Speaker 1: Pushkin. Maybe just to start, can you just, like, off
Speaker 1: the top of your head, list a bunch of the
Speaker 1: businesses that you've started in your life. Oh? Okay, yes,
Speaker 1: that's a lot. I'm Jacob Goldstein and this is What's
Speaker 1: Your Problem, the show where we talk to entrepreneurs and
Speaker 1: engineers about the future they're going to build once they
Speaker 1: solve a few problems. My guest today is Ramon van Nir.
Speaker 1: He's been starting companies since he got kicked out of
Speaker 1: high school in the Netherlands more than twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: A lot of companies. A construction company, online pianta website,
Speaker 1: soap opera blog, a YouTube channel, festivals in Vegas? What else?
Speaker 1: What else? Oh? I did, an online travel company. And
Speaker 1: at the moment, Ramone runs an e commerce company that
Speaker 1: has sold tens of millions of dollars of ramps for
Speaker 1: docsins like ramps that let weener dogs get up and
Speaker 1: down off the couch. And as the owner of an
Speaker 1: online weener dog ramp business, Ramone has to figure out
Speaker 1: how to solve some really big global problems, you know,
Speaker 1: everything from jammed up supply chains to privacy fights between
Speaker 1: Facebook and Apple, and on top of that, even more interesting.
Speaker 1: Ramone is trying to solve these problems as a relatively
Speaker 1: small business in an era of giants. You know, there's
Speaker 1: this obsession right now with trillion dollar tech companies and
Speaker 1: ten billion dollar Decca Unicorn startups, but we do not
Speaker 1: hear much about this whole big ecosystem of thousands of
Speaker 1: small and midsize online businesses like the ones that Ramone
Speaker 1: has built. All these entrepreneurs who make stuff and sell
Speaker 1: stuff and solve problems and in many cases build multimillion
Speaker 1: dollar businesses. They build on top of the giant tech companies,
Speaker 1: and also once in a while they end up getting
Speaker 1: crushed by the giant tech companies. My conversation with Ramone
Speaker 1: started with his first big success, a blog about soap
Speaker 1: operas that he started back in twenty fifteen. At the time,
Speaker 1: he had never watched a soap opera, no Silicon Valley startup,
Speaker 1: was thinking, hey, let's build a block for soap operas.
Speaker 1: Everybody was laughing at me when I was, you know,
Speaker 1: saying like, yeah, I just started a blog about soaps.
Speaker 1: Don't want to made me make a two personal at
Speaker 1: that time actually was going through a really difficult time
Speaker 1: personally and I'm a single father, was me and my son.
Speaker 1: You know, when I started this, I was literally at
Speaker 1: that time paycheck to paycheck barely. I actually paycheck to
Speaker 1: the less paycheck, like I barely could make the rent
Speaker 1: when I started soap op. And actually I think that
Speaker 1: helped me motivate, like, shit, I need to soon. As
Speaker 1: I saw like okay, we have ten dollars a day
Speaker 1: with soap Opera the blog, I said, Okay, I need
Speaker 1: to make this work. I can. I can get this
Speaker 1: to one hundred dollar day if I just work my
Speaker 1: ass off. So I'm interested in the work you did
Speaker 1: on that soap opera blog, and in particular, I know
Speaker 1: you used all these tools and sort of tricks that
Speaker 1: people can use to build a business almost for free.
Speaker 1: So can you talk me through the story of how
Speaker 1: you did that. You started out basically on Facebook? Is
Speaker 1: that right? At that time Facebook was it was a
Speaker 1: different time for Facebook where more or less two fifteen sixteen, okay,
Speaker 1: where it was very fairly easy and cheap to build
Speaker 1: a huge fan page around any topic, right, And I've
Speaker 1: learned very quickly, like okay, instead of building a fan
Speaker 1: page about daytime TV shows or even soap operas. The
Speaker 1: best engagement you get if the fan pagees is targeted
Speaker 1: and niche as possible. And so I saw that building
Speaker 1: a fan page that just talks about days of our
Speaker 1: lives or just talks about the young arrest O soap
Speaker 1: because people don't care for these others. They just care
Speaker 1: for their soap. So you start these pages on Facebook.
