"You start with ‘there’s no way this is me.’ Then you question everything. Then, eventually, you realize—this really could be me."
"You start with ‘there’s no way this is me.’ Then you question everything. Then, eventually, you realize—this really could be me."
Ron Shah built Obvi into a $100M+ powerhouse, with $40M in top-line revenue in 2024. But not every business he touched turned to gold. Today, Ron gets brutally honest about two brands he started—Coffee Over Cardio and Paw Rangers—that didn’t go as planned.
This isn’t your typical success story. Ron shares:
Most founders only share their wins. Ron is sharing his losses. And why, in hindsight, they might be even more valuable.
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Kurt Elster
This episode is sponsored in part by Address Validator. Incorrect addresses cost U. S. businesses over $20 billion each year. If you're tired of paying for re-delivery fees and dealing with frustrated customers, Address Validator can help. It integrates with Shopify to catch and fix address errors before they become costly issues. Every day Address Validator checks over 300,000 orders. and prevents more than eleven thousand failed deliveries. Big brands like Sennheiser, Heli Hansen, and Kylie Cosmetics already trust it to save them money and keep customers happy. You could even try Address Validator on your first 100 orders for free. With a dashboard showing your savings, head over to the Shopify App Store and make bad addresses a thing of the past with Address Validator. I'm your host Kurt Elster and today on the unofficial Shopify Podcast we are going to hear from a man who turned a four letter word into a hundred million dollar powerhouse. We've got Ron Shaw from Obvi, OBVI, Obvi, and their biggest growth year. Last year, 2024, brought them 40 million in top line revenue. Okay, so nonstop winning and success here, but maybe That made them overconfident because not every venture they attempted followed the same trajectory. And so he's gonna tell us about sure we'll hear about Obvi, but Ron's gonna tell us about two brands that they started that didn't go as planned, right? Coffee over cardio and Paw Rangers. And so we're going to cover what went wrong there, you know, why success in one business can't necessarily be applied to another. and the lessons he learned along the way and the friends we made. Ron, thanks for doing the show. Happy to have you here.
Ron Shah
First of all, thank you so much for having me. Uh love the platform you've created. Absolutely love your your pod. And uh It's an honor to be on and excited to chat.
Kurt Elster
And you have your own podcast. Let's plug it up front. What is it?
Ron Shah
It is called Chew On This, uh, and we try to create uh digestible content for um DSC founders.
Kurt Elster
It digestible content. Is that why it's called chew on this? I'd never considered it. I just thought it was catchy.
Ron Shah
Yeah, we just tried to do shorter episodes just to make things a little bit more um easier. A little snappier, exactly.
Kurt Elster
The all right, clever. I like it. Okay, so for people who are not familiar with you and Obvi, let's start with, you know, what what's obvi? What do you sell? Give me the rundown there.
Ron Shah
Absolutely. Um so we started Hobby about five and a half years ago. We believed um that we had a strong hypothesis, which was Collagen and overall health and wellness for women is pretty boring. We believe that if we made it feel more interesting, more sexy, more fun, more pink, more colorful, more tasty. The people, mainly women, would be more excited to talk about it. They'd uh be excited to take it. And also, instead of putting the product behind their cabinet, they'd actually want to put the products on their countertop. So that was the hypothesis we wanted to solve. Uh fork. And so we started Obvi, which uh we we got the name from watching Maine Girls. They said the word Obvi and we said, Wow, that's it, what's the brand name? Um and from there we created uh collagen products that actually taste good. really fun flavors, really cool community that we built around it. We started also getting into weight loss products, which is now a key leader product for us. Over these five years, we've uh kind of focused on growing really efficiently with a really small team. We're still less than ten people. We're about nine now. Um, and uh we're coming off our biggest year last year, which was uh right out about forty million in revenue, we're profitable, and uh yeah, having a lot of fun doing it, but definitely, like you said, um steered a little bit too much confidence into starting doing other things, which um we'll get into.
Kurt Elster
So what made you think, like you've got this really successful brand and business going, what made you go, you know what? We should launch more brands instead of doubling down on the one that's working?
