and I think you specifically mentioned it very clearly, saying like I fought to the nail to survive in a starting.
00:16:04.784 --> 00:16:06.327 You know we made compromises.
00:16:06.388 --> 00:16:10.042 We sold our house we had built so we could keep the dream going.
00:16:10.042 --> 00:16:19.666 We, you know, eventually got leveraged in too much uh of an opportunity that didn't see the foresight to get out of and had to go through a bankruptcy to deal with that nonsense.
00:16:19.666 --> 00:16:30.481 And so that was just part of the struggle of staying in the fight and not going back to the old ways, you know, just because it felt comfortable or maybe it felt more safe or whatever the case may be.
00:16:30.481 --> 00:16:34.599 We just set out to keep going forward and there was no going back.
00:16:34.599 --> 00:16:37.986 That was where the boats getting burned was just not an option.
00:16:37.986 --> 00:16:38.687 I didn't burn the bridges.
00:16:38.687 --> 00:16:50.344 In fact I made some contract relationships with IBM later on as a subcontractor and had quite a few management consultants working with me under my brand that was staffing backwards into IBM projects later on.
00:16:50.344 --> 00:16:56.004 So you know, don't burn the bridges but just keep walking forward.
00:16:56.004 --> 00:16:57.405 Even in through the difficult things.
00:16:57.405 --> 00:16:58.628 Just keep going, Literally.
00:16:59.750 --> 00:17:39.835 Yeah, and I think you also mentioned a very great point what people are looking in terms of lesson learned through the podcast and through your inspiring story, for example in this one is keep going and how much of effort it takes, how it all started for the voltage digital marketing and I know you struggled at the starting times, but what triggered that idea of digital marketing when it was really new in the market?
00:17:39.835 --> 00:17:42.372 Right, it's a risky call at that time.
00:17:42.752 --> 00:17:52.895 Yeah, Well, as I was learning to become more of a business owner and less of a self-employed, because originally, you know, I traded my time for money at a job for W2.
00:17:52.895 --> 00:18:00.328 Then I got some contract arrangements where I was the lead consultant, and so then I was just trading more money for time still.
00:18:00.328 --> 00:18:05.547 And then I realized, you know, as I got a mentor who kept reminding me, sales fixes everything.
00:18:05.547 --> 00:18:11.278 You need to be focused on the sales and growth of the business, not just the operations, and you, you know, booking your time.
00:18:11.278 --> 00:18:13.653 You need to get other people involved in the business.
00:18:13.653 --> 00:18:21.653 He really pushed me for that, and so I started to hire more consultants and then I spent more time in the marketing and development, and an aspect of that was getting more online marketing.
00:18:22.546 --> 00:18:25.875 With online marketing came, you know, less social networks.
00:18:25.875 --> 00:18:31.896 When I was doing that, in the 2008 to 2012 time, there just wasn't that much social media.
00:18:31.896 --> 00:18:33.490 It was relatively new.
00:18:33.490 --> 00:18:42.757 We didn't have the paid traffic systems and mechanisms everybody takes for granted today, like Facebook traffic and YouTube traffic and buying media that you can get fingertip access to.
00:18:42.757 --> 00:18:44.952 Literally anybody anywhere can do that now.
00:18:44.952 --> 00:18:48.409 So when we were doing marketing, it was a little bit more guerrilla.
00:18:48.409 --> 00:18:57.769 And then there was aspects of the online marketing to some degree, due to websites and other things, but we just simply didn't have the power of the social media engine that's there today.
00:18:57.769 --> 00:19:00.277 So I learned to buy media.
00:19:00.277 --> 00:19:07.276 I learned to buy media from third party providers that had sold traffic onto airwaves for cell phones.
00:19:07.276 --> 00:19:18.108 Because I had a background in cell phone and mobile marketing, it was a natural expectation that if I knew mobile, knew the systems and I knew how to get advertising in front of them, I should try that out and see if I can't get more clients.
