The Resilient Retail Game Plan Episode 174

Scaling Your E-commerce Business with Yoni Kozminski

Podcast show notes

Scaling Your E-commerce Business with Yoni Kozminski

Have you thought about what it would take to scale your e-commerce business to $5 million or more? What about getting an investment to grow your business further? 

In today’s episode Ecommerce Business with Yoni Kozminski of The Resilient Retail Club, I spoke with Yoni Kozminski, an e-commerce scaling expert.

Yoni shares his expertise in scaling e-commerce businesses and the process of working with founders when investing in their businesses to help them grow.

To achieve growth, Yoni emphasizes the importance of streamlining operations and building scalable systems. This involves documenting processes, defining roles, and leveraging technology to create efficient workflows.

By doing so, businesses can free up the business owner from day-to-day operations and focus on high-impact tasks.

Yoni also walks us through his process of investing in e-commerce businesses to help them scale toward an exit strategy. 

This is a fascinating interview about Ecommerce Business with Yoni Kozminski. Tune in to learn:

[00:00] Welcome Yoni Kozminski

[04:23] What would you say needs to be in place before an e-commerce business starts to scale? 

[06:29] The mindset shift business owners need to have in order to scale

[10:33] Does scaling equal systems?

[12:43] What does it mean to exit an ecommerce business?

[14:16] What is it that investors are looking for in a business before they invest?

[25:56] When it comes to scaling quickly what levers do you need to pull?

About the featured guest

Yoni Kozminski

Co-Founder
SouthCol
Founding Partner of South Col, a venture capital firm that provides capital, guidance, and resources for growing eCommerce brands. Additionally, I am a Mentor at 365x Scale Up, a Partner at Escala Ventures, and the Host of Successful Scales, a podcast that features entrepreneurs and experts who share their insights and stories on scaling businesses. My mission is to empower and support SMEs and Filipino professionals by creating win-win partnerships and delivering solutions that see rapid improvement and tangible growth.

Interested in being a guest or sponsor of The Resilient Retail Game Plan?

Drop us an email to let us know why you think you’d be a great fit for our audience of small businesses and independent retail brands

[00:00:00] Catherine Erdly: Welcome to episode number 174 of the resilient retail game plan. Hi everybody. It’s Catherine Erdly. I’m your host as well as the founder of the resilient retail club. The resilient retail club is my membership group and mastermind for product businesses. You can find out more at resilient retail club. com. And if you use the code 10 podcast, that’s one zero podcast, then you can get 10 pounds off your first month. 

So I’m delighted today to be joined by systems and ecommerce scaling expert, Yoni Kozminski. He is the owner of not one, not two, but three different businesses. They all specialize in working with ecommerce businesses to get them to the next level of growth.

It is an absolutely fascinating insight into how investors look at ecommerce businesses, and you won’t want to miss this.

[00:00:47] Catherine Erdly: Welcome to the Resilient Retail Game Plan, a podcast for anyone wanting to start, grow or scale a profitable creative product business with me, Catherine Erdely. The Resilient Retail Game Plan is a podcast dedicated to one thing, breaking down the concepts and tools that I’ve gathered from 20 years in the retail industry.

and showing you how you can use them in your business. This is the real nuts and bolts of running a successful product business, broken down in an easy, accessible way. This is not a podcast about learning how to make your business look good. It’s the tools and techniques that will make you and your business feel good.

Confidently plan, launch and manage your products and feel in control of your sales numbers and cash flow to help you build a resilient retail business.

Welcome to the podcast. Yoni, do you want to start by introducing yourself and your business?

[00:01:42] Yoni Kozminski: Before, thank you Catherine for having me on. It’s a pleasure. It’s an honor. So just really happy to be here. My name, like you said, Yoni , , I am from Australia. I grew up there and have spent my entire career up until about six or seven years ago in creative advertising and digital marketing, working with the likes of Sony, MasterCard, Mercedes Benz, Medtronic.

