Ben Knegendorf's Money Story "I'm not very good at success. That's something I learned as part of this." Ben Knegendorf went from forklift operator at Walmart to selling his stake in an indoor golf business for $720,000. Then he watched most of it disappear through lifestyle creep, speculative investments, and financial ignorance. His second exit was different - and his brutal honesty about where the money went offers real lessons for entrepreneurs facing their first big payday.
"I'm not very good at success. That's something I learned as part of this."
Ben Knegendorf went from forklift operator at Walmart to selling his stake in an indoor golf business for $720,000. Then he watched most of it disappear through lifestyle creep, speculative investments, and financial ignorance. His second exit was different - and his brutal honesty about where the money went offers real lessons for entrepreneurs facing their first big payday.
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Kurt Elster
This episode is sponsored in part by Swim. Okay, here's a depressing stat. 70% of shoppers who want your products never actually buy them. They browse, they consider, then they forget. That's revenue walking out the door. Swim Wishless Plus turns browsers into buyers. Customers save products they want, get notified when prices drop, or items restock. You can also engage them in personalized fashion through your marketing or sales outreach. It's like having a personal shopper reminding them to come back and buy from you instead of your competitors. And 45,000 stores already use it, and it only takes five minutes to install. You could try it free today for 14 days. Go to get swim. com slash curt. That's swimwithay. com slash curt. Turn those maybe later into sales today. Get swim. com My friends, I think for sure, as a business owner, it's everybody's dream that you sell a business. We've heard a lot of stories on the show about people who have been successful with their business and then sold their business for reasons. And then what happens after that? Where does the money go? How long does it last? What do you do afterward? What is life after exit look like? And recently I was talking to my friend Ben Negendorf, who's been on the show before, uh back in 2022, and he had this experience. He sold the business. And then I believe, and he's going to share this with us, because he gave this talk and is really candid, just shared all the numbers. He's going to tell us. Where the money went. Where did it go? Ben Negadorf, thanks for joining me. How you doing? I want to know where the money went.
Ben Knegendorf
Yeah, I'm happy to be back. Uh yeah, I told you I did this presentation and uh you turned it into a nice little talk here. So I'm I'm excited to see how we can turn a presentation into a podcast because you're right. Um it's interesting what happens after you get a lump sum of money. And I think it's even more interesting what happens when you get a, you know, uh Payouts, if you will, and in the middle of COVID. Like COVID was just an absolute weird time in so many different ways. And I think you'll see that in in some of the places the money went.
Kurt Elster
Uh in my journey here. The other thing I want to bring up that I didn't in my intro is your your origin story before You know, you were in this position selling really suc selling a successful e-commer e-com business for three quarters of a million dollars. You were a forklift operator at Walmart, right?
Ben Knegendorf
Yeah, it all started in in 2015, as I mentioned. I think I was on your show in early 22, does that sound right?
Kurt Elster
Yeah. Um where it kind of gave you my backstory there.
Ben Knegendorf
But yeah, I was driving a forklift at a Walmart distribution center and uh you know just a kid with a dream if you will Kurt and and and look where we are now. So um look I think anyone can do this stuff. It's just you you have to put your attention to it and actually, you know, give a shit. Like you know put in the effort when instead of sitting on your couch watching Netflix or or playing Call of Duty or whatever. Whatever it is you do.
Kurt Elster
Okay. I like sitting on my couch playing PlayStation, but 100% I'm not going to build a successful business doing that. Uh you're right. And the pandemic was such an interesting time. So use Tell me uh when you went to sell this business, you know, when you signed it, when you sold it.
Ben Knegendorf
Yeah, so if you remember uh in my previous story again, um I didn't own this whole business, right? I actually consulted these two boys. uh to a quarter million in sales in their first three months. Uh and then they asked me to come on board. Uh I paid twenty thousand dollars for twenty percent of the business and we scaled from one million in revenue in the first year to 11 million two years later. Uh and that's when they approached me and they were like, hey, I think we're we're ready to we're ready to you know go off on our own. We're ready to jump out of the nest, if you will. Uh and this was February of twenty twenty, uh so just shortly before interesting times, and they approached me and and you know, we we kinda all felt like it was a good time to to to go our separate ways. I I certainly was interested in a payday and they were interested in going on their own and um yeah, kind of wild. Kind of wild uh you know, next month or so in the world after that.
Kurt Elster
The yeah. Yeah, that uh March twenty twenty is when y everything shuts down. Yeah. And then, you know, obviously that becomes a strange period in the world. Um, prior to then, you know, the before times never considered such things. So how much did you get?
Ben Knegendorf
Yeah, so it uh the deal was uh pretty simple $720,000 over three years, right? So $20,000 a month, you know, plus some interest after that, um, which is you know, no one's gonna balk at that kind of deal.
Kurt Elster
20,000 a month. You know, I the risk I've always heard with payouts is they stop coming at some point. Did you get the full, were there disputes? Did you get the full payout?
