Matt Leavell, CEO of BuyLowWarehouse.com, earned $1 million in their first year and ranked in the Inc 5000 fastest growing companies in the USA in 2022.
This episode of the First Customers podcast is available on all major podcasting platforms including YouTube.
After decades of taking business risks and learning hard lessons along the way, Matt found success selling wholesale goods by the truck load. Armed with a strong sense of loyalty and determined to build trust within his community, he’s built a great company in an industry full of scammers.
Listen and learn as we uncover the strategies and tactics he used to grow from near bankruptcy to bringing in millions in revenue every year.
Mentions
- Matt on LinkedIn
- Matt’s website: BuyLowWarehouse.com
Topics Covered:
- Trust
- Loyalty
- Door to Door Sales
- Ebay Sales
- Selling Liquidation Merchandise by the item, pallet, and truckload
- Facebook Groups
- Niche Software
- Freight Brokering
Show Transcript
Paris Vega (00:00.936)
welcome to the first customers podcast today we’ve got matt lavelle the co of bile warehouse dot com a company that earned a million dollars in their first year of business and also ranked in the ink five thousand fastest growing companies in twenty twenty two matt welcome to the show
Matthew Leavell (00:18.140)
man i’m pleased to be here thanks for inviting me
Paris Vega (00:22.296)
yes sir so we’ve known each other for years used to work together many moons ago feels like a past lifetime ago um so and i know you’ve been involved with lots of businesses over the years before getting to bile warehouse but let’s start off with maybe getting a little bit of your perspective on getting how do you get those first customers for a business
Matthew Leavell (00:31.400)
for sure
Matthew Leavell (00:47.120)
yeah good question is always a there’s always a bunch of ideas right and it’s like what what can i do and you want to make sure that i want to make sure that whatever i do is sustainable you know one hit wonders don’t build a business when we were getting going at least in bilowarehouse we were in an industry where
Paris Vega (01:10.156)
m
Matthew Leavell (01:17.760)
you had to watch your back you had to protect yourself there were a bunch of scammers there still are we trying to do something about it but there’s a bunch of ammers i mean horror stories of people wiring somebody ten thousand dollars and then if they even got a truck load it would you know maybe it was a truck load of all melted chalk load or something and and you know they’ve been saving their money for their whole life to take this risk and somebody just screw them over and
Paris Vega (01:24.176)
yeah
Paris Vega (01:34.396)
man
Paris Vega (01:43.436)
in ten thousand dollars it would cost something
Matthew Leavell (01:46.300)
i mean yeah i mean truck in our business we sell truck loads and so it’s gonna a truck loads going to range i mean you could get one down to twenty five hundred bucks but i mean most which price is going to be eight to fourteen thousand dollars depending on what you’re looking at so when when we’re kind of getting going the biggest thing to me and what people don’t really know what i mean when i say this but i built my business on selling trust
Paris Vega (01:57.256)
still yeah
Matthew Leavell (02:15.860)
you know everybody thought we fell on truck loads but in reality all we were selling was trust and as people started to get to know us and started to understand that we actually did what we said we were going to do we weren’t afraid to kill a sale because if we learned that it wasn’t the right thing for the customer we weren’t afraid to tell them he like i really don’t think this is good for you i’d rather not do it i still have some people that remind me like you talked about
Paris Vega (02:21.836)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (02:45.320)
i am from you the first time i called you and then i knew i could trust right and thbuilt a foundation for a long term relationship with the customers that they know that you have their best interest in heart because if man if your customers make money they’re going to come back and and if you have repeat customers then you start to have a foundation to build a business on so i always joke when i say it but i’m very serious we built our business selling trust
Paris Vega (02:49.876)
there you go
Paris Vega (03:14.996)
awesome uh that lines up with a lot of what we’re hearing from different guests on the show seems like trust is a big part of everybody’s like all the successful businesses their sales process and the long term businesses that stay around so that makes a lot of sense all right
Matthew Leavell (03:32.920)
yeah i mean if well cut you off there but if if you’re new right what credentials do you have to stand on you know you may you have your past life and and the people in your past life may be a different industry or whatever they they may trust you they may know you but man if you’re trying to start something you’re in an industry and your new what are people looking at to say okay this is a risk that i’m willing to take like
Paris Vega (03:36.416)
now go ahead
Paris Vega (03:42.996)
right
Matthew Leavell (04:03.100)
in some situations where maybe you’re not you’re not requiring your customer to pay up front okay there’s a little bit more safety factor maybe you can to some payment methods where the customer does have recourse in our business manage it primarily wire transfer like and we’re talking big numbers you know ten thousand dollars sending you a wire they have to really believe that they’re going to get something back and and what they’re supposed to get back
Paris Vega (04:24.076)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (04:32.760)
scribe and so i think in a lot of scenarios even if you are giving the customer recourse through their payment method or whatever you got to you got to have some form of credentials that makes them say okay this is a good person to work with i’m making a bet because every time they buy someting here making a bet that they’re going to get as described so that they can take it and and follow through with it whatever they’re playin is okay i’m going to buy it for ex percentage i’m not going to turn around and reset
it for ex percentage to make why margin and and that’s their business model and they’re making a bet that you are a good partner to help them get there
Paris Vega (05:13.776)
yeah
Paris Vega (05:16.116)
now that makes sense um let’s pause on the current business and get a little perspective on how you learned that that’s the way to grow a business or that’s the way to get those sales so going back in your history a little bit um starting off where did you grow up did you have any childhood experiences doing sales or like dortdoor fund raisers selling doughnuts or anything like that
Matthew Leavell (05:22.900)
uh
Matthew Leavell (05:42.860)
man first of all dad gum at paris like i’ve worked so hard not to try to deviate from by low and now you get me in a conversation the question you ask me my personality i love to square you know when we could do this we could do that we could so it’s always like i’ve really tried to narrow my focus as i’ve gotten older but to question all right so i was born and raised in vicksburg mississippi i you know low
Paris Vega (05:52.696)
uh uh
Paris Vega (06:00.136)
yeah
Paris Vega (06:05.856)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (06:12.700)
the outdoors i was in boy scouts growing up so you know what we did with boy scouts with sell popcorn and oh man i sold the heck out of it i would get on my bike and i would go door to door man and i’d i’d knock out our neighborhood i’d remember what houses people actually entered the door so if they were like peeking in the windows and ignoring my knob i was coming back i was like just one hit onder i was they were
Paris Vega (06:42.176)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (06:42.720)
here from me um and i go the neighborhood and do the same thing and i don’t remember exactly where i ranked in the state of mississippi but i was way up there in popcorn sales m i don’t know if that contributes to anything today but kind of where i’m naturally wild so started there went to misssippi state graduated from missippi state it’s going to be a orthodonist was the goal while i was in college i started fishing bass tournaments
Paris Vega (06:44.476)
assistance
Paris Vega (06:56.456)
for sure
Paris Vega (07:07.516)
okay
Matthew Leavell (07:12.700)
and i always loved to fish and i was always competitive so that was a perfect blend and really got into it started traveling with b a s s all around the country fiscient and o and because i was a brilliant college student decided that i didn’t want to be a orthadonist or a dentist because how could i fish these tournaments and travel all over if i had a dentistry practice to take care of yeh man your history
Paris Vega (07:23.356)
wow
Paris Vega (07:41.176)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (07:43.160)
maybe i wasn’t as smart as i thought i was and then you kind of overlay that on to me today and i’m like all right what decisions am i making today i’m gonna look at twenty years from now and be like well it was um but you know decided that i want to fish but i also was introduced to business so the first business i got introduced to i was in college and growing up like my friend’s dad’s den businesses or anything like that so