Always from the lens of small digital agencies from 10 to 40 people working with enterprise clients. And about seven years ago, I took that entrepreneurial , leap. And, went off on my own, met a couple of guys that had an ecommerce business that were doing about 2 million in revenue had gotten stuck.

And I went and built an agency. For that business that grew from 2 to 5 million in 12 months, it was acquired. And on the back of that experience, it really set up what I do today with the businesses that I’m running.

[00:02:35] Catherine Erdly: Amazing. So you specialize in helping ecommerce businesses scale.

[00:02:40] Yoni Kozminski: Correct. Yeah. So I have multiple businesses. One of them is Escala and it’s a process improvement management consultancy. Where we actually go into ecommerce businesses, we understand them operationally, and then we’ll design everything from their current state process maps to their future state, to their org and accountability charts, making a whole host of recommendations and then actually building out all of their SOPs, all their training videos and documentation and wrapping it up in a really nice, neat little bow inside of a project management tool like ClickUp, Asana, Trello or Monday.

You name it.

[00:03:13] Catherine Erdly: So it’s fantastic. And so then these people are able to grow their ecommerce revenue. Is there a sort of a typical kind of size of the business that you work with?

[00:03:23] Yoni Kozminski: Yeah. For our like done for you service, our consultancy that has 30 full time management consultants, we’re typically working with businesses that are doing about a million dollars in revenue up to probably 250 million is the largest business we’ve worked with, but our sweet spot is. I would say that five to 15 million is the most typical.

We have a do it yourself. Like we’ve got an online course where you can go and learn how to do everything that we do yourself. With an air of caution, just saying you have to be wired in a way where you’re interested in the details you want to take that project on, but it’s pretty incredible in terms of what it is, if you’re the right archetype of an individual who would have that passion around process and systems and want to actually design it yourself.

[00:04:08] Catherine Erdly: for sure. Absolutely. So you specialize then in the ecommerce brands and helping them scale. So if anyone’s listening to this podcast, a lot of people listening to this podcast have got ecommerce businesses, or some of them are bricks and mortar retailers, but they’re all selling products.

[00:04:23] What would you say needs to be in place before an ecommerce business starts to scale? 

[00:04:23] Catherine Erdly: So they’re all fit under that remit. many of them are looking to grow and some of them are looking to scale and scale substantially. So what would you say to people who are looking to scale in terms of what they need to have in place before they start that process? So when you go into a project and you work with people on that growth, what are you almost looking for before you get started?

[00:04:43] Yoni Kozminski: Yeah, so it’s a great question and I would say for anyone who’s looking to scale, I think that the most important thing that you do before you get into how do I make an optimal process and do I have the right people in the right seats and all of that is you have to take a current stock take of what is actually happening in your business today?

It’s impossible to build a dream future state without understanding where you sit. So I would say if I were to give the advice to someone looking to take scaling their business really seriously from an operational standpoint, you really want to get clarity on what is the process mapping look like?

What are each of the different high level tasks and how do each of your functions from supply chain and logistics to listing creation, if you’re selling on a marketplace to launching on your website to media buying, how do each one of those key components actually interact with one another before taking material steps into the real granularities of okay, what is each person actually doing to achieve that desired outcome?

That would be the first steps. First step I would take.

[00:05:49] Catherine Erdly: So just get really clear on what are we even doing right now how that’s all functioning, 

[00:05:54] Yoni Kozminski: yeah. And write it down. I think a lot of people, when you talk about process, people like, I’ve got no SOPs. Everyone’s running a process. It just depends on is it something that’s in your head or is it something that actually is documented and is it in front of the people that actually need to use it?

Because ultimately, if you’re a business owner listening in here, your goal, or I believe your goal should be. How do I make myself redundant? How do I find a reality where I am not needed in 90 percent of the things that are driving my business forward?

