How did PillowCube build its own Direct to Consumer brand and ramp up its growth to 8000%

Zach Johnson

Dylan Carpenter

Clark Bigler

Episode
122
|
1

Clark Bigler

,

CFO

Pillow Cube
Apple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsLive on SpotifyLive on Youtube

Clark Bigler is the Chief Financial Officer of Pillow Cube.

Episode Summary

TAKE AWAYS

  • Where do most e-commerce businesses fail?
  • Understanding the cash flow cycle
  • Picking the right financial product for your business type.

RESOURCES/CONTACT:

Transcript

1
,
Episode
122
Transcript

Clark (00:00):

Yeah. So specifically our journey was, um, you know, we did more sales over black Friday weekend than we have done in the two years preceding over a three-day period. We saw more pillows than we did over two years. Um, so obviously the biggest issue that presented itself to tell you to take care of right away was supply chain. Um, uh, how do you get from selling a pillow on Shopify to a customer

Speaker 2 (00:38):

[inaudible]

Carson (00:38):

On this episode of the rich ad, where I bought gas, we have mark Bigler CFO over at hello cube. Miss episode, Clark goes over one, where do most e-commerce businesses fail to understanding the cashflow cycle of a business and three picking the right financial products for your business type. This is a really informational episode. Y'all just sit back, relax and enjoy the ship.

Zach (01:06):

Welcome to another episode of the rich dad. Poor dad podcast is your host sack Johnson. And today we're talking about D to C pillows, consumer pillows. We're talking with the CFO of pillow cube. Uh, these guys are spending $900,000 a month last month, 1.1 million in this month on paid advertising. And I believe it's just like a, literally a pillow that is a cube, uh, for those that, uh, I don't know that sleep weird, I guess I, uh, I'd love to learn more, but, uh, Clark Bigler, welcome to the show, man. Thanks

Clark (01:45):

For having me.

Zach (01:47):

All right. Explain to me the whole cube thing first, right? And you're, you're the finance guy I'm excited to talk to you. You're you're, you're actually, you're the second like CFO we've had on the show. So normally on the show we get into, you know, rich ad poor ad and kind of saved the financial goodies for last, but we're switching it up today. I'm excited to get into it, but you first have to explain to me why would he want a square, a square pillow?


Clark (02:16):

So if I could describe it, uh, sum it up in a couple sentences. It's, you know, every, everybody tries to make a pillow for everyone and in doing so, they make a pillow for no one. Um, so the pillow cube is specifically designed for side sleepers. Um, it's a very high quality core memory foam. And the idea is that it really supports, um, the neck and head of side sleep. Um, turns out we have a very large demographic that sleep on their sides. Um, but the idea is designing a pill that is very comfortable for one particular sleeping position. And you know, of course we're finding it's, uh, extremely popular and it does really, really well.

Zach (02:55):

There you go. There you go. Product a and you're going to also do product marketing. Uh, sounds great. Sounds like a startup. So, um, cool. So tell everybody a little bit about, uh, you know, pillow cubes journey. It's pretty new. You guys have been scaling ads, uh, pretty aggressively. So give everybody a little bit of backstory on the business.

Clark (03:19):

So if I'm, if I'm doing justice to the full backstory, um, our CEO, Jay Davis and myself, you know, we, we go back almost 15 years. We were friends in our undergraduates at BYU here in Utah, and we kind of went our separate ways after we graduated, did a decade of doing other things apart. And then about four years ago, he came back and he started an advertising agency and he asked me if I wanted to be a part of that, you know, of course, um, loved the creative side, even though I'm a finance guy. So we started, uh, an advertising agency and then two years after that, you know, Jay kept asking himself, Hey, I'm helping everyone else do it. You know, why can't I do this on my own? And Jay's a taller guy. I'm a bigger guy. He's about six foot three.