Paris Vega (07:45.596)
uh uh
Paris Vega (07:52.536)
yeah right right
Matthew Leavell (08:12.740)
never really exposed to entrepreneur entreprenerialism i think i was naturally wired that way but i never really had a role model or example so in college i someone asked me a buddy of mine i played socker with was like hey man i got a guy coming to my house tonight going to talk about this business you’re interested sure man i’ll be there m showed up and it was what is now they’ve changed their name back to a way
Paris Vega (08:21.936)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (08:42.680)
was amy went to quick star may so when i was involved those quick star and man that was my first like whether people have had positive or negative experiences or any experience at all what what that meant for me is it was the first time i got mentors um from a business point of view so i was introduced to book i mean hacking behind me i got all sorts of books and my wife
Paris Vega (08:44.036)
oh yeah
Paris Vega (08:53.876)
yeah
Paris Vega (09:01.236)
okay
Paris Vega (09:09.756)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (09:12.700)
is the one who color coordinated in i’m not that creative just but but you know i got book shelves over here there over there and i’ve read most of them but that was my first introduction like to hey you can read books to improve m various ways whether it be you know just you maybe not personally but how you interact with people how you invest or business just whatever and that was really
Paris Vega (09:31.156)
m
Matthew Leavell (09:42.740)
opening to me i remember i would sit in the front row of my chemistry class the teacher walking right up there talking i’d just been reading a book completely ignoring him like it was so rude i looked back and i’m like man they trying to hit me but it was it was a new you new horizon for me so
Paris Vega (09:55.856)
yeah
Paris Vega (10:03.136)
what was one of the first books you think you you read that was like handed down from the mentors
Matthew Leavell (10:08.040)
the magic thinking big by words i think it is where is it my god where are you yea i think it’s over there it’s well dan gomme i can’t believe i can’t grab it because i definitely have um anyway so the magic king you know and then how to get rich by j paul geddy actually i think that was the first one how to get rich by j paul geddy i still have that book to um anyway so
Paris Vega (10:10.076)
there we go
Paris Vega (10:13.256)
okay i’ll add at the show notes
Paris Vega (10:26.416)
the magic looking big
Matthew Leavell (10:38.780)
so i started reading these and and it just shaped me as you can image and it gave me a platform to practice some of the skills um to try to improve and so for me i built a decent little organization i was driving all over the southeast um and thank goodness at that you know at that point i’m sure my parents were helping me with you know gas expense and stuff i’m sure they were thoroughly upset
Paris Vega (10:42.776)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (11:09.360)
but you know they gave me the freedom to do that and so went from from that too then starting our that that’s my puppy dog biskit he comes to work with me every day but but i moved to uh i graduated and i moved to tuskluse alabama and started a marketing company this was like right when
Matthew Leavell (11:38.480)
the digital sign age industry was fled fledgeling industry like we me and my business partner like came up with the idea and started pursuing it and then all of a sudden realized there was like this micro industry that we were part of and didn’t even realize it and so our idea was simple it was we basically said hey there’s waiting rooms around the city um that we could go strike a deal with the owner of that waiting room
Paris Vega (11:56.756)
m
Matthew Leavell (12:07.900)
we could put a television screen and hook a dvid player to it and then we could sell thirty second advertising loops on those screens and so throughout tuskalusa we built a network of about twenty or thirty waiting rooms and sold advertising that you know then again it comes back to the trust the trust concept because now you started having these advertising customers right and they were looking at you as a platform to advertise on
but then the question would come hey matt you all design any marketing collateral do you do anything online do you can you help us with any of this and and so you know being young it was like sure where we’re young were atrprnrwe know t all right yeah we’ll help you um i said we expanded that’s how you and i of course got connected and we started on some online stuff and and really doing some
Paris Vega (12:46.216)
yeah
Paris Vega (12:54.696)
yah
Paris Vega (12:57.076)
right
Paris Vega (13:04.156)
yep
Matthew Leavell (13:07.860)
innovative stuff there i just don’t think i mean looking back i think a lot of the the failure of that company was was on me you know i don’t think i was a great leader i wasn’t mature enough i didn’t really understand enough
Paris Vega (13:22.536)
i think we were actually early on some stuff because we were trying to do social media marketing before everybody was even comfortable with that way back
Matthew Leavell (13:29.040)
absolutely we were building custom business facebook pages when for like local companies when the only other companies who had that was like coca cola but yeah we were early but i also think where i messed up as i wasn’t targeting big enough customers like i should have been knocked the doors of coca cola or s people and i don’t know if it was yeah
Paris Vega (13:40.016)
yeah it was it was way early
Paris Vega (13:48.896)
yeah
Paris Vega (13:51.756)
right
Paris Vega (13:55.496)
they were still kind of local
Matthew Leavell (13:58.460)
was focusing locally i think it was probably some of just a self limiting belief like who am i to have something to offer to coca cola which in reality looking back we had a lot and had we just or had i understood that because i guess what the audience doesn’t know is yet we kind of started the company but i was acting as the main sales person and so early up to me on who are we going for and going after it
Paris Vega (14:04.896)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (14:28.940)
you know i just i was a little young and naive the i don’t understand the value so i guess to pull a business principle out of that is if you’re young and you’re starting out you need to understand the value proposition that you have to offer and do research to understand who your your competitors are what kind of value proposition are they offering you are they offering the customers how do you compare um because man you might have like
Paris Vega (14:45.636)
right
Matthew Leavell (14:58.400)
something really special and just a self limiting belief not realize it
Paris Vega (15:00.176)
yeah
Paris Vega (15:03.336)
right because that was at least twelve years ago i think now or more
Matthew Leavell (15:07.620)
yeah yeah i’ll tell you another lesson i learned out of that company this this is kind of one of the lessons that i think eventually killed the company was well there were two things but one was um we me and my business partner like our pay role was based on our ownership percentage that’s the most horrible idea in the world because my partner
Paris Vega (15:32.536)
instead of what your operational role was yea
Matthew Leavell (15:35.500)
exactly like it’s well to get paid if if you’re going to take a distribution based upon ownership that’s fine but your pay rate needs to be based on your operational role and and so what we did by doing that is my my business partner was sixty six percent i was thirty three and so he was always getting paid double but it wasn’t putting that work and now you know if i listen to this i’m not speaking negatively about him please like
Paris Vega (15:45.496)
right yeah
Paris Vega (16:01.556)
m
Matthew Leavell (16:05.140)
don’t let anybody we were both young we were both naive in that regard and we’ve talked about it since then i mean we we just made some mistakes man and so no one’s at fault but what happened is we drain the company of all the money so it had no operating capital to grow with so if you’re young and you’re starting to have some success you gotta you got to realize leave as much of that money in the company as you can because your fuel that that’s what powers your rocket like you
Paris Vega (16:05.636)
yeah yeah
Paris Vega (16:14.696)
yeah
Paris Vega (16:22.976)
you
Paris Vega (16:30.976)
right
Matthew Leavell (16:35.060)
might be growing good now take what it’s costing you to grow well right now and multiply that by three and that’s how you got to that’s what you need to figure out like what kind of cash you need to have in your company to continue that growth right
Paris Vega (16:50.276)
yeah and how did you guys get the first screen advertising clients
Matthew Leavell (16:57.240)
man smile and not smiling tiling smiling and knocking um w one flat screen in one business i sat there one day and counted the number of customers um and then after i did that i kind of got smart and realized well on i just go ask the reception s how many appointments that so in truth be told i think part of it was there
Paris Vega (17:02.276)
just go into the businesses and talking to him
Matthew Leavell (17:25.800)
