Amazon Legal and Private Label Exit Questions with Paul Rafelson from Seller Basics

What should I do about these letters I get from "brand potection" companies?  Will they sue me?  Should I just trash them?  What could I sell my amazon private label business for?  How are deals like that usually set up?  Do I need to set up sales taxes for my Shopify store?  If you find yourself asking these questions then this eposide will have answers for you! I sit down with lawyer Paul Rafelson from Seller Basics.com and just rapid fire talk about these issues with super realistic answers.  We cover a lot of common amazon selling questions and hopefully bring some calm to worried sellers who might get a letter or two.

Rafelson Law Firm: https://ecomattorneys.com/

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Transcript

0:01

Welcome to the selling from the beach podcast, where we talk about selling online, making money, and creating a lifestyle that you want. Recording from the white sandy beaches of Costa Rica. Here's your host, Rob Cosman. On this episode, I talk with Paul Raffleson from Raffleson Law Firm. He's also the founder of SellerBasics. com, an Amazon account health service. On this long but action packed episode, we talk about how to approach letters you get from the brands and the risks and actions that you might want to take. We dive into selling your e commerce and Amazon business, how the deals are often set up, what people are paying and a lot more. And to finish it off, we chat about the sales taxes for sellers who are starting Shopify stores in the U S if you have questions about letters, you might get, this is the episode for you. Also, if you're not already subscribed to our newsletter, be sure to sign up at selling from the beach. com slash newsletter. It goes out every two weeks on Monday. Let's get to the interview. Hey, Paul, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks so much for having me on. Really excited to be here. I'm actually excited to talk to a lawyer. If if you can imagine last time we talked we talked about a bunch of legal stuff that we started talking about Lego collecting. And so I think today we'll just, today we'll be mostly lawyer, legal. I got lots of questions. But first, can you just give us a quick little background on you, your experience and your company? Let me see if I can do this really fast. So it was an Amazon seller 20 years ago, before it was cool for, they even called it retail arbitrage. They used to call me a scammer. This is how I helped pay for law school. So I didn't have a bunch of debt. I was a corporate lawyer for like over 12 years, worked for Walmart, Microsoft, General Electric, not necessarily in that order. Then by accident, I wrote a blog post about sales taxes and the government's going after these Amazon sellers for bogus tax claims. And that blog post snowballed into a private law practice that I never intended because as much as our clients or mutual client base loves to knock on the nine to five, I had a really good one in house. Counsel's very cushy when you're in big corporations. I loved it. But it was just, this was too cool to pass up. The issues were just. Amazing. And so I built a law practice. I built a law practice that was designed to serve what I call the global small business, which is what the Amazon sellers and e commerce sellers really are global small businesses. That concept didn't exist. And, you know, prior to the late 1990s and early 2000s, when we had access to the Internet, right? They were kind of a weird oxymoron prior to that. And so, you know, we're focusing on. Let me think. Helping people build their companies, LLCs, trademarks, taxes, you know, corporate hygiene, business hygiene, compliance with laws, all this boring stuff. We also have to do the account suspension stuff. We have a whole separate program, a new company I created called seller basics, which basically takes the account suspension stuff away from the law firm and kind of creates its own account suspension program. But you get free access to lawyers because it's based on a legal plan model that MetLife created. And. And that's, that's what I've done over the last six years, since I started this Amazon practice. And and it's, it's crazy and we're never not busy. We're always up to something. We're fighting taxes. We're fighting the price gouging thing. We were fighting Amazon's over, overreach of sellers. And, and we've helped our, during the aggregator bubble, we've helped their sellers receive over half a billion dollars. It's, it's nuts. It's been a nutty ride. Honestly, we got connected because someone in my masterclass. Got letters like most of us get letters and one of them, David was a client of yours and he was raving about you and your seller basics. So I joined I signed up. And then you and I, I get a free call with you. I'm like, cool, let's talk. And I mean, that, that call just kept going. And I was like, dude, I got to get you on the podcast. There's people need to know, I need to hear this. And and I was talking to people in my masterclass last night. I'm like, Hey, I'm going on with Paul tomorrow. You know, what are the other questions you got? So they hit me with some things and I just, I've got