Clark (04:05):

Um, and he's always, he's always had problems supporting his neck and getting a good night's rest. And so the first product and first company he wanted to launch direct to consumer was the pillow cube, really out of a desire to solve his own problem. Um, and so kind of off of the back of our advertising agency, we launched phyllo cube, you know, all of their original content that pops up almost incessantly on everyone's Instagram, Facebook and YouTube are our interns and hourly employees at our advertising agency, all, um, you know, not working for free, I guess we were paying them hourly at the time to make the content. Uh, but we made all of the content with our advertising agency and we hired them to manage kind of our ad spend and our growth. And, um, it turns out that, you know, because we kind of all have our roots in advertising, it did pretty well, you know, it did our own direct to consumer brand and you know, we're, we're sitting here today doing well.

Zach (05:04):

That's awesome, man. All right. So I, uh, you gave me the best analogy. I think I've ever heard when it comes to funding and paying for ads. Um, and maybe you can kind of give, share the analogy that you gave to me in any, probably our champion and explaining to everyone that, that pillow cube, how would you describe, uh, the conundrum of scaling?

Clark (05:34):

Yeah, the analogy, the metaphor I gave you was very much like a dog. What does the dog do when it actually catches the car? Right. You know, um, and that's, that's a lot like our journey, right? As we, we always talked about getting big and making it big, but very little conversation around what do we actually do when we're here? Because the journey is certainly not already, it's not over once. You're, you're doing a thousand, 1500 units a day of below sales, right. It's, it's certainly not over. Um, and it actually is when the real work begins. And so I think that was for us a kind of a small advertising agency that kind of converted into a pillow queue. Um, the real journey began when we actually started selling these things like crazy because, um, you know, my partner, I love him to death. Jay is he's an amazing strategic visionary. Um, but what do you do when you're sitting on 5,000 backorders and, you know, you're struggling to fulfill, that was kind of, I think what the Genesis of this conversation. And I think we're a lot of e-commerce businesses end up failing is, is poor execution once they get in front of a solid customer base.

Zach (06:51):

And is it fair to say that pillow cube experienced this and Q4

Clark (06:56):

The last year? What do you do? What's

Zach (07:00):

The, what's the, what's the short checklist here? Right.

Clark (07:04):

So specifically our journey was, um, you know, we did more sales over black Friday weekend than we had done in the two years preceding. So over a three-day period, we saw more pillows than we did over two years. Um, so obviously the biggest issue that presented itself to take care of right away was supply chain. Um, uh, how do you get from selling a pillow on Shopify to a customer? And, you know, we're still learning our lessons here. I would say that, you know, if we first fully mastered the supply chain kind of enigma, um, then, then, you know, we're already ready to exit and move onto the next business. But I think the most important lesson we learned from supply chain, and this is just one of the execution pieces to running a successful business, uh, was diversification. I think, you know, we found some really good single source suppliers and the pricing was great.

Clark (08:02):

The sales pitch was great. The contract was great, uh, but we didn't have, uh, foam in our warehouse. And then, you know, at the end of the day, what ended up happening and right now is an especially hard time to operate. Um, for us during November, December last year, we had a lot of canceled orders, uh, because we had a ton of foam just sitting on boats, floating outside of long beach. Could we have fully anticipated those problems? Uh, no, certainly not, but at least, um, what I think Jay did really well from a, from an executive standpoint, right? If we're, if we're talking specifically to CEOs who are managing their business early on, Jay created a relationship and, and hired an amazing chief operating officer for supply chain, um, we hired a, you know, one of my good friends now, Joey, from, um, one of the large, um, kind of essential oil MLMs that come out of Utah.

