i got fired

I spend a million dollars a year with this vendor. I've been with them since the beginning, 13 years, and they just fired us this week. What's up, everybody? So, welcome back to the, I don't even know. We need, I feel like we need like a name for this kind of new format that we're doing. For those of you who haven't watched any of my videos in a while, we've got a new format. If you have a business question, or a question about my philosophy, or just a question that you would like me to answer, down below, say, or start it with "Question," and then ask. At the end of each video that I do, I'm going to be answering the questions from the previous week. And today, I'm going to answer a bunch of your questions because they were awesome.

Um, something else I'm going to do real quick. If you are interested in supporting this channel or me, I'm going to have a link down below to what I call the Empire kit. You are going to get a full bottle of sea salt spray, the bold shampoo, which is amazing, manly, sexy, incredible, and a texture powder, which is like my favorite hair product. Just a little bit of a sprinkle, right? Work it in. You're going to have weightless volume, crazy texture. If you haven't tried a texture powder, you definitely need to do it. 20 bucks. All right. Why am I doing this? Because I want you to try these three products. I also have too much inventory in these three products. And as we've talked about before, excess inventory equals dollar bills sitting on the shelf that I can't do anything with, including paying off two people apparently.

Um, so you can't even imagine this week. All right. Like, just when I thought, like, all right, everything's cool, you know, I'm getting this lawsuit behind me, and I won't even go into the fact that the same attorney sued Tee Hanley. Anyway, I'll get into that some other time. Just when I thought everything was like, going to be like, all right, getting things under control, it has been a, how do I put this, a [ __ ] of a hard two years. Um, it started basically when this lab that we were using from literally day one decided, "Okay, we are going to basically stop working with all these companies that are, or that started as like, private label."

So, just a little recap of the history of Pete and Pedro. When I started Pete and Pedro, I basically went out to a bunch of different labs. I said, "Hey, I want to start a hair product business." They all sent me their private label or white label samples. I found a company. I loved their product line. And so I ordered 96 units of putty, pomade, clay, paste, and cream. And 96 units, right? My opening inventory order was like, I don't know, $2,000. And over the years, that company has been like our go-to. And it was amazing because it was turnkey. Turnkey basically means I could call them up and be like, "Yo, I want to order 10,000 putty." Boom. Done. Right. They handle the packaging. They handle the silk screen. They handle the ingredients, components, everything. And three months after I place the order, they send it to us, and I pay my bill.

Well, apparently there's been a lot of changes in this industry and in manufacturing, contract manufacturing industry. And so, a lot of these smaller, like labs have been selling off to these like bigger conglomerates and corporations. And so, basically, we got an email from this company that was like, "Yo, um, sorry, but you are one of two companies that orders a large enough volume that we're going to keep and bring with us to this new like entity. We're shutting down the lab that you're that we're using, or that we were using in Chino, California, and we're basically absorbing all these, you know, things into this other other business."

Well, the problem, as I've mentioned before, and this is going to be a long vlog probably, so buckle up. Make sure to grab your coffee or water or whatever you're drinking. I'm not even mad if you get a beer. I need a beer. I should probably start drinking more anyway. So, so the problem was that the minimum order quantity for something like a putty, or any of our like styling aids, was that the minimum order for this now, in this new like system, was 25,000 units. And so for some of our products, like 25,000 units is like, okay, we can handle it. Like sea salt spray, our number one seller, like we order like 150,000 units at a time. And so certain things we order like a ton of. Certain things we order like, you know, a smaller amount. And so 25,000 is like a non-starter. And so immediately when we found this out, it was like [ __ ], like we are 100% screwed because I can't afford to keep 25,000 units of all these auxiliary products. Um, because if I'm not selling through them at a specific rate, then they're literally going to sit on the shelf for like, ever, and they can potentially like go bad. They've got a two-year expiration, and I'm not going to keep like three or four years worth of pomade on my shelves. It just doesn't make sense.