Ron Shah
Um great question. I I think I think there is this, you get to a certain point where a lot of the actions you take on a brand like Obvi. doesn't allow you to take big swings anymore because you've taken your big swings, right, to get to where you're at. And so now each swing you're taking is incremental at times, but you don't see the impact being like Oh wow, I just I just brought two million in revenue, you know? It's more like, all right, well, I I went I got conversion rate from four point one percent to four point two. You know, and that's a win, but it's not huge. And everything we were doing, I think, you know, we we continue to do, and we just found that we're not going to take big swings anymore. in this company just because there's not that many opportunities, but that still allowed us to have a lot more energy to want to take big swings into things. So we're like, what is they just kind of do what we're doing, but just on a different brand. Like, why wouldn't that work? And um uh we just wanted to feel that energy again. Just really selfishly speaking, we just wanted to feel the ability to take a big swing.
Kurt Elster
You know, I I get it. It it is easy to have nostalgia for the early days of a startup. Like looking back on it, all you see are the wins. You quickly forget about you know the the struggle, the anxiety, etc. Yep. But And it you have uh gee, what is that? Um it's like a a winner's mentality. You're so successful at the one, you go, well obviously I could do this again. Tell me bet the other the two brands you started there were coffee over cardio and paw rangers. I'm guessing one sells coffee. I don't know about the other. Tell me about them.
Ron Shah
Um yeah, so we bought one company, which was um Coffee Ricardio, but before that we started a company called Hall Rangers. Haw Rangers was our play on pet supplements. And we believed that pet supplements had its own space to really grow. And we thought, we know supplements well, we can sell to humans. This is gonna be easy. We just gotta sell the pets now. They don't even talk. Um so um that's what we started off with. We came out with liver support and calming choose. Um basically products to that are core to to certain pets and their um anti-aging efforts. Um and we ran up a website, started a Shopify, ran up a website, Got some product um from an MOQ standpoint from a manufacturer here locally. Um, got some content shot with friends and family and and and and some people who have pets as friends. Um and then we s got all of the pieces ready to say, all right, well, you know us. We we we start running ads and it's gonna hit ROAS heaven right away. Um and we literally went in with that energy. Like it like we we felt untouchable. Um and so we started. We launched um a campaign. And um I remember I think it was Ash our CMO, he was like, Hey guys, I spent like five hundred and we have zero sales and we were just like, Wait, what? Is something broken? Like we did assume that maybe like our marketing prowess won't be it as easily applied. It was more of like, wait, something's broken. Like maybe the check apps aren't working. We checked everything and we were like, no, like this isn't This isn't working.
Kurt Elster
Um again, like zero, zero sales on the initial launch.
Ron Shah
Zero sales on the initial launch. And then we were like, you know what? Screw it. Let's just make it a subscription only website. That way when we do get an order, it's a subscription. Um, I think we spent another thousand dollars and we got two orders. At that point we had spent fifteen hundred dollars and our CAC was basically seven hundred and fifty dollars. Um and and then we're like, okay, well, you know what? Maybe it's the product. So we went and ordered little tinctures. uh little drops. And it's not the product because the people haven't even tried the product. But again, we weren't ready to accept that it's not just going to be the same exact copy-based strategy Um because again you're you're so clouded with the idea of it. Um once we launch those two products as well then that didn't work as well. And that's when we were like, all right, you know what? Put this on Amazon and um let's just see how it rides there. And we'll come back to this when we got time because when you don't get the response you want you quickly lose a little bit of perspective of like, uh well, what's going on here? So we let it kind of build on Amazon, started selling well on Amazon, um, and then we took another go at it in D to C and um We started to get a little bit of this kind of feeling of like, okay, we really have to put effort here. We really need to build a little bit of a team around here. We gotta get real proper content, not our friends doing this in their dog park in Hoboken, New Jersey. You know, like we gotta we gotta properly do this. We invested in some agency um for content. We got a good retention program going so that, you know, the the welcome flow is good. And at that point, we had started to build this. You know, we've gotten um um uh to the point where we're building closer to five figures in in revenue. Um and I think after a couple of months of building that way, we realized like even in this company, we can't take big swings And it was less about big swings and it became more about like, right now, we know what we know at Obvi because it took years to learn it. We don't know what we don't know at Power Rangers because we've only been doing it for a few weeks. And I think when we realize that point of view, we start to like really humble ourselves. Um and again, we're not like we weren't out there being like, you know, uh ch uh trutting around our chest and being like you can't talk to me that way. It was more like you had internal confidence like, all right, I I did this, I can do this. But um that was super super humbling real quick.