cute girls who worked there um but either way i got the data i needed and once we knew about what the monthly flow of customers were um i just started going to local customer local companies around that business so we’re on the south side of tusklsotuslus is not that big at all but it kind of if you’re if you live on the south side you’re going to do the majority your business on the south side or buying i guess
Paris Vega (17:28.656)
just coping out the landscape
Matthew Leavell (17:56.240)
and so when i would go into those other you know i go into the local mexican restaurant i went into the local dentist i went to the local kyropractor and really what i tried to do to answer your question is i i thought about okay who else from a proximity standpoint could stand to benefit to get their business on in front of these people that were sitting waiting nothing else to do and try to create some sort of loose pers
nal connection like you think about it like dentist started din a dozen why do you choose your dentist it’s either a recommendation or you just saw an ad and okay i’ll do it you went they were nice they made you smile your teeth were shining when you left you go back so it’s like what really drove that and and so really all we were doing were saying hey we can we got people literally a quarter of a mile down the street sitting having nothing
Paris Vega (18:31.556)
hm
Paris Vega (18:36.936)
yeah
Paris Vega (18:42.696)
right
Matthew Leavell (18:56.880)
and i can put you in front of them and
Paris Vega (19:00.036)
that was still a time where everybody didn’t have a cell phone like yet the cell phones what came out the type we have now the smart phones was two thousand seven but you guys were right around there to where they weren’t everywhere yet
Matthew Leavell (19:05.980)
no
Matthew Leavell (19:10.320)
we were we’re talking two thousand five two thousand six yeah um and so m that’s really what we did now with that we ended up growing that network to more businesses and and so then another lesson i learned i don’t know why i’m on the lesson train right now yeah another lesson i learned in that scenario is m
Paris Vega (19:16.016)
yeah
Paris Vega (19:33.016)
hey that’s what it’s about
Matthew Leavell (19:41.020)
and this has served me well even into my today business is just because someone tells you if you had x i would buy it doesn’t mean that when you have x they will buy it
Paris Vega (19:53.056)
m
Matthew Leavell (19:54.180)
like everybody loves to say they’re going to buy everything in the world until they actually have the opportunity to buy it and then they get cold feet and they don’t do it so why did i say that right so i i grew this network we ended up having i don’t know twenty thirty screens around tuscalusa and and you know there were people i go and visit they’re like man if i could just be on every screen for like three hundred and fifty bucks a month i do it and i’m like well i mean we’re at six hundred
i don’t know well finally i heard that enough i said all right i got forty people out here saying they’ll do it i calculate some quick revenue i give them what they want so i went back to every one of those people and i was like hey got ya here you go and offered them the deal i probably picked up only four of the thirty or forty people and then so i learned most of them were full of crop and then the
Paris Vega (20:47.976)
wow
Matthew Leavell (20:54.060)
and then i learned that’s more just human nature it wasn’t them in particular it’s just most humans but then the problem is because it was now kind of known that we were cheaper my customers that were paying a higher rate we were in such a small geographic region i was scared for them to find out that they were paying double than someone else so out of my conscious i dropped their price it ended up costing my business revenue rather than growing the revenue
Paris Vega (20:57.856)
yeah
Paris Vega (21:15.756)
m
Paris Vega (21:21.216)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (21:24.000)
um so learned that lesson and the only other thing that really kind of got us to a point where we we where that business didn’t work out was we just we couldn’t deliver the deliverables for the time estimates we quoted we just blowing time lines and that simple math man it just eventually doesn’t work um all in the scenario of shedding
Paris Vega (21:24.196)
yeah
Paris Vega (21:42.356)
m
Paris Vega (21:47.676)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (21:53.980)
business down um i learned a lesson that actually saved by low warehouse which is current business and know just me personally i’m very loyal always have been it’s just i don’t know how it was to operate whether that’s loyalty to my i think that’s what was driving me dropping the price on my existing customers just being loyal to my network and i was that way
Paris Vega (22:00.736)
okay
Matthew Leavell (22:23.960)
our team that we had at that point or at least tried to be to the best of my ability and so we were on a sinking ship but i didn’t want to let anybody go and i mean part of that was just me personally wanting to avoid that conversation but i mean there were other owners of the company other people could have had those conversations but for whatever reason people were looking at me to do it m i didn’t want to do that
Paris Vega (22:37.356)
m
Matthew Leavell (22:53.920)
and so i just thought like like magically we were going to find a genie or something an they were goin to grant just three wishes and the business would be successful but that didn’t happen so what i learned is hey man that hard conversation that you didn’t want to have it actually happened anyway so wasn’t going to escape the hard conversation the only different is instead of because i wasn’t pro active about it when it actually happened like there were no other options and there was not another day
Paris Vega (23:12.196)
yeah
Paris Vega (23:15.496)
right
Matthew Leavell (23:23.880)
left like i couldn’t even say hey guys and i’ll leave their names out just for the but you know i remember delivering the news and they started crying and they’re like can we not do something i’m like no today’s last day like i we don’t have the money to do another two weeks like so i botched that man i didn’t all um but what what i did learn from that lesson is
Paris Vega (23:28.816)
yeah yeah
Paris Vega (23:43.696)
wow yeah
Matthew Leavell (23:54.040)
m you know and well we can talk about if we want to be balowarehouse you know in our journey yeah we were on the five thousand that’s great but in the middle of of growing it we we had to completely scrap and shift business models and in that process literally we were so close to to going bankrupt and you know whether we actually failed or not i again the loyalty
Paris Vega (24:09.876)
really
Matthew Leavell (24:23.920)
and i would have i probably never would have failed i’ve probably would have just gone and gotten another job and paid on the debt for another fifteen years but um but most definitely it was there i mean i i don’t know what we’re in twenty twenty three so probably twenty twenty the christmas of twenty nineteen or the christmas of twenty twenty um you know it was like things
Paris Vega (24:33.316)
yeah
Paris Vega (24:49.916)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (24:53.840)
we’re going great up until about october and then all a sudden i was like where’s all my cash i had no cash in the business our sales were good had a lot of product on the shelves but we had no cash and i started to dig into what was going on and essentially we were selling all our high priced in demand stuff and because we were ramping up fast it made it look like our sales were increasing but that’s only because we just we were processing more product like in a given
Paris Vega (24:59.576)
dang
Paris Vega (25:23.756)
m
Matthew Leavell (25:24.000)
last month we made a processed half a million dollars of product this month we processed seven hundred thousand next month we processed nine hundred thousand so because we were growing in what we were processing there was more of the in demand items on the shelves to sell so it made our sales look like they were increasing in reality and so we thought hey we have a thriving business and we were making purcpurchasing decisions off of that hiring decisions all that in reality what was happening is yeah we were we were selling i mean those numbers weren’t alive
Paris Vega (25:40.916)
okay
Matthew Leavell (25:54.200)
but what was hidden was there was about out of all the high priced stuff that was in demand that was on the shelf there was a lot of lower price stuff that people just didn’t really want that we were eventually going to have to discount to the point where we were taking a loss so we were looking at the profitability of the company but all this stuff that we were eventually going to take a loss on that was like a deferred loss and it wasn’t balancing out the profit does that make sense
Paris Vega (26:18.876)
okay a little bit maybe this would be a good time to back up and tell kind of a little bit about what bile warehouse is and how that business model works
Matthew Leavell (26:28.620)
well in short we it almost created our company i mean i did that business model i still remember like telling my wife man we can’t buy christmas tree this year i mean christmas seventy bucks and i was like we can’t do it and i mean i’m i am not ashamed to say i mean i had to do an employment for a while had to all coincide with carntoours right