And so, right away, we started reaching out to all these different labs. And basically, the way that it would work, because these labs kind of own your formulas, they aren't going to be like, "Okay, you don't want to use us. Here's the formula to sea salt spray. Here's the formula to whatever." And so what happened? Um, so, so we basically sent our product to all these different labs, all these different products, and we said, "Hey, like, we can still order certain products from the current company because we order them at the volume that they need us to order, but some of these smaller SKUs, we need to have backups, right?" And so, we basically sent our products. They, and the way that they do it, they reverse engineer it, right? They reverse engineer it. They send you samples. We get the samples. We test them. We give them feedback. They send you new samples. All right. We did this with a bunch of different companies.

The problem with this is that it took so much of our time and energy just trying to make sure that we don't run out of inventory, but also that we had a company that could actually produce a product that we loved and that was consistent with what people were expecting and what people used to use, or use are used to using. And so, unfortunately, because this took so much time, we weren't able to do really what we need to do, which is focus on marketing and moving the needle in terms of sales. And so, literally for the past like two years, it has been us just trying to basically figure everything out.

The other problem with what was happening was now instead of us basically being able to just call them and be like, "Okay, we want 10,000 putty," or "15,000 putty." We can't do that because these new manufacturers, these contract manufacturers, they are not turnkey. I can't basically just call them and say, "Place the order," without us having to grab the labels and get the containers and have everything coordinated and ship. So, it's been a cluster [ __ ] of massive magnitude at Pete and Pedro, but we've done a pretty good job managing it, and everything's kind of getting cool until this week.

And so, one of the things that Mike Levy, my boy, my marketing director, he, and he has just been a godsend with trying to make sure and negotiate and and have everything, you know, situated with these new manufacturers. Now, the upside to some of these new manufacturers is because we're buying like the packaging and everything, and they're basically just buying the ingredients, they're filling it, and they're shipping it to us. We've actually been able to save some money on some of the products that we've been getting. And at the volume that we're ordering, like, it's significant. And so, just give you an example. If a bottle of sea salt spray cost me $5, right? And I'm ordering a h 100,000 units, that's $500,000 that I'm ordering. Well, if I can knock that down to $4, now, all of a sudden, it's literally $400,000. So, I've just saved $100,000. And that $100,000 is literally just profit, right? Which is a good thing.

But this week, we got, and so, so, so let me back up for a second. So, ever since the transition from this lab and they consolidated it, it's been a nightmare because they haven't had their [ __ ] together. They're still trying to like figure things out like as it's happening. And so they're changing their mind. At first, it was like, "Oh, our minimum order quantity is 10,000." And we're like, "Cool." And then like, "No, no, no, 15." And we're like, "Ah, okay." And then they said, "No, no, no, it's 25." And so they keep like changing the game as as this is happening. And so we've had issues. Like, we've had a ton of issues. The last issue that we really had with them was the putty issue. Basically, they were trying to reformulate their formula from the other lab in order to basically make us a viable product. We went through all sorts of samples, and they weren't able to do it. The good news is that we had other manufacturers that were able to recreate our product for us. So, we basically had a backup. So, when they weren't able to do it, they weren't able to deliver it, we basically said, "Listen, we can't place this order with you." And it was for 25,000 units. We can't do it. You haven't produced a product. I'm not going to just, you know, fingers crossed because the other thing I've learned about this company is they don't have our back. If they make a mistake, they're basically going to number one, try to basically mitigate their financial obligation or liability. And so they're not going to be like, "Okay, you know, we made a mistake. It's a bad formula. We'll recreate it for free." No, they're going to say, "You take it, but we'll give it to you at a discount." Right? And so it's like, "Well, [ __ ], I've got this product that I really can't sell or whatever. It's just not a good situation." Anyway, you shake it. And so we ended up saying, "Okay, we'll buy the packaging from you." And so, um, because like I'm like, "Okay, I'll buy the packaging from you since it, you know, was already screen printed with, you know, putty, and we'll send it to the new manufacturer."