Ben Knegendorf
Yeah, no disputes. I had full confidence in what was built over there and really where the company was going. If I'm honest, you know, in hindsight, I would tell you there were bottlenecks that were probably cleared up once I left. Like I think I was more. hesitant on the hiring that needed to be done as soon as I left they hired like 10 people. Um and then, you know, as you know, uh I so I signed the check and I was flying home on like March 4th, March 5th. Um, you know, a week later the world shut down. I can literally I can picture Mark Cuban's face as he's at the basketball game looking at his phone, like, oh my goodness. And then as you can imagine, an an indoor golf company did pretty well. uh during that next period. So I think I was pretty confident about like where we were going or where the company was going. And I certainly had confidence in the two founders of the company. They're both rock stars. And so I I personally wasn't worried. I've definitely heard it from other people who Have earned out and you know they worried about it. I think a lot of people still meddle in those companies to make sure everything's going well and they try to do the best they can. But yeah, no, it was a it was a it was a clean break and I felt good about it.
Kurt Elster
Okay, so no lump sum payment up front here. This starts at a consistent monthly payment start to finish.
Ben Knegendorf
Yep.
Kurt Elster
Okay. And I think that changes a little bit. You know, there's a difference between someone hands me half a million dollars and someone hands me, you know, an an annuity. Yeah. Makes it it makes it, I think, maybe a little harder to spend through it all, you know, when there's not just a giant pile of cash, you know, sitting in front of me. What's the first thing you bought?
Ben Knegendorf
Uh if I'm honest, I don't I don't have a a recollection of buying anything in March 2020. I think it was such a weird time. Um so those first payments came in late March or early April. And, you know, full transparency, my wife had two very close family members die very early on from COVID. And so I think our our lived experience was much different than most people, you know, could go all the way to one extreme of like, you know, COVID's not real. uh no one died from it too it's very real and and i'm i'm very scared and i you know i think we were closer to that further end of like holy shit like we you know we have very close family members who passed away and so we spent you know Most of those months, as is a lot of us did, not doing anything, right? There was there was nothing open. We were in Wisconsin, so there was a few more things open here than there was maybe where some of the listeners are are listening from.
Kurt Elster
But five years later, you still have all the cash?
Ben Knegendorf
No, five years later it's gone, honestly. Um that's that's what I made this whole presentation about is like uh where did it go? And it certainly went to some good things. It went to some uh I I called it mid in this presentation. I don't I think I'm too old to say that word Um and some you know terrible things as well. But uh look, I'm happy to share with you everywhere it went.
Kurt Elster
Okay, that's why I'm here. That's what I want to know. Tell me how you messed up that cash, Ben.
Ben Knegendorf
The first thing I did, uh, I invested close to $100,000 on coaching, masterminds events, and mentorship, right? So that includes coaching with my coach Elliot Rowe, as you can see on the screen there. I think he's the best mindset coach in the world. Mastermind events like the one ECF. I know Kurt's a big fan of ECF on big. Right, yeah. It could be little mastermind events like you see on the screen or live events such as e-commerce fuel. Uh and I did a bunch of one-on-one consulting as well with different types of mentors. So I would consider that uh a good place to spend the money. Um at one of those events I met Mike Diller. I don't know if you know who Mike Diller was is or was. He was a big guy in the uh information marketing space back in the day. Um and this was the first moment I kind of had a inkling of, hey, maybe I should do something here. He literally pulled me aside. He's like, hey, you know that money could set you up for life, right? Uh if you just knew how to put it to work. And he he kind of gave me a talk and two, but I wasn't listening. Uh but more good here. I had a kid. We spent five straight winters in Florida, which was a big deal for me. Speaking of that coach Elliott Rowe, I got on a call with him one day in the middle of winter. He's like, you know, how you going, mate? And I just said, like, it's winter. I hate I hate my life. I don't want to be here in Wisconsin. And he was like, then why are you there? He's like, you you have the money, uh, you have the resources. And you don't need to be anywhere, just leave. And I'm really glad he said that. So we spent five straight winters in Florida. Uh we flew grandparents on both sides down, aunts and uncles on both sides down. Um, just intentional like living, right? This is memories we'll have forever. And then another great place I would say uh I spent the money was on a concierge doctor. Uh he helped me identify why I couldn't seem to shed any weight despite wearing 400 pounds at one point. Um so none of those were like bad decisions, but none of them were part of a wealth plan either, if that makes sense.
Kurt Elster
So we've got so someone early on tries to tell you you should uh I'm assuming you should invest the money.
Ben Knegendorf
Yeah. Yeah, he gave me a bunch of options for like REITs that, you know, he lives in Austin, and so he was like, I can connect you with this person to get your money in a read. I can connect you with this person who can invest it over here. I can I can connect you with somebody over here. Uh, I think the the mastermind I happened to see him at was right um um in the middle of 2019 One or twenty-two when the when the market first crashed a little bit in July. Um and he was like, you know, you you kind of missed the rally here on crypto. I wouldn't go into crypto right now. It's you know it's we're gonna enter a bear market. I wouldn't put my money in the market, it's gonna, you know, turn sour, but there are places like real estate. uh long-term things that you can put your money into that are gonna make sense long term. And and you know, if you just keep it in your account, it's gonna disappear. I promise you that. And he was right.
Kurt Elster
We could keep we'll have to clean this up, but if I calculate the date and I just say like April first, twenty twenty And our initial investment, like let's say we just put in the 20,000 right then, and we're gonna put it in Apple stock, and we're gonna reinvest the dividends too. If I calculate that out. Don't tell me. All right, the 20,000 would be 62,000 now. It's easy for me to go, you know, hindsight 2020, go, yeah, no, absolutely. You should have just invested in this and then, you know, you would have untold millions.