Clark (09:02):

Yeah. That's going to get a good laugh because now I grew up in Southern California, but I'm from Utah now. And for whatever reason, Utah's like synonymous with essential oil and MLMs, but we brought him in because he just has this massive international supply chain experience. And I think, you know, being willing to, whether it be sacrifice, you know, some options to a high level guy like that, or pay a salary that makes you a little bit uncomfortable, definitely pays dividends because you know what, there's nothing more expensive than unfulfilled orders. Um, so that was, that was kind of key. Step one for us is pushing Joe, Joey as a priority to be a part of our team. Um, and then, and then second after that is kind of the cash flow requirements. I think that's the one where, you know, as a CFO, everyone always talks to me about like, oh, how do I solve cashflow? And you know, of course I have some good insights, but at the end of the day, it's like, you might as well ask me how to solve world hunger. Right? It's an extremely complex set of variables.

Zach (10:09):

So what is like the most, uh, what's the best hack you think that you could come up with that, uh, or tip you could give to two, another e-commerce businesses is trying to solve for, uh, their cashflow needs,

Clark (10:26):

Uh, hire a good CFO. This is where I get to have a little bit of a chip on my shoulder, right. Even though I've been involved in kind of in the ownership groups since day one, you know, I didn't make this, my, this was my side hustle up until February. I'd, I've been giving of my time freely for almost four years now. And, you know, I think, I think it's one of the reasons why it's worked out so well for Jay's his ability to create these strong relationships with diverse backgrounds, diverse people, and, you know, have someone like me willing to provide him the feedback, the consulting, the service, um, without getting paid for such a long time. Can everybody do that? I don't know, is that the right way to operate for every business? I also don't know. Um, but it's worked really, really well for pillow Q because you know, the, the double-edged sword and all this, right, is if you hire all these, these really expensive executives around you, you're also gonna run out of cashflow, right? So it's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Clark (11:33):

I think one of the things Jay and I did well is we would frequently meet together and we'd have open discussions on like, Hey, what kind of revenue and profit numbers do we need to see before we can support support like a minimal salary for me to come work here. And, you know, I think that's a Testament to Jay really, you know, in my opinion, why he's such a good CEO is he's not to have those conversations. He's not afraid to speak candidly to a guy. And, and it's, even though he and I have been friends for so long, that's why I kind of set the table is he was also not afraid to say no, you're too expensive. Um, and, and, and to have that candid conversation and find people that were more invested in the idea than a paycheck,

Speaker 5 (12:14):

This episode is brought to you by funnel Nash's ad card, the only charge card exclusively for your digital ad spend. And if you're an ad agency that manages seven or even eight figures a year in media and ad spend for your clients, and you're looking to double your profits over the next six to 12 months, then check out ad card, see the typical agency model is this, you charge 10% of your spend. You make 10 to 20% margin at the end of the day. So that's really one to 2% of your clients spend that is profit in your business. The easiest way to double that is a really find a way to earn in that one to 2% cash back of the card that is on file of your clients as ad account. And before ad card we had to do was invoice all your clients for their ad spend up front. She's really difficult on a cash flow basis and very difficult ask. And then you had to put the card on your own Amex or whatever card of choice to get that level of value back into your business with add card it's entirely different in streamline. You simply get your clients on add card and make yourself the agency of record, and you'll get the cash back. As long as you're managing the ad spend, it's a great way to double your profit without doing any additional work, check it out@funneldash.com.

Zach (13:33):

And what outside of just telling you what your, you know, D date is, when are you run out of cash? What's the single best thing tactic that, that your CFO or VP of finance can do, or the company and the first three?

Clark (13:50):

Yeah. So it's, it's, it's, it's really understanding, um, it's more bringing cash in, right. Um, I think the, the biggest, when I work with CEOs, I think the hardest thing to fully grasp as a visionary and strategic guy, is that a profitable business, if it's growing rapidly, runs out of cash very rapidly in a, in essence, what I'm saying is cash and accrual, accounting are two different things. I know that, that seems very, very basic. You know, I've, I've worked with CEOs where, you know, I get asked the question, why do I have to pay taxes on things I haven't received cash for yet? And, and this was a CEO who was an MBA. And so I realized that was a very enlightening moment for me. I realized he doesn't really understand the difference between cash and accrual basis accounting, in essence, just because you've earned a profit doesn't mean you've been paid a full profit.

