Chapter 1: What is the background of Marc Smookler and his companies?
This is the Top Entrepreneurs Podcast, where founders share how they started their companies and got filthy rich or crash and burn. Each episode features revenue numbers, customer counts, and other insider information that creates business news headlines. We went from a couple hundred thousand dollars to 2.7 million.
I had no money when I started the company.
It was $160 million, which is the size of many IPOs. We're a bit strapped. We have like 22,000 customers. With over 5 million downloads in a very short amount of time, major outlets like Inc. are calling us the fastest growing business show on iTunes. I'm your host, Nathan Latka, and here's today's episode. Hello, everyone. My guest today is Mark Smokler.
He's founded six companies, two of which have been acquired and three of which are market leaders in their respective spaces. The leading brick and mortar retail analytics company, IdealSpot.com, a leading online retailer, SakeSocial.com, and a cutting edge marketing services platform, Written.com.
Mark's companies have generated over $300 million in lifetime revenues and sold over 150,000 products worldwide. Mark, are you ready to take us to the top? Yep, I hope so. All right, so you're doing so much. The challenge is I have to figure out one of these things to focus on. So let's do it this way. Which one's making the most money top line?
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Chapter 2: How did Marc achieve significant growth in his companies?
Ideal spot, sake social, or written?
Well, it's sake social. Oh, good. Yeah, Japanese sake online. So we're the largest online retailer of Japanese sake online. But no, I mean, ideal spot is the one that's rocking and rolling right now. And that's where I spend most of my time.
Okay, let's focus on that. But I'm curious now that I know it's sake. How much do you sell annually in Japanese sake online?
Well, a lot. I mean, on a daily basis. So we use Shopify on the front end. I'm a big fan of Shopify. And essentially every day we sell thousands of dollars worth of sake all across the United States. Now, there's some states that are obviously dry that we can't ship to. But again, I mean, we ship to most states and it's all outsourced. I have no employees.
Um, we have a third party, uh, warehouse in Napa Valley, um, that pick, pick packs and ships all of our brews and, uh, again, Shopify in the front end. And it's just, um, yeah, just a fully automated business. So it's really fun business.
That's great. So a couple thousand a month. So minimum 365 grand a year. Have you, I mean, do you do more than a million a year there?
We do not do a million, more than a million dollars a year.
So between 365 and a million, but no touch.
No touch. I mean, yeah. I mean, it's just a, you know, it was a hobby business that became something more and interesting. And again, it's not that I'm a, you know, a big drinker of sake. It's just, you know, an opportunity that I saw. And that's a sort of a long-winded story in and of itself. But again, I mean, you know, if I just had, you know, five of those, I'd be happy, right?
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Chapter 3: What is the business model of IdealSpot and how does it operate?
Clearbit moved to basically, it is like a buffet and you pay per scoop, you pay per API call essentially. And it's now it's obviously cents on the dollar, but I'm curious if you've plan to move to that kind of model?
You know, look, um, you know, I'm a huge fan of sort of letting the, the, the market guide us on a lot of these things. Um, and it's really what my customers were bare. Um, do they expect to purchase, you know, at a report base? And we're finding that people are, our client base is a little bit more, um, they're sort of They're more old school, if you want to call it, right?
So they're thinking of a report. I want a report. I want something tangible, right? And I want my report to share it to either get an SBA loan, or I want to give it to my broker, even if it's the broker trying to lease the space or the developer trying to get financing, whatever it might be. They need that report.
So chopping things up is sort of not something that I think will work today in our marketplace. But who knows?
Guys, I get asked all the time, Nathan, you host all these interviews, hundreds of them per month. How do you do them efficiently? And guys, the answer is simple. People always agree to my calendar, back-to-back meetings. I batch my interviews to stay very efficient. And the way that I do it is I use a tool called Acuity Scheduling at nathanlatka.com forward slash schedule.
And the reason I use them is very simple. They keep my no show rate very low because they send out reminders about when the interview or the meeting is coming up. And also they make it very easy to schedule time, right? I don't have to go back and forth via email 10,000 times with people I'm trying to meet with. Okay, at nathanlatka.com forward slash schedule. Helps me so much.
And by the way, look, I like have so many meetings. I'm the best at meetings. Okay, I do them back to back. Very, very efficient. You guys know me. many people say I'm the most efficient they've ever seen. Okay. So I use the tool. It's so efficient. And by the way, I got Gavin. I said, Gavin, he's the CEO. I said, I want a great deal for my people.
He said, Nathan, well, most people get a 14 day trial. Isn't that great? I said, no, he's given us a 45 day free trial at Nathan Latka.com forward slash schedule. That's not going to stay up forever. So go get it now. Nathan Latka.com forward slash schedule. It only works, I mean, Clearbit works because they're not selling to the person that needs the report.
They're selling to the technical team that builds the integration that is constantly pinging the API. I mean, when I think about the use cases you just gave, I'd say, man, that's hard to build a SaaS business around that because these reports are one-time events. I mean, or do you have people that have to come back over and over and over and over week after week, month after month?
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Chapter 4: What data inputs does IdealSpot use to make recommendations?
Does that make sense?
It does. What do you got now? You obviously just launched, right? So you're still learning here. But what do you got today in terms of total customers?
So we have over 10,000 registered users on our platform and they have plotted over 500,000 locations already on our platform and we're adding about another thousand plus per month. And so we're, and that's inbound. And so we're having to basically turn off that funnel about a little bit after lunch, just because we don't want the wheels to fall off.
But as you can imagine, the real estate space and data, they're both combining to make a pretty large, fertile environment.
Mark, what's the customer number though? I know 10,000 sounds better users, but what's the customer number?
Um, how many people are paying per month? Correct. Um, we're closing in at about a hundred.
Okay. That's, I mean, that's pretty healthy on, on that amount of folks. And it's, I mean, it's not a cheap price point either. So, I mean, are you putting touch on these sales with your team size today?
Uh, we're just 10 people.
10. How many of them are sales?
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Chapter 5: How does IdealSpot determine demand for retail locations?
Um, we are spending about 15 grand total a month all in. Um, and that's spread between right now, remarketing, uh, Google, Bing, um, and a little bit of Twitter. So, I mean, what I would say is not that much. I mean, if you look back at my days at finality, I mean, we were spending, you know, a hundred grand a month.
Yeah. But Mark, it all comes back down to cat. So for that 15 grand, how many new customers will that drive?
Um, so again, uh, if we're, you know, bringing in at about a thousand, so yeah, we're about anywhere between 15 to $18 customer acquisition costs from a signup in terms of sale. Uh, I don't have the exact.
Well, how many, how many signups do you, well, you said you had 10,000 and then a hundred of them have converted to a paying customer. So you need about, you need about a hundred signups to get one new customer. So take 15 to 18 bucks times a thousand. You can basically back into it. Yeah. Interesting.
Well, I mean, look, it works because your price point, your price point, well, I don't know, this is, you're figuring it all out. This is a beautiful part about where you guys are right now as a business. Have you bootstrapped to this or have you raised?
No, we've raised, so we've raised to date two and a half million, um, and seed capital.
Who'd you raise from out of curiosity?
Yeah. So a mix of people. So we did ATX seed, um, was a big chunk here in Austin, Texas. Um, we also, uh, got some capital from Steve case, um, over there revolution. Um, capital factory in town here, put in some capital. We had some individuals that were previously customers. So, you know, some retail shops, some money from individuals at CBRE, Newmark, Rubknife, Frank, et cetera.
So we had a pretty good list of investors that are also potential channels, clients, et cetera.
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