00:19:18.108 --> 00:19:22.025 Turns out, what I got was a whole lot more affiliate sales.
00:19:22.025 --> 00:19:30.153 So I actually got into affiliate marketing and driving a lot of traffic and lead generation for other people's products and actually got really good at it.
00:19:30.192 --> 00:19:34.153 By the time I was doing more than a thousand dollars in profit per day on my affiliate marketing.
00:19:34.153 --> 00:19:46.117 I figured it out and so what that became was in around 2010 and 12, as that was growing and I was looking for new ways to expand that, I realized I need to own the offer.
00:19:46.117 --> 00:19:46.499 I wasn't.
00:19:46.499 --> 00:19:51.692 You know the affiliate thing is difficult because once you get it running, if someone changes the offer, it stops working.
00:19:51.692 --> 00:19:58.973 You just there's a time life cycle that goes very quickly If you can't keep it or you can't own the offer.
00:19:58.973 --> 00:20:07.875 And so I'm like, well, I need to own the back end of the offer, I need to own what I'm actually driving leads for, and it's just a natural progression of the business evolution.
00:20:07.875 --> 00:20:10.660 As you stay in there, you start to realize I need to do these things.
00:20:10.660 --> 00:20:17.721 You may want to set off and immediately do them all, but I guarantee you you got to step your stones to it first because you just can't bite that whole thing.
00:20:17.740 --> 00:20:23.028 So as I was growing and doing that and learning the marketing and then being successful in the marketing, it was like, okay, I need to own something.
00:20:23.028 --> 00:20:30.575 So it became the idea of owning physical products, where I could take capital and put it into a physical product and run the legion and connect those dots.
00:20:30.575 --> 00:20:34.538 So these systems and infrastructure just wasn't caught up with me yet.
00:20:34.538 --> 00:20:39.761 If you did that, you needed a warehouse, you needed people, you needed to pack and ship those products.
00:20:39.761 --> 00:20:45.827 And I'm like, dang, I don't want to create a whole infrastructure of people.
00:20:46.269 --> 00:20:50.798 And then someone introduced me to Amazon FBA and said, hey look, they built this you know marketplace for books.
00:20:50.798 --> 00:21:01.444 And now they've evolved it into physical products and they've acquired this logistics company that they've rebranded, called FBA or fulfilled by Amazon, to ship those products and deliver them to customers.
00:21:01.444 --> 00:21:03.266 And I'm like, well, that's really cool.
00:21:03.266 --> 00:21:04.227 What does that mean to me?
00:21:04.227 --> 00:21:05.748 And so he gave me.
00:21:05.748 --> 00:21:08.849 The explanation was like look, you could be the direct marketing guy.
00:21:08.849 --> 00:21:14.432 If you just get the products and Amazon can deliver the products, you just send the products or you can even ship them yourselves.
00:21:14.432 --> 00:21:19.316 And I said, well, it's like eBay, I don't want anything to do with it, because I knew about eBay.
00:21:19.316 --> 00:21:21.376 And he's like no, it's not eBay, it's got to be private label.
00:21:21.376 --> 00:21:24.298 You can flip products, but it should be your own products.
00:21:24.298 --> 00:21:25.839 And I thought, okay, well, that's pretty clever.
00:21:25.839 --> 00:21:30.803 And so I got started on it and I did flip a few products just to see how the whole thing worked.
00:21:30.803 --> 00:21:36.371 And I thought, oh my gosh, this was actually pretty easy.
00:21:36.371 --> 00:21:36.772 No one's doing this.
00:21:36.772 --> 00:21:45.174 Yet I actually took a little course and realized they weren't teaching me anything I didn't already know in business, but it just kind of helped amplify what I thought was possible.
00:21:45.836 --> 00:21:55.789 And when I was about to go ask for a refund from the course, I had a mutual friend connect me with my current partner who's named Reed, and we had a conversation in one hour.