So, we've had issues with this manufacturer, and it's not just this thing. It's a bunch of things. We had a huge issue with 150,000 salts that we ordered. Like, it's been a cluster. Combine that with the fact that one of the emails that we were copied on from our sales rep that went to upper management when I was sort of talking about this putty, like, "Hey, like, we can't take this from you. We've got to cancel the PO, right?" He basically didn't take us off the BCC, and he and he copied us and said, "Hey, they're trying to cancel the order. Give us whatever ammunition you have for Pete and Pedro. Give me the ammunition." And anytime somebody says ammunition, it's not a good thing. And so we had this huge kind of blow up with them. It's been a a tumult, tumult, how do you pronounce it? Tumultuous relationship, but it gets worse. Seriously, it's like, really.

So this week, then we get a, we get a, we asked them about hairspray. We're trying to do a hairspray. We asked them, "Hey, can you do like a 10 or 15,000 minimum order on this aerosol hairspray?" And he said, "No, we can't. And by the way, this is obviously not a good relationship anymore. And so, um, just we'd like to part ways amicably, and we've got $35,000 worth of your excess packaging and excess chemicals that we are using. And so we think we're going to do you a solid and give you all your stuff that we don't need for 20 grand." And I go, "Hold up. Wait a second. What? You're firing us? First of all, we still order, like I said, over a million dollars a year from this company. All right. You're firing us. That's one thing. No like, "Hey, we're going to be done in a month." "We're going to be done in three years. Place like your last order." No, just, "We're done, and you need to buy all the crap that we've overpurchased for your company." How's that work? And so I said, "Fuck." And oh, and they said, "As a as a bonus, just so that we part ways on an amicable or we're amicable about this breakup, we'll give you your formulas." All they're trying to do is basically just mitigate their loss. Like if they have to throw out the $35,000 worth of stuff, like that's on them. They're, and mind you, they are a monster, monster, monster, monster company, right? But they're trying to mitigate that. They're trying to use our formulas as kind of like the leverage. You know, coincidentally, we don't need the formulas because we've had everything kind of like engineered and figured out by these other labs. And the other problem is that all this packaging that they have is obsolete. We've already changed the barcode on all this new packaging to be consistent with what we need it to be on Amazon and and these other like other platforms. And so I don't need any of it. I also can't take chem. What am I going to do with chemicals? All right, here's the other problem. They're like, "Oh, you can have the chemicals." My other labs won't take somebody else's chemicals. And so what am I going to do? I also need to ship all this stuff, which is a complete tractor trailer load worth of stuff, if not more. That will cost me $5 to $10,000 just to get the stuff that I don't need. I also don't have room to store it. We're packed with our current stuff, with our current packaging, with our current inventory at the warehouse. And so then I'd have to basically spend more money in order to dispose of it. And so I basically sent him an email and I was like, "Yo, like, we don't need anything. Keep it, throw it out, do whatever. I'll pay you 10 grand for the formulas." And they said, "Nope. If you don't accept our offer, we're just going to invoice you for the full third $35,000." And I said, "What? Like, this is insane. This is insane. This is crazy. F it. We don't want the formulas. We don't want anything. Call me." And, um, he didn't call me. He's like, "Let's set up a time to talk, um, this coming week with, uh, with the upper management." And so like, this is craziness, and it's just one more thing. And the reason why it's frustrating, well, there are many reasons why it's frustrating, but one of the main reasons, and I'm sorry this segment is going long, but I'm just telling you what I'm dealing with. The main reason why it's so frustrating, um, is because we're having to deal with this stupid [ __ ] as opposed to what we need to be dealing with, which is marketing and selling Pete and Pedro products. But unfortunately, we're having to deal with this [ __ ]. And, um, you know, it is what it is. And I am just very thankful that, um, we have a a strong business, but this has been a really hard year. Hardest year that I can think of for our company. And, um, just we just want to, we just want to sell [ __ ]. We just want to sell [ __ ]. That's it. I'm a capitalist. I just want to sell [ __ ]. But unfortunately, as the owner, as the company, you're going to have to deal with issues. And sometimes, even though it feels unfair and is unfair, you still have to deal with it. And so, anyway, that's a long way to just tell you that [ __ ] is crazy out there.