Ben Knegendorf
Yep.
Kurt Elster
But at the time, you know, and you're watch you don't know what's gonna happen, especially in that first year of the pandemic, you know, and the market's tanking. You're like, well, see I do I really wanna do this? So yeah.
Ben Knegendorf
I think the big thing for me was like immediate lifestyle creep, if you will, right? So I went from making lifestyle creep. Like we were distributing. Six K a month, roughly, to me, right? And I and I had some uh consulting on the side and as well as I had a company Paramount Pet Health at the time that was doing pretty well. But that six turned into 20, right? Essentially. The payouts just kept coming at 20. And so it was very easy for me to just go, I have more, I'm gonna spend more, right? Like the second you earn more, your life seems to expand to match it. Now it it doesn't happen with Lambos. Uh I know you're a Tesla guy. It doesn't happen with Teslas, but It happens with Amazon boxes and like slight upgrades and more meals out and better vacations. Um and it just continues to add up and you don't really notice it as it as it's creeping along. Like lifestyle creep is a real thing that I don't I don't think I would have ever imagined to be a thing, just given where I came from. I grew up relatively poor cur like very, you know, low middle class and um I couldn't imagine being in a place where I was I was making, you know, those mailbox money checks that were coming in on a monthly basis. Uh, you know, two of those is like what my dad made as a kid. So it I don't I don't think it registered with me. uh the gravity of the situation. This isn't in the presentation when I was really hoping the room would raise their hand, Kurt, so maybe you could raise your hand. How many of you own or own an NFT? Yeah, great. How many of you own worthless NFTs now?
Kurt Elster
Oh yeah. I almost bought an NFT once and then I found the process so difficult that I'm like, I'm just not gonna bother with this. And of course the NFT I was trying to buy became worthless. Yeah. Uh pretty quickly. Yeah.
Ben Knegendorf
NFTs, okay. So I bought some. Some did really well. I still hold some. Uh, but most of them, like everyone else's, went to zero, right? So I'm a huge uh Geary V fan. He has his V friends, which you can see some of those on there. Uh and his NFTs have treated me well. Certainly all the stuff that he gives away to his NFT holders have uh have treated me well.
Kurt Elster
And honestly, how much, man? How much did you spend on NFTs?
Ben Knegendorf
Um, I don't know if I could put a dollar figure on what I spent on it um versus what is still here, if I'm honest with you. I think uh there is one later on that that definitely has a dollar figure attached to it, but mostly this was just me being a degenerate, right? I think Some of us bought NFTs during that time and you know, believing you're smarter than the crowd or or falling for the hop FOMO of markets, if you will, and just look, some of these treated me well, right? Like I'm a big fan of of Gary Vee and what he's building at V, friends, but For the most part, the thing is.
Kurt Elster
There's a lot of like YOLO purchasing that happened during the pandemic. For sure.
Ben Knegendorf
There's a whole lot of scroll underneath these ones that are actually still worth some semblance of money. So um I started actually accumulating Bitcoin during that time and speculating on Ethereum and a bunch of other shit coins that were gonna make me rich. Um it was fun, I guess.
Kurt Elster
But Bitcoin and Ethereum would have done well.
Ben Knegendorf
Sure, for a for a time, yep. Uh and I'm a big believer in Bitcoin, um, less so Ethereum, but you know, there's all there was thousands of coins that that launched from 2017 to to 2022. Um They're all like chasing the next thing, chasing FOMO, and like you're investing in literally nothing but the hope that someone would buy your bags at a higher price than you paid for them. Like that's all it is. Most of them don't have any um utility whatsoever. So it was dumb and It's not like it was one bad call. There's not like one coin I put it all in and lost it all. It was just like death by a thousand Why not? Like l let's just try this stuff. So I did start actually accumulating Bitcoin though during that time. And even though I played stupid games and I learned stupid lessons with the shit coins, I'm glad I went through the what is money journey. It caused me to learn economics and understanding investing and wealth at a much deeper level. So I'm really glad I started that. Um if you want, I can I can jump right into the bad here. Yeah, let's hear it. Because this is where it gets fun, right? So there this is dumb stuff. So have you had um Taylor Holiday on this podcast before?
Kurt Elster
Yeah, as a lightning interview. Yes. Smart guy, I like him.
Ben Knegendorf
Uh formerly of Common Threadco, uh I love Taylor. Uh somewhere in the middle of COVID, he had uh tweeted uh back when you were tweeting. Um Who wants to play poker? Like I'm I'm lonely. I want to do some stuff. So we put together this uh ragtag group of like e-commerce entrepreneurs and agency owners and just a bunch of different people. And we all started playing poker on Wednesday night. Uh and somehow Us playing poker turned into us getting like pitched by companies while we were playing poker. So we had multiple different companies come through, pitch us on their business while we're all playing poker for real money. And then we all as a group said, hey, do we want to make an investment in this company? um or not. So we as a group uh invested in two of them. So the first one was called Dibs. So what Dibs was is a Fractionalization marketplace, right? So uh think of of uh stocks you can buy you know fractions of uh of a company, right, by buying stocks, but there are a lot of other assets that you can't buy fractions of, right? So sports cards is where they started. If you wanted to go buy a PSA 10 Michael Jordan rookie card, you're looking at you know $10 to $20,000 somewhere in there. You might want to buy one Kirk because you love Michael Jordan living in Illinois. But Most of us probably don't, or if we wanted the action on sports cards or on art or on anything else that could fractionalize, you would need a marketplace like this where you could go buy you know, one percent of a Michael Jordan card and like enjoy the upside and then sell that one percent to someone else.
