#316 - The Difference Between Success And Fulfillment: Nick Penev’s Story, Lessons, & Insights

#316 - The Difference Between Success And Fulfillment: Nick Penev’s Story, Lessons, & Insights Speaker 1: Welcome to episode 316 of the AM PM podcast. In this episode, I'm speaking with Nick Penev. Nick is from Bulgaria and he made a killing selling supplements throughout Europe for about 10 years. All DTC. He's going to be talking about his story, some of the ups and downs, as well as what he's up to today. Enjoy this episode. Unknown Speaker: Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast. Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast, where we explore opportunities in e-commerce. We dream big and we discover what's working right now. Plus, this is the podcast where money never sleeps. Working around the clock in the AM and the PM. Are you ready for today's episode? I said, are you ready? Let's do this. Here's your host, Kevin King. Speaker 1: Nick Penev, how are you doing, man? Great to have you on the AM PM podcast. Welcome to the show. Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, Kevin. I was actually planning to be here next year, but you surprised me. So I'm here earlier. So Christmas came early for me. So I'm very happy to be here, you know. Great day for me, a lot of meetings, but the last meeting is the best, I guess. Speaker 1: There you go. That's right. You're ahead of me. I'm in Austin, Texas, so we're recording this for me. It's the middle of the afternoon, but for you, it's almost bedtime, right? Speaker 2: Yeah, 10 PM. Bed for the kids. It will be fun for me and the wife after that. Speaker 1: Where are you actually at? Speaker 2: I'm actually in Sofia, Bulgaria now, that's actually Eastern Europe. Speaker 1: So in Bulgaria, how big a country is that for a lot of people that don't know? Speaker 2: Yes, 7 million is the population or like one-fourth of the size of California. So it's, I mean, I'm not sure, I mean, like the size of which states in the USA, but it's like, I know that it's one-fourth of California because I used to live there, I finished high school, university, so I know that for a fact. Speaker 1: Were you originally from Bulgaria? You spent some time in the US as well. Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. I finished high school here and then I went as an exchange student to the States in 2001. Actually, I came to the States one week before September 11th. I actually have pictures with the Twin Towers. On my first day in school, It was September 11th, you know. Speaker 1: That was college. Speaker 2: No, no, university. Actually, I just had my senior year there. And like an exchange student, I actually lived with the host family. Because this is what happened. Before I leave, my father told me, OK, I mean, just finish your high school degree. And I actually took two years in one. I took all my finals for the 12th grade before I go there. Because he told me, you know, if you change your mind, if you come back, you should have like a high school degree. So anyways, and that's why I have actually a high school degree here and the one in the States, but that's not that important. My first day in school, I go to school, we had civics or something like that, and we're just watching the Twin Towers on TV. That's my first day in school. Speaker 1: Welcome to America. Speaker 2: Yeah, but the thing, you know, one thing that I noticed there is how united the people were after that. So that was very, you know, because, you know, that was very, you know, different to what I've seen, you know, because usually when bad things happen, people are not that united. So I have never seen that anywhere else, to be honest. And I lived in a small town, like 2000 was the population, and like in Layton, California, it was very interesting, you know. Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I remember that day very, very vividly. I was working in my office and we actually were doing, I was working with models at the time and we were doing some stuff and we actually had one on a plane actually in, and she was coming out of Boston. And flying that morning out of Boston, she was on a flight that left about 45 minutes after one of the planes that flew from Boston that actually ended up was hijacked. And we were freaking out. We're like, we didn't know, at that point, we didn't know what planes or where they were and we were freaking out and we couldn't get a hold over for like four or five hours. And then we finally got a hold over and she said, yeah, they canceled the flights. And I just remember waking up, I missed the first tower. I remember waking up and turning the TV on and like, what the heck is going on? And seeing that second plane come into the tower and it just transfixed everybody. I mean, everything just stopped. And like you said, everybody came together in this country. So it was amazing how everybody came together. Now we're so divided in the United States. It's like a 360, you know, or 180. It's a total different environment right now than what it was back then. And, you know, it upsets me every year. Sometimes, you know, people that didn't live through that, some of the younger generation, the kids in college right now, you know, they hear it in Austin at the University of Texas, every 9-11 in September, they go and they have a man on the street and they interview students, you know, about that. These are 19, 20, 21 year olds that most of them either weren't born then or they were just born. And their attitudes and their beliefs around that is completely flabbergasting sometimes about what they think and how they feel about that. And it's just, they didn't live through it. They don't understand it. And it's difficult to explain to someone that didn't actually go through that. Speaker 2: Yeah, man. I mean, people have a very quick expiration of their memory. People forget very quickly. I'll give you an example like for Europe. We used to have all these terrorist attacks. After COVID, everybody forgot that. So people are like that. But that might be actually good on one side because if you are feeling like, if you live in fear, people don't do anything. So I mean, probably it's not good on some actually. But sometimes it's actually good to know you need to keep on moving. But you're right. No, I mean, you guys are very divided right now. I know that because I have so many friends now. But anyway, let's change the topic. Speaker 1: And it's this change. That's that. Yeah. But sometimes, you know, we can we can pivot because sometimes times like these are some of