Kurt Elster
Well and there are similarities in in what these brands were. It's like, you know, the price points are gonna be similar. They're consumable goods. You could sell them on a subscription. There's a lot going for it and enough similarities to selling collagen that you one would think, okay, you know, these principles, these learnings should apply across brands. I wonder is it how far between how much time between starting Obvi and attempting these, right? How how long between when Obvi starts and when Paw Rangers gets going? I'm wondering if it's timing.
Ron Shah
Um, very, very good question. I think it is probably time. I think like so much of what we learned throughout AB. became like stuff we forgot because it was so foundational, right? Um to a point where Obvi now is like we're just working on again so much of the day-to-day is just churn and and and run. versus like at Paul, it was like thinking about all the little things. And I think when you set up the little things at Avi, you don't go back and refer to that all day, every day. Um so I think waiting the fact that we waited four, four and a half years Definitely took us out of our element of like being able to roll up our sleeves type mentality compared to like, hey, we already know this, get the ads ready, get the website ready, and let's run. Um and I and I think there was a really large time gap there, which which did definitely play into that.
Kurt Elster
And I also you I don't think it's a a bad theory, right? If you If I own a single stock, right, I buy Apple stock, I have an extremely risky portfolio. If I own a single business that sells a single product, that's a lot of risk. One business with multiple units, less risk, multiple businesses and one, you know, person's or organization's portfolio de-risks the whole thing. Like it it is a sound theory So in practice though, like even if those businesses had been successful, now like you're adding you have to be adding new challenges to it. There's no no free lunch here.
Ron Shah
Absolutely. Um I I I think the the big piece that we learned was um when it comes to adding a new business or or managing a new business. In your mind, you think that it's really only going to take a fractional percentage of time to do the same thing you're doing on another business that took you a lot longer. But the truth is that that you're then assuming that every shortcut is going to lead you to a quicker finish line. And that is You know, like you you assume that and I think you very quickly figure out like there isn't as many shortcuts as you thought. Because you still have to carve out your path. Like you you can't go and start having shortcuts before you don't even know which path you're going on. You know, we didn't even understand. who our buyer persona was. We didn't understand that we're selling to the person who's buying for their dog. In our mind, we're like, we're selling to the dog. Right? Or we're like we're like that's all we th we didn't even ever talk about like, well What does a pet owner think about? And and the pet owner, although a great customer once you get them, they're very hard to get because they're very loyal to the things they find that their pets like. 'Cause their pets don't communicate much. Right? So once they find something, pet owners are very routine driven. So we were coming out with a product, yes, it would get a very sticky customer, but they're sticky because they're very loyal. So, you know, how are we going to market? We're gonna go and, you know, we didn't think about these things. Um and and it's because of, you know, we we thought that it's gonna be as simple as it would be. And then I think again, part of it is just those assumptions that are being made.
Kurt Elster
The other thing I'd I'd like to hear your perspective on is is your mindset. Emotionally, it is it is difficult to not internalize wins and losses. Like if I'm going to celebrate the wins in my business That means I'm also going to be impacted by the losses in my business. And so when we have this idea, and like admittedly, it It's a little bit of hubris. It's like, hey, you know, we were successful at this and we have this experience, so why shouldn't you be able to do this again in a similar scenario? It's not crazy at all. And then when it doesn't go the way you want How it tell me tell me what your mindset tell me about that experience.
Ron Shah
Yeah, um I think you spend that first 500 and nothing hits and you're like Oh, something's wrong, right? Again. Because you're like, yeah, there's no way. There's no way it's it's me. Then you go into like this stage of like, wait, it's still not working. Is it me? So you start to question yourself. And then what what you know brings you back to normal is like, oh, you know what, I've built this business. And it's doing great. It's definitely not me again. So you go back to the drawing board and you're like, all right, since it's not me, let me go figure out what else it is what else it could be. And then you realize you take another stab at it and you're like, holy shit, this really could be me. You know, this is the like you you start to, again, they call it it humbles you because You realize just because you've done it once doesn't mean you can do it twice. And I think that's the one message that like stuck with me. Um and I was like, wow, that's that's so true. Um so I think emotionally we got to a point where we were like we were pushing and spending money on it, not because like we were so destined to figure this out and so determined and like so excited. We were like We can't not figure this out because like imagine what people will say. Imagine what people will think. You know, I have told friends and family about this. What are they gonna say? Because they're gonna be shocked if I said we couldn't figure out how to sell this, because now they're gonna think that I can't even do good enough for Obvimen. And and you think about all these and again, these are natural human nature tendencies of like, what is everyone gonna think? So it became a very emotional battle to where I think we probably would have saved thousands of dollars had we not tried to beat the ego part of this. Um then you I think we figured out early on this this is not going to work the way we're doing it. But um I I think we spent more money to to prove the counterpoint.