[00:06:29] The mindset shift needed to scale

[00:06:29] Catherine Erdly: love that. So that’s a really, I think that’s such an interesting mindset shift. Do you find that you work with people who, if they’ve been there from the beginning, if they’ve set the business up from scratch, is it, is that almost like the mindset shift they have to have before they start the processes or do they come to you once they’ve had that mindset shift that they need to get themselves out of the business and that’s what they’re coming to you for?

[00:06:49] Yoni Kozminski: Great question again. So I would say a lot of being a good business owner or being someone who is really focused on the expansion of their business. They put their ego to the side and I think a lot of people will sit there and say well, you know, um, I have a guy that I used to work with in a business that I helped scale years ago that actually led me into all of the journey that I’ve been on ever since.

And he always used to tell me, like. We’re the business where the most important people and drivers in the business. And my response to him was always then we’re not seeing the same equation because I’m trying to as much as possible hand over. If I can get something like our philosophies, if I can get someone to a point where they can do even 80 percent of the quality of work that I’m looking to achieve.

And all I have to do is a little bit of a review and an audit if at all, then that’s what success looks like. I think that the mind shift really needs to come from within or from a point in saying, I do not have all the answers. I am not the best, like the age old saying jack of all trades, master of none.

I think entrepreneurs inherently are really good generalists. And I would classify myself as a really good generalist. There’s maybe one or two areas that I’m really good at specializing in and what I’ve tried to do as I’ve understood that more and more is I think for every business owner is lean into the things that you’re really good at and build a support system around you and your business that can do far better at the tasks that are not in your wheelhouse.

I’ll leave you with the fact that the last thing that I’m interested in, even though I’m the CEO of multiple businesses here is our finance function. That is not what gets me excited coming into the office on a Monday morning. I don’t know anyone listening in or Catherine, I don’t know if you enjoy that stuff, but 

[00:08:40] Catherine Erdly: I do. I’m going to, I’m not going to lie. That’s actually my favorite bit of the business doing my numbers finances, but I know I’m a rarity.

[00:08:49] Yoni Kozminski: Then we are a perfect match right here. Maybe at the end of this, we can talk about some new business ideas that we can work on. 

[00:08:55] Catherine Erdly: That’s such a good point. I love what you say about 80 percent because that’s often the conversation that I’m having with people about trying to expand and trying to grow their team and the frustration that comes that when you’re at that, that first level of letting go as the, as a single founder and realizing that.

Yes, you might be able to do this better than somebody else, but you’re going to bottleneck the business unless that person does it. So that’s a great rule 80 percent because the truth is that if you’ve started the business and you’ve put your blood, sweat and tears into it, it is hard to find people who are going to also put their blood, sweat and tears into your business in the same way that you would.

But it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t, you should still hang on to all of these things, right?

[00:09:38] Yoni Kozminski: Absolutely. And I would say coming back to that 80% goal the Pareto principle, the objective in getting to that point really means that if I can train someone to get to that point, if they can have KPIs and goals that align with that specific objective. And that is aligned with my business objective.

Then all of a sudden the 80 percent of your time or whatever it was, as it relates to the finite hours, we all suffer from the same challenge. And that’s we all have the same number of hours in a week and, try as any of us might, you’re never going to find more time. So it’s how do you expand on that?

And that’s by giving people very clear KPIs, objectives, and goals that fit their skill sets that can align with your objective. And ultimately all you’re trying to do is make your time or what you invest your time in of the highest possible lever. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:10:33] Does scaling equals systems?

[00:10:33] Catherine Erdly: I Love that your focus, so your focus really for the business helping e com businesses scale is really on the system side. So in your head, is it really that simple that scaling equals systems? could you wrap it up in a nutshell like that? Or is that just the area that you tend to focus on most specifically?