the best times for business as well. You know, recessionary times, difficult times is sometimes when some of the best companies and the best opportunities happen. And you've been doing This business for a while, so after you came here as an exchange student, you went to university. Did you work for anybody here or did you go back to Bulgaria right after that? Speaker 2: Let me tell you the story. So this is what happened. I finished high school, I got a scholarship for Fresno Pacific University, which is like a private university in Fresno. And I went there for actually three years. But then the issue was the following. I had a girlfriend from high school. She was trying to come ...to the States with me and she got her visa application rejected three times. And one day I said, okay, man, I'm going to go back. I'm not going to tell anybody. I didn't tell my parents, anybody. I just went to Bulgaria and said, okay, let's do something. Let's go to France. And actually I went to France without telling anybody. I lived in France. I wanted to find some job. Nothing happened. I didn't know the language, so I only learned how to say I'm looking for a job. I still remember that I was calling people, even got like a job in one place, but it didn't work out. I didn't know the language. So long story short, eventually we came back to Bulgaria. We just take the overnight bus from Paris to Sofia. And then actually we just say, okay, what are we going to do right now? Are we gonna stay in Sofia or we go to the beach side because on the beach side there is a lot of resorts so I can actually work in the summer and I said okay let's do like Heads and Tails and actually it was Varna. Varna is one of the resorts. We went there, we lived there for a few years but that's like the period when I was like a bartender, waiter for like one year. But to be honest, you know, everybody, every young guy, they should work as a bartender or a waiter. There is no better job that you can learn to sell and actually read people. So that's probably one recommendation to everybody. If you've never done that, I mean, this is probably the best thing to do, you know. And just to fast forward a little bit, you know, then I actually get back to Sofia like a few years, like a year after that. And I got my first sale job. There was a company called Aplus.net. They were actually GoDaddy and Rackspace competitors. I'm sure that everybody knows GoDaddy. And we're just selling like hosting, dedicated servers, like web design, all this. The first day I go to the office, actually, we had a training with one guy from the US team. He was in Bulgaria and he was saying, OK, I'm doing 50k per month and I'm getting 5,000 commission per month. And just to give you a perspective, my salary was $200 and I was just one guy who was doing 5K. And then I'm a very competitive guy. I'm like that. So what happened? My wife was actually my girlfriend back then. She was telling me that when I was sleeping, I was having like dreams, nightmares. I was saying, dedicate service. So actually, I was dreaming about what we're doing and I hit the goal in my mind, okay, I would like to be the best sales guy in the company. And this is actually what happened. I mean, I'm just fast forwarding a little bit, but in the next four years, I was actually the best sales guy in the company. And I was like 20, 23 at the time when I started. And I worked there for five years and I was averaging like $5,000 per month. And to give a perspective, my mother, she's still a doctor, like a medical doctor, pediatrician. She was making 300 euro. At 23, I was actually doing what my mother was doing in more than a year. Speaker 1: And this is... You're doing per month more than what she was doing in a year. Speaker 2: Exactly. Because it was the newest company, we were outsourcing Bulgaria. We had a team in Bulgaria, which was competing with the team in the States, but you know, it was fair game. You sell something, you get 10% commission. And then I realized how much you can do, you know, I mean, there's actually no limit to what you can do. And then I said, okay, I mean, you can do anything, you know, and actually I worked for these guys for like five years, but you know, a lot of time in life, I mean, some things don't make sense. So what happened like in 2010? You know, the company got acquired. And even though we're doing a lot of sales, they said, OK, we don't want the European office. And I was doing 5k per month, like an average. I went to zero, you know, they closed the office. And the other thing, this was probably the worst period in my life because my wife got pregnant. She had almost miscarriage. She had four babies. Four twins, one survived, which is my first son. He's named Niko, by the way, which Niko is for victorious, from the Greek mythology. Nikid is the goddess of victory. So that's why we called him Niko. Then, at the same time, I had a car accident at the exact same crossroad one week apart and these are the only two times that I've ever had a car accident. And you know usually, and then I was not able to find a job for a few months, eventually I actually got a job in a company doing affiliate and performance marketing. And all these things happened at the same time. But no, we have a saying in Bulgarian, too much bad is never bad and too much good is never good. So when a lot of bad things happen to you, there is a balance, then something good is going to happen to you and then things start to actually happen in a positive way for me. They were actually also in a bad period. I was about to get $1,000 per month, which was not what I was used to making, but since I had a mortgage, a pregnant wife and all this stuff, it was good. But the thing is, I was about to get a lot of commission based on the sales that I do. But actually, things are not going right at the company. They had a lot of campaigns, they had their campaigns suspended, so nobody was making money. But I saw one thing which I liked in the company. They were selling some product called acai berry. I'm not sure if you remember that. It's the magic Brazilian fruit. They call it acai berry and I said, okay. I mean, I got an idea. I mean, I love what these guys are doing. I'm going to leave them and I have some saved money. I'm going to set up like a private label supplements and I'm going to start selling that. Speaker 1: So you set this up through them or you set this up on the side? Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, no, no. I actually left the company. I said, I'm going to set up that. I like that. I mean, nobody's doing that. I see that there is a potential, even though these guys are not working out right now. And what happened next? Speaker 1: That was Extreme Brands? Speaker 2: Yeah, Extreme Power Brands. I'll go to Extreme Power Brands and actually this is my second product. But the story is the following, you know, I actually left the company and I went to my best friend, you know, he's like a 90 guy. And I told him, you know, his name is Lucky. I said, Hey Lucky, you know, I work for this company. They're doing some stuff. I think we can do it ourselves. And this guy said, okay, man, but he's like that. I mean, he is very good with like all this technical stuff, but he's very like. Speaker 1: What was the first company, before you left, where were they selling that in? Speaker 2: They were actually selling all kinds of offers for other companies, like supplements. Speaker 1: In Bulgaria or in Europe? Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, no. Actually, globally. They're like affiliate marketing. Let's say you have an offer, you do the performance marketing. And then they were actually think of doing their own product. And this is where I left and I said, okay, I'm going to do something like that myself. And of course, but I don't have too much money and I don't have partners. I don't know. I didn't know how to build a website. So I actually spoke with my best friend and said, okay, let's do a website. We're going to call it Bio Archive Berry, because bio is all the green bullshit stuff. And he said, okay, but I'm scared. I mean, I don't know how to do that. I said, okay, don't worry. Build a website. I'm going to order like 100 units from like one wholesale website in the UK and we're going to resell that. So we purchased them for like €10 and we resell them for like €50 each. And this happened in a matter of like two weeks. And I saw the document, do you see? Speaker 1: Where did you sell them? What was the website? Speaker 2: It was called like BioKyBerry or something like that. We just built a website and we're actually reselling the products that we purchased from another supplier. Speaker 1: What were you selling in the US and in Europe? Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no What do you want? Okay, we would like let's say to private label this product and they said, okay, I mean you guys need to do like a label and all this stuff and we just ordered like I think the minimum was like thousand units and we called the product Acai Verde. And this means like in Latin, like very is green because it was dried, fresh, like a pure supplement product. And that was actually our first product. And the good thing was that nobody else was doing that, you know, in Bulgaria. Nobody was advertising on Facebook and Google Ads for that. We're actually paying one cent per click, which is crazy. You know, the first month we're actually spending $100 For the advertising, we were getting 100 sales. So, I mean, cost per action was $1. And you know, when you do that, then you realize, okay, man, we need to expand to Greece. Then we expanded to Greece, then to Romania. Speaker 1: So when you expand to each of these, did you set up a specific website in each of these places? Like you set up a website in .gr or whatever, and it's all in Greek. Speaker 2: Exactly. All in Greek. We hired like a person who speaks Greek. He did the translation. We hired the person who speaks Romanian. They did the translation. And we always had like a landing page. The so-called bridge pages, like you can lose weight, you can do that. You know these pages. They're not actually the most trustworthy pages, but we made a lot of money. I mean, and you know, we actually set up like a logistic partner in each company. So we're actually, we're just learning all the time. We're experimenting. But the best thing was that we actually never, I mean, we never did anything in advance. So for example, whenever we're actually starting a new market, we're actually building the page without having the supplements there. We do a test campaign. We get verification that our product is actually being sold and it's profitable. And the next day actually we ship the supplements and we tell the clients, hey guys, thank you for ordering our product. We're out of stock, we're gonna make the delivery in one week. And because it was early, nobody was doing that, no people are willing to wait. And from actually building a website to execution, it was in a matter of like one or two weeks. Which is crazy right now. Nobody does that, but when you're early, no. Speaker 1: Where were you fulfilling from? If you had a site in Romania and a site in Greece, did you have like a 3PL service in each of those countries or were you all doing it from one like central location within Europe? Speaker 2: No, no, no. I mean, initially, no, we had like a 3PL in each market because we're able to send them from Bulgaria to Greece and Romania, but the shipping cost was not good. The delivery time was not good. So we need to actually have a local 3PL, but that was not an issue. No, that was really easy. Because now, you know, we're sending huge volumes, you know, and to be honest, actually one of the companies which was servicing us back then, we used to be their first client. And to this day, he's telling me, Nick, you guys actually helped us a lot because... Speaker 1: You mean their best client, not their first client. Speaker 2: Actually, we're the first client selling this type of supplements, but actually we're the clients with the highest volumes, you know. So actually, we help the company to grow through our expansion. Speaker 1: What kind of sales did you reach? This is like 2010, 2011, right? Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. 