Clark (14:47):

And I know that seems so rudimentary and basic, but really understanding nuance of those differences. And I would say a great CFO is going to come into a CEO and really help him understand his cashflow cycle. It's what are your streams of income? And when exactly do you get those in your checking account, what are your outflows of cash? And when exactly do they come out, that is an entirely set of different variables other than your accrual basis gain and loss. And a lot of small e-commerce is maybe a cash basis accounting system. And that, and that's okay. Um, it typically ends up being harsher on cash to be a cash basis, accounting system for taxes. So I usually, I encouraged our company to go accrual. And then, so a good CFO is going to sit down with our CEO and I'm going to, I'm going to have the hard conversation of understanding the cash flow cycle, but then from there also really understanding our different streams of non, you know, revenue based influxes of cash.

Clark (15:48):

So that's going to be your debt and equity deals. Um, is it it's going to be venture capital, private equity, um, and debt, um, fortunately for, for, um, I look, you, we went right from the, we grew so fast. We went right from the friends and family investments directly to commercial lending, right? So, cause we, we grew, you know, 8000% in three months. And so, you know, the banks aren't super thrilled to lend us money, but we have so much, uh, immediate cashflow that they are. Um, and so we kind of jumped over the venture capital step. I think that we were very fortunate. I'm not a big fan of that step that's, that's the step where you end up just squabbling over the valuation in your company. Um, but having a great CFO is going to help you navigate your true cost of all those different caps, capital options, um, where equity is great because you don't have to service a monthly debt repayment.

Clark (16:48):

It ends up being way more expensive to you in the long run. Yeah. Um, and then, and then debt, it's just, there's now, you know, as, even as a CFO, I'm just always finding new avenues to go the debt route. Um, there's just a myriad of different ways to go down the debt financing route. Um, you know, in e-commerce, in my opinion, uh, revenue based lending is extremely, extremely attractive for a small company. Um, it's just kind of high cashflow requirements. Um, but it's just very low kind of, uh, uh, recourse debt, right? You don't have to sign personal guarantees, your owner's not signing pals and his assets to get it.

Zach (17:31):

One of the, one of the mistakes I see people make is they pick the wrong, you know, financial products for their business type. So you've got, you know, you've got, uh, Devi in your backyard right there in Utah, but you also have like a Brex or like a ramp in the space. And like, I think, you know, Brex or, you know, ramp those guys are just doing was, you know, cash underwriting, right. And so it's based on how much cash you have in the bank, right. And if you're a growing business, you are running out of cash. Um, and so cash is great for funded startups, right? It's great for life sciences where, where there's high cash balances, but generally you're fast growing companies that are grown by 20%, 30% month over month, or in your case, like 8000%, uh, you have to somewhat pick like even the right, our product or financial product that, that fits, uh, you know, the assets that you have in your, in your business.

Clark (18:34):

Yeah, absolutely. Um, it's it's and it's all really understanding the products they're offering. I mean, there's, what's really popular for e-commerce is kind of some asset based products like inventory based lending, which it's funny because for us, I would love to have the option and do some of that, that, that can't keep a single product and inventory. So, you know, when I'm chatting with people and they're, they're looking at our financials is your inventory or your finished goods inventory, really zero I'm like, yeah, because whatever, whatever we got that day is, is being shipped, you know, that day. So, you know, there's, there's a, you know, I've talked about revenue based lending, which, which is really more, you know, selling advanced receivables. It's really, it's actually not even technically considered debt. Um, those are great.

Zach (19:24):

Let's talk about that. Right. So like who owned the space? Like, you know, who are the top, like three revenue based financing companies and how do you go about justifying, uh, you know, the fee associated with, with those products? They're all fixed fee percentage of your revenue.