But now, what's not crazy are your questions. And if you have a question down below, start it with "Question" and ask it. And if you're interested in easing my burden, boom, the Empire kit, $20, make you holler. I will also put a special discount code down below for those of you who've already bought this but want to still support and, uh, need a little little incentive.

All right, so here's the deal. Some business questions. You guys are so awesome and so much smarter than me and so much further ahead than I was at at most of all of your ages. Um, and I'm still trying to figure things out, but I've experienced a lot. I've had over 22 different businesses over my entrepreneurial career. A lot of them did not work. Some of them have. And, um, I still currently have a few businesses that are doing all right. Salon Posta, Tee Hanley, Pete and Pedro, Menfluential Media, which is kind of tailing down, and, um, that's another story for another time. But, uh, but yeah, you're awesome.

First question is from our friend Wise Guy of Personal Dev. "How are you going to make your website compliant moving forward so another troll doesn't sue you?" This is a great question, and it's something that I already did, and I am going to continue to do. Um, I basically, when I got sued, I used an agency that specializes in ADA compliance, and it's all about, you know, the wave score. It's all about getting these scores and making sure that you are high enough on these scores, or low enough in terms of errors, that you're not a target. Something else I did was I removed accessibility from my website. I'm going to talk a little bit more about like ADA compliance. If you guys want to know more about like what to do, or what I've learned, I'm not an expert. I'm just somebody who got sued and doesn't want to get sued again. Um, let me know down below. Say, "Yeah, tell us more about this." Um, I removed the widget that I basically have been paying like $5,000 for a year that was making it accessible. I removed that. And the reason is because there were too many people telling me that having that little man on there makes you a target. These websites, or these attorneys, will see that you've got it, and they will basically just, you know, come after you. And so we removed that. But we also fixed all of the potential issues from the software that is used in order to scan your website and tell you how many different errors or issues you've got. And so when you do like the wave score, which is basically for accessibility, my website now gets like a 99%. All right. There are other things that they basically scan, and they want to see you having like under like five issues, like level A issues, you want to be like under five, you know, level, you know, C issues, like you want to be like under a certain number. And so we are all like well within like the acceptable range. Does it mean somebody could still sue me? Yes, they could sue me. But now I have proof that I have done things to make it compliant, which really strengthens my case. And if you focus on being more accessible, you're going to be in a better um, position. And so, uh, yeah, and I also, once every six months, am having and hire this website company. I pay them $500, and they will rescan, re-evaluate, and then fix whatever needs to be fixed. And so, one of the issues with ADA compliance is that that it's really difficult to be completely compliant on every page of your website, especially as your website grows and gets bigger, whether or not it's images or text or whatever. It's hard to be compliant, honestly. And so, I'm paying them once every six months to basically keep me as high in terms of accessibility awesomeness as I possibly can.

The next question is something that I absolutely love, and it's something I'm passionate about. It's from our friend Ethan Height 7815. He says, "Question, can you qualify the effect of one's physical fitness on the success of a public-facing business through an increase in perceived discipline, uh, competency, and trustworthiness?" So, this is a question that, no, you can't qualify that, right? But I can say that physical fitness and taking care of myself and the discipline that has gone into that is directly correlated to the discipline that you need in order to be successful at anything. Um, and that's one of the things that that physical fitness does matter, and it really, I think, also depends on kind of what you are going into. All right. Like it or not, people do form opinions on you based solely on the non-verbal communicating that you're doing. And if you are overweight, or if somebody sees you and you're kind of sloppy, and then they basically have the choice between doing business with you or somebody that is, you know, in shape, or good-looking, or well-groomed, or dressed well, you know, chances are, we buy from the people that we feel are higher value. And so one of the things that we talk about a lot on my Alpha M channel is personal packaging and branding. You are your brand. You can't change things like your height, but you can control other aspects of basically your personal branding or packaging. All right? The way that your hair looks, all right, your skin, your style, the way you smell, the way you stand, eye contact, communication, all of these things add perceived value to whatever you're doing, whatever you're selling. It's also something that's going to impact you in a positive way basically throughout your entire life. I love this question.