Speaker 1: You figure out that building a page for one show
Speaker 1: is kind of the right way to do it. And
Speaker 1: then what do you do next? Yeah, as you can hear,
Speaker 1: I have an excellent English is now my first language.
Speaker 1: And I also am not really good at writing, and
Speaker 1: I don't watch the show, so I couldn't really write.
Speaker 1: So the idea was, okay, let's start a blog to
Speaker 1: write about what's going to happen tomorrow in the show.
Speaker 1: So I bought the domain first. I never buy a
Speaker 1: premium domain. I just bought whatever was available. What was
Speaker 1: it at that time of soap shows? Dot com? Dot com? Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: so now I have the website. Now I need the content. Um,
Speaker 1: I cannot write it, So let's find a writer. So
Speaker 1: there's these websites platforms out there. I use upwork dot Com.
Speaker 1: You can basically hire any type of freelancer that you
Speaker 1: can think of. I found a writer that started writing
Speaker 1: one article day, and then we shared that on our
Speaker 1: fan pages. And that's how we started to drive traffic
Speaker 1: slowly from Facebook back to our website. And how are
Speaker 1: you making money? UM? There's a service called Google ad
Speaker 1: Sense that's like everybody's seen the banners when you go
Speaker 1: to a website. Typically those banners are served by Google.
Speaker 1: And then the more traffic you get to your website,
Speaker 1: the more money you make. And it started with one
Speaker 1: dollars a day, and then five dollars a day, and
Speaker 1: then ten dollars, and then slowly, you know, and went up,
Speaker 1: keep going up. What did I get to? UM? Right
Speaker 1: before I sold the business, the company was doing or
Speaker 1: a website was doing around four hundred thousand dollars a
Speaker 1: month in revenue. And then so it's making all this
Speaker 1: money and then you sell it, right, Yeah, for a lot,
Speaker 1: it's public, right, the amount of the sales much? How
Speaker 1: much was? It? Was close to nine million dollars in cash.
Speaker 1: After the break, Ramone takes his millions and starts investing
Speaker 1: in new businesses, including that company that makes ramps for
Speaker 1: wiener dogs. And he comes up against a few gnarly
Speaker 1: global problems. Now let's get back to what's your problem.
Speaker 1: With the millions of dollars he got from selling a
Speaker 1: soap opera blog, Ramone invested in a few different companies.
Speaker 1: Some didn't work so well, but one that did was
Speaker 1: that company that sells ramps for wiener dogs, which apparently
Speaker 1: wiener dogs tend to have spine trouble and so they
Speaker 1: can actually hurt themselves by jumping down from the couch
Speaker 1: or whatever. This is a show about technology and business
Speaker 1: we're doing here, not a show about wiener dog physiology.
Speaker 1: But in any case, the key thing for us is
Speaker 1: in this instance, Ramon did not start the company from scratch.
Speaker 1: He bought an existing online wiener dog ramp company for
Speaker 1: around three hundred thousand dollars. The company was actually called
Speaker 1: Sausage doc Central at the beginning, so they were really
Speaker 1: leaning into the wiener dog market, exactly the weiner dog market.