[00:10:51] Yoni Kozminski: Scaling absolutely equal systems and systems I would define as the perfect harmony between people, process and technology. If you can get those three core drivers working together, and just to give you an example, ecommerce is also our specialty internally. If if I was to look at a tool, let’s say for an Amazon seller, Helium 10, very well known tool that helps you understand, optimize listing, keyword research. The gamut, it’s a pretty robust tool. If you were to come in and you were to say go into Helium 10, go into Cerebro, one of the products that they have and do your keyword research, for example, if you’re not defining who that person is, if you’re not defining specifically where in the technology it is and the cadence of what’s happening, so you’re not looking at the person, the process and what they need to actually achieve and when and the technology, then. It all breaks down because it’s either gonna be, individual led, technology led, and technology is absolutely not the panacea of all of life’s problems.

You have to have the person operating in the finite system that you are creating in times of solving. When it comes to what we’re trying to solve, I’ve got three businesses. My other one is a staffing company outta the Philippines that also hires talent specifically for e-commerce businesses.

And I have a fund, a $50 million. Venture fund where we invest in ecommerce businesses and grow them to exit with a. To joint venture partners and investment bank in a fintech. So everything that I’m doing is about scale. And how do you actually put the right people in the right seats, driving the right systems in able to achieve, I would say, generally speaking, ecommerce, the ultimate success is having a liquidity event. Cause we all know how expensive they are to grow. The larger you get, the more inventory you need, the more media you need to spend. And it’s it’s it’s quite cyclical

[00:12:43] What does it mean to exit an ecommerce business?

[00:12:43] Catherine Erdly: What do you mean by a liquidity event specifically?

[00:12:46] Yoni Kozminski: Selling, selling the business. 

[00:12:47] Catherine Erdly: Selling them. Okay yeah.

[00:12:49] Yoni Kozminski: yeah. So having an opportunity where you get paid a multiple that is, depending on the size of the business, that’s going to be. Your ultimate outcome, I would say, unless. You have one of the very intelligent few that are able to already step into your ecommerce business, knowing that you have significant operating margins, 60, 70, 80 percent net profit margins.

And, you never really have to worry at that point. If you sell that, that can very easily become a lifestyle business, but if you’re operating in the normal ecommerce space, and that’s 15 to 20%, I would say would be like the norm then. Ultimately, exit is going to be I would imagine a likely goal.

[00:13:30] Catherine Erdly: Yeah. Yeah. So that’s interesting. So it’s just really fascinating because because I work with people at various different stages and, a lot of them, these are passion projects that they’ve started, but then there is always that point at which they start thinking about, okay, so how do we.

How do we scale and ultimately how do we exit or some people have an exit plan? Some people, to be honest, like the lifestyle element. And I think, I’m always a big believer in, you have your own definition of what success looks like for your business, but I think it’s just really interesting to hear a little bit more.

So you’ve also got, you’ve got these various different elements. You’re working on the systematizing and scaling and the staffing. So there you’ve got your process, your people. I see how that all fits together, but turn talking a little bit then about the fund. What is it, I guess the question people often ask is, 

[00:14:16] What is it that investors are looking for?

[00:14:16] Catherine Erdly: what is it that investors are looking for?

Obviously I would think that net margins probably a big piece of it, right? You want to invest in businesses that are profitable, but is there anything else? I think it would just be interesting for the listeners to hear from your perspective as someone who does invest in ecommerce business.

What, what kind of attracts your eye?

[00:14:34] Yoni Kozminski: Yeah. Yeah. Happy. Very happy to talk about it. Let me start off and predicate all of this saying. It depends on what the buyer’s objective is. So, you know, you have, You have a broad spectrum of buyers. So it starts with, at the highest end, you’ve got private equity and strategics. 

Then you would move down to. Venture capital and then again, you’d have the debt providers and and maybe people that have had a liquidity event and just want to have something to do. so from my lens I wish one day to be a private equity investor. That’s the dream. 