Kurt Elster
Man, those order change emails suck. They're always like, I ordered the wrong size. I meant to change the shipping address. Oops, I was drunk. Instead of making customers email you that stuff, let them fix it themselves with Cleverific. Cleverific is a self-service portal that lets customers edit their orders without bugging you. That means you get fewer headaches, customers get faster fulfillment. And there's fewer returns overall. Everybody wins. Peter Manning New York cut their support tickets by 99% with Cleverific. You want in on that? Get fifty percent off the pro plan, just forty nine dollars a month, exclusively for listeners of the unofficial Shopify podcast. Go to cleverific. com slash unofficial and use promo code Kurt fifty. Done. Problem solved. That's Cleverific. This does yeah, at its face, this does not seem like a bad idea. I have seen similar ideas. Um I've seen this done with art, I've seen it done with luxury watches. The I've seen it done with cars. You know, it's not again, I like I'm risk averse. And so I'm like, okay, well, if I want to do my investing, I can just do it in the US stock market is my preference. But Yeah, this doesn't s I could see where someone would present this to you and if you had the cash you'd be like, okay, I'm willing to take a risk on this.
Ben Knegendorf
Yeah, and it only got better, right? Um If you're at all into sports and they start telling you, well, this athlete and this athlete and this athlete and this famous athlete, they've all invested and you could be co-investors alongside all of these people that you look up to. That gets more intriguing. And then they raised a special round and only took investment from Amazon. And we were like, oh, like, holy shit, this is actually happening. Um the founder had experience in a different company, uh, doing quite well prior to this. They ended up securing uh I don't want to call it a banking charter, but it's like one of only a dozen or so, not banking charters, but something like that in the state of New York. Um And they still went bankrupt. Like it still didn't work out, right? Um, and so I we invested as a group. Um, I invested $25,000 of my own money into this as a, you know, it's a pretty normal size check when you're when you're doing VC investing. I'm a big VC now, Kurt. Um, but this just became a $25,000 write-off.
Kurt Elster
So it didn't didn't work out?
Ben Knegendorf
It did not. Uh and let me tell you one more. Have you heard of uh whatnot, Kurt? No. Okay, whatnot is like a uh social selling platform. Well, I invested in the one you still you if you've heard of Whatnot, you definitely haven't heard of loop. So um it's very similar. Uh they are still around. I don't wanna I don't wanna, you know. poo-poo on them at all by any means. Um, but they're not, you know, what not as huge, right? They're they're the clear market leader here. They're they're live selling, which I think is 100% going to be a thing in the next few years here in America. A lot of people are breaking cards on there, but they're doing all sorts of other stuff, right? If you go back to the beginning of like what streaming was, it was just video games. Now I challenge you to go on kick. uh and go watch some of the stuff people are doing live stream like people are live streaming themselves sleeping which is absolutely wild to me and and people are commenting and and and uh you know sending uh subscriptions and and paying cash and like uh yeah there's so much you can do on these platforms. I think it's the early stages, but we invested um a few of us invested in loop uh much smaller investment than the 25k uh but uh again i've i've seen no return from this you know i wish them the best i hope they do well i understand what they're trying to build uh and i hope someday i see a return on my investment but more likely you know it's it's gonna end up being Donation.
Kurt Elster
So we this one we is still an ongoing concern, but Yeah, we'll see. We're not not holding out hope.
Ben Knegendorf
Yeah. Well the the reality is I I lit the money on fire thinking I was smarter than VCs, right? So VCs hope, hope. that one out of the ten companies they invest in actually make it, right? Their whole business model depends that one of those 10 actually returns the capital of the other nine investments that went big. Bankrupt, but look, I was gonna hit my first couple, Kurt. I'm I'm really smart. And indeed, they're they're like really good ideas on on face. Bank But good ideas don't mean dick. Like execution is all that matters. And even though they had loads of experience, the backing of famous athletes and Amazon, um, the first one failed and and you know the second one's still there and they're doing okay. Um but you know, none of these are VC investments where you're hoping to 10x, 100x. uh over five, ten years.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, don't blame you for that one. Because I've also, you know, I've done the same thing. Been like, oh yeah, I'll write you, you know, $20,000 check. It was over the pay same period. And uh I've not had a positive return on my investment. Uh, and of the the companies I invested in, you know, one's one's gone. That money's gone, you know, and the others. There's one good one in there. But has not returned anything yet.
Ben Knegendorf
So this Yeah, this what happens to the best of us. On the flip side of that, it makes me want to shoot for the moon. It makes like I've I've genuinely got an idea out on this whiteboard out here that I think could be a billion dollar idea. I would need investment. I would need my soul focus on that business, but it kind of makes you want to take that shot, right? Because there's so many people that are like Great idea. Here's some money. And look, if it doesn't work, it just doesn't work. There's like no repercussion to you not taking the shot, right? It makes you want to go big.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, you're you're absolutely right. Because like the ones even the ones that didn't work out, I I don't even hold it against the the founder. Like that, you know, that's the risk we take.