Speaker 1: And but I love the idea because it really it
Speaker 1: solves an actual problem for a target audience. The wiener
Speaker 1: dog ramp does feel like the sort of e commerce
Speaker 1: version of a blog for one soap opera, right, It's
Speaker 1: like this very narrow thing that some universe of people
Speaker 1: care a lot about. Yes, and nobody was looking at
Speaker 1: it seemed like with soap propose. So I bought this
Speaker 1: business instead of starting it, and the previous owner build
Speaker 1: an amazing product, but they were not Internet marketers. So
Speaker 1: there was a lot of low hanging fruit that I
Speaker 1: saw that I can, Hey, I can just you know,
Speaker 1: improve conversions, or I can do X y Z to
Speaker 1: increase revenue. So it's kind of like a house that's
Speaker 1: like a nice house in a good neighborhood, but the
Speaker 1: paints peeling off and the roof needs a patch, and
Speaker 1: so you can get a deal on it and fix
Speaker 1: it up and make it worth a lot more. Yes,
Speaker 1: And that's funny, you say, because I used that same
Speaker 1: example all the time. Their website was very old, not pretty,
Speaker 1: the copy was not great, It was very difficult to navigate,
Speaker 1: it was very slow. So I thought, okay, we can
Speaker 1: just redesign it for fairly cheap, higher copywriter to make
Speaker 1: the copy and and make better pictures. That will for
Speaker 1: sure increase the conversion rate, Like more people will buy
Speaker 1: once they're on the website. And did you also change
Speaker 1: the sort of commerce kind of backbone of it, the
Speaker 1: way that actual commerce back end of the site work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we switched to Shopify. Shopify is you know, to
Speaker 1: you like, I'm sure it's like Google or whatever, but
Speaker 1: most people don't know what Shopify is, and yet it's
Speaker 1: this giant force on the internet. Right, just talk for
Speaker 1: a minute about Shopify. Yeah, Shopify, it's basically anyone can
Speaker 1: set up your own store and start selling products within
Speaker 1: a matter of hours. I think that is their mission, right,
Speaker 1: that my mom, without knowing anything to code, could basically,
Speaker 1: within a couple of hours, set up her own store
Speaker 1: and start selling whatever she wants to sell. And it's giant, right.
Speaker 1: What was there was some metrics I heard recently that
Speaker 1: there were more visits to Shopify sites than to Amazon
Speaker 1: over the last quarter or something like. It's like millions
Speaker 1: of businesses at this point, certainly billions of dollars in
Speaker 1: revenue flowing through the businesses. Yeah, Shopify is actually on
Speaker 1: a mission to really compete with Amazon. And that's why Shopify,
Speaker 1: right sort of shot, they're succeeding that thread, right, the
Speaker 1: thing we were talking about earlier of you know, everybody
Speaker 1: is so focused on the giant tech companies and for
Speaker 1: good reason. Right, clearly, they're extraordinarily large, powerful companies worth
Speaker 1: paying a lot of attention to. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: there is this other parallel thread that I feel like
Speaker 1: you are emblematic of, and in a way, Shopify is
Speaker 1: kind of emblematic of, right of all of the dog
Speaker 1: ramp and soap opera blog and custom pinata businesses growing
Speaker 1: alongside the giants. Yeah, and it's it's really um especially
Speaker 1: last year, and you know, maybe this is a good
Speaker 1: pivot into like the e commerce you know world in
Speaker 1: the last year. How much has changed it actually in
Speaker 1: the last twelve months? Yeah, tell me, Yeah, what has
Speaker 1: changed for most has unfortunately has changed for the worst
Speaker 1: for a lot of e commerce, including ourselves. So on
Speaker 1: one hand, the supply chain has dramastically changed and we're
Speaker 1: still in it. But because with covid, there was a
Speaker 1: huge backlog of containers coming from overseas to a point
Speaker 1: where there were over one hundred container ships stuck at
Speaker 1: sea waiting in front of Los Angeles Ports. So that's
Speaker 1: what does it mean to you? What does it mean
Speaker 1: to your business? So that means for me and a
Speaker 1: lot of companies is that we were not able to
Speaker 1: get inventory or if we ever got inventory huge delays.
Speaker 1: Instead of you know, waiting a month, it took three
Speaker 1: to four months. But most importantly, the prices of getting
Speaker 1: our products to our warehouse went up. Like for US
Speaker 1: ten x so we used to pay two thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred to get one container from Asia to the United States,
Speaker 1: we got quoted twenty nine thousands. Well that's just for
Speaker 1: shipping to be clear of containers of dog correct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And there's no I have to pay. It's like I
Speaker 1: have to choose between not being able to sell something
Speaker 1: or you know, just pay these fees. And that's just one.