2011 is when we started actually. Really heavy. Speaker 1: So you're in Greece, Romania and Bulgaria at that time? Speaker 2: Exactly. This was actually in the first few months. So within the first year, we actually expanded to all Europe. And when I mean all Europe, we tested UK, Germany, Scandinavians, but we never actually were selling too much there because they already had exposure to these products. So our markets were actually the niche markets like Spain, Italy, Central Europe and something like the pre-Baltics. The Baltics are really small countries, but we're doing like thousand sales per day in this free. The same way for Central Europe. So we're actually selling. Speaker 1: So in Finland, Norway and Sweden, you were doing a thousand per day? Speaker 2: No, no, no, no. We actually there we did little because the CPC was crazy. I told you in Bulgaria we were paying like one cent. In Sweden it was like half a euro. Speaker 1: Wow. And this is mostly like what, like Facebook tie ads or what? Speaker 2: Only Facebook and Google Ads. So at a certain point in our peak, we're doing sometimes between half a million to a million in ad spend per month. But that was actually in 2015-16. But let me get back a little bit in the story. So and then after that, of course, we have a supplement. Obviously, target audience is mostly women. I said, OK, let's build actually a product for men. And we actually found like a product in the U.S.A. called XO Booster. It was like Arginine Nitric Boosters. You just will buff, you know, even though you're not that strong. Speaker 1: Okay. So how did you pick that? Did you do some sort of research with some sort of tools? Did you just like stumble on it? Like someone said, Hey, this is the new up and coming thing or how did you? Speaker 2: I mean, as far as I knew, there was no tools. So we actually were just checking what offers are being actually around like the US websites, because we knew, to be honest, I don't even remember how we found that. But I think we're using some tools which we can actually change the IP of your browser and we can actually check out specific websites for the type of offers they're running. And we saw that in the USA there is this muscle builder tool called ExoBooster or something like that. It's like nitric boosters. It's with all this kind of stuff. And I said, okay, let's call it Extreme Power. And this actually The company of my actual agents right now, but that's like 10 years after that. So we set up a muscle builder product and then. Every six months, we're actually developing a new product. So after that, we did a product which was called Smoke Deter. The thing is on how to stop smoking. It was a complete flop. Nobody was buying that. Speaker 1: You can't sell a smoke stopper to Europeans who smoke. Speaker 2: The good thing about us is that we never ordered any stock in advance. So we always build like a landing page for like few markets. We do a test campaign. If we have no sales, then we just drop the project. If we have a good number of sales, of course, we go and order from the manufacturer. We just build the label, get the certificates and we're ready to sell in like two to three months. Speaker 1: And this is all direct to consumer, you off your own website, nothing, this is not like Amazon or anywhere else, it's all... Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, no, no Amazon and I'll tell you why. First thing is that our company was registered in Bulgaria and then in Malta and we're not able to sell on Amazon from these locations back then. This is one reason and the second reason is we're selling, we're actually buying the supplements for 2 euro and we're selling them for 50 euro. And there is no way we can sell. Eventually, when we were able to sell on Amazon, there was no way for us to sell at this price. We need to actually decrease the price. So it didn't make sense for us ever to sell on Amazon. Because I mean, we even knew our competitors by name. There are actually two companies selling that in Europe. And one of those were actually the company where I worked in 2010. So we actually became their biggest competitors and because we're not doing any trademark or copyrights because we're doing stuff so quickly, when we actually launched the Xtreme Power brands, you know what they did like two weeks later? They copied everything and they called their product Xtreme Gain. So they copied our website landing page, but you have no copyrights, you have no trademarks, so there is nothing that you can do. So, the only way for us was to actually make up new products and then we actually had like a male enhancement product, how to stay hard the longest and this one was called Omnipotence and this was probably our third most successful brand. We're selling like crazy, like thousands of supplements from those per day and usually on like adult websites. And all that was great for this product until the dating websites actually took our traffic. So they're paying so much for the actual agencies that we actually couldn't compete with them. So one by one, each of the products were actually being pushed out. Speaker 1: So you didn't have them on like a subscription kind of thing or was it all one-off purchases? Speaker 2: No, no, it's a one-time purchase because see, the subscription purchase, this is the so-called free sample stuff. And I actually was asking our lawyer, okay, man, can we do that? And he said, yes. In the USA, in Europe, you'll get trouble. You'll have a lot of lawsuits if you do that. And we never did that because this is probably the most profitable thing. But eventually, a lot of companies got sued in the States and like affiliates doing that because what you're doing, you know, you're telling them you pay just the shipping. We're going to keep on sending you stuff. But of course, this is in the fine print. Speaker 1: So, to explain that, they would say, get a 30-day supply for free, just pay $5.95 shipping or something like that. And then what in the fine print it would say, you're signing up for a subscription service and every month we're going to bill you $59.95 or something like that. They didn't realize that and you're banking on most people not either arguing it or just canceling after one or two months. So you get a lot of extra sales from unsuspecting people. Speaker 2: Exactly, exactly. And that's why I know we didn't do that because it's awesome and you get in a lot of legal trouble. So obviously, I mean, money are good, but you're misleading people because what we're selling It might not work, but you're not ever misleading people because I mean, so I mean what we're doing is just innovating, you know, keep on introducing new products. And eventually here we had like 20 private label supplements. And even though we actually stopped selling like two, probably three years ago, people keep on actually buying all this stuff. Because we create a lot of content. Speaker 1: And was there a lot of liability with that? Anybody complaining like, hey, this didn't work as it work or anybody threatening you or getting no any kind of getting sick off of using it improperly or anything like that? Speaker 2: No, no, no, because this is the one thing that we're actually doing a little different. We're actually buying more expensive supplements, which actually were actually better than the rest, because a lot of people are actually ordering from China, which back then was not that popular for