But right now we sit in. We’re in a really unique model. We actually think we’re the first ones to come up with this model. So just to share the business that I’m a founding partner of in this joint venture is called al, SouthCo.co. And what we are is we’re a combination of an investment bank where they have done north of a billion dollars in transaction value selling CPG brands.

So online CPG brands a FinTech called SellersFi, where they are a capital lender. They’ve got, hundreds of millions of dollars out on short term loans for ecommerce sellers. And then us escala process improvement consultancy. And so what we’ve built as a model is that we’re coming in and we’re looking for a very specific investment mandate.

So we are looking at a two year timeframe where we’re looking at businesses who they know they want to exit, maybe they’re doing about four or 5 million in revenue and it’s quite a material jump operationally from a capital perspective to get from, say, 5 to 10 or 15 million dollars in revenue.

And so what we’re doing is we’re growing that business over that 2 year time frame and how we’re paid. We’re not paid throughout the journey. We take a minority position of equity on the exit, on the liquidity event. And that’s how we make money in that business model.

So while we’ve invested in a handful of businesses, we actually haven’t seen a dollar yet we’re waiting still for our first exit, which. We’re just about a year and three months into the first investment. So sometime next year, we should hopefully see that that event happen. So coming back to it, I just wanted to

[00:16:48] Catherine Erdly: Yeah. No, that’s great. No that’s very helpful. Thank you. 

[00:16:50] Yoni Kozminski: So for us there’s a few things, again, given that we’re a little bit unique is one we’re looking for.

I think first and foremost, when you talk about in investment in any standpoint, whether it’s whether it’s a strategic PE VC or anyone making investments, ultimately, you’re not investing in the company you’re investing in the people that are running it. And so the first starting point is always going to be, is this someone that I can work with?

Are they the right cultural fit? And for us specifically, it’s going to be, are they someone who. Believe they have all the answers and they’re just looking for the million to 5 million that we’re looking to inject in the business. Or are they someone who will actually listen to guidance as we’re working with them to build out this two year exit roadmap?

Are they someone who will actually take on the feedback and, understand that maybe they don’t have all the answers and. And actually listen to us because it’s a marriage, it’s a partnership throughout that period. So we’re really working through it. As well for us, net operating margins is always going to be really important.

So for us specifically, if it’s under 15%, it’s probably not going to be the right investment for us. We’re typically looking at about 20 percent and like I said, about 4 to 5 million in revenue. Because one of the important things again for our model is that. Okay. It needs to be, it needs to be big enough in terms of the exit value for it to make sense for us to invest so much time, effort, energy resources and, and put capital into the business.

So for us, we need it to grow to at least 10 million in revenue because. Once you start to hit those types of numbers at a 20 percent net operating margin. So let’s say, two to 2. 5 of EBITDA, then we’re starting to talk about much more meaningful multiples. If you’re looking at a business, it’s maybe 5 million in revenue today.

A million dollars in profit in today’s climate, you might be lucky to get, a 2 to 2. 5 X multiple on that million dollars. But if you can take that up to 2. 5 million EBITDA and 10 to 15 million dollars in revenue, that might look like a 5, 5. 5 or 6 depending on who the prospective buyer is. So all of a sudden.

That is, it’s a much larger sum of money. In our model, particularly for the founder for them, it’s going from taking home two and a half million dollars to maybe 8 million.

[00:19:06] Catherine Erdly: Yeah.

[00:19:06] Yoni Kozminski: And, for us, it’s got to make sense as well. I would say outside of that, when you look at the broader spectrum of investing, I think that some of the critical things again, depending on the size of the business to and what you’re looking to achieve, strategics and PE buyers will typically look to acquire the actual operational team.

A clause where it might be one, two, three years, depending on the size of the business and have a real meaningful opportunity for that business. So to, to stay within the ecommerce realm here, let’s say that you were the manufacturer of. Hydro flask, for example, one of these drink bottles and all of a sudden there was a sports energy drink that could had to be kept at a certain temperature.