Clark (19:42):

You know, my, my background is underlying, is it accounting? So I always live by a motto if something is too good to be true, it's too good to be true. There's no such thing as too good to be true. Um, you're going to have a give and take with all of your different debt products. Um, so a commercial, a classic debt from a bank, right? If I went down to the bank and I took out a million dollar line of credit, um, it's going to be a much lower interest rate, but they're going to file a UCC filing on you. And they're going to own your first and last child. They're going to own your house, right? They, they own you with that debt. So cost of capital is extremely low, but you have a lot of giveaway there. Basically. You can't go out and get other debt.

Clark (20:22):

You know, you, you, you would struggle working with private equity, right? You would struggle with the takeaway from that. Um, we're a revenue based lending the idea for those, for those who don't understand, I realize a lot of people in e-commerce do the principle of revenue based lending is, is you advance me, let's say a million dollars. I guarantee you back a certain percentage of my daily sales, most cases it's between 11 and 20% of your daily sales back plus a fixed fee. So it's, it's anywhere typically between 10 and 15 to 20%, um, on top of the original mountain loan. So you give me a million, I pay you back 1.1 million based on 10 to 15 to 20% of my sales. That's that's the way it works. So it's in, it's a much, much higher cost of capital. It's even more expensive than just doing it on a credit card. But the, but the reverse end is, is you're not traditionally encumbered. Like you are from leverage from a bank. It's the least amount of recourse you have to give to a company because they're going to get paid back a lot faster. Um, they, they typically don't even really underwrite your company. They just ask for a set of financials and then they'll loan you money. So the answer, yeah, I know it's crazy. Cause what they w what they'll typically do is they'll get backend logins to your, your, your

Zach (21:44):

Let's throw some names out there,

Clark (21:46):

The one we use and I'll give them props, you know, maybe, maybe we can just, just be very direct on what the company we use is way flier. Uh, the reason why we use way flyer is, is they're willing to guarantee a payback period, which most revenue based lenders aren't. So in essence, I'm my guaranteed payback period is typically seven to 12 months, which means if I'm doing more than the percentage of sales, they signed me up for, they actually reduce the percentage of sales. Um, and their annual percentage rate is around the 10% range, which is about a quarter of what other revenue based lenders are. Um,

Zach (22:24):

One more time, the annual percentage rate or the fee. This is

Clark (22:30):

Yeah. Being a finance guy. You come back into whatever an annual percentage rate is. The last deal I did with them was about seven months at a, at 6% fee. So that kind of backs me into just above 10% is my annual percentage rate on my debt. Right. Seven months,

Zach (22:46):

6% fee. Is that right? Yeah.

Clark (22:48):

Yeah. Yeah. So

Zach (22:50):

How do you do the math from six to 10?

Clark (22:54):

Yeah. So the metal is basically right as it's. So it would just be 6% divided by 7, 7, 12. Yeah. So that gets you to what your annual percentage rate is. You put me on the spot, man. You're testing to see if I'm picking out my

Zach (23:16):

Basic matter

Clark (23:16):

Here. I didn't realize this was going to be like mathematical,

Clark (23:23):

You making sure I'm not just BS and everybody. Right. So we we'd actually in the past, we we'd just, um, Shopify capital is probably, is probably the most prominent, uh, revenue based lender that just because they're able to get in front of you so quickly, because they are, um, uh, a function of Shopify. Um, they worked great. We were small, small, small, um, in fact, they, they provided us under, um, a hundred thousand in capital in the very beginning when we first did our black Friday, which was great, um, with almost no underwriting, they basically offered it because they had access to see our store. Um, but you know, when you, when you kind of do the math, the same math, we just talked through their annual percentage rate was like 60%. So, um, as you get larger, you get more options. Um, that's why we went with wave flier, which is a London-based firm. Um, there's several others that I've, I've chatted with. Um, I can't remember their names off.