Kurt Elster
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Ron Shah
Yeah, we pin the blame. um initially to this is just a hard category. Like, you know, the these customers are just it is, it is hard. But we just said these customers, once they've once they've picked out their supplement, they're never changing. We kind of tried to buy ourselves into the point of like it's impossible to start a brand in this category with desktop shoe either. Um when then Amazon quickly proved that tr um to to to to be the case. But I I think the other thing we we started blaming was um that our branding and our product wasn't good enough. Like our branding was fine, but it was like we were like, hey, our chews, maybe they don't taste good and we can't taste them because we're humans. And we're like, wait, but there are and then we we you quickly reconfigured some of these problems that you think it is when they're like, wait, I'm not even getting this into enough hands to make that the blame. My problem isn't retention. My problem is acquisition. And so when we started to always keep putting out acquisition, we're like, wait, we just can't even get customers. We're not marketing this right. You know? Um, and so I I think we blamed a lot of different things, uh, including product and things that didn't even impact acquisition. Uh, but eventually it came down to I didn't think I don't think we knew how to market this product, nor do we put the right efforts and resources around marketing it and getting the right marketing tools for it.
Kurt Elster
How do you know? How is someone supposed to know when to when to keep fighting, when to keep going, when to grind it out, versus Let it go, move on, pivot, try something else.
Ron Shah
Oh man, I I wish there's like just something sitting on your shoulder that just tells you the answer to this. But I feel like Uh maybe actually you need to go through it a couple of times because we have to go through it a couple of times. Um because especially with coffee or cardio as well. But I think the only way you know is the time where the ego meets its like fate and says, like, okay. I'm okay with this. And then you quickly realize none of the things you were worried about actually mattered. Like not a single person really cared about how well we scaled All Rangers. None of our friends ever really followed up with us on how we're we're doing on that. And, you know, we didn't really ever face any humiliation. Um, and so like I think the right time is when how quick you can get to the point of acceptance. But I I would say I actually think it's truly arbitrary. to how big your ego is. Um and I think for us, we were at the top of our game in one thing. This was not a a loss we wanted to take. And so we pushed it further than we needed. I think you can figure out between the first thousand to ten thousand dollars and spend. If you're a good marketer and you're be able to to market this um well enough, because that's what it comes down to, especially in the T Dispeed game.
Kurt Elster
For you, was there a specific moment where you you knew? You're like, all right, it's time. We gotta this isn't working, we gotta sell it.
Ron Shah
Um Good question. I think for me, when we got the second round of products and that didn't sell as well. That was enough cursor to me. I'm like, wait, I don't think we belong here. Like it, I don't think we should be here. But that's where we then took out the next slate of funding and say, all right, let's let's see if it's the product, you know? Um but I think on that second slate, first round of app spend not working, that's when we knew.
Kurt Elster
And then hindsight being 2020, if you were to do it again, like re truly your ego gets you and you're like, you know what, I'm gonna make it work this time. What were there key mistakes you think you made? Were there something you would have done differently going into Paw Rangers if you had to do I would never do it again, but if I was to.
Ron Shah
Um If I was to, I would definitely take what we're good at, which is providing the guidance of Being able to implement certain things that will create good efficiencies for the business rather than being the person that's rolling up the sleeves and doing all the groundwork. Because when you're doing the groundwork, you have a your one side of mentality is like, hey, I've hit this certain pinnacle on one side. I don't need to be doing this. You have this pathway that's leading you to this like hustle mentality to keep you there and thinking like, oh, I want to do this. So you get there and you're like, damn, I don't really want to do this. uh especially if you don't get instant uh gratification. Um and so I think for us, um I'd say we'd work more in the role of consulting and getting a really good key operator. to to extract all the good stuff from us, but and then apply it rather than us keeping everything in our head, applying it, getting quickly discouraged. You really need an operator that's gonna come in with the mindset we had when we started out.