Paris Vega (26:29.916)
how that got started yeah
Paris Vega (26:34.056)
right
Paris Vega (26:41.436)
yeah
Paris Vega (26:54.736)
wow
Paris Vega (26:57.656)
yeah yeah
Matthew Leavell (26:58.640)
none of it really helped but had to do that for a while i remember sitting in the living room kind of curled up in a ball just crying like what happened i mean that’s all like paratime shift in two months and so the lesson learned is the only reason i didn’t hit bankruptcy in this is because when i first got the bad news there were a few people that i was if about on our team and the day i got the news i remembered the market
Paris Vega (27:07.476)
dan
Paris Vega (27:10.596)
yeah wow
Paris Vega (27:24.876)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (27:28.500)
and where i didn’t let people go fast enough i called people into the office and let them go that day um i didn’t know what was wrong but i knew something was wrong and so sorry i’m kind of ramp but trying to bring that
Paris Vega (27:31.176)
right
Paris Vega (27:40.796)
yeah now that’s good that’s a good way to yeah that’s good to tie it together um and so was it a matter of like just misunderstanding or miscalculating on the accounting side and having like an account or somebody go deep with you and explain the dynamics of that or was it you having to go deep and understand it
Matthew Leavell (27:46.160)
um
Matthew Leavell (27:58.960)
and i was told when i got started because so to to explain a little bit more about what we did you said there um you know bile warehouse um we we we started as a hundred percent sellin on bay so we’re in the liquidation industry um we would buy liquidation product customer returns and then
Paris Vega (28:07.176)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (28:28.640)
we would take those customer returns and we would basically take one by one take pictures assess whether they work whether they have all their park all that list of one bay sell em we were receiving eighteen wheelers full of product doing this we had a staff of probably i forget at this point but let’s let’s say fourteen product specialist which all they were doing all day was and posting product
Paris Vega (28:55.996)
so did you say how that started like did you have to just buy a truck and take pictures yourself and like
Matthew Leavell (29:03.500)
well so let me finish talking about financials and then i’ll get to that that’s actually pretty fun if anybody thinking about it the answer is yes your bathroom can be a photo station i’ll get to that but your wife won’t like it so so when i got started i had a guy who had been in the industry a long time so e told me he told me to watch out
Paris Vega (29:06.756)
okay okay okay
Paris Vega (29:11.776)
all right
Paris Vega (29:19.196)
all right
Matthew Leavell (29:33.380)
this but i didn’t understand what he was telling me like he didn’t explain it and he said yeah and i mean they had grown a massive company sold out to private equity i mean big deal and with bay also and he said look what what we eventually did is is if an item sat on our shelf for more than like sixty days i think at day sixty they basically booked their cost in that product they wrote it off in too
Paris Vega (29:44.776)
yeah yeah
Matthew Leavell (30:03.380)
it is a loss okay so what does that do to your to your financials you still got this product on your shelf but you basically just wrote it off as if you no longer have it and it was a complete loss no revenue to counteract that what they were doing and what he was trying to tell me to do with saying look if you’re growing your sales are going to be increasing you got to match those increasing sales with the product
eventually going to lose money on to balance out so you can make good decisions so your profit doesn’t show fifty thousand dollars this week you balance it out with a forty thousand dollar loss so now you’re at a ten thousand dollar profit now you’re making decisions off of only a ten thousand dollar profit versus a fifty thousand now they still had that item so once they sold it they book it as revenue they already they already had taken the cost the loss so then it was just pure revenue that hit their pen
but what it did is it balanced out their books for him and he told this and i really had no i didn’t understand what he was saying you know man if you’re talking to somebody experienced in an industry and you’re getting started you don’t understand what they say don’t be afraid to ask for clarity because gosh dang it that would have saved me so much heartache um so that that’s kind of yeah i was told
Paris Vega (31:08.076)
yeah
Paris Vega (31:15.176)
yeah
Paris Vega (31:21.096)
right
Paris Vega (31:25.676)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (31:33.360)
about it but know how do how did we get started with bile right i actually was in a business group with a guy and he actually had a store that they call him bend stores basically it’s yeah like a master mind it’s called visage it’s a international organization and we number seven um anyway so he was in the business and he
Paris Vega (31:34.836)
okay yeah that makes lot of sense
Paris Vega (31:50.076)
what do you mean by business group like a master mind or
Paris Vega (31:58.036)
okay heard of that
Matthew Leavell (32:03.400)
and what they call ben stores where it’s it’s a concept where you walk in and it’s just bins of random product and you just dig through and if you’re like if you’re there on their rock day where they’ve put new product in you’re paying like five dollars for anything whatever you grab it’s five bucks or you know some people might be seven bocks or nine bucks or whatever but it’s a flat price whatever grab is that price then the next day so let’s say it was five bucks the next day everything is four bucks the next day everything is three bucks
Paris Vega (32:14.256)
huh
Matthew Leavell (32:33.420)
next day to one gets fifty cents and then they re stock and it all goes back to five bucks and the cycle starts over well so he was in this business and had some stores doing really well the problem is is you can’t make your numbers like you can’t buy a truck load um and if if you’re paying on a percentage of retail value of that truck load you can’t take the four thousand dollar night vision scope and throw it in your bends and sell it for five bucks and make a prop
Paris Vega (32:40.316)
huh
Matthew Leavell (33:03.440)
on that truck so what do you do with that well what they were doing as they were running through bay but they were getting really tired of bay they didn’t want to do it and i was in property management at this time that’s what brought me to nashville and we we i was in property management it was our first acquisition of another property management company and it was my responsibility to move up here and integrate into the portfolio and man that was prob
on of the hardest things i ever did we made some dumb mistakes or dumb decisions and how we tried to do that and it just caused a bunch of stress and so i was at a point where i was like dude i need something different i cannot continue with this stress like it will not be healthy i’ll have a hard attack before forty and so i bought some of the high priced stuff from him and came home and was like
Paris Vega (33:53.556)
m
Matthew Leavell (34:03.320)
i wasn’t even thinking about a business man i came home and i told my wife her name is so anthea color sam i was like sam like what i got this like paper you know printer paper box of like i don’t know fifteen items or something and one was like a knock off go row and you know some other you know speak or what and she’s like that’s great what are you going to do with that stuff i’m like i don’t know but it was all five books so i figured why not buy it like
Paris Vega (34:21.976)
yeah
Paris Vega (34:32.196)
uh uh
Matthew Leavell (34:33.540)
i mean he but you’re you’re not going to do anything like her i said all right whatever i’ll just throw it on bay i’ll just sell it and so i hopped on be listed it sold it made like three hundred books well while i was there um they were telling me about a new program they were launching called small boxes or small so let’s call it small boxes and anyway it was where they would have a box of pride
Paris Vega (34:34.715)
yeah
Paris Vega (34:49.616)
dang
Matthew Leavell (35:03.640)
and there might be fifteen items in it and and i would get an excel manifest with the items the u p c and what the retail value was that was in the box and i said wait a minute see i can get the box i know it’s in it and you’ll give me that el manifest they said yeah well the minute they said that my wheel started turning because i’ve utilized remote team members before and so i was like dude if i get an excel sheet i can upload it to a google fold or somebody in
and india or wherever they are can log in at night get that build out the draft listings in the bay do all the research to put the information in the next day i can take pictures of the product and add it to the draft listing posted alive and there we go like it could be a side hustle i whipped out those processes probably in a couple of days and got it built out and went and bought some boxes and
Paris Vega (35:35.336)
yeah
Paris Vega (35:53.916)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (36:03.740)
sold them within a week and then went and bought more and dated it
Paris Vega (36:08.776)