Zach (24:24):

They give you a couple options though, right? Like what are, how, how do they structure all the different options compared to,

Clark (24:32):

Uh, so they, they they're really flexible. They're willing to do almost anything you ask. Um, with us, they basically offered us two options. They said, Hey, we'll give you a million bucks over four weeks. And if we do that, your, your, your fee will be 6%. Um, we'll over two weeks, we'll give you a half a million each week, but your fee will be like six and a half percent

Zach (24:55):

Over four weeks.

Clark (24:57):

Well, that's when they'll disperse the cash, right. Payback period of seven months for both,

Zach (25:05):

It won't let you draw it all down. Like they one basically what they're getting at.

Clark (25:09):

Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's kind of when I, you know, negotiating where if any feedback I got is they, oh, they won't let me draw it all down day one. Then typically, typically I've found though, if I need a million bucks a day, one, I need to be looking at a different debt vehicle other than, than a revenue baseline. Right. Because I'm using a revenue based loan. So I can scale up my ad spend, which is, which is a day-to-day gradual thing.

Zach (25:36):

And why are they at seven months? Like everyone else at six, w w what's

Clark (25:40):

I don't know that there was anything special there. Then other than that, we asked for it.

Zach (25:46):

Fair enough.

Clark (25:47):

That's an extremely accommodating I've, I've been impressed. I've haven't had any negative experiences. And granted typically in my, my career history, which is more in corporate finance, right. I came from a Goldman Sachs background and public accounting pedigree. I'm typically used to working with banks. Um, the ability, you know, we were funded within a week. We got our first quarter million within a week of chatting with these guys on the first sales call. I'm used to like taking 90 days to get cash from a finance financial institution.

Zach (26:19):

So at work with like a London maze from, I mean, do they just like, why are you the money? Or did you get a virtual card

Clark (26:24):

Wired the money directly to our checking account?

Zach (26:28):

All right.

Clark (26:29):

Yeah. I feel, I feel like this has become a Salesforce for way flyer, but yeah, we're

Zach (26:34):

Gonna, we're gonna get them to sponsor.

Clark (26:37):

I better get some sort of a

Zach (26:39):

Here's the thing though. I don't, I think the way you're breaking all this stuff down though, Clark is actually like your typical marketer on the show does not like do all of this level of detail the most, you know, that most are advertised on the show. They're like, I have a winning campaign. I just spent 250 grand on it, but somehow I'm in a cash crunch. 36 days later, I thought my row was phenomenal. Right. Um, and so then they're, they're kind of just like get me money in the door and not really thinking through all the nuances. So you're edgy, you know, these questions are prying, but you're educating, um, a ton here. One of the last questions I have just to wrap up the, the way fire front is when you do you, do, they just automatically take a percentage of your sales daily or weekly, or like what's the repayment.

Clark (27:33):

So the repayment is an automatic percentage of your sales daily. Um, you know, in order to sign a deal with an outfit like this, you have to allow them access to your, your, your store. There's no, there's no ifs, ands or buts or ways around that. Um, and typically they'll, they'll just take view, only access, right? They don't need to make any modifications to your store, but they need to know what your sales are. And what's, what's great about way fliers is ours is 11% until we hit our monthly cap. So basically if you do the math and I apologize for not having these numbers off the top of my head, right, we are our total w you know, we would just be whatever, whatever our total payout on the loan was 1,000,060 thousand, right. On the assumptions we were using and divide that by seven months.

Clark (28:23):

Um, once we hit our monthly cap, they stop taking our 11% out that month. So, because we grew so much latch last in March, they only ended up taking their payments like 14 out of the 30, um, 31 days of the month. We had like half of the month where they weren't drawing from us because we'd already hit our gap there, as far as I know. And I, you know, I could be a bit ignorant in this field. That is the only revenue based lender that's willing to get the rest. We'll continue to eat away 11% of your sales until they get all of their funds back.

Zach (28:55):

Yeah. And have you ever used like clear bank? I mean, I feel like I've heard their name more often.