The next question is from our friend Paul Renis 8930. He says, "What are your thoughts on an event company? I like the idea and thoughts of an event company, but I need more information. Like, what type of event are you going to be putting on? Where are you going to be putting on this event?" Like, you need to, you need to tell me more. Um, because, you know, there are people that I know that basically have done events in a wide variety and different scales, right? I actually put on an event, um, with Antonio Centenno, called the Menfluential Conference. I know just from experience that that was a brutal thing to put on. You know, putting it on is one thing. Selling the tickets is another thing. Making sure everybody does what they're supposed to do is another thing. But events, you know, I like the idea of it. I like being kind of like an event planner, and the idea that you can be kind of like the conduit, or the person that puts together an experience. There is a gentleman that I met very re recently. It was actually last year at a Christmas party that this dude, I saw him at at my my builder. Um, he has this like really lavish, um, holiday party, and he was a friend of my designer Kelly and her husband. He basically was this like, really well-dressed dude that was like put together. He was wearing amazing clothes. And I said to them, I go, "Well, who's he? What does he do?" They go, "Oh, he puts on super lavish premium like events and experiences." And I'm like, "Really? Does he make money?" They go, "Oh, yeah. He makes a ton of money." And that's the thing. It really depends on what you're doing, who you're going after, and what your angle is going to be. But I love the idea. Now, what is interesting is you've got to make sure that whatever you're going into is going to be able to be sustained in like a recession. I mean, COVID, basically every like event business that was out there like kind of shut down, right? And so you, you know, not that you need to plan for the worst-case scenario, but if your customer is going to basically not have money to do what you want to do, um, you know, during a recession, it might not be good. But the truth is, a lot of people that have money, if you're going after that upper echelon, or that high-end customer base, even during a recession or a downturn, they still have money and they will still spend it. I know somebody that spent a million dollars for their daughter's wedding. Yeah. Like insane. And like I saw like all the stuff that they did, like it's crazy. People with money will still have money, and those are the people you need to serve.

The next question comes from our friend Khadar Aad 5196. "Have you ever thought about starting another nutrition store? What kind of products would you focus on and how would you make your store stand out from well-known competitors like GNC and the Vitamin Shop?" No, I haven't thought about it. And no, even if I did think about it, I would never open another nutrition store. The game has changed. I have a dear friend, Mona, who owns a discount nutrition store. She does really well, but it is a hard game. In the world of e-commerce, people aren't going to stores like they used to. And so, any type of brick-and-mortar retail shop is really, really not something I would recommend. But I would possibly consider starting a supplement line and selling it online. I think this is still an amazing opportunity. I actually have a guy that's in the White Label Empire, Rocky, who started, I basically worked on with him one-on-one through the accelerator program. Anyway, this isn't a sales pitch for that. And we ended up deciding that a testosterone support supplement was going to be a great idea. We ended up white labeling it, and he ended up selling like $20,000 of this stuff in literally like two days, and he's waiting for more product to come in. And so there are companies out there that really focus on like problems that people have or people, you know, are dealing with that do incredibly well. Another one company that I love is a company called Neutrifold. All right. Online, they sell hair vitamins, basically all natural solutions to like hair loss or hair growth. And so there are definitely pockets out there that you could crush it on, right? And so if you're going to do like one product, I would go, you know, testosterone sounds good. And then another product could be like erection support or libido, and then like a men's multi for guys over the age of like, whatever. But I wouldn't do like a line of like vitamin C and vitamin D and vitamin. I wouldn't do that. I would specialize and niche down to specific things and natural solutions, the real problems.