And so maybe the partnership or the acquisition of that second brand is a strategic acquisition, but They don’t really want to operate it. It’s not exactly in the same wheel house in terms of manufacturing. So they’d own and operate it. They’d build a, they’d build an agreement with the owner that says you’ll continue to be employed.

You’ll get a second bite of the apple, so to speak, when they roll it up into 10 other companies and they sell a whole thing. So they build a whole plan. If it’s a smaller business. If it’s, let’s say the 5 million revenue business, then typically, it’s less of a strategic buy typically.

And it’s going to be are all of your processes well documented so that when you, the operational team leave the business, can I run this business without you? Is this something really easy that I can roll into? Let’s say I’ve got another similar business. I want to create the economies of scale here.

And that effectively was, or is the aggregator model, right? That’s what a lot of these ecommerce aggregators did was that they maybe maybe a little bit too excitedly thought that they could just roll up plenty of these businesses and it would just be really easy and economies of scale.

And the reality is. It’s not easy to run an ecommerce brand or it’s not as easy as people make out and it is absolutely not a ah, yeah, put in 50, 000 and you’ll just have a passive income and you don’t have to do anything. I think I think everyone’s learned the hard way. 

[00:21:16] Catherine Erdly: Yeah. Yeah for sure Now that’s really fascinating and he’s actually also really it’s useful to really useful to you spell it out like this because I’m going back to conversations that I have with people and sometimes one of the things that people say they want investment for is to improve profitability and I always make that point about you got to get the, you got to work on the profitability.

Do you see what I mean? There’s that there’s different levels where, because actually if your criteria is, it’s got to make sense, you’ve got to have that net operating margin right from the get go, then it’s just a really interesting point, but I’m just intrigued because I, it just makes me think, of course, there’s no such thing as a magic formula, right?

There never is. There’s. Every different business is unique. So you’re taking these businesses. So there is it almost like any product type. So ecommerce The numbers look good the fit is right with the person. Are you product agnostic or other certain products that you feel like, yes, this is, we can help with on other ones that you think, okay, I’m not so sure about this, or is it literally if you’re selling it as an ecommerce product and you’re making decent amount of margin and we think it’s a good fit culturally, we can work with you.

[00:22:22] Yoni Kozminski: Yeah. So I would say for anyone out there listening in, and I think this is forget al as a business, I think. From the mindset of how you should be approaching this. If an exit is your goal is you always want to start with the end in mind. So knowing that I need to be hitting, a net profit margin of 20%.

 You should be operating your business and the advice that Matt Glackier, a friend of mine, the guy who has a course called exit DNA, which is really fascinating. The guys had I think. Six, seven exits, multiple eight figure exits, mostly in the product CPG space. And, he always preaches and says, it’s always about focusing on who would buy your business, who would be the ideal target, making that list early and then working backwards as to what are all the criteria that would make sense.

And so when it comes to us as al, how we’re approaching it is, we have. Effectively the answers to the cheat sheet in that we have an investment bank that’s done, north of a billion dollars in transaction value, and we’re looking at the verticals that we know are the ones that, the hottest that, that are most likely to sell.

And I would say, look at the stage that we’re at. We’re still. Early stage, we only have a handful of brands, so I’m very happy to have conversations. And even if I can give someone some sound advice that can help them on their journey, I’m very happy to do that as well. But for us specifically, the categories we like most are going to be in the pet, in the baby space any of the more evergreen, renewable and, let’s face it.

I’m. I’m a father of both a human child and also a dog, and there’s no amount, there’s no amount of money I wouldn’t spend on either of my kids, right? So it’s got to be the best. And I think that’s also, just again, depending on what stage you’re in. In your life cycle as you build out your brands, like these are important things to consider is what is the upside potential and, is this, if it’s like a fidget spinner, these things are a flash in the pan moment, and they’re not going to have lifetime, I would say another thing to consider as well is uniqueness or defensibility, these having a patent whether it’s a design or trade patent, having things that actually.