the best quality. Ours were actually from the USA or from a UK manufacturer, meaning they're more expensive, but they had better ingredients, so actually were better, you know. in a way, you know, they're not hurting anybody, we're telling everybody, we're actually doing some tutorials with like fitness models and all these people, so we're telling them, okay, it would work, but of course, you need to work out, because that was actually part of the Google and Facebook compliance, because eventually they suspended all our accounts, by the way, in 2016, even though we're doing like... Speaker 1: So at your peak, what were you doing per month? Speaker 2: Yeah, peak, I mean like our peak year was like 5 million. Speaker 1: Per month or for the year? Speaker 2: No, no, no, the year for the year. But keep in mind that we started like four years earlier with like 5K was the total investment. Me, my best friend, which was a partner and one other guy who was like the developer, he developed our affiliate portal, like everything, you know, there was no tools. If there were tools, we didn't know about that. We developed our own CRM, our own food. Fulfillment software, our own affiliate marketing program. And so it was, this is actually the big difference between back then and now. Now we have thousands of solutions. Back then you had nothing. I mean, of course, you know, it was early. Nobody was doing most of the stuff that you do, but you didn't have any tools to do any proper research or anything. I mean, and this is like D2C, you know, it's not like Amazon, you know. Speaker 1: You never sold any of this stuff on Amazon in Europe or anywhere. It's always just direct to consumer on your own website. No other marketplaces, no eBay, no nothing. So all direct. So in 2015, 2016, Google and Facebook, they changed some of the algorithms. They changed some of the rules on what you can and can't do. You can't show, you can't shame people into saying that, hey, you can lose weight and all this stuff. So how did you pivot? Speaker 2: Yeah, so obviously what happened one day, you know, they just suspend your account and we said, okay, man Let's okay. Tell us what should we change and they say, okay, you need to change the landing page You need to remove the bridge pages. You need to do all this stuff and say, okay, we're gonna do that We change everything based on their guidelines and two, three weeks later, they say, okay, you know, we're suspending you forever. It doesn't matter that you're complying or they even stopped replying and from doing like I mentioned, like half a million ad spend, we just went to zero. It was only Google Ads and then I realized, okay, I mean, we're just too dependent on this like Facebook. Speaker 1: A half a million ad spend per month? Speaker 2: Exactly. Speaker 1: Well, that doesn't add up though. A half a million ad spend per month and five million per year in gross sales. Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. So probably that was like the peak month that we ever did. But they actually suspended us. So that was like the best year was like when they suspended our account. So this was probably the best that we ever did. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 2: That was like 2015, 2016? Yeah, 2015 or 2016. It was at the same time that the mobile ads kicked in, you know, because the mobile ads kicked in a lot of conversions. I mean, a lot of like impressions, no conversions. They suspended our accounts. I mean, we need to find something different. We cannot just rely on these guys because they'll keep on suspending our accounts. We actually did run around using quite alternative accounts, but it didn't make sense to continue doing that. Speaker 1: So what did you do? Speaker 2: And then I said, okay, let's do affiliate marketing. We're just going to find as many affiliates as we want. They're going to do all the Traffic for us, we're just going to pay them by results. And this is actually what we started doing afterwards. We're only paying by like cost per action because all the sales that we're doing are cash on delivery. Speaker 1: You should have a good house list by this time too. Speaker 2: We had like half a million clients. And I have even a funny story because people keep on asking me, okay, what's your WhatsApp number? And I said, okay, man, I don't have a WhatsApp number because it's suspended for a while. And they say, okay, why is that? Because one time my guys told me, okay, we have all these emails, we don't do anything with them. You know, there is like a service we can text them. And I said, okay, let's do that. Let's start, let's test with 50,000. Okay. And they say, okay. And nobody was willing to use their number. I said, okay, I don't care. Use mine. We started doing that. And I think, I'm not sure, like we sent a few thousand and they just... Suspend my phone number and that's it. And it didn't work out or anything. So we're, I mean, we're complete newbies now. Email marketing, zero, you know. We're just doing so much profit from this like, I mean, the basic stuff that we never looked into anything that people are doing right now. Which is probably because we don't have any knowledge. We're just making easy money without trying hard. Speaker 1: How many people in the company? Speaker 2: At the peak, 50. We had one or two people for each market in the call center because obviously we're just doing the calls, confirming orders and all this stuff. We had five people in the media buying team. So like around 50 at the peak. But to be honest, I mean, you can do it with less, I mean. Speaker 1: And this is all remote. You didn't have like a main office because you've been working remote. Speaker 2: Yeah, no, this is the thing, you know, my partner, one of the business partners, he wanted to be the boss. He wanted to stay in the office. So I was running the business, marketing, like advertising, everything remotely. And he was always staying in the office. But the thing is, whenever, you know, he need to fire somebody, he was telling me, okay, Nick, you know, this guy, you know, we need to fire him. So he's only going to the office to actually fire people because he wants to be the boss without the nasty stuff when you need to fire people. But anyways, I mean, that's another story. No, that's why I don't like offices too much, I mean. Speaker 1: So someone that was looking at getting into the supplement space, do you think that's still a good space to get into or do you think it's just too competitive and too many rules and regulations on how you can advertise and you're doing everything with one hand tied behind your back? Speaker 2: Honestly, too much. See aggregators, they were not buying brands. I mean like supplements, they buy pet supplements, but not the regular supplements. So I mean, probably you've been in the Amazon space for a long time, but you tell me if it's true, but I have people telling me that you need to actually spend two years, even like two years actually selling on Amazon before you break even. So you need to have like. Speaker 1: Yeah, it's brutal. Unless you can really niche down to something and really niche down to something that's very, very, very specific, it's brutal. And there's a lot of blackout, there's a lot of competition, a lot of... Because like you said, you're buying them for 2 euros and selling them for 50. It's a crazy margin, so it attracts some nefarious characters sometimes. Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you'll be surprised, but they still have some offers running for some of our competitors. But no, they actually switched from supplements to all kinds of scams, like the crypto scams. I saw a few years ago something called the little Bitcoin. It was kind of on the shady side, but like a supplement, you can always actually succeed, but you need to have something which really works. Real quality, like one of our products called Omnipotence that I mentioned. This product, it obviously works because it's like a Viagra knockoff or something. No, not like Viagra, no, it's just like to be hard, you know, for a long time. So, I mean, I guess it's like Viagra, but something like that. Anyways, the thing is, you know, this product was working very well. And years after that, people keep on ordering the product, even though we didn't have it anymore. So, obviously, when you build a product which works, people are going to keep on buying that. But of course now it's much harder and to be honest, last week I actually consulted a company which was selling supplements. And I told them, just keep in mind that it's much harder right now, but they're saying, okay, our product is great. So if you have a really good product, you would succeed, but you would spend a lot of money. You need to find the right partners to actually help do that. And just to be completely honest, I wouldn't be doing supplements right now at this stage. Speaker 1: So you exited a couple of years ago, right? In 2020, did you sell the company or did you close it down? Speaker 2: I sold everything to my partner. He wanted to do like a Like an Amazon in Eastern Europe. And I said, you're crazy, you know, he wants to actually order multiple supplements, sell our own products in his own. And I said, okay, man, I have enough. I mean, how are you going to sell that? He said, okay, I don't know. I mean, you're the sales guy. Okay. I mean, I'm the sales guy, but I think it's not like a good idea. And I said, okay, man, I have enough. I mean, 10 years is too much, you know. And this is actually where, you know, Helotax comes into the picture, you know. We're using Hewlett-Packard as a client, which is one of the companies I represent right now. They're actually a VAT compliance solution. And what they do is obviously they were taking care of our VAT, like filing reports and everything for our own brands. And when I sold the company, they told me, okay, Nick, I see that you guys are changing the ownership and I know that you're doing a lot of affiliates and partnership programs because I actually got to know them all. Speaker 1: When he bought you out, did he just cut you a check or are you like getting some sort of ongoing payments? Speaker 2: Yeah, that's how much I got. Speaker 1: You got zero. Speaker 2: Yeah, zero. Actually, we're sliding. 2015-16 was the peak. We have never heard of aggregators. Speaker 1: So when you exited, you basically just threw in the towel and said, here, take it. It's yours. Speaker 2: Exactly. But you know, we're actually getting a lot of profits when it was successful. I bought a lot of properties. So actually, I cannot say that I didn't get enough from the. Speaker 1: You were happy with the previous 10 years of what it threw off and you're like, I'm done with this. I don't like the direction you're going. Just take it. I'm out, basically. Speaker 2: Exactly. Because, like I said, it was really easy. That was my first business venture. You know how people do one thing, they fail, they win, they fail, they win. In my case, the first time I won, And then, you know, when we were actually making the most of the money, we actually got spoiled. We were just not as driven as it was in the beginning. We started doing some bullshit. I mean, just spending money for dumb stuff. Speaker 1: So how's it going now for him since you've left with his new Amazon ideas and all the stuff that you want to do? Speaker 2: It's gone. It's gone? Speaker 1: The whole company is like, it's history. Speaker 2: History. We still have the website but nothing. I mean, his idea was ordering a lot of stock for companies without knowing how to sell that and using like Like reselling all this stuff, but I mean, that's not like, honestly, like I told you, I mean, the issue that I always hit when I was running my company is how to order X amount of products so I can sell them in X amount of time. Speaker 1: So you guys were right place, right time, and you were able to ride away for a while, but running the business side of things and the operations side of things wasn't really the skill set. Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we actually suck at business and operations, you know. That's the whole truth. I mean, we're actually like 20-something, you know, no business experience, you know. So, obviously, I mean, just to give an example, you know, if somebody with business experience were actually where we are in like 20, 15, 16, probably they would be like doing like 80 years more globally. But since we don't have that experience and we're actually poor guys, when we started, I told you 5k, you know, it was initial investment and you have like 5 million in like, like fears in the, like the poorest country in like in Europe. I mean, I mean, your head is off, you know, man. So, I mean, you're not dreaming about this stuff, you know. Sometimes when you get Yes, reach too quickly, you know, I mean, you don't realize what you have there. And when you don't have the business experience, probably our mistake is that we didn't Find the person that actually we can have the business side of things, how to operate that properly, because I'm very good in actually finding new things, but