do you get a guaranteed price so you know what the items are so you can know if your price is going to be profitable right because you can research the products before you buy it is that
Matthew Leavell (36:18.660)
yeah i mean all reality i was those those programs exist today and they can work if somebody is based out of their house or whatever but if you’re trying to build a business like the numbers just won’t work if you’re trying to do it in volume and we learned that lesson but it’s kind of funny because you know i started buying more and more and and so the next thing i knew i would still work
Paris Vega (36:19.496)
okay
Paris Vega (36:30.136)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (36:48.400)
in property management and i was very diligent to make sure that my side hustle never took time away from my employer like that just remember the whole loyalty thing that that’s not not right you know if he’s paying me to a job i need to do that job and when he’s paying me now in my bare time fair game i can do what i want to in my spare time um but it was getting to a point where i couldn’t come home and take pictures every night
Paris Vega (37:11.376)
right right
Matthew Leavell (37:18.840)
kids i just had a new born baby that was colic and oh my gosh if anybody ky baby i feel for you right now but don’t worry you’ll get past it so i did what any natural human being would do i asked our baby sitter hey i always i always trust you being in our house when i’m gone so how about you come in during the day and take pictures of product and i’ll pay you for that that he had just graduated from college he acts
Paris Vega (37:24.896)
m
Paris Vega (37:29.536)
yeah
Paris Vega (37:43.816)
nice
Matthew Leavell (37:48.380)
he was the nephew of a guy worked with at the property management company he is still with us in my right hand man today but he was like all right he was thing about going to p t school so next thing you know he’s coming into our house so we grew that to we had shelving set up you know we took over the grage we took over the play room and took over another room in the house and had shelving set up and probably had a hundred and fifty
thousand dollars worth o product an ain’t given time in the house we had seven people showing up every day taking pictures and and that’s where the the i learned photo station or bathroom sinks where you got the lighting right above you just got to put daylight bulbs in and you can create a photo station and so finally my wife said you guys do something different so we moved to a warehouse and started doing it there
Paris Vega (38:27.956)
m
Paris Vega (38:40.556)
m
Matthew Leavell (38:48.480)
but that’s how below got started man and then we went through what we went through almost you know almost shut the business down but honestly i mean with we saw the virus come in and didn’t want to be in a warehouse at that point but also thought and things aren’t going real hot so it’s probably not a bad idea to move out so we moved out of the warehouse and then
Paris Vega (39:01.296)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (39:18.580)
corona virus came along and really there was no one that was going to hire me anyway so then i just put down and said how do i figure out how to get customers because it was a new business to sell by the truck load i was buying by the truck load so i know where to get some of this stuff so how do i now sell by the truck load and so i decided to start some facebook groups and the fast forward to today those facebook groups each probably over two hundred and fifty thousand members there some of the largest
Paris Vega (39:24.036)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (39:48.360)
up in our industry um and that became a platform for truck load sales you know we would when we first started the groups nobody was in them but i told myself every day i’m going to make a post of truck loads available every day and pretty soon there was another member and then there was another member and then there was another member and then we eventually sold our first truck and
Paris Vega (40:00.756)
m
Matthew Leavell (40:18.640)
we sold our first truck one month this is probably seven months into working on it every day full time sold the first truck um next month we sold three trucks the month after that we sold like thirty six the month after
Paris Vega (40:35.036)
so now you’re selling to people who are wanting to kind of do a similar business of where you started
Matthew Leavell (40:37.480)
he
Matthew Leavell (40:40.340)
that’s it yeah yeah buying truck loads a lot of them sold by the pilot so they’d receive the truck load into the warehouse put a price tag on every pilot and sell by the pilot the people who would buy the pilot would sell on facebook market place sell on bay sell on grabe sales flea markets all sorts of stuff a lot of them may have been maman pop stores that have one to three discount liquidation stores a lot of them had
Paris Vega (40:41.716)
okay
Paris Vega (41:09.536)
hm
Matthew Leavell (41:10.200)
and stores like i was talking about before um some exporters i mean just all sorts of people
Paris Vega (41:17.916)
and what was the i may have got distracted because my dog ran in here a second ago but what was the switch and business model that you had to make specifically because before you were the one processing everything and selling it directly
Matthew Leavell (41:29.620)
selling everything on bay and m and you know we dabbled in selling by the palate we dabbled in selling as a percentage of retail by the piece out of our warehouse we dabbled in having a bin store in our warehouse um but but the shift in business model was just selling by truck load only
Paris Vega (41:31.716)
right
Paris Vega (41:44.336)
okay
Paris Vega (41:52.536)
oh okay
Matthew Leavell (41:54.500)
so any customers we had we no longer were selling to because none of them were buying a full truck and um and so that that was the shift a hundred percent truck loads
Paris Vega (42:00.156)
right
Paris Vega (42:07.376)
and so that’s still the focus is hundred percent truck load
Matthew Leavell (42:07.660)
yep
Matthew Leavell (42:10.860)
um well yes and no you’re you’re going to get me when is this going to air you’re going to get me doldingomotion that maybe
Paris Vega (42:20.496)
no you don’t have to give anything sensitive out of course
Matthew Leavell (42:23.180)
i’ll give you some good stuff so yes it is however we are expanding on the idea we have always had kind of a software development side like i told you i liked squirrel right i like to see objects and go after him so when we were in our warehouse we were selling on bay we had a software and we were paying that software company twelve hundred bucks a month to allow us to sel
Paris Vega (42:41.136)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (42:53.080)
omne channel which my channel means to sell on multiple market places at once and if the item sells on one it takes it off all the others so you don’t over sell your inventory um well i wasn’t really happy with number one paying him the money but number two all the research we had to do and i just was like man there is no way all this research like item description stock photography item specifics up c cut like all this junk has to be online somewhere
Matthew Leavell (43:24.060)
and so again i was into working with remote remote team members and so i was like you know what i got our lead developer from when we had the marketing company days and i said if i can just get him to like look at what someone like to hire someone on up work and just get him to help me hire someone and say yeah they know what they’re talking about
Matthew Leavell (43:54.120)
i can i can then manage that person to build just a simple tool so that we don’t have to do all this research and so i reached out to him and and he said you know what there’s a guy that is in tuscalusa super trustworthy he actually just left where he was worked and you know he wants to need to be at home with his wife i think he’d be perfect for it he’ll be a little bit more expensive but perfect he can do what you want
Matthew Leavell (44:24.340)
all right cool that’s fine so brought him on board he still worked with us today is his role is a little different but i works with us today um and we started building the software so we built a software out that integrates with ba amazon ship station shopify we started integrang with facebook we never fully completed what else does it integrates with it
Paris Vega (44:28.936)
he
Paris Vega (44:31.696)
awesome
Matthew Leavell (44:53.280)
banana maybe one or two others and so we built our own omni channel software you know we could get picked you know shipping pick list when item sold it managed the warehouse with where every item was stored at managed all our photo man i mean we were operating on our business through our own hunger and software now there was no beautiful i becaut we didn’t need that but we
Paris Vega (45:08.396)
wow
Paris Vega (45:14.836)
it’s awesome right right yeah
Matthew Leavell (45:23.020)
built it and and so i say that so yeah truck loads are the focus but we haven’t lost our software development so now we are in the final stages of building out an entire suite of management tools for selling in our industry there’s no other tool that we know that focuses on selling in our industry anywhere from full truck loads to palot
Paris Vega (45:44.376)