Speaker 1: So just to be clear, this show is called What's
Speaker 1: Your Problem, and we're definitely into the what's your problem
Speaker 1: portion the interview. So what are you doing about the
Speaker 1: supply chain problem? Can you do anything about that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So we moved our manufacturing to Mexico. Oh interesting, interesting
Speaker 1: from Asia? It was in China before? Where was it before?
Speaker 1: We used China and Vietnam both countries. So okay, the
Speaker 1: supply chain problem, that's one big problem that you and
Speaker 1: like every other importer and exporter on the planet are
Speaker 1: dealing with, and like a lot of other companies, you're
Speaker 1: moving product to Mexico? What else? What else you got?
Speaker 1: What other problems are you working on? On the marketing side,
Speaker 1: we had Apple making updates to their operating system called
Speaker 1: to iOS fourteen updates, where it makes it more difficult
Speaker 1: for em or for online businesses to target um their
Speaker 1: potential audience. And just to be clear, like I remember
Speaker 1: that as as an iPhone user last year, there was
Speaker 1: some update and I was able to like opt out
Speaker 1: of being tracked so intensively by Facebook and other similar companies.
Speaker 1: It was like, not a huge deal to me, But
Speaker 1: we also know that that that iOS update from Apple,
Speaker 1: it wound up costing Facebook billions of dollars in lost
Speaker 1: ad revenue because they could no longer track users like
Speaker 1: me so so intensively. And then for you, it means
Speaker 1: it's suddenly harder for you to get someone who is whatever,
Speaker 1: who is a weener dog owner and is worried about
Speaker 1: their dog spine, you know, to target exactly the customer
Speaker 1: you want to target with your ants exactly what do
Speaker 1: you do about that problem? Yeah, And that's a tough
Speaker 1: problem and everybody, a lot of e commerce are trying
Speaker 1: to figure that out. We're looking at you know, Okay,
Speaker 1: what where else can we put our marketing dollars? Can
Speaker 1: we do YouTube? Can we do TikTok? Can we you know,
Speaker 1: we're all trying different things. Um, we we are allocating
Speaker 1: some of our ad budget to influencers. That's been working
Speaker 1: well for us. Okay, So like weener dog influencers. Is
Speaker 1: there like the weener dog Queen of Instagram or something
Speaker 1: who you're sponsoring? Now? Yeah, like funny like you have
Speaker 1: you have? You have no idea? How I have no idea?
Speaker 1: Dog have? How many instagrams about dogs are? Meaning like
Speaker 1: dog insram like an actual you know, the influencers you're
Speaker 1: sponsoring our dogs? Are you sponsoring? How many dogs are
Speaker 1: you sponsoring? Well, we have a lots. Well, we're working
Speaker 1: with four hundred influencers and the majority of them are
Speaker 1: actually not a person, but it's actually a dog and
Speaker 1: some of them have over a million followers and it's
Speaker 1: just an account of a specific dog, you know, Rudy
Speaker 1: the dog fluencer. Is there one dog fluencer that's like
Speaker 1: killing it for you that's gonna save your business? No,
Speaker 1: it's it's because it's always it's It does well in
Speaker 1: the beginning, but after a couple of times, right, Like
Speaker 1: their audience have seen our ads and then affects it
Speaker 1: hard down right, So that makes it hard. You always
Speaker 1: have to find new influencers and new you know. Um.
Speaker 1: Actually the big takeaway is pivoting actually away from ramps.
