SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
This Mom of 3 Does Clever Thing Each Morning, Has Made $76 Million with Jana Francis of Steals.com EP 244
20 Apr 2016
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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 the 100 bucks is Jose Avila. He is a 17-year-old that doesn't wanna go to college and he wants to start his own business.
Chapter 2: How did Jana Francis start Steals.com from her basement?
For your chance to win 100 bucks just like Jose every Monday morning, simply subscribe to this podcast on iTunes right now and then text the word Nathan to 33444 to prove that you did it. Coming up tomorrow morning, Top Tribe, you're gonna hear from Joe and I'll tell you what, Joe is a teacher and he is right about education and you're crazy if you disagree with him. Okay, top tribe.
Good morning to everyone this morning. I've got my warm coffee with me and I've got a guest that you're really going to love. Her name is Jaina Francis and she's the founder and president of the daily deals e-commerce site steals.com. Founded in 2008, she turned her idea into a multi-million dollar enterprise without any loans or investors.
She is an Entrepreneur of the Year finalist in Utah, a mom of three, and is known for using social media to create genuine relationships between her business and fans. Jaina, are you ready to take us to the top? I'm so ready. Let's do this. So first things first, tell us about Steals.com. What do people buy? How do you make money?
Okay, so we are a daily deal website and every single day at 8 a.m. Pacific time, we launch a new high quality brand on our website at the best price online for 24 hours. And it's one singular brand. So if you go to steals.com, you will only see one product that we're promoting that particular day. And we have four niche websites within the Steals.com family.
We started with BabySteals.com, which is our first one. We also have KidSteals. We have ScrapbookSteals. And we have SheSteals.com, which is all products for women, everything from footwear, jewelry, clothing, you name it.
I love it. And so you do a unique brand that you launch for each of those each day.
Yes, exactly. Four brands a day.
Four brands a day. So let's focus on she steals. Today's steal is, let's see, is it California women's spring shoes?
Yes.
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Chapter 3: What strategies does Steals.com use to generate revenue?
I mean, I've got, you know, a lot of employees and you name it, even the packaging. So now we've got a now source. a box that's going to fit the DJ California box.
Right. Wow.
And then we've got to factor in, um, in our, um, in our system. What's the weight of the, it's so complicated. It's like, what's the weight of the six and a half versus the 10.
Oh gosh. This is not something that I would want to be doing.
It is really, really, really complicated.
Let's go deeper on that, on that shoe again. Cause we've got some of the numbers, let's finish it out. So 12, 1199 sales, six 25 is what you paid a DJ. Uh, what else, what other costs are in there? The actual numbers.
So packaging.
Yep.
To ship to consumer, the shipping to consumer, which we do charge the consumer. But like I just mentioned, as you could tell, there is quite a bit of variance on what one size of that particular shoe will cost.
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Chapter 4: What is the importance of holding inventory for Steals.com?
Eight million. And what do you think you'll do in 2016?
We will do. It depends. Right now, my forecast shows us flat year to year. So we'll do another eight million this year. If I get an influx of capital from a really smart investor that believes in my business as much as I do.
How much are you looking to raise?
I would love to raise around two million dollars.
OK. And do you have lead investor leads? Do you already kind of know who you might go to?
I've spoken to most of the local investors in Utah, and I've never gone beyond the first pitch. And to be honest with you, this is very new. This has only been the last, I would say, two months that I've said, you know what? This is great. I'm eight years in.
You're crushing it.
Oh, thank you.
Why do you need the money? So in 2015, if you did $8 million in sales, going back to that about net margin of about 17%, that means you brought in somewhere around $1.5-ish million in bottom line kind of cash flow. Is that right?
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