that’s awesome
Matthew Leavell (45:52.940)
box lot to individual items um and being able to manage the inventory being able to sink with the major market places being able to network with other sellers that utilized
Paris Vega (46:04.856)
when you say when you say sink with the market places you mean like integrate the product feeds and they automatically distribute to the store you’ve set up on whatever marketplace
Matthew Leavell (46:16.520)
it’s your website your websiteis just a sales channel so whether it’s your website bay amazon banana you know we haven’t integrated with makar but if we can we will you know so i mean some of these other other platforms um works with a lot of the marketing you know integrate your marketing with i mean as we yeah it’s it’s pretty advanced
Paris Vega (46:18.796)
yeah
Paris Vega (46:23.476)
that’s awesome
Paris Vega (46:39.816)
awesome
Matthew Leavell (46:46.060)
i did some math figured it would cost me now so much money and we’re well way past that um never realized that software development cost this month m oh my gosh it’s no joke but we are we’re at the now we have a team of developers probably i think it’s probably seven eight people now
Paris Vega (47:00.116)
oh man yeah it can be infinite
Matthew Leavell (47:15.340)
and it’s it’s its own little business within our business but we’re about to launch our our initial i’d call it b p but it is so far past n b p it’s not even like we read the b p book and said yeah we’re going to go the complete opposite direction let’s just build everything it was probably the dumbest thing in the world anybody listening to this who’s in says knows that that’s probably dumb but you know read
Paris Vega (47:40.396)
it seems like your other business is feeling it though right like you’re not having to depend on the software for the revenue
Matthew Leavell (47:46.980)
that’s exactly right what where building whether anybody else decides to use it or not we’re going to use it and it’s going to give us efficiency it’s going to help us sell more it’s going o help us network with other sellers and it really competitors they re competitors but we still work together right and it’s going to help us network with them to where everybody can benefit and sell more um so whether other people want to use it
not as a paid subscription or however we decide to charge for it i really don’t care because we’re paying for it with cash we’re not having to we don’t have an investor we haven’t had to take money out and we’re gonna be able to use it for us so that that’s going to diversify our business quite a bit and really separate us i mean that’s we have a lot of eggs in our basket in that basket and then
Paris Vega (48:33.536)
awesome
Paris Vega (48:43.236)
yeah and is this something that the truck load customers would use as well so you can up sell them to the software
Matthew Leavell (48:50.340)
absolutely so one of the challenges in our industry is like if you’re a buyer from the buyer side is finding the inventory you need and how do you find it and i mean currently one of the main ways is you’ll go to our facebook groups and you start scrawling through the post and okay i found it and it’s eleven thousand dollars scroll a little bit further and all sun you find the same thing for ten thousand scroll a little
Paris Vega (48:51.116)
cool
Matthew Leavell (49:20.180)
further you find the same thing for fourteen thousand and it’s like and it’s like all right there’s no curation here um so yeah we one of our value props to the buyer side is to be able to not only help them find that in a search able data base um but to like let them know when it’s uploaded so um if i say i’m looking for apparel well if
Paris Vega (49:22.236)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (49:50.080)
just in my user profile say i’m looking for apparel in this part of the country then when apparel in that part of the country is uploaded to the system i get a notification
Paris Vega (49:59.056)
m
Matthew Leavell (50:00.820)
so yeah that’s one small piece of what we’re trying together but the power behind that could be huge especially in our industry um so we’re looking at doing that we are i’ve kind of been anti warehouse since we’ve moved out of a warehouse but i’ve got a lease on my computer right now for another warehouse we’re fin i mean we’ve just grown to the point that we got to have one we’re doing
Paris Vega (50:03.996)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (50:30.680)
tremendous business without it but there’s certain deals we just can’t get into like if want to negotiate a deal for a fifty truck load package or a hundred truck load package um which we’ve done plenty of that as we are but we always get to the point when we’re down to the like the last twenty and it’s like all right who are we going to move these twenty to because if we don’t we don’t have omewhere to ship it or we’re pulling favors with our network he can i ship five trucks to your facility blah blah blah
Paris Vega (50:35.016)
got you
Matthew Leavell (51:01.400)
um and we’re just at the point that we’re bigger than that at this point m so yeah so we’re we’re the business model will there expand a little bit more so we’re really at an inflection point
Paris Vega (51:06.436)
yeah
Paris Vega (51:17.936)
that’s really cool so when you expect that customer facing or like public facing software to launch
Matthew Leavell (51:25.100)
you’re asking the questions that i you’re asking today honestly i gave up on forecasting launch date a year ago because we just never hit him now what what we have done here recently is you know we’re fighting fighting going into gera and and actually managing agile development you know in
Paris Vega (51:28.736)
okay
Paris Vega (51:35.016)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (51:54.460)
print form at and i mean we’re doing sprints but they weren’t really sprints like they weren’t real well document and we now have just fully gone into it i mean or were fully operate out of this off where we very clearly are defining scope for every little every little piece of and overall sprint we’re tracking know as things are getting done are we meeting the sprint deadline because we just finally got to a point that
Paris Vega (52:08.416)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (52:24.500)
i finally just told the deb deb team i said look guys i really don’t care if you sand bag like crazy and just like like just set a goal to finish this one thing and get it done in an hour i don’t care if you send back that back that bad and we call it a two weeks print i just need to get us to where we are accomplishing what we set out that we’re going to do like we say we’re going to do something we got to accomplish it and then we can wrapchited up from there but we just got to get a system
Paris Vega (52:46.776)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (52:54.440)
in place that holds us accountable and so we were on i think our third sprint since we’ve gotten into that model and you know the first sprint they didn’t sand bag even though i thought they should they did and we missed it by like ten percent the second sprint we comatall except for a little bit of left over q a this third sprint we’re on track to complete it all there’s only a little bit of question
Paris Vega (53:14.676)
not bad
Matthew Leavell (53:24.480)
some of the carry over q that we got to complete so i mean it’s it’s learning how to get those processes in place and software deb is just so hard because it’s so much different than just a normal or our normal business it completely different skill set pletely different management structure um i mean it’s just is crazy and then once we finally launch it we’ll start getting customer feedback loops and that’s probably on throw
Paris Vega (53:43.536)
sure
Matthew Leavell (53:54.480)
it’s all off again and we’ll have to reach set you know i mean it’s part of business it’s learned and if you don’t get outside the box you’re never going to grow
Paris Vega (53:57.376)
yeah
Paris Vega (54:03.556)
right um when you switched business models to the truck load only how did you get those first truck load customers
Matthew Leavell (54:14.680)
man it was really just consistency um until i found somebody dolitable enough to trust me that then with in reality it was the consistency of posting in our facebook groups and be
Paris Vega (54:30.236)
so you’ve already had the facebook groups at that point when you switch business models okay
Matthew Leavell (54:33.440)
yeah yeah and being pro acted well i mean realized when i started i knew i need to switch business models probably three months before i did it for months so i started the facebook groups and started posting every day probably three months before like i would because i knew what we were doing was not going to continue not in its current form and so i knew i had to do something else and
Matthew Leavell (55:03.920)
i didn’t know anything else to do but hey i’m just going to start a consistent habit and m and hopefully it pays off and it did so now it’s more consistency and i think once our groups had enough members people all that you know now i don’t think this this method works at least not in our industry today i don’t think it works maybe i’m wrong but there’s a lot of people who have tried to duplicate it
Paris Vega (55:08.736)
yeah
Paris Vega (55:12.916)
huh
Matthew Leavell (55:34.000)