Ben Knegendorf
So back into that poker group, we were doing so well with these investments, Kurt, we thought, why not why not capitalize on this NFT boom and Uh Taylor and some others kind of led the charge here of let's do a 90-day rush. Let's uh like everything was ripping, right? I had a student who was selling fitness equipment and they were crushing on the word dumbbell. Like dumbbell. That's it. Um, you know, go try to win on that keyword today. But like they were crushing. There was money everywhere in 2021. So we were like all caught up in the euphoria. We were gonna go after this. NFTs, NBA top shot. Um, we were gonna go after this. The premise was simple. We all pitch in $10,000, capitalize on the euphoria, buy and flip NFTs within 90 days, and make money, right? It's a very uh simple premise. We're all winning. Uh, and you can see in the upper right-hand corner that currently uh this is worth $3,000, uh, this NFT portfolio. And so um again, uh I think it was a decent idea. I don't think it was executed well and and more so All of us are e-commerce agency owners or operators. What are we doing? Like why are we why are we trying to be fish, you know, swimming on land? It doesn't make any sense.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, a lot of this was based on the timing, uh, zero interest rate phenomenon, right? Yeah. It being like 2021 I don't know when interest rates start moving back up, but it felt like there that when interest rates get low enough, it turns into the infinite money glitch and you start seeing phenomenons like NFTs, like you know, some of this reckless spending. You know, some of it was, you know, just a a product of the time of the environment. Certain if you got these payouts, what about taxes? We got uh all right, a hundred and one eighty a hundred and eighty thousand seven hundred twenty all right, so twenty-five percent. Yeah. Is what you gave to them.
Ben Knegendorf
Yeah.
Kurt Elster
And then when it's on in like an annuity payout like that, was it like each year you had to pay that twenty-five percent?
Ben Knegendorf
Yeah, each year, whatever you got that year. So
Kurt Elster
Okay. That makes sense.
Ben Knegendorf
I don't want to do public math, but you know, whatever, a quarter million a year or something like that, you had to pay on.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, yeah. So, okay. I mean obviously like and like as you said, there's really No way around it unless, you know, you already have like your tax attorney on speed dial and you're, you know, willing to to get creative and potentially go to jail for it. Um, I am not. I am risk averse. I don't, I will just pay them their demands. What are you gonna do?
Ben Knegendorf
Yeah, I'm not gonna not pay it, but I'm Begrudgedly gonna have to stand I'm gonna stand up and explain why I think it is is nonsense that we keep paying it and that there's this entire group of people who are screaming, pay more, pay more, pay more. It doesn't make any sense to me.
Kurt Elster
So like when you look back on this retroactively, what's the word you would use for how you treated this money?
Ben Knegendorf
Man, I don't know if I have a good word for it. Just like I would say reckless and and more so like ignorance. I don't think I knew what to do. Again, I grew up in um be my other question. Yeah, I grew up in a lower middle class and uh I learned the phrase rob Peter to pay Paul from my dad. Like we would put a vacation on one card and then when zero percent got offered on this card, we'd put it on this card and we'd continue moving that until we could possibly pay it off in minimum payments and We just didn't have a lot. And I don't think the education was there on how to get more. Like for my kids, they want a Steam Deck really bad. And I said there there's a hundred different ways you can make the money for a Steam Deck. Uh let's brainstorm those. You could you could, you know, God forbid have a lemonade stand. I think that's the lowest tier of what you could do as a little kid entrepreneur, but you could probably make up some like almost like circus games and stand down there and the the kids would show up for two, three dollars to try the circus games just to win some of your squish meals that I know you don't mind getting rid of, right? There's a million ways we could do this. They could color on cards and we could sell them on whatnot. There's so many different ways to make money. And I don't think I knew any of that. I was mowing lawns in my neighborhood at nine years old. I had my own paper route at 11 years old. So I was doing everything I could. But that was my idea of money was like work a job, right? And I think I said this on the last show. When I when I was at Walmart, I was married to a CNA and that's what I w as a kid. My dad worked at a at a warehouse and his wife was a CNA. And like I had hit the the absolute peak of what I thought reality was at one point in my life. And so I did I just didn't have any education on what to do with money before then or after that moment.
Kurt Elster
That's the trouble is you know the our education system doesn't teach you like it doesn't teach you uh like wealth management. You know, and I think even if we did teach it, most kids will be it's so abstract the idea of you know having a large sum of money that they're not going to be able to internalize it. And you know, for me, it was like it was something my dad was interested in. So I picked up a lot that way. And then, you know, when I went to college, there was I would not even have learned it in college or getting an MBA, it was purely because there was a an accounting teacher who worked it into like an unrelated class about bookkeeping. He had like all these investment and wealth strategies that he Like, clearly was his interest that he just happened to work into one class that I happened to take because it was a requirement. But had I not done that There's just a lot of core info that has been extremely helpful for me to avoid these, yeah, to avoid um reckless spending or or just, you know, unknowingly. missing opportunities with money that um you know I really I owe that guy I owe that guy a lot. I should find him on LinkedIn and say thanks.