Build a moat around you. That’s just outside of a review mode going to be important. And, we could have a whole conversation about building toward brand, which is the, which is the whole thing that has been pushed for a while, and I almost feel like we’ve. diluted the message of what brand means but ultimately it has to have some form of uniqueness and defensibility for it to be attractive to a prospective buyer.

[00:25:01] Catherine Erdly: Yeah, that makes total sense. And then, so when people come, so in terms of how you actually make that move, so you’ve got, so you can put capital into the business because you’ve got the investment bank, you, so then you’re, and you’re also systematizing, so you’re making it that much more appealing to buyers as well.

But then also you’re presumably. Investing in say digital marketing, advertising to grow, or is it, I suppose it depends on the business. I actually, I’m sure a lot of people are just curious to say okay, so if you are starting on this basis to say I’ve got two years to move this business from say 1 million to 10 million or 2 million to 10 million, almost like how, yeah, how, what do you, what are the levers that you would look to pull?

Obviously we’ve talked about systematizing, so putting the right people in place, putting the right process in place. Selecting the right technologies, there anything else that’s on your immediate tick list?

[00:25:56] When it comes to scaling quickly what levers do you need to pull?

[00:25:56] Yoni Kozminski: Yeah, I’ll put my, I’ll put my South Co hat on for a second. And share, like in terms of our specific process, like how we approach it is, let’s say you had a brand and it met our baseline criteria was four or 5 million. 20 percent net operating margins. And it was a pet, it was a great pet product and you had a patent against it.

And we had an initial conversation. We at least liked each other. We thought there could be some, there could be something here. You’d like numbers. I’m not the numbers guy. So we’re already on, we’re on a, we’re on a

[00:26:25] Catherine Erdly: I just love dogs, 

[00:26:25] Yoni Kozminski: we’re both love dogs. Exactly. So we’re in a really good place, right?

So we go through a diligence process on a few different levels. So we’ll do. What we call founder diligence, which is really getting an understanding of who is this person that we’re getting into bed with and what is our relationship going to look like? Me and my 2 other joint venture partners, there’s 5 of us as the founding team, we will each interview the potential business owner and understand. Okay. We’ll look at it from the process perspective. The investment bank will look at what is the upside potential? What are the ideas that this founder has in their head to take their business to the next level? And the CEO, Nick would look at it from the financial standpoint, understanding okay. What are we looking at here? What is the cash flow position look like? What is the Trans upside potential, et cetera. On the back of that let’s say those all got the tick of approval. We went through our next stage diligence, which, we plug in the back end of the Amazon store, Shopify, all the different platforms to understand.

How much capital can we actually lend out? What’s the total amount that we can actually inject into this business? And then on the back of that, we, we all sign on the dotted line. We agree on the outcome that we’ll see a percentage of the upside on the exit. And then we go to work with the founder.

And so what we’re doing is we are then working backwards on this two year time frame of what is the revenue need to look like? What is the profitability need to look like? How many products do we have to have in market? When do they need to launch? What are the different channels that we need to expand to?

Are we just in the EU and the UK? Have we explored the U. S. Market? Are there other markets that make sense? What is our level of investment? What is the appetite on our DTC store? What is our Product development pipeline, and we effectively break it down into, I believe, six different key areas from the business management product side, the marketing operations.

And I forget off the top of my head, the other two sections, but ultimately It almost looks like a spider’s web on a map is the visual that we have, and we break it down into these three month increments of what are all the things that we need to achieve in each of these three month increments in order for us to see success.

And so we’re working backwards and saying we know product development is, the longest thing. So us as a Escala, how do we as quickly as humanly possible either hire in or find the external resources with them? Let’s say 2 million that we’ve just injected into the business. How do we free Catherine up from not having to actually do a listing optimization and keyword research anymore?