but it hasn’t really worked out as well for them as it did for us the groups just haven’t exploded like ours did i do think there’s some specific reasons for that but i also just think we timed it really well and wasn’t on purpose it just was happens thence which keeps swinging the bat and eventually you’re goin to get lucky and hit m
Paris Vega (55:47.656)
yeah
Paris Vega (55:54.216)
yeah so you built out a good community there in the facebook groups have you expanded that community into any other platforms
Matthew Leavell (56:02.480)
so we haven’t that’s actually a area so one of the places that i think we are lacking as just an overall team m is getting a a head of marketing um and and having somebody who who can oversee just the marketing across the board whether it be software m on social for our truck loads pallets whatever it is and
Paris Vega (56:04.076)
okay
Paris Vega (56:23.256)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (56:32.580)
they don’t have to do all the work but they do need to have a vision and they have to manage the team and that team could be a team of remote team members i don’t care who it is we just need somebody to have the oversight and we just haven’t found that right person yet i mean part of the issue as we’re investing so much in the software that it’s not like we just have just crazy money sitting to the side though well let’s just hire this person but started looking started putting feelers
Paris Vega (56:41.116)
yeah right
Paris Vega (56:50.936)
right
Paris Vega (56:58.376)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (57:02.740)
um but that’s where i think one of our next inflection points will come from i think our software one i think when we open the warehouse that’s another i think when we actually get the right person in marketing that’s going to be a big big boost for us a really big we have not expanded i mean and that’s a that’s a concern i mean we’ve started we started an effort towards o um and we did we started that probably
Paris Vega (57:18.956)
yeah
Paris Vega (57:28.456)
okay
Matthew Leavell (57:32.540)
six months ago eight months ago we got a long way to go there i mean we and we know our websites a hundred percent of c s s h t m l so um you know we don’t we don’t have the ability to go download the yeast plug in for so you know we gotta we got to build all that ability into our website ourselves we didn’t have a c m s we had to implement strappy um we didn’t you know so i mean there’s
Paris Vega (57:37.476)
right
Paris Vega (57:46.156)
m
Matthew Leavell (58:02.300)
a lot of build out that honestly had i understood that when i made the decision to go that route i probably would have gone the other route but um but it’s just taken some time to get our co where we need it and to where we can build upon it now i think we have a great structure moving forward is a hundred percent adaptable to whatever we want to integrate off where whatever so long term i’m happy with where we’re at
Paris Vega (58:03.796)
yeah
Paris Vega (58:09.256)
right
Paris Vega (58:19.456)
right
Paris Vega (58:24.136)
yeah that’s always the trade off when people are looking at hey do we build a custom site from the ground up or use word press or some other popular platform because you do get the benefit of all the plug ends that are pre built little features or little things that can improve your business model kind of overnight supposedly but a lot of times it blows your web site causes other issues security problems and i think especially developers always prefer to build from scratch so they can control everything
Matthew Leavell (58:32.900)
m
Matthew Leavell (58:41.420)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (58:49.260)
step
Matthew Leavell (58:53.140)
yeah scale ability too i mean with our and if we would have gone with word press the server it was posted on would have blown up very quick um so i mean i would say if we were financing it with debt i would have made a lot of different decisions i would have gone for the cheap word press right off the bat i would have won for some of those to get the customer base in place to then we could upgrade
Paris Vega (58:54.716)
yeah
Paris Vega (58:57.556)
yeah
Paris Vega (59:00.656)
yeah right
Paris Vega (59:11.956)
m
Paris Vega (59:14.656)
right right
Matthew Leavell (59:23.500)
we just we had the privilege of a cash going business and the opportunity to use it re invest in itself and so we did
Paris Vega (59:32.036)
so i know y would go through like a rapid fire of all the different technologies and whether or not you’re using it but it sounds like you’re literally just on facebook or is that are there other things that you guys are using
Matthew Leavell (59:42.280)
i now really just on facebook and then trying to get so rolling our soft gonna be what we think i mean we’re building an eco system is what we’re building and not that i’m suggesting that everybody do that by any means we just thought it was the right move for our industry and i mean we’re taking a flyer on it man it’s it’s just as much of a defensive play as it is offensive
Paris Vega (59:47.576)
yeah
Paris Vega (01:00:00.196)
right
Matthew Leavell (01:00:12.260)
um and it is super expensive but at the same time if it works out it could be a really big deal and if it doesn’t then when we lost a bunch of money we didn’t i mean we’ll continue to use it but is what it is we of insight on the other on the others as a matter of fact if anybody wants to reach out and give me the insight that would be awesome
Paris Vega (01:00:16.276)
yeah
Paris Vega (01:00:25.716)
right so on the
Paris Vega (01:00:36.556)
and hey me and you can talk afterwards maybe we can help out with our agency or something
Matthew Leavell (01:00:39.840)
sweet good yeah
Paris Vega (01:00:42.476)
um so all the other social platforms and everything that’s for later for you are you doing any traditional marketing stuff like outside of the digital side like any kind of other advertising
Matthew Leavell (01:00:54.480)
with our warehouse we will we’re going to sell some pellets out of our warehouse m so we will look a little bit more local with that but we’re still not going to do like bill boards or anything like that it’s any we do is going to be digially based where we’re going more down the content route um you know when when we started talking i said man i actually am interested in doing a podcast for our industry on
Paris Vega (01:00:57.516)
okay
Paris Vega (01:01:06.876)
yeah
Paris Vega (01:01:12.796)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (01:01:23.080)
and i am i mean a couple of times you’ve probably seen this little blue tape on the floor behind me back there that’s one of the one of the pegs of my lighting goes when i’m sitting in that blue chair like video studio set up to do it we just haven’t started yet and so we’re going the content route to it produced good videos you know a lot of times people are like well what do i expect in the pallet off of a target customer return truck load
Paris Vega (01:01:28.576)
there you go
Paris Vega (01:01:33.696)
okay
Paris Vega (01:01:35.976)
yeah
Paris Vega (01:01:41.736)
oh that’s smart
Paris Vega (01:01:52.336)
right
Matthew Leavell (01:01:53.860)
why don’t we just video s breaking down a palet and show you right and so we’re looking at more of that type of stuff
Paris Vega (01:01:56.696)
there you go yeah
Paris Vega (01:02:00.476)
that’s smart because yeah you can use some so tools and see what questions people are asking related to whatever it is you know you got your services and then just answer them one video at a time each question
Matthew Leavell (01:02:08.280)
yep
Matthew Leavell (01:02:13.740)
a hundred percent as well as if we’re doing the product breakdowns then i mean why not just add that video for the that specific listing on our website like interest in a truck load well here’s some pictures of sample pallets but there’s an actual video like so i mean other things we can do with the content to but at the end of the day about creating clarity for the customer what what are you getting what are you expecting and then
Paris Vega (01:02:26.696)
yeah there’s a video yeah it’d be huge
Paris Vega (01:02:35.016)
sure
Matthew Leavell (01:02:43.560)
holding our feet to the fire a lot of people that kind of grow in the business model that we grew in a lot of people like to just kind of shy away from any responsibility like oh well i just broke the load i made three hundred bucks m yeah there’s a problem with it i’m sorry i only made three hundred i mean i’ll give you three hundred well then tell me who your supplier is oh i’d never tell you that what
Paris Vega (01:03:07.616)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (01:03:14.280)
so how am i supposed to get like how am i supposed to be made whole right and and so you know that’s just that’s not how we operated and never has been um you know we’re going to hold our feet to the fire and it’s what our customers responsibility to go to our supply is for us to take care of our customer and then we’ll go to our supplier i don’t know how i got on that tangent i’m sorry
Paris Vega (01:03:29.116)
yeah
Paris Vega (01:03:37.056)
no that’s good that leads into kind of a final question how we can wrap up here this has been great it’s been awesome getting to re connect with you and hear about all the things you’ve been doing um let’s say there’s like a thousand of your ideal target customers listening what’s the pitch or the reason they should use your service what’s that that sale pitch you would give them