Clark (29:01):

I had a conversation with clear bank, but again, they weren't willing to do the things like way flyer is like the caps. Um, and, and their interest rates are between 11 and 20%. Um, I call them interest rate, but that's just their flat fee. Right. So if you took out a million bucks, they'd want 110,000 back as revenue.

Zach (29:21):

Well, Clearbit kind of advertises 6%. Right. But if you're going to wire, if you're going to wire it out to the bank, that's really, that's really good, too. Um, amazing. Well, clar you've like, uh, educated everybody online, probably one of the more popular ways to fund their business. Um, and you've educated everybody on how to really think about, um, just how to structure a deal, right. And how to walk into that door and that sales conversation educated with all the different levers to pull, um, most everybody's just negotiating on rate. Right. Um, but there's a lot more to pull the trigger on. Um, yeah. Any, any other thoughts that you would have for like an e-commerce, um, business that's looking to scale that you would, or any other tools or negotiation tactics with vendors that you would recommend

Clark (30:15):

Actually, you brought, brought to mind a big thing. Um, having a strong negotiator for payment terms is going to be huge in your cashflow struggle. Um, you know, frankly, as is one of the things I found when I came in with, with pillow cube was one of the biggest things I could bring to the table from the beginning is calling up all of their vendors and saying, yeah, I'm not paying you. I'm not advancing cash to you anymore. That's not happening anymore. Um, you know, cause I, we take for granted, I came into pillow cube, right? Our fabric suppliers, our foam suppliers, um, our Sowers, all of our vendors were expecting pillow cube to pay up front for services. Um, I realized that's a hard conversation to have because basically we're asking them to be a bit of a bank for us. Um, and it requires strong negotiation skills. And I'm not, I'm not like a rude or mean guy. Right. But going into those conversations saying, look, we have an amazing opportunity ahead of us. We're growing like crazy. You can either be a part of that or you, or we can find somebody else. And so we need net 30 terms right now. Um, it's a tough, difficult, uncomfortable conversation to have, but it's, it will make a world of difference in your cashflow cycle.

Zach (31:29):

So you're, you're, I mean, this is a little bit of a negotiation tips. One-on-one here from Clark, the walkway and negotiate with you. I want it now and I want it all or nothing.

Clark (31:43):

You know, I'm sure you can appreciate there's some nuance there, right? I'm not going into the, the advice. I'm not saying I'm the type of guy that walks into and every vendor and says do or die because there's some vendors you can do without I think in, you know, if you've read any of the negotiating popular negotiating books, the only way you're going to effectively negotiate is if you are willing to walk away. So, you know, in my opinion, don't even bother negotiating unless you really do have other suppliers, but it goes back to our supply chain concepts. I brought up in the beginning, you shouldn't be diversifying your supply chain anyways. Um, I know that kind of cuts against, you know, the classic char classic Charles Deming from the sixties and seventies, which is single source supply everything, unfortunately in a global supply chain environment, we live in, you have to have multiple suppliers.

Clark (32:33):

So it also helps you in the negotiation room and saying, look, you know, if you don't want to the guy, there will be someone out there to supply for me. Um, and, and you know, there's a softer way to negotiate it too, which is you just ask the simple question. What do you need to seed offer me credit terms? And if they say there's nothing that can be there, then you know, that's a supplier and vendor you don't want to work with because if they're not willing to change over time and kind of see a solid payment history, it's not someone you want to negotiate with anyways. And so I think that's been a huge part of executing for us is making sure that small things like that are negotiated and typically for the strategic thinker, it's not really what you want to be doing from a day-to-day thing. You don't want to be calling vendors and giving them a hard time about their payment terms. So it's made a world of difference in our cashflow cycle.

Zach (33:28):

That's awesome, man. Well, Clark, you've been amazing guests. You're you're uh, you're the first solo CFO to rock rich ed, poor ed. I think this'll be a breath of fresh air for everybody. Uh, listening, tell everybody a little bit, uh, how they can all support you and what you guys are up to.