Ben Knegendorf
Yeah, I think it for me it was just paycheck to paycheck mindset. My my entire life it was I was living paycheck to paycheck. And I don't I don't think that ever changed And until I had someone educate me on like, hey, that money should go work for you. Rather than just you have it, let's go spend it, or or what are we saving towards getting? You should put it to work. And I don't think I learned that even until I was in business for quite a few years. Obviously, I didn't know it here. I tried, right? I put it into some PC companies. I tried some things like that. But Let's be real. I didn't I didn't really have a plan. And I think it takes getting a little wrecked for you to learn anyway, right? Like people are gonna make these mistakes. I'm I'm positive there's people listening who are like, oh fuck yeah, uh definitely bought some NFTs and You know, I tried the Dogecoin and I did that. I'm sure there's people listening like that. And we're all gonna, you know, throw our money around in some stupid way, but like, you know, eventually you're gonna land on on what makes sense and realize that, you know. You're working your ass off to make this money. Why not, why not put it to work further for you, right? Because just like an athlete, uh, you know, your window isn't as short as an athlete, but it's it's not going to go on forever, right? Let alone the good times aren't going to go on forever. There's not going to be another huge wave of of 40% of the money supply showing up and just all of us having the greatest time ever in e-commerce. And now we're in this deep low where everyone's, Taylor Holiday included, saying e-commerce is terrible. Don't start an e-commerce store. None of that's true, right? It's just, it's the ebbs and flows and and knowing how to handle that.
Kurt Elster
Most yeah, if you had to do this over again, clearly you would approach it differently You're lucky enough and skilled enough that you have that opportunity. You sold uh your Paramount Pet Health you mentioned earlier, your other business, right?
Ben Knegendorf
I did.
Kurt Elster
And For how much?
Ben Knegendorf
So we sold that company uh right around 800, somewhere around there.
Kurt Elster
Okay, so uh a similar amount of money as well.
Ben Knegendorf
When was this? Uh last year, last October.
Kurt Elster
Okay. So this time around when it shows up or you're like, all right, how are we handling it?
Ben Knegendorf
Yeah, first off, I need to shout them out because I know they've been on your show before. Liana Patch was my partner in that business. Late Layton Taylor was my partner in that business. So uh a big win for all of us. it was a fun time. But we you know I definitely handled it differently, right? Um immediately I recognized and I should have recognized this the first time that I had other sources of income. I didn't need to do anything with this money. Um I didn't need to just spend it because I had it. Uh it also came in a lump sum this time, which is very different than getting it uh, you know, monthly.
Kurt Elster
Hugely different.
Ben Knegendorf
You know, I spent some time. The sale process took uh all of 2024 and some of 2023 to get to get to the finish line. And so I had plenty of time to think about what to do differently this time. And I just said I'm not gonna buy, I'm not gonna buy anything out of the game. It's uh like literally I'm not gonna buy anything. Uh the only thing I told myself I would do is buy myself an infrared sauna. It's something I've wanted in my house for a while. And so I I did that. I bought an infrared sauna and put it in my basement and I set aside the fucking tax money and then I I I put the rest in Bitcoin, all of it. Because I just wanted to put it in a place where it wasn't going to get devalued against the dollar. I didn't want to just, you know, put it in the dollar. I really didn't want to put it in the SP 500, which is really just like seven companies all spending a shit ton on AI right now, which is pushing up their stocks. I didn't feel comfortable there. Um, and I you know I believe in what Bitcoin is, and so I put I put it all in there.
Kurt Elster
When was this?
Ben Knegendorf
Uh right when we sold it in October last year, right around 70K.
Kurt Elster
And since Bitcoin has has gone up since then, I believe.
Ben Knegendorf
Yeah, up and down and up and down. It's it's what Bitcoin does for sure, yeah.
Kurt Elster
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Ben Knegendorf
Yeah, I got a slide in here that that uh you know I kind of referenced in the room, right? So again, I run dropshipbreakthrough. com with my my partner John. We teach people how to start e-commerce businesses, specifically high-ticket dropshipping. If you want to understand all the benefits of that, you can certainly go listen to my last episode on here or or or you know, I'm sure we have a webinar on our homepage or something like that. But uh There's people in the room who are they're running the best investment vehicle they'll ever have. And there's probably a lot of people listening to that too. Right. So if you look at um, you know, let's just use this, this, this first case study we talked about. I I I don't know Spent 20K to get 20% of that business. And I exited three years later for $720, right? That's 3,500% growth plus all of the dividends monthly in between there. If you're running any business whatsoever, if it's making a dollar, you already have the best investment vehicle you've ever had. You should spend more time trying to grow the thing you can control. than putting it somewhere and hoping it grows for you. That's my opinion. I I put the rest of it into um something hard, right? Gold. God forbid real estate. I'm not a big fan of real estate either, just how how inflated that has gotten to. But like something that's not going to lose its something that's going to hold its value against the dollar, right? If the dollar devalues, the asset price will go up. Um, you know, the the rich get richer, as they say, right? Put your money in assets and your assets will ride that that devaluation up. That like that's how I think about it, right? But I think everyone listening to this and certainly the students who are in the room for this presentation. They know their customer. They know their margins. You can bet on them. They're an expert in their industry. Fucking act like it, right? For us, it's like buy stocks so you can get even better margins. Higher than employee you don't think you can afford right now. that can help grow your business. Launch your own product line, whether it be an accessory or the main product you sell, buy links. I'll talk to you about that tomorrow morning. I wrote here as I did another presentation on links. If you guys uh you know someone listen wants that, I'll shoot it over to you. Buy consulting, right? Uh I'm a huge, huge fan of consulting by mindset coaching. As I talked with uh Elliot Rowe before, I think there's so many places that you can put your money. Um, and you don't need to go spend it all either, but like You know, if you have an exit, you should you're probably still doing something. I don't think any of us can just shut it off and go sip a Mai Thai on the beach. Why not, you know, put that somewhere that that that can grow your business? Another another great place is literally on the screen. I know people, one of our students, John Murphy, hired you guys to redo his website. Um, you guys did a fantastic job. What an investment that was. Like you turned his whole uh website literally upside down to turn it into this like bloody dear gory website. It was gorgeous.
