SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
EP 554: Brandetize is Jack Canfields Internet Engine, Hits $4M 2015 Revenue with CEO Eric Berman
29 Jan 2017
Chapter 1: What was Eric Berman's journey leading up to Brandetize?
This is The Top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base. You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have. I'm now at $20,000 per top. Five and six million. He is hell-bent on global domination. We just broke our 100,000-unit soul mark.
And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. Okay, Top Tribe, this week's winner of $100 is Dustin Goodwin. He's in the HR industry, specifically in the software as a service space, looking to increase his revenue. So congratulations, Dustin.
Chapter 2: How did the stock market crash impact Eric's first company?
For your guys' chance to win $100 every Monday on the show to build your idea, simply subscribe to the podcast on iTunes now and then text the word NATHAN to 33444. Again, text the word NATHAN to 33444. Many people ask me what tool I used to sell my first company, Heyo. The answer is thetopinbox.com.
I used it to send emails, schedule emails to be sent out later, and set reminders inside my inbox so I would know when potential buyers were actually interested, and I easily remembered to follow up with ones that hadn't replied to me. You can try it for free at thetopinbox.com. Nathan Latke here. This is episode 554. Coming up tomorrow morning, you'll learn from Francisco Lorraine of Pseudo.ai.
They've raised $2.3 million at a $10.3 million post-money valuation to fix a very unique CRM space.
Chapter 3: What lessons did Eric learn from consulting after his first business failure?
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Top Tribe, good morning. Nathan Latka here. Our guest today is Eric Berman. And since graduating from UCSD, he's been a serial entrepreneur and business operator. He grew his first company to 400 employees and just missed out on going public. We'll talk about that.
He then consulted for many other businesses and is now the CEO and founder of Branditized, a full-service performance-based marketing agency that partners with esteemed thought leaders such as Brian Tracy, Jack Canfield, and many, many others. Eric, are you ready to take us to the top? Yeah, let's do it.
Chapter 4: How did Eric start working with Brian Tracy and other thought leaders?
Awesome. So tell us first, what happened with this company you grew that you just missed out taking public?
Well, funny enough, this is back in the late 90s, and we were going after the college market, and then the web started hitting. And we were actually the first, first of all Facebooks. We were the original Facebook. It was called collegeclub.com. We had grown to, gosh, yeah, about 400 employees, raised $75 million.
And this was at the time, back in the internet, before the first bubble, where venture capitalists, less about getting profitable. It was more about buying, getting as many eyeballs as possible.
Chapter 5: What unique business model does Brandetize employ?
So spend, spend, spend, get market share, get market share. And so we were doing that at a furious rate. And at one point we were the 40th biggest site in the web and really the number one pure college play website. offering all sorts of features to the college market. And early on, we realized the college market was the one to go after. Obviously, Zuckerberg knew that as well.
And years later, certainly did what we were trying to do the right way. A lot of it was, I think, just timing and missing the wave. So it was an interesting story that we worked our asses off to finally file to go public. Uh, we were taking our first vacation about five years.
Chapter 6: How does Brandetize measure success with its clients?
And then as we were on, uh, in plight of Carmen, Mexico, I remember this very well. We were watching the stock markets just crash before our very own eyes. What year was this? 99. This is 90. This is a 2000, April of 2000. So we were supposed to go out about July of 2000. And I was watching my CFO have a heart attack on the fly, flew home immediately.
And we had a $2 million bridge, actually, sorry, a $10 million bridge loan lined up two bridges to the IPO. And all the bankers, everybody basically closed the windows immediately after the crash.
Chapter 7: Who does Eric believe will be the next big name in motivational speaking?
And so they needed to hold off. And so... we were literally sitting there with our pants down and said, what the hell are we going to do? And so it was, it was a crazy, crazy time.
How much cash was in the bank when you guys were sitting on the beach in Playa del Carmen?
Uh, well, you know, we were burning about 2 million a month at that time with 400 employees. And, uh, you know, we only had enough run for maybe three, you know, two, three months with that, with that, that staff.
Yeah. So about 6 million in the bank, how much are you raised before that, before the bridge?
Well, in total, the lifespan was 75 million.
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Chapter 8: What advice does Eric have for aspiring entrepreneurs?
We just finished the Series C and yeah, we're getting some big players. It was we were like the little darlings of San Diego and it was really exciting. And we're supposed to be the ones acquiring all the companies in the college space. So it was a fun time, but it was a tough loss.
So this was like a just a spectacular failure. I love these stories. So 75 million bucks plus a market cap wiped out. Yep, yep. Crazy.
Exactly.
So you saw nothing from that except the salary you paid yourself, right?
Salary paid myself. You know, I tell people it's a lot harder to lose money that is real dollars in the bank account than a piece of paper that you never actually had. I mean, you never saw the dollar. So, you know, and I was in my 20s and it was, you know, coming from nothing to having a great ride. All you can do is focus on the positive and take the learnings from it.
I can't sit around and cry about it. I had way more experience than a lot of people my age, so I was pretty proud of that. You sort of just shake off the cobwebs, stand up and move on and go to the next project.
How old were you at that point?
I was 28, so I started at 21, so I was 28 when it came crashing down.
Wow, and how old are you now? 45. That thing crashes. What do you do in the years after that?
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