Kurt Elster
So you would have gotten uh like a a consultant partner, someone to do the actual like the day-to-day operations. And then you say, okay, th these are our resources, this is what we learn. Treat it like an internal roll-up strategy of sorts.
Ron Shah
No.
Kurt Elster
Okay. Yeah, we know how it affected you. Did it have larger effects on on the team? Yeah. Like it's it's not just you working on this thing. It it you've got other resources where things stretch too thin. Any impact there?
Ron Shah
I think the the big piece it did was it started to shake up our confidence in general. Right, you it's very important when you're doing well that you're confident in what you're doing. Right? So Avi left us very confident. We're still very diligent and very humble, but very confident. I think what Power Ranger started to do is started to make us like feel not as confident in what we were doing. Um, you know, Ash, my partner, was like, why can't I make this ad work myself? I'm like, Why can't I find the right influencers and key partners to make this work or retailers? Unkit was like, is my design off? Like we started questioning core things. that like we shouldn't question because on a higher uh in a in a bigger um stage we're doing a great job at it and and and and relatively speaking So I think that was one piece that was definitely a little bit like frustrating to to kind of go through.
Kurt Elster
So pick the one thing that you think went wrong with Paw Rangers. It's like, I know you know how to design an effective Shopify store. I've seen it. Right? It's not a crazy product. It's supplements for pets that should sell well. Like you check all the boxes for this should work, at least from my perspective. So where do you think this went wrong?
Ron Shah
This is interesting. I think if I had to pin it down, we assumed that we can take creative, put it into a platform. run ads the way we do at Obvi, and everything else will work out. We we we really put this entire engine to fail or succeed. on the ability to run a successful ad on meta. That was the biggest problem. Exactly. It's Zuck's fault. The the biggest problem in this was we tried to operate this in our mind probably as a drop shipping business. When in reality, we wanted to build a brand. And you can't treat a brand like a drop shipping business. And you can't treat a dropshipping business like a brand. And I think we got crossed up in in in between how much effort we wanted to put versus our confidence in being able to be successful on a gate.
Kurt Elster
We've talked entirely about the the Paw Paw Rangers. What about Coffee Over Cardio? Which coffeeovercardio. com online right now, 9,000 five-star reviews. Great looking website. Uh on the title tag is literally online coffee store buy flavored coffee. And then you've got collabs with cereal. Like I could buy Fruity Pebbles coffee. It this site's great. This one I refuse to believe did not print money.
Ron Shah
Yeah. Um coffee. Um a friend of mine from my old company, um Shreds, when I first started my career, he started a coffee band when I started off beating. Um, him and his wife have started it. Unfortunately, their marriage didn't end well and he got to keep the company, didn't want to run it. She um was the face of the company. Um and so he came to me, he's like, Can you take this over? Um I was like, All right, how much? Um, give me a good price. And I I think it just flicked us again. And he at this point the company had done ten million in sales total in four years. Um his last six months had done um just about million and a half, almost two. Um so we're like, all right, there we go. Like, you know, I can buy uh a a two million dollar uh a year company for um, you know, a hundred K and change. Why not? You know, this is a great deal.
Kurt Elster
You know what? If I was presented with that same deal, I would have done it. Exactly. Because I know it's easier to work with an established brand where they're like you see the opportunity in it and they've proven that it can work. by getting those initial sales. And so like this all right, the Paw Rangers, it's riskier. Like I see where you went with that. But, you know, if you had asked me to invest in it, I probably would have I I probably would have said no. The coffee one, I would have been like, here, just where d where do you want do you take Venmo? I'll just write you the check now. Okay. That one I wouldn't have questioned either.