a list. So if you see me glancing off to the side, I'm not, I got stuff I want to hammer through. So. So don't go easy on me, go, go, just go for the jugular. I don't care. Just do it. I love it. Let's, let's start with this whole letter industry, man. Because like I'm an arbitrage guy, I'm online arbitrage. I get some letters, lots of people get all these letters from the brand protection and all this jazz, you get the letters that are asking for Give us your info. We don't know if you're a seller. You don't have a warranty. You cease and desist all these different questions. Give us your invoices. So just give me, give us a little high level of that industry, what we need to worry about, which ones we don't, or how we should approach it. Cause you know, everybody's a little different with the. Well, just sell it out and dump it and tank your price and tell them you won't sell it again versus, Hey, I'll provide you the invoices. Maybe I'll get whitelisted and I give you invoices and you approve me and then you don't harass me and just kind of give us a little bit of that. Yeah, so, you know, happy to talk about it. So there's a couple of things going on. So just just to clarify for those listening, what you're talking about is that there's an industry major brands, right? Have just, you know, grown tired of resellers on Amazon undermining their minimum advertised price or map. We're just generally undermining their authorized dealer programs and it's sort of creating chaos and they're looking for ways to keep people off of Amazon who are not either they're authorized dealers or sometimes they say they're the only ones who can sell on Amazon. There's a lot of antitrust questions I have about those types of declarations, but we can get that for another day because that's a whole side topic. But anyway, so there's this industry that's developed over the years of trying to scare people. Off of Amazon, and there's a couple ways to do it. One way is to just file these brand registry takedowns, trade it from our account, or if it without a test by. But what we've learned over the years, and what we've kind of fought for over the years, is that, you know, it's, it's written right there in Amazon's policies. You're not supposed to use. An Amazon brand registry tool for the purposes of knocking down a reseller of authentic product. I don't care if it's that they claim that they don't honor the warranty and I don't care if they claim that's Amazon is very clear. They believe in this concept of the first sale doctrine, whatever version of that they believe this is, they don't want their brand registry tools knocking off authentic resellers. Now, why is that? Because Amazon loves resellers. Why do they love resellers? Because we break map. Right. Let's just be honest about it. We will sell at lower prices. We get things at TJ Maxx for 10 bucks that normally sell for a hundred. We sell it for 30. The customer's happy. The prime member is happy. You see what I'm saying? Like Amazon wants to keep their prime members happy. That's their most important goal, right? Cause if they lose that confidence, that's why they're so protective about. How brands private label brands price on Amazon versus other places, because they don't want private. They don't want their prime members in the perception that there's no value in prime. That's the scariest concept. I think Amazon has right now. It's like the scariest concept. A lot of their antitrust focus has been efforts to make prime to protect the prime member base. It's such a huge revenue source for them. So with that in mind, they are definitely more pro reseller, but they're under pressure to police counterfeits. They're under pressure to make sure that, you know, that people are not selling just complete crap on the pro on the, on the, on the on the platform. But at the same time, it is not their place to prevent people from reselling authentic goods, because again, they love when we do that. So now you've got a couple things. You've got these brand managers that don't really get that and file brand registry takedowns, like, you know, counterfeit without a test by now, if my client has a or a member of seller basics has receipts from a good source, like a walmart or directly from the brand, you know, something credible has to be credible. Can't be like, you know, file. Bob's, you know, liquidation of, you know, Secaucus, New Jersey. That's not going to work. You need to be credible. But if you have that documentation, we can typically overcome that, that issue. And actually, we've been very successful in getting brand registry revoked for some of these brands, because we're trying to send a message. Amazon's trying to send a message to these brands that this is not how you police. You know, these authorized, and it says it right there, their policy, like you, you can have those things, but we're not going to respect. Like, we're not going to enforce them on your behalf. Like, we were like, I think what Amazon says, like, we respect that you have it, but it's not our job to enforce map or any of those things. You can't use our tools to do so. So out of that comes a different angle. You've got law firms. You've got Voris is the most famous one. They kind of