Matthew Leavell (01:03:46.000)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (01:04:00.200)
m
Matthew Leavell (01:04:03.680)
man really are there’s a couple couple things i mean we made our our company slogan always delivering value we mean that in a couple ways number one yeah we’re goin to deliver deliver you good value for what you paid from a retail value perspective we do it also people are like hey do you think this would be good for my business so like advice we do it in education
we frankly want long term relationships with our customers we want them to make money we want to leave money in the deal for them to make um and we want to help them grow a successful business you know there’s plenty of people in this industry that like to look at their customers or potential customers as if they have a target on their back they want to try to figure out how much money can i make off that person that’s just not us um you know so that would be the first thing
um our second thing we put in every marketing or all of our marketing material is as described or we’ll make it right and and at the end of the day we hold our feet to the fire on that i think our google reviews speak volumes i don’t how many we have but i know we’re at like a four point nine something i think only shows four point nine but i don’t even know if we have a negative one on there and it’s because we take care of our customer
Paris Vega (01:05:30.956)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (01:05:34.040)
so you know there’s enough risk in the liquidation industry so my pitch to them would simply be outside of what i’ve said is there’s enough risk why are you going to take a risk with working with somebody that you have question marks about like from a supply or standpoint pick someone that has proven to be dependable reliable and delivering good product like there’s not some secret source and if
there is you got to be moving such so much volume that at that the secret source really doesn’t like change your numbers or business trajectory so it’s like everybody thinks they’re going to get in and find a bunch of play stations for next to nothing or air jordan’s for five buck and honestly i say that jokingly but dad that is the pictures that scammers post and people fall for it they think they’re getting a
Paris Vega (01:06:07.256)
yeah
Paris Vega (01:06:21.636)
yeah
Paris Vega (01:06:25.556)
yeah
Paris Vega (01:06:28.976)
oh yeah
Matthew Leavell (01:06:33.400)
all it eric jordan for fifty bucks and it’s like people fall for it all the time and it’s like guys like that’s not the industry so if you’re search
Paris Vega (01:06:34.296)
right
Paris Vega (01:06:43.156)
that would be like winning the lottery almost like the odds of something like that
Matthew Leavell (01:06:47.220)
i always tell people it’s like if you’re searching for the secret source here’s what’s going o happen you’re going to talk to every like seller that is trustworthy that you can count on that’s going a say actually tell you we’ll know here’s what you should expect they’re going to tell you the real information but you’re just going to not think it’s good enough and so you’re going to keep searching keep search until you find that scammera that’s gonna tell you exactly what you want to hear and then you’re going to get scanned i hope that in that scenario you learn your lesson
Paris Vega (01:07:13.516)
got you it’s interesting
Matthew Leavell (01:07:17.040)
on a fifty dollar expense i hope it’s not a ten thousand dollar one um but at the end of the day it’s the dependability man that’s at the reliability it’s delivering what we say that’s why people should work with us
Paris Vega (01:07:20.696)
right
Paris Vega (01:07:25.576)
yeah
Paris Vega (01:07:30.556)
i think that’s a really good point that i haven’t heard said quite in that way before about people will almost search for the cam that tells them exactly what they want to hear like they’re looking through things until they find the cam that’s telling them what they want to hear and that’s how they get scaped
Matthew Leavell (01:07:47.180)
so in our business praise that that the common question that somebody knew coming in is like our business is very contract based like you’ll go sign a contract with target that you will get all the truck loads coming out of this distribution center for the next two years and you will pay x dollars per pilot right that’s how the contracts are based and so the new people coming in are like i’m going to buy from the contract holder
Matthew Leavell (01:08:16.720)
well all those cameras guess what when you ask them are you the contract holder absolutely absolutely on the contract holder for sure and then they talk to somebody who’s trustworthy and like us a lot of times we’ll be like no we’re not the contract holder on that but what’s funny is a lot of times my price i know the contract holders we buy from them and the funny thing is is that the price i’ll sell it to that
person for it is cheaper than what they would get from the contract holder because we’re buying in volume and we’re passing some of the savings on but they just have it in their head they have to buy from the contract holders so they pass over us and try to find the secret source and get scanned that that man that’s how it manifests in our industry and i would imagine it’s the exact same way in other industries around there it just it takes its own form in that industry
Paris Vega (01:08:58.156)
m
Paris Vega (01:09:00.636)
so they just don’t under fully understand the industry
Paris Vega (01:09:16.416)
by you following the kind of best practisers of the right way or being transparent you’re going to turn off the people who are looking for that overnight success or one in a million lottery situation
Matthew Leavell (01:09:28.020)
which is a double edged sword i mean that the news is is that it’s those people that are probably looking for the lottery so when they actually get something that’s realistic for the industry those are going to be the ideal people to complain and say they were scan we kind of turn those people off but on the flip side i mean it it does kind of stink in the fact that i mean that’s business and it’s it’s someone who’s legitimately going to buy something and if
Paris Vega (01:09:29.656)
yeah
Paris Vega (01:09:42.475)
right
Matthew Leavell (01:09:58.420)
if they would just take a step back and think logically um they’d kind of see that we’re telling them the truth and we could build a relationship with them that could be years long where we are setting them up to make money and taking care of them along the way and so it does kind of stink in the fact that i’d love to be able to secure that business because it’s mutually beneficial
Paris Vega (01:10:23.816)
right because if you can help make your target customers because their business is basicallyu’re kind of a b to be at this point if they’re buying a truck load and if you help them through your educational content or whatever it is or giving them realistic prices and uh not being that like one in a million lottery situation like if you help them make their businesses better you’re goin t have a long term customer and you both kind of grow and there’s a little men take in there
Matthew Leavell (01:10:31.540)
that’s it
Matthew Leavell (01:10:49.360)
hm
Matthew Leavell (01:10:53.460)
all the time i don’t care that you buy from someone else i’m not the person that’s going to be like you’re buying from them well then we’re done that’s not me and there’s people in our industry that try to act that way that like you’re you don’t go buy from anyone i don’t care who you buy from i want you to make good money whether you buy from me or buy from someone else because as long as your business is profitable i know we we are doing a good enough job on our
and to offer enough variance in what we offer like enough diversity in the in the loads that we offer and we’re always pricing them at reasonable prices so i know that if i can just make help in some small way that someone’s business is around for the next ten years at some point they’re gonna buy something from us it may be three years down the road that’s cool i’ll be like johnnie apple see man planting seeds every day in
Paris Vega (01:11:41.456)
yeah
Paris Vega (01:11:50.056)
yeah
Matthew Leavell (01:11:51.340)
one point they’ll sprout and that’s cool and that i’m okay with doing that it’s a long term vision it’s a long term play and we plan to be around for a long term
Paris Vega (01:12:00.976)
awesome well matt this has been great appreciate your taking the time sharing all the ups and downs of business i think this is a real kind of raw look at entreprenurial life and doesn’t always go the right way but it sounds like you’ve learned a lot of hard lessons through it all and got a really solid business going now
Matthew Leavell (01:12:22.000)
man we’re excited for the future and i appreciate it we’ll have our challenges along the way were by no means past that but we’re going to try to keep our smile and keep our positive attitude and just serve our customers
Paris Vega (01:12:37.276)
awesome all right thanks mat
Matthew Leavell (01:12:40.380)
absolutely Paris i appreciate it catching up thank you
Show Links:
Website: https://buylowwarehouse.com/
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