00:21:55.789 --> 00:22:02.435 We realized that we were going to be doing business together and that first hour led to realizing, you know, he was a different brain than mine.
00:22:02.435 --> 00:22:15.837 He was the logistics and operations and management and real estate and doing deals and mortgage brokering and he had a lot of financial and background around numbers and building businesses to scale with the financial side, but he didn't know the marketing side.
00:22:15.837 --> 00:22:22.689 Well, I knew the marketing logistics, I knew the narrative, I knew how to build a brand, and so we're like, hey, we're two halves of the same coin.
00:22:22.689 --> 00:22:24.432 Maybe we should get together and kind of figure this out.
00:22:24.432 --> 00:22:25.614 Two brains are better than one, right.
00:22:25.614 --> 00:22:30.071 And so we started launching physical products and we just found out we had a really great aptitude.
00:22:30.071 --> 00:22:34.972 As long as I focused on product and development, he focused on logistics and supply chain and these kinds of things.
00:22:34.972 --> 00:22:40.214 We could move relatively quick, got our first seven figure brand and physical products around 2014 on Amazon.
00:22:40.715 --> 00:22:51.180 From there it was learning systems and operations and controls and replication of that and building that engine into eight figures and then building multiple brands and eight figures teaching others.
00:22:51.180 --> 00:22:54.233 This was just a natural byproduct of hey, what are you doing?
00:22:54.233 --> 00:22:54.915 We want to know.
00:22:54.915 --> 00:23:04.836 We actually helped a lot of people in that original course who couldn't get success, and when they saw us having success at the very beginning stages of Amazon FBA, they were like, hey, teach us how to do this.
00:23:04.836 --> 00:23:10.566 And so we, we just did a lot of one-on-one work and they were like, okay, we need to do it in groups because we can't handle you all.
00:23:10.566 --> 00:23:14.717 And so then we just kind of turned back into what we were originally management consultants.
00:23:14.717 --> 00:23:17.931 So it kind of went back to the management consulting world.
00:23:17.931 --> 00:23:25.516 Didn't really want to do the course world but, long story short, we did a course for about two years and it did okay.
00:23:25.516 --> 00:23:29.391 But then we kind of ended that and said that's enough of that, we want to just do our own business.
00:23:29.391 --> 00:23:38.994 And it has evolved since then as we continue to mature systems and we've got our own software, our processes, our methodologies and pipelines for building products into our brands.
00:23:39.878 --> 00:23:47.106 And then just assisting and managing others in a consultant format led to the realization that we could get bigger if we went and became an aggregator.
00:23:47.106 --> 00:23:57.758 So in 2019, the holding side opened a portfolio division that was intended to take all that operational knowledge and skills and SOPs and acquire brands into it, which is an aggregator.
00:23:57.758 --> 00:24:10.512 So we raised about $50 million from two home offices and had that going to the books and getting very close to closing that by November 2021, we hadn't taken the funds yet.
00:24:10.512 --> 00:24:20.923 But by November 2021, we realized that they were buying at like 40% above market share and at that point too many were buying with just too much dumb money and it was too dangerous to get involved.
00:24:20.923 --> 00:24:28.573 So we pulled the plug, didn't take the money and that just evolved into relationships upon relationships and all the time we'd spent to do that.
00:24:28.644 --> 00:24:37.109 And that led us to more management consulting of existing brands or people who were like hey, well, if you're not going to buy a company with me, will you teach me how to build one, or teach me how to buy one?
00:24:37.109 --> 00:24:48.698 And that's where the evolution of Voltage kind of came from was a management consultancy specifically around growth, acquisition and merging of these companies, launching new brands and taking them to exit.
00:24:48.698 --> 00:25:06.075 And so we've kind of evolved past the incubator sorry, aggregator and now we were really more like an incubator as we help clients grow and build existing brands or we take them out with new brands in the process or we look to acquire companies, bring them within the portfolio and manage them ourselves.
00:25:06.075 --> 00:25:13.387 Which is one of the things we're very adamantly working on right now is getting five new brands in the company by 2025.