Kurt Elster
Uh you did a really wonderful job on uh e-bike gen. John Murphy, he sold e-bikes.
Ben Knegendorf
Yeah, yeah, e-bikes for hunters, right? So you guys threw some some interesting photos on there, but it was a you guys did an awesome job. Like, what better investment can you make than in yourself? I don't know. That's what I would say. There's just so much you can do to invest in yourself and more importantly, into the in the best investment vehicle you'll ever have, which is your business.
Kurt Elster
That one means a lot to me. Because I needed to be, I think last year I needed to be reminded of that. Like, hey, reinvest in your business, reinvest in the things that you could control. And so sure enough, I started to do that. And it's been about a year since then. And wow, that really changed things. Suddenly, you know, I'm The the business is better. It runs smoother. I it uh uh there's more revenue, more prof everything worked better the moment I started putting cash back into it, you know, more than I'd been in the past. And it paid dividends. And so I'm like, wow, you know, how far can you scale that? And where can you go with that? So I I like that advice. I think, you know, as entrepreneurs is you know the business gets more successful, that lifestyle creep trap can get anybody. You know, it just depends on the you just happen to say yes to the wrong thing, man. And that then it happens. Um And then from there, it's like, oh, well, you know, now you're you start as the owner, you start paying yourself more. Or it suddenly there's less going back into the business. And that can be detrimental, but you don't notice it. You don't feel it, right? Because you're you're buying yourself your toys or whatever. Um, I think that's that's a mistake that anybody can get into.
Ben Knegendorf
I think a lot of e-commerce store owners are just like me. You know, maybe they weren't a forklift driver at Walmart, but they were a nobody in e-commerce, right? They've never done this before. And so I think there's too many of us who just don't know what to do and we're too scared to go look stupid and ass. Right. There are s there's so many experts out there that, you know, for 200 an hour, 500 an hour, a thousand an hour, you can go pay for their time. And they're going to give you so much in that short period of time that will blow your mind. They'll they're they're going to tell you exactly what you need to do, and you just need to listen and go apply that. So I think the easiest place to reinvest is is just getting advice or spend it to go be in the rooms. ECF is wonderful. Go put yourself in ECF if you're doing seven figures, e-commerce fuel. You're going to get a lot of other forums. You're going to get even more if you go to ECF Live. And there are many masterminds that are just like that or live events that are similar to that that you can go be around other people who are doing the same thing as you, who are smarter than you, who are 10 steps ahead of you or 10 steps behind, one way or another, you're gonna help somebody or you're gonna get helped. And I promise you it'll be an investment that you will not regret making.
Kurt Elster
Would you would you ever hire a wealth manager? Would you hire someone to manage your money
Ben Knegendorf
I think I would need to have a lot of money in order to give them a fee to manage my money. Honestly, I don't think it's rocket science, right? If you really want to get simple, just Put it in the market, put it in VU or uh or any of those those ETFs that ride the whole market and and at minimum you're gonna ride The money growth. Like you're gonna average about 12% per year. That's about what we print per year of the money supply. And so at least you're keeping up with inflation at that point. If you just let it sit in the bank account, it's like holding a melting ice cube.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, for sure. I also I would not hire a money manager, just the idea of like, you know, giving someone else access, letting them be in charge of it. It never happened. Yeah. I like my independence and that includes not giving up that control to a money manager. Plus, man, anyone, any service, any person who wants to take a percent of revenue. I'm like, all right, let's be suspicious of that. Because that pays dividends for them, not me.
Ben Knegendorf
Um you might want to put like a buffer between you and the decision anyway, right? If you want to make all the decisions, that's cool. And again, this is not advice. I'm not an expert. or a lawyer, any of those things, but you should probably put a buffer in between your really, really like emotional monkey brain and the ability to to do something, right? Like um When the market tanked. Like, you know, use uh what's that what do they call it? Liberation Day when we did all the tariffs, right?
Kurt Elster
The market just absolutely tanked.
Ben Knegendorf
And I know quite a people who saw quite a few people who sucks and they were like freaking out. And the market's right back to where it was a month later, right?
Kurt Elster
All they had to do was wait. S heard a lot of stories, heard from friends who've been successful and sold businesses, and then are absolutely miserable later. Like they achieve that independent wealth where they don't have to work. But then they don't know what to do with themselves and they become, you know, quite depressed about it. What do you do? You know What would you do if you were in that position?