Ron Shah
Yep. Uh so thank you. Uh we needed some validation in this in this podcast to not completely crumble myself, but uh same same exact um aspect here. Yeah, this sounds like a no-brainer. Let's go. It really does. Um, we did one thing that we had learned from the Paw Rangers, which was let's get an operator. So we hired this guy. um who we literally called the operator for for coffee recardio. We took over the business, we brought him in house, literally worked in our office. We pretty much dumped the company on this operator. who was like, hey guys, like, all right, you who's running the ads here? And we're like, oh well, find a media buck. And then he's like, all right, um, I thought you guys are gonna say and then you're like, oh well we need a new website. We're like, all right, let's go build it with this agency. And we let him lead the project. Um, all right, we need content, let's go do this. Because again, the company was cash flowing. And pretty soon enough, I would say like a few months into it, we just realized like the operator was no longer operating because he was just facilitating all these different parts of the business. Um, but wasn't actually able to make a difference in anything because he was just in meetings and managing agencies and partners because we didn't put any resources on this. When we jumped in, we're kind of like, guys, what's going on? Revenue's dropping. Subscribers are leaving. What's going on here? And we just kind of come in almost as if we're like some VCs, like knocking on the door. Um, we thought he was to blame. And so we kind of said, hey, we're no longer gonna work with you, and you know, made some changes there, and we said, All right, we're gonna do this ourselves, guys. We know how to do this. You know, our our cloak kind of came back on and we're like, all right, let's let's let's go. Um Ash got behind the ads. I started to reach out to retail partners, Amazon. uh find additional revenue streams. Unkit said, let me work on the redesign of the site better and make better ads, this and that. And we start to run it and we're getting sales. And we start to do what we do for everything, which is unit economics, understand our contribution margin. And very quickly, within the first week, we realize like This is not easy to acquire customers for a $35 to $45 checkout. A $40 AOV is not enough. So I started working on AOV stuff. So did Ash. And we're like, AOV is not going up. And we started to understand, like, no one's gonna buy more than fifty dollars worth of coffee or forty dollars worth of coffee. Like i I it doesn't matter how well you're good marketing it, like why would you buy so much more coffee than you need, right? It's coffee, it's commoditized.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, I can only drink so much.
Ron Shah
Can only drink so much And we were we were not okay with accepting that. So we kept pushing AOV, trying to get the numbers up because our fixed cost for Meta was $25 to $30 to acquire a customer.
Kurt Elster
Okay, again it's Zuckerberg is the one who screwed this up. Exactly.
Ron Shah
Oh, no things are Zuckerberg. Um from that point, we got to a a place where we're like, okay, we can't make the unit economics work. Let's go make Amazon work. Let's go find retailers. So we got our B2B team pulled in and we're like, hey guys, I know you're selling Obvi and you're selling, you know, a million dollars a month worth of it. Can you take some time out of your day to sell this seven dollar coffee bag? And so we started to utilize some of their time. We went, got an Amazon partner to start scaling that. And I think it was basically end of last year, and we were starting to prep for Q4 for Obvi. And we came down to like just looking at coffee and we're like, guys, since we took over, the revenue's gone down. We've lost subscribers. Um the two licensing deals we got with Post and Warner Brothers for licensed coffee flavors, we haven't really been able to take advantage of it. We haven't launched any new SKUs. We barely put time in this. We don't really know how to manage anything more than obvi. Why are we doing this? Um, and that's when we were like, you know what? Second time has to be the charm of learning a lesson. We are not ready to run another business. It's not in our mentality. we don't have it in us. We don't want to give up some of our lifestyle. We don't wanna give up anything else to make this happen. We were doing this because we wanted to have another um uh another um belt around our waist. that you know showed that we were champions, but we're not gonna get that. Um and uh we finally said let's let's go and shop around the sale.
Kurt Elster
So let's g fantastic. Let's talk about selling these brands. What is that what's an exit look like when you've you've got a brand that isn't doing what you want? It's it's a distressed sale.
Ron Shah
Yes. Both of these are distress sales. Um, so one, you have to mentally accept that you're not gonna get what you put it. Um out of it.
Kurt Elster
And I think that's a tough feel to swallow.
Ron Shah
It's a very like that I want to just echo more and more because it's like that is actually the hardest thing. to accept and is the hardest part of this journey. The the getting a person to sell it to and finding a a right buyer and stuff, that's actually not as hard as you believe because there's a lot of cool tools and resources out there But accepting that you have to take less and something you put more into because you couldn't figure it out, it's like a double whammy. Right? To both your ego, to your emotion, to your mental. Like all of it kind of just kinda hits you and you're like, damn, I still gotta go run this other company that's my main gig, you know? And and so yeah, that was probably took us weeks, if not a month, to get through and we'd kind of go back and forth like, oh, can we make it work? Should we partner with somebody? Should we bring another operator in? Whatever it may be, we we we went through it a little bit, but once we accepted, like, all right, we'll take whatever we can get, uh, that's when we were able to quickly find the right partner, the right buyer.
Kurt Elster
So well how did you find buyers?