00:25:13.387 --> 00:25:16.479 We've partnered with a company called Patriot Growth Capital.
00:25:16.479 --> 00:25:20.108 It's a PE firm owned, manned by veterans, run by veterans.
00:25:20.108 --> 00:26:11.627 When we grow these businesses in, we've got two right now that we're very seriously looking at an LOI letter intent to purchase them they're both doing between 10 and 20 million a year in sales and we look to grab them up and pull them into the business if it makes sense and the numbers all work and they tell us everything that they're telling us turns out to be true as we go through that process the due diligence, yeah, and then exit those businesses with them later or bring them in as operational controls and give veterans an opportunity to have a business, a model, provide for their family, maybe even own companies later on.
00:26:12.068 --> 00:26:16.969 So it's mission-based now, not just aggregators for profit, which was the wrong way to do it.
00:26:16.969 --> 00:26:27.686 So I'm quite happy that we didn't go that route and I'm quite disappointed to see how the aggregator market has blown up with all the corruption, challenges and problems and just overspending of money.
00:26:27.686 --> 00:26:33.199 But the multi-channel and beyond Amazon is a requirement, as everyone is.
00:26:33.199 --> 00:26:37.932 You know maybe listening to this that might have a channel or have considered that you always want to have multiple channels.
00:26:37.932 --> 00:26:45.317 We won't acquire companies that don't have multiple channels or a very clear and quick path to an additional channel as part of the acquisition process.
00:26:45.317 --> 00:26:59.711 So it must be, you know, on FBA, it must be on Shopify or TikTok or have an omnipresence or a website strategy, or we'll move it into one of those places and expand that out as we acquire it as part of our strategy, but an omnichannel is very important.
00:26:59.711 --> 00:27:01.291 That's a long-winded answer to your question.
00:27:01.291 --> 00:27:03.355 I'm sorry, but that's it.
00:27:03.424 --> 00:27:23.954 No, I think it's a kind of you have beautifully put down the roadmap of how the idea of your startup evolved during the years and the transformation of your organization, which is very important for people to know, right, so you start-.
00:27:25.926 --> 00:27:48.915 So you start with an idea, but you adapt to the market, you adapt to the demands, you reassess your skills and what your team can do and you keep on either acquiring new skills, acquiring new operations, or you expand what your organization vision was compared to as you grow through through that branding.
00:27:48.976 --> 00:28:00.882 It's now moving me out of hey, it's neil and he does amazon or he does shopify or tiktok shopster, e-com or whatever, um, to its voltage and the brand is now moving forward ahead of me.
00:28:00.981 --> 00:28:27.981 I'm now able to kind of step back, uh, more into the ceo role and I and I have a team's relations and other people that are coming forward that are a part of that and are leading the brand strategy as well as the conversation and voltage, first in the branding and so, as any normal evolution at this point is to pull me out of the primary spot of it was Neil and his company to its voltage and oh, by the way, there's Neil and all the other team inside of it, and that's one of the strategies of the next steps.
00:28:27.961 --> 00:28:38.328 It was Neil and his company to its voltage and oh, by the way, there's Neil and all the other team inside of it, and that's one of the strategies of you know, the next steps which are evolving very quickly this year and into next year, which are pulling me back into conversations more like this and out of the day.
00:28:38.328 --> 00:28:47.734 You know, operations are out of the visibility and only brand visibility of the language and what we're saying and the narrative of what Voltage has in our business model and our brand.
00:28:47.734 --> 00:28:58.348 That's all coming out of our clients and our people and our operators and just the brand that's starting to lead itself, as opposed to just being an operator and a brand, if that makes any sense.
00:28:59.270 --> 00:28:59.672 Yeah.
00:28:59.672 --> 00:29:15.934 So let me go back, neil as a person, as a husband, as a parent, as an entrepreneur, as an executor of a multimillion dollar company, and let's talk about the multi-dimensional Neil.