Clark (33:47):

So yeah, I mean, that's a great question. So pillow cube right now is we're, we're still riding the success of our flagship product, which is the pillow cube and the pillow cube pro. Um, we recently just launched the pillow cups and the pillow Cubs is our kids line of pillows. Um, I'm telling you, these things are so much fun and not only that they're a functional pillow for your children or the kids in your life, if you don't have children, um, essentially it's, it's our same design as the pillow Q pro, but we're outfitting cases that are fun to play with, um, their stuffed animals, but that are also functional pillows right now. We're on K we're. We're just running our Kickstarter on the Cubs. Um, so you can find us by looking for pillow Cubs by pillow cube, um, anticipate by Q3 Q4 that we'll have those for sale on our website as well. Um, it's just pillow cube.com. Um, and also, I mean, at the end of the day, if you're just looking for a life-changing pillow, um, by one of our,

Zach (34:52):

Yeah, I'll even throw one out there, right. Which is, you know, you got a lot of affiliates listening to the show and advertisers that are looking for offers that are working right, that are scaling. And, um, you know, if you guys are listening and you're looking for, uh, you know, something that's scaling really well right now, and you want to promote it on a performance basis, um, you go try to negotiate a payout with Clark good luck.

Clark (35:20):

That's why I said I didn't want to come across as a meat guy. Cause I always like top when Jay and I are in the same room, he gets to be bad cop. Oh, there you go.

Zach (35:28):

Alright. I love you, man. Well, thank you so much, Clark. I really appreciate it.

Clark (35:32):

It's been fun.

Speaker 5 (35:37):

Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the rich ed or ed podcasts. If you're like me and listen to podcasts on the go, go ahead and subscribe on apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and rich dad, poor dad.com/podcast. And if you absolutely love the show, go ahead and leave a review and a comment share with a friend. If you do take a copy screenshot of it, email me zach@funneldash.com. Show me you left a review. I'll give you a free copy of the rich and poor ed book to learn more about the book. Go to rich ed for a.com to leave a review that a rich ed or at.com/review. Thanks again.


Host Resources Links

MORE EPISODES
MORE EPISODES

Here’s what people are saying!

About The Podcast

Jason Hornung is the founder and Creative Director at JH Media LLC, the world’s #1 direct response advertising agency focusing exclusively on the Facebook ads platform. Jason’s proprietary methods for ad creation, audience selection and scaling are responsible for producing $20 million + of profitable sales for his clients EVERY YEAR

Zach Johnson

Zach Johnson is Founder of FunnelDash, the Agency Growth and Finance Company, with their legendary Clients Like Clockwork solutions. Under Zach’s leadership, FunnelDash has grown to over 5,000+ agency customers managing over $1 Billion in ad spend across 41,000 ad accounts on. Zach’s private clients have included influencers such as Dr. Axe, Marie Forleo, Dan Kennedy, Dean Graziozi to name a few. Zach is also a noted keynote speaker and industry leader who’s now on a mission to partner with agencies to fund $1 Billion in ad spend over the next 5 years.

Dylan Carpenter

Dylan Carpenter

Dylan Carpenter will be diving into what he and his team are seeing in 200+ accounts on Google and Facebook when it comes to trends, new offerings, and new opportunities. With over $10 million in Facebook/Instagram ad spend, Dylan Carpenter had the pleasure to work with Fortune 500 companies, high investment start-ups, non-profits, and local businesses advertising everything from local services to physical and digital products. Having worked at Facebook as an Account Manager and now with 5+ years of additional Facebook Advertising under my belt, I’ve worked alongside 60+ agencies and over 500+ businesses. I work with a team of Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn experts to continue to help companies and small businesses leverage the power of digital marketing.

Subscribe now and sharpen your advertising skills each week while building your swipe file of winning ads