Ben Knegendorf
Look, I hope to get to that position. I don't think I'm there. I think I'm in a place where I'm comfortable and and um I think there's a movie called The Gambler where or uh the the the father in Roseanne, if you will. What's his name? John Goodman? Where John Goodman says, you know, get to a place and fuck you money. Where it's just like you know you got just enough to buy a house and put a 26-year roof on it and and have some money set aside and live off the dividends. And like if you want to work, great. If you if the boss is mean to you, fuck you. If you If you you want to build a business, great. If it's not doing well, you know, you can just tell everyone, you know, F you if you want to. And so I think getting to a place like that is is powerful. I'm not certainly not to a place where I don't need to work anymore. I I I would love to get there at some point. Um, but I would say. Through working on the mindset stuff and getting to this place, the chip on my shoulder is gone. And and what a real advantage a chip on your shoulder is to to to be somebody Who, you know, your family's still doubting you, your friends are still doubting you, people are, you know, tall poppy syndrome, as they call it uh in Australia, uh, crabs in the pot, people are trying to pull you down. Don't start that thing. Oh. You'll never make that. You should just come back and work. Like that chip on your shoulder to like prove people wrong or prove your dad wrong or prove your mom wrong or whatever it is for you, whatever that chip is. Um, I would say removing that kind of sucks. Uh, because it it used to be what drove me. Um, and and it took a while for me to shift to like purpose uh and shift towards really just growth, right? That there is no endpoint. Just every challenge in and of itself is the joy of like getting better every single day. Um but for a long time it was just, you know Okay, I'm sorry to swear so much on your show, Ker, but just like fuck you. I'm gonna show you. Like I'm gonna show my teachers. I'm gonna show my boss. Like literally when I got fired, their words were Seems like you're having fun doing that cute little internet thing. And they fired me from Walmart. Like that like that was the end of my my employment at any company, right?
Kurt Elster
Two watchwords you gotta watch out for. If someone says uses cute or little, it's like they're they do not want your success.
Ben Knegendorf
But you know, losing that chip um is frustrating for sure. Uh and it took a long time to like realize purpose. And then again, John and I started dropship breakthrough We've helped thousands of people start e-commerce businesses. You've had multiple on this show, which is fucking wild. John Murphy, Jaden coming on the show a couple weeks ago as well, another student of ours who had a good exit. Um, we have so many successful students. Some of them have become business partners of ours at this point. And so That's been cool, right? That the the shift to helping others rather than helping yourself was told to me. People told me that's what you should do and that it's gonna feel so rewarding. But you know, for a long time it doesn't feel like that, right? Because you're just fighting for yourself and And I would tell you that transition is super helpful. And maybe it's not a course for you, maybe it's some other way that you give back, but giving back is certainly something that I didn't think would be this rewarding. And it definitely is.
Kurt Elster
I agree with that. You know, from the folks I've talked to, it's like ultimately you need purpose. You can't just chill forever. Maybe some people can, but I think you know the the people of entrepreneurial uh backgrounds don't And, you know, they have to have that purpose. They're work dogs. They need to be doing the work. But you could get that same satisfaction, you know, out of helping others, out of volunteering, you know, whatever it is. Um And yeah, it's it's powerful. This this is a a great episode. You've you're so candid, you know, you really shared everything and all it really with the intention of helping others with the same mistake or showing other people Hey, you know, you're not alone in these same things. Because we have everyone has made mistakes with money. Everybody. Um, and so it it's just refreshing to hear somebody talk about it. 'Cause you go online and it's every it's like nothing but Gen Z kids. with Lambos and then you know other people complaining that Gen Z kids don't know how to do anything. You're like, okay. Yeah. Like I don't know what to believe anymore. Um so with you, it is it's nice to hear something honest.
Ben Knegendorf
I'm just happy to share. I hope somebody, you know, at at home can relate to either this version of the story or or the last one in 2022. I think that's a different version of my story as well that hopefully more people can relate to and realize, you know, we're all just doing our best here.
Kurt Elster
And then where can we learn more about you?
Ben Knegendorf
Absolutely. You can find me at uh dropshipbreakthrough. com or on the dropship podcast. Uh and John and I are about to launch a new uh more business focused, interesting podcast soon too. So look for that coming soon. Cool. Very cool.
Kurt Elster
Uh Ben Negadorf, dropship breakthrough. Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks for having me, buddy. Crowdfunding campaigns are great. You can add social proof and urgency to your product pre-orders while reducing risk of failure. But with traditional crowdfunding platforms. You're paying high fees and giving away control all while your campaign is lost in a sea of similar offers. It can be frustrating. That's why we built Crowdfunder. The Shopify app that turns your Shopify product pages into your own independent crowdfunding campaigns. We originally created Crowdfunder for our private clients. And it was so successful we turned it into an app that anyone can use. Today, merchants using Crowdfunder have raised millions collectively. And With Crowdfunder, you'll enjoy real-time tracking, full campaign control, and direct customer engagement. And it's part of the Built for Shopify program, so you know it's easy to use. So say goodbye to high fees and hello to successful store-based crowdfunding. Start your free trial and transform your Shopify store into a pre-order powerhouse today. Search Crowdfunder in the Shopify App Store to get started.