Ron Shah
Um so I think we had we have a good network or two on this. And so I think we had like started to mention the newsletter and started talking about um the the ideals of it. And it was actually um a WhatsApp group that I was on. where somebody had um asked me about it because they read in the newsletter or meant or or someone had mentioned it to them because they read in the newsletter and uh they just asked me some details about it and we started just uh chatting through and um we were happy with the number they they were giving to us because at that point you've now finally forgotten what you've invested. And you're just like, all right, this is new revenue.
Kurt Elster
You mentally moved on. You're ready to just be done.
Ron Shah
Yeah. So I've lost that money, it's sunken, but now I'm looking at this, oh, this is new money. Let me you know, let me take this. And um we worked on it pretty quickly. We had everything pretty much set up 'cause it was a pretty new acquisition too. You know, it was only about less than a year that we flipped it and so uh yeah that was uh that was what we did.
Kurt Elster
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Ron Shah
They're going fully retail and Amazon with it. They know D to C economics don't work. They also have much better relationships that bring the cost down for the product. Um so they were just very much more like tactical reasons of why they wanted it versus for us it was for an ego battle to say we are serial entrepreneurs.
Kurt Elster
And in you know, one case that they're selling coffee and cereal. I mean you would have been a serial entrepreneur.
Ron Shah
You're right.
Kurt Elster
That joke's terrible. That was good. That was good. Uh was there anything you you know after the f there's what you learned in operating the business after selling it, is there anything you would have done differently in that sale process?
Ron Shah
I don't think I'd do anything differently because they were pretty fast. I feel though like I I I wish I like learned a little bit more about like How these guys are making their decisions to buy this and what they're gonna do. Like, I understand like what their goal is and and why they believe they're gonna do a job, but like I'd love to understand like what didn't we think about probably a little bit deeper if I could have. Just so that I can like, I think Freewood got to a point of like, all right, let's just quickly get them all the material and let's just get it, let's just move on from this as quick as we can.
Kurt Elster
I think that that's how I would have approached it too. It's like once I've once I've made the decision, then I'm I'm just go, right? I've I know what's happened here, I know where I want to go. Let me just be done with this now so I could take back Yeah, the the mind share, the time that I spent worrying about it. Um so was there I mean when you did finally sell it, what did it feel like? Was there emotional cost to it or relief?
Ron Shah
Oh relief. Oh my God. Like it was it was incredible. It was one of those fans you're like, wow, we just exited. You know, like I I I I I I would assume if we ever exited Obby. It'd probably be a much better, you know, relief slash excitement. I think we were like just more relieved than anything else. And like we felt like this burden of like, damn, let's just go back to doing what we were supposed to do. Um and it felt like this like wave of distraction just faded into the into the dark of us.
Kurt Elster
I I feel better. I feel relieved just hearing you describe it. Um you know it Part of what kicked this conversation off is you had tweeted that uh you had tweeted about this, but you said these failures might be worth more than some successes. What did you mean by that?
Ron Shah
Yeah, um I think I look at this and saying and and always say my to myself, like, had I Done this at a later stage. Let's say I did this in two years where I'm hoping I'll be already at the hundred million a year mark. Okay? Let's just say hypothetically. I think the cost of making a mistake then of doing something like this would have been potentially far larger. than the this uh the than the price I paid now. I still paid a large price. Like there are things that I potentially didn't get to do on Obby or my focus on Obby wasn't there or my focus on certain things. And of course that had a price. But I believe like paying the price for the failure now was definitely better than you know garnering like quick success or any other level of success because I I think I now know what I absolutely should not do. um until the right time is there. So I I I think um it it it was something that was super helpful.
Kurt Elster
You know, you're right. We're always looking to know what should we do. There's a ton of value in knowing what you shouldn't do. Uh I could see it. And so was there anything, any learnings from this that you applied to Obvi, right? Like Obvi is is your baby. That's the successful business. You know, that's the one we're proud of that enabled these other purchases. Is there anything that you learned that you were able to apply to it? Maybe a change in strategy?
Ron Shah
Yeah, I think um I I think that the the biggest piece, the biggest change in strategy was that knowing that we The next do we work on the next thing isn't going to be easy. Starting from the ground up, we learn to just treasure what we've built a little bit more like the community we've built, the customers we've acquired, the fact that, you know, uh we can say we have over a million customers and not just make that something that we put on our website and really internalize it. I don't think we had any strategy shifts. I think we had a humongous appreciation shift.