I'm not like the best guy in actually operational. Speaker 1: How was that? How was that adjustment from making a lot of money and taking the money out and probably could buy almost anything you want to do, whatever you want to now, not going down and, you know, Not having all that money, were you able to save some away and you're okay? Speaker 2: No, I'm saying that we could have done much more if we had somebody who knows what they're doing. We might have grown the company a lot because we didn't lose the money. We're not actually losing money, we're just doing less sales. But whenever we're actually doing a lot of money, we're actually getting all the profit. So we actually purchased a lot of properties right now. So nothing is lost, but I'm saying that Potential for growth was huge and we didn't do anything. So that's the thing. I mean, we're not actually... I had like 10 properties across Bulgaria, you know. So, I mean, we've made a lot of money. Speaker 1: By properties, do you mean these are like apartment houses or rentals? Speaker 2: Exactly, like rental properties. Speaker 1: Income producing properties, not like land somewhere. Speaker 2: No, no, no, no. Actually, my business partner, he's into lands. He purchased a lot of lands, but he's not doing anything with them. On my end, Actually, everything that I purchase with the profit from the company, they're actually in some either like rentals or like where we live right now, our beach house. Obviously, we have like a big apartment in Sofia and we have one on the beach. So everything kills for actually renting out. But of course, I mean, I did some dumb stuff with like oil features and other stuff in the meantime, so I cost like a quarter million. But that's another thing, you know, like I told you, when you get a lot of money without knowing what to do, you do some dumb stuff in the meantime. Speaker 1: Now, one of the things that you're big on right now is you're like a connector. You like meeting new people in the e-commerce space, not just Amazon, but anything in the e-commerce space and then connecting people and introducing different people to different things. Where does that come from? Where does that passion come from? To do that because you'll just I'll get emails from you, you know Well, I think when we first spoke a while back you're like, alright, so what do you do? You get some information from me like, okay, I know like 25 people That you should meet, you know, some of my already knew and some of my didn't and you would sit out emails. Hey John meet Kevin Kevin does this John you do this you guys might have some Something you might be able to work on together. You you really are known for doing that. Where does that come from? Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll tell you the story now. When actually I got out of my business and when Helotax offered me the following, they told me, you run, you do partnerships for your company, you have a lot of affiliates partners and we've been thinking to actually build a partner program for Helotax. Can you help us out? And I said, okay, I mean, I'm out of my business, I have no idea what I'm gonna do. I'll do it for you guys, I like new challenges, so let's do it for you. And then I didn't know anybody in the Amazon space. I mean, I was a brand owner. I mean, I can say that probably I know like five or six guys that they were using for other services, but they said, okay, I mean, Helotax offers VAT. That's it. I mean, if people come to us, they will need much more than that. So if whenever they come to me, I'm going to build a partner network. So I'm going to connect them with everybody. The thing is, when you come to me, you know everybody. Because you need more than just the VAT. And I just started doing casual introductions. I meet somebody, okay, meet with this guy, you know, you guys can do some good stuff together. And I started doing that, doing that, like that. And my wife was telling me, okay, why are you doing that? I mean, nobody's connecting people for free. Nobody works for free. And I said, okay, I mean, why shouldn't I do that? I mean, I can actually grow my network, I can help people. And when you do that, you know, where actually everybody's benefiting, you know, you're just spreading, you know, What you know, you help all people and I just thought it's a good thing to do. I was not planning anything commercial with that. And eventually, a few of my partners came to me and they said, okay, Nick, can you do what you're doing for HelloTax for us? And I said, okay, do what? And they said, okay, to run the partnership. And I said, you guys just gave me an idea, you know, I'll set up a partnership agency and network. And just like that, I actually turned my hobby, because you can see it, the hobby connecting people into partial business, partial what I like to do. And then I actually got the following idea. Now, when I meet somebody, I'm going to connect them with partners who can actually help them grow and vice versa. And by doing that, obviously I'm growing my network. Everybody benefits doing that. And people are going to actually return the favor, even if you don't ask that. And right now I have like 20 companies which are actually paid clients where I run the partnership for them and just to put it as simply as possible I teach them how to grow through partnerships because everybody in the space they want business. One people would like to work with brands, one people want to work with Amazon brands, one company would like to work with Shopify brands and I'm telling them You know, the best way to actually grow your business is when you connect with other partners who work with the same clients without actually competing with you. And you just need to do a certain set of things. You need to obviously be willing to share. You will be willing to help them out. And just by creating all this content, first you help the sellers on either end. You get some business, you get exposure. So it's a win-win cooperation. And just by accident, that's what happened. And some people don't, honestly, they don't know what exactly I do. And they do it on purpose because they would like when they meet somebody, just for people not to make assumptions. I'm worried that I meet everybody. You want to sell me stuff? I come and join the meeting. You might sell me something that I need. I might learn something. So I have this approach. I meet everybody. I talk with everybody. I don't care if you're a founder or a new small partner. I can always learn some stuff. You can always show me something that I don't know. If you're not a perfect match for me, I can find somebody who is the best match for you. And some people tell me, okay, what is the kitchen? How do you make money? And I'm telling them the following, I make money from only 10% of my partners. I don't need to make money from everybody. Speaker 1: But sometimes a lot of people lose sight of just doing good things. It comes back to you. Like you said, you're not expecting someone to give you a favor back or to return it, but just by doing good out there, eventually good is done back to you. And it comes around. You just got to make sure people don't take advantage of you. But doing good for others can pay dividends in the long term, for sure. Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, if you if you ask me now about my previous business, I was making probably most money in the peak, but I cannot say that I was feeling satisfied in what I was doing right now. I cannot even call what I'm doing is a job because I mean. Why quote him drink? Speaker 1: There's a difference in success and fulfillment. You were having success selling the supplements for a long time, but you weren't fulfilled. Now you're getting fulfilled. You're doing what your passion, you're introducing people, you're helping people, you're guiding people. And that's much more fulfilling to you and much more rewarding. And that's important. It's not always all about the money. Speaker 2: Exactly. I fully agree with you and I'm happy that I had some failures because if I didn't have these failures, I wouldn't be doing what I do right now, which I really like. Speaker 1: What's next for you? Speaker 2: I hate to plan, even I'm extremely organized. Everybody's telling me I haven't seen a better organized person like you because I do like a four-day work week. I never work Friday, Saturday, Sunday, but I never would like to plan too much ahead. For example, my wife was asking me the other day, okay, how many clients do you have? I don't know. I don't count them. I mean, I'm happy with what I do. And the other thing that I don't mind is I never push anybody to become a client. If you're not ready, I'm not going to take you. I tell you, okay, do these things. When you're ready, we can talk again. And this is why I actually do it on purpose because partnerships are unlike anything else. You need to be ready for partnerships. If you're ready just to receive without giving, then you're not ready for partnerships. So you need like a specific mindset for that. I mean, honestly, I mean, I like what I'm doing, you know, I make more than enough. I like sitting in full field unlike before. Speaker 1: I mean, that's what matters, man. That's where it's at. Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, if you ask me for planning, you know, probably what I'm planning is how to do like eternal summer because now I've been thinking that we should actually travel with my wife and kids. And live in like a different country each year so the kids can work from experience. But this is probably the one thing that they should be doing, you know. The only thing that is holding us back is that, you know, obviously my younger son who is like seven, he has like a speech delay. So if he gets better, you know, we can go anywhere. But besides that, I mean, I can do what I do from anywhere. I mean, I talk with people everywhere, you know, I've met so many good people and probably planning to go on some offline events. Next year to finally meet them in person because I'm like a remote junkie. I go speak at a lot of conferences, a lot of things, but I don't go in person. But I went to one event here and I guess now I like it, people like me when they go there. So I guess I'll make an exception and go to a few events next year just to meet some people. Because people don't believe me that I'm real. I sent like a cardboard copy of me to Las Vegas and people went there thinking that I'm there, but anyways. Speaker 1: Well, Nick, if people want to reach out to you or learn more, what's the best way for them to get a hold of you? Speaker 2: I mean, LinkedIn is where I hang out a lot of the time. So, I mean, I'm going to share my LinkedIn profile with Kevin or you can just write Nick Penev. I mean, I think there is nobody else with that name. Speaker 1: P-N-E-V for those needing to spell it. P like Paul, E-N-E-V like Victor. Speaker 2: Exactly, and I have a picture that you're not gonna... Actually, you'll notice the picture is nothing like you've seen on LinkedIn. It's like with one guy with an inflatable around his head with minions. You haven't seen that, but that's on purpose. Now, if people make assumptions, they shouldn't connect with me. I'm not the regular guy, you know. Speaker 1: Awesome. Nick, I really appreciate you coming on and telling your story. This has been great. We'll have to do this again sometime. Speaker 2: Yeah, Kevin. I mean, I think you're the first one who has actually asked all these questions. I don't think I have ever told my story to anybody like you. So I guess you know how to ask questions. That's for sure. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Well, it's great to have you on, man. And we're talking soon. As you can see from Nick's story, there's lots of opportunities out there besides just selling on Amazon. Nick really didn't even sell on Amazon. He sold all DTC and tailored everything to the markets that he was targeting. targeting Greece, targeting Romania, putting everything in that local language and just cleaning up and doing really well and I really like what he he said at the end about it's not all about success it's about fulfillment and how he's really enjoying what he's doing now more so than when he was making bank selling supplements so that's that's a really important lesson Hope you enjoyed this episode. Next week I'll be back with another guest, Arnold Shields. Arnold is from Australia and we'll be talking about a subject that's not the most exciting but it's super important and he's got some really good tips and strategies all around accounting and bookkeeping and some of the common mistakes people make when they're doing their forecasting. And a lot of other really cool stuff. So I hope you join us for that episode. Before we leave today, I've got my good little tip for you as well. My little golden nugget. And this week it is this one. Good marketing can sell once, but only a good product can sell twice. Remember that good marketing can always sell once, but only a good product can sell twice. Have a great week and we'll see you next week. Thanks. Unknown Speaker: Thank you.