Speaker 1: The big problem with the ramps, it's like, okay, ramp,
Speaker 1: it's a one time product. Sometimes a person buys another
Speaker 1: one for the bed, but there is a ceiling. There's
Speaker 1: technically going to be a day where I sold all
Speaker 1: the all. You know, there's every Wiener dog will have
Speaker 1: a ramp in the house right there. The bull is finished, right,
Speaker 1: there's no more Wiener dogs that sell ramps too. You
Speaker 1: gotta close up shot. Yeah, and so we are still
Speaker 1: going to sell ramps, but it actually we six months
Speaker 1: ago we really started to pivot to dog food. So
Speaker 1: dog food, the lifetime value is a metric that is
Speaker 1: used often in e commerce. Is like, the lifetime value
Speaker 1: of a dog food customer is so much higher, meaning
Speaker 1: it's thousands of dollars. Right, it's a dog owner and
Speaker 1: presumably most people who have dogs, when their dog dies,
Speaker 1: they get another dog. Right, So if I buy dog
Speaker 1: food from you and I live for another forty years
Speaker 1: and worth tens of thousands of dollars in dog food
Speaker 1: sales to you exactly versus so the amount of work
Speaker 1: to acquire you as a customer is more or less
Speaker 1: the same if I'm selling a ramp or I'm selling food.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit more difficult in food because it's
Speaker 1: more like it's a little bit more tricky. But in essence,
Speaker 1: it's like the amount of work I need a product,
Speaker 1: I need a website, I need a warehouse, I need
Speaker 1: you know, customer servers, I need ads. All these things
Speaker 1: are the same if ourselves ramp or food. But if
Speaker 1: I do all this work and try and sell and
Speaker 1: focus more on food, the return on my time and
Speaker 1: return on investment is so much higher because you know
Speaker 1: you're going to keep coming back every two weeks or
Speaker 1: every month. Coming up next, the Lightning Round, including the
Speaker 1: biggest bet Ramona's ever made, and the one piece of
Speaker 1: advice you give to someone who wants to start a business.
Speaker 1: Let's get back to the show. We're gonna close with
Speaker 1: the Lightning Round. Okay, Lightning Round, don't think about it
Speaker 1: too much. I'm gonna try. Are you ready go? What's
Speaker 1: the biggest bet you've ever made biggest bet was an
Speaker 1: big EDM party in Holland. I set all my money
Speaker 1: into one party plus more and it was a total flop.
Speaker 1: I lost everything. What's your favorite app on your phone? Slack? Wow?
Speaker 1: What's a trait you cannot stand in? A coworker? A
Speaker 1: big ego? If you have a ten minute break? What
Speaker 1: do you do to relax? I M call my son? Um.
Speaker 1: I like that. You're giving me a little musical accompaniment
Speaker 1: for the lightning round vibe? Oh yeah, this is my
Speaker 1: dog just locally. What would you do if you couldn't
Speaker 1: do what you do? I would do something in music? Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh in music. What's a piece of advice you'd give
Speaker 1: somebody who wants to start a business to not overthink
Speaker 1: it and just start and improve along the way? That
Speaker 1: was Ramone van Nier. The company he runs is called
Speaker 1: Alpha Paul. Today's show was produced by Edith Russelo. It
Speaker 1: was edited by Kate Parkinson Morgan and Robert Smith, and
Speaker 1: it was engineered by Amanda Kwong. The music by Luis Gara.
Speaker 1: Our development team is Lee, Tom Mulad and Justine Lang.
Speaker 1: A huge team of people makes What's Your Problem Possible?
Speaker 1: That team includes but is not limited to Jacob Weisberg,
Speaker 1: Mia Lobel have their Fame, John Schnars, Kerrey Brodie, Carli mcgleory,
Speaker 1: Christina Sullivan, Jason Gambrell, Brant Hayes, Eric Sandler, Maggie Taylor,
Speaker 1: Morgan Ratner, Nicolemrano, Mary Beth Smith, Royston Deserve, Maya Kanig,
Speaker 1: Daniella Lakhan, Kazia Tan and David Clever. What's Your Problem
Speaker 1: is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. To
Speaker 1: find more Pushkin podcast listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or Where Effort. I'm Jacob Boldstein and I'll be back
Speaker 1: next week with another episode of What's Your Problem.