Kurt Elster
That's powerful too. To appreciate what you had.
Ron Shah
It really is. It's really powerful.
Kurt Elster
It's so easy to compare yourself to other people. But especially as an entrepreneur, then you really do it. Because you go on on social media, you go on Twitter, and it's nothing but people sharing their wins. Very rarely do you see anyone like as you did saying, hey, you know, this is this is where things went wrong. Um, and so when you're only looking at just this like algorithmic highlight reel and you start comparing yourself to it, and I think that can lead to to support decision making when you're like, look, I gotta keep up with with this. Instead of appreciating like how successful and fantastic and rare what you have is. It happens to all of us.
Ron Shah
You nailed it. Um I think that's that was one piece where I'll just be like I I had a whole different level of like, wow, the stuff we've done at Obti, that was really hard work. And years cannot years should never be treated like days or weeks. Um, and I think when we started Paul Rangers or bought African cardio, we assumed that the skill and the talent and the exposure and the experience we gained. can quick uh that took years to gain could be quickly applied in hours, weeks, and months um and to to create a similar story and that's just not gonna happen.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, we always underestimate the time that things will take, especially when we're good at them. When we've done like I do the same thing with projects. Um The oh, I remember. It really the the the cognitive bias that got you is survivorship bias, where something worked for me, therefore you know it'll work for everybody else, or it I could repeat it. You survived obvi and then some. And so any closing thoughts, any lessons or wisdom that you would impart to listeners
Ron Shah
Yeah, I think I think a couple things. One is as you garner success in whatever you're doing, you don't have to shut off and be in this like Mode of like blinders on, double down, don't look at anything else, because I think that's also the wrong attitude. I think that's a bit too extremist. But I definitely think At each opportunity that seems easy enough to do, be like go go deeper into why you believe that. Like I think we believed it because we're like, oh, well, we're just gonna run ads. Right. And I think there's very quick and easy ways for you to test if you just running ads is gonna work. you know, setting up a a pseudo site, uh, run ads with a pseudo product. You can always refund people on the back end, you know, but like you can test this concept. Of if you think what you think is super easy, is it gonna be easy? Um and had we done that, we probably didn't even have to go to a nightmare of building a company. You know, because we could have easily found out that hey, pets pets market is tough. It's gonna take a lot more than just running an ad. So I think really dig deep into it, whatever you think Is the ease is the driver of like, oh well, because this is easy, I'm gonna go do this. Truly challenge that and like if you can test it before, try to. And then I think number two is um If you're doing this for more reasons beyond money and ego, I think that is where you will find more success. I know, again, there are people who do it for money and ego and still find success, but I think you will find deeper success if you do it for more reasons than money and ego.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, it's you're right. You could there are people who can absolutely be successful that way, but I think for most folks it's superficial. You need something more to it. There like a cause, a mission. A purpose. Those things definitely make you know getting up in the morning and doing the job easier.
Ron Shah
Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, you know that what's next for you?
Kurt Elster
What's coming up for Obvi? You're not launching new brands, are you?
Ron Shah
Nothing, no new brands. We're working on getting into the RTD food and beverage space because we think consumables are just on a tear right now. What's RTD? Uh ready to drink.
Kurt Elster
Ready to drink, okay. Oh right, right, because it's it's cur it's a powder, I gotta mix it.
Ron Shah
Exactly. So we're thinking of ways just making um convenience. People are at such a deep level of like needing convenience right now. Um and uh we just want to make that part easier. So that's what we're working on right now.
Kurt Elster
We'll always spend money on convenience. Shit.
Ron Shah
Yep.
Kurt Elster
Always.
Ron Shah
Always.
Kurt Elster
Where can people follow you, follow Obvi, learn more
Ron Shah
Um you could follow me a few different ways. So Oppy CEO on Twitter, Ronak Shah on LinkedIn. and my podcast show on this. Um not as great um as Kurt's unofficial shop Shopify podcast, but um definitely check me out there. Otherwise uh yeah you can typically DM me and I'll usually answer.
Kurt Elster
Rancha, Obvi, and Chew on this. This has been fabulous. And I appreciate your your honesty and candor. Thank you so much.
Ron Shah
Kurt, thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate it.
Kurt Elster
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