And all these things, do we find an agency? They’re always the person that’s deciding where investments go, we’re making recommendations with our network and resources. And we have a heart, we have a company that can also hire this talent. So we’re always starting with the end in mind and working methodically through what are the milestones and achievements that need to be have over that, over that two year timeframe and that window, and then we’re going through and we’re actually holding the founder accountable each week we sit in production or rather like a management meeting for 30 minutes. And we’re saying what are the inhibitors? What are the things that are holding you back? And what can we do to help? And then we’re effectively working through. And while this is all going on, we’re documenting the processes, we’re helping streamline the reporting.

We’re making sure that we’re actually getting, for us as the portfolio company, we’re getting all the bits of information we need from all the different businesses that we’re invested in to help them. Give them guidance on any material changes that might happen throughout that process. So to take it on for yourself.

And I’d be happy to share with you that sort of framework or that model that we have in South Co of that spider web that I’m talking about. Ultimately. It’s really working toward that goal and effectively, if you think about it like a checklist, ticking off every single one of those boxes, as you move toward that material outcome.

[00:30:30] Catherine Erdly: Amazing. Thank you so much. I it’s absolutely fascinating. I feel like we could keep going for quite a long time, so I’m going to have to wrap this up reluctantly, but I think it’s just so interesting. And I’m sure the people listening will agree that it’s just really fascinating to hear how you. People probably wondered that about their own business. If someone to just come and take it, and say we’re going to go over here, like, how would they even start? And I know there’s so much more to it than what you’ve just outlined very briefly, but thank you so much for sharing your insight and your thoughts.

It’s really fascinating. Do you want to tell people a bit more about how they can find out more?

[00:31:04] Yoni Kozminski: Yeah, absolutely. You’re welcome to, I’m most active on LinkedIn. So Yoni Kozminski, you’ll find me any of my companies, it’s just Yoni at weareescala, multiply me, MII or southco. co. And you can also get me through there. There’s tons of free resources for anyone listening on particularly multiply me and we are a scholar, everything from building accountability and all charts and mirror board to a whole lot of guides.

I’d invite you to check it out and see if there’s things that can help you. 

[00:31:34] Catherine Erdly: Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Don’t forget to check out the podcast show notes. We will have all of the links that Yoni mentioned in there so you can take a look at all of the resources that he mentioned as well as find out more about Southco and what they do and his other businesses too.

I hope that you enjoyed the episode. Why not head over to Instagram at resilient retail club and let me know what you thought about it. Let me know what your key takeaways were. Of course, if you have a moment, To rate and review the podcast in Apple podcast. And that makes a huge difference to me getting the podcast out in front of more people.

And if you rate the podcast in the Spotify app, that helps as well. And of course, if you subscribe or follow the podcast, you’ll be the first to know about every new episode, which comes up every Thursday. See you next week.

Get more on the mailing list

Heaps of small business retail advice for your inbox

Sign up the The Resilient Retail Club mailing list for totally free advice and business help, the occasional digital download, updates from our podcast and promotions for indie retail brands

More from The Resilient Retail Game Plan

Dive into another episode of our small business podcast

Erika Robinson General Manager, UK for Constant Contact
Episode 226

Simplifying Marketing for Small Businesses with Constant Contact

Kate Tompsett - Stock Doctor
Episode 225

How Stock Doctor Transformed Happy and Glorious

Chatbot in Retail Melanie-Eilers
Episode 224

The Power of Chatbots in Retail with Mel Eilers

Black Friday with Catherine
Episode 223

How to Leverage Black Friday to Clear Your Dead Stock

Customer Service
Episode 222

Retail Customer Service Horror Stories

Holiday Cash Flow
Episode 221

Navigating Holiday Cash Flow: A Retailer’s Survival Guide

News you can use

Join The Resilient Retail Club mailing list to receive The Weekly Sales Review, jam-packed full of useful information, events and expert advice for indie retailers, online sellers, Ecommerce brands and independent small businesses