The next question is from Marcus DC2. "A couple of years ago, you had a class that could be paid for to start a new business/side hustle. Do you still offer that class?" Um, yes, I do, but it's changing. Um, the one that I'd recommend going to is the 10K Club down below. We are going to be changing the name. Antonio Centenno, my partner in that. Um, he's actually on a plane right now as we speak, coming to Atlanta. Um, we're going to be filming some more stuff for this course, but basically, it is the best thing out there in terms of starting a business, and the curriculum is amazing. Um, we're changing the name to the Freedom Accelerator Club. Um, because really, what we're doing, it's not about, you know, a side hustle. It's more about creating a legacy and building financial freedom through small businesses or side hustles. Anyway, I'll link to that down below, but yes, I still do.

Um, the next question is from our friend, um, Nova Cleaners. "At what level would you take on or start a second business if you already had one on the go?" So, this is a great question, and one of the problems with people that are successful or have business is that you think, "I can do it again, and I could do it, and this one that I've got is going to just kind of coast on autopilot." Unfortunately, what I found for me is that anything you take your eye off of is going to suffer. And so, you know, when would I start a second business? If there was something that was sort of like an addition to what you're already doing that would basically leverage the same or the existing customers that you have, and it's basically like an add-on, or something that they would also be interested in doing, that might be something I'd be interested in doing. Like, give you an example, hair salon. I own a hair salon. A med spa might not sound so crazy because I've got a built-in customer base of people that are getting their hair done that are also interested in looking sexy, looking pretty, having their skin look amazing, right? Botox, filler, all that stuff. And so I don't, I should say, the other thing is that I don't need to market from zero. I have a customer base. And so it kind of makes sense that it would be very easy to just basically be like, "Hey, you know, here's some other services or another business that we have that offers X, Y, and Z." And they already trust us. They already love us. They already are using a service. And so that is something that I would do. Now, if I had a business and I was trying to start something completely different, I don't know. Unless I had people that were like running it, and I wasn't worried about like paying attention, or it was something I could do kind of like small and grow, kind of like a side hustle or something like that, I think you could do that simultaneously. But you got to be very, very, very careful when it comes to diluting your attention span and your focus because from experience, what you don't focus on fails.

One more business question this week. If I didn't get to your question, just copy it from last week, post it here under this video, and hopefully next week I'll get to your question. All right, the last question we're going to get to today, and I love this for the record. I hope you guys enjoy, um, this kind of format. If you like this format and you're still here at this time in the video, down below, let me know. Say, "Yo, we really kind of dig this format." All right, so here's the deal. It's from our friend Give It All to Lose It All. He says, "I have started my own business, personal trainer, and have started posting 15-second advice videos every day. Is there any social media advice you have to, uh, to gain followers?" Yes. Go look at other fitness people that are popular. See what videos are their most popular, and then do your version of those videos. Whatever they're talking about, whatever they're showing, do that because you know that if it was popular for them, if they have like 5 million views on it, you should do the same thing. All right? Do your version of their most popular videos. And this is a formula that you can use for YouTube, you can use it for TikTok, you can use it for pretty much any platform because you know if people in the algorithm like, if it was popular for this person, you doing it will probably be popular as well, and you know that it was something that people were interested in engaging with. And if that's the case for them, it'll probably be the case for you.

That's it. That's where I'm going to wrap things up. I got to get to work. I've got a, uh, a live call that I'm going to do on the White Label Empire in about 25 minutes. And so for those of you who are there, I'll see, actually, I already saw you, but I'll hopefully see you next week. Down below, if you've got a question, start it with "Question" and ask it. And if you want to support this channel or Pete and Pedro, grab the Empire kit while supplies last.