built this industry. You've got K& L Gates. The Gates, for those of you who don't know, is actually Bill Gates dad. He was, it was formerly Preston Gates. Now it's one of the biggest law firms in Seattle. The law firm that probably advised Bill not to sell DOS to Microsoft, to IBM, but to license it. And here, you know, that was, Maybe we'll know Bill's dad was one of the top IP players in Seattle at the time, but anywho, I'm digressing. So, those law firms realize that if they start telling their major brand clients to just use brand registry, those brands are going to get in trouble. So, what they've done is created this industry, and it's very, very lucrative for these guys. Almost so lucrative that they almost want to keep this gray thing going, which we'll get into where they just sort of create this sort of like amplified threat model, right? So they send you a letter. Stop selling the product. You're violating these things. Your product doesn't have a warranty. Your product doesn't follow our strict quality control guidelines. The 1st sale doctrine doesn't protect you. If you're not scared by that letter, right? Maybe they'll email that letter to you. They'll send you one in the mail. If you're not scared by that letter, they'll FedEx one to your house. They may even FedEx one to your mom's house. They may, you know, they, they have incredible background research tools, right? Ones that like, you know, if I wanted to get those tools as a lawyer, I'd have like somebody from LexisNexis or Westlaw would come to my house. They would make sure I have like a space or they'd come to my office and make sure there's a separate room. Where you can lock the door that nobody would ever access the terminal, you know, they're so paranoid about this, this data, so they have access to that. They can see your T Mobile bill. It's crazy what they can say. So I'll find you. They can figure out who you are pretty well. So they create this amplified brand models when they send another letter. Then they send a draft of a lawsuit. Now, some people who are not legally trained. Right. Might actually get a draft of a lawsuit in the mail and a FedEx envelope and think that they've been served with an actual lawsuit because it's confusing. Right. I've seen that happen many times. No, you haven't been served. They purposely want to confuse you. They purposely want to confuse you. They want you to. They want you A hundo. That's the name of the game. They want to scare you off this thing. They want you to feel like it's just like, this isn't worth it. I want to, I'm just going to move on. Right. And then. In some cases, they may send you that lawsuit again, they made another letter, like, we are, and they usually use kind of this wording, and again, this is not what always happens, so please don't say I heard, you know, don't be that idiot who watches a podcast and say you got legal advice, that just doesn't happen, there's no legal advice happening here, okay, just don't be that idiot, okay, no financial advice either, no, like, we're not, this is just a chat, we're just telling you, like, what's the way of the world, what we're seeing, okay, you have, I don't know who you are watching this, I'm sure I like you, I'm sure you're a nice person, but this is not legal advice for you, because I don't even know who you are. Okay. This is, we're just chatting. Anywho, so then there's an amplification process. Now, in some cases, they will sue. Very, very not that often. I should say, not very rarely. But it's like, not often have we seen them sue. But sometimes, they will sue the, the person. And it's not the law firm. This is what people have to forget. Like, often forget. They always say, you know, worries or okay, you know, they're such jerks because they do this. It's like, it's not really them. It's really the, the brands that they represent. So, you know, the decision to sue you, it's like, well, what have, what is, what has Boris done in the past? I get that question all the time. Or was K& L Gates on the past? I'm like, it doesn't matter. That was for a different brand. You can ask me what that brand has done in the past. What we've seen, like Lego has sent takedown letters. Do I think Lego is going to sue resellers? Considering that they own the number one reselling website in the planet, right? That they create, I don't think it's their model to want to have like public lawsuits that where they go after resale, especially resellers have expired, you know expired, like it? Not expired. Like it was retired out of print retired. Thank you. I should know that as a Lego investor, I should know that, but I'm an idiot. So sometimes so I don't think Legos to do that, but I mean, you know. Could they? I mean, they always could. And so there's always this risk that they might sue. Now, there's another law firm we see a lot and they're very clever. It's the Amazon lawyers firm. They do their own version of this, but they do something a little different. Sometimes I've seen this. I don't know what they are. I'm not saying they're always doing this, but we've seen this in the past as well. They'll start the letter out with sort of an inquiry, like, Hey, first and foremost, we just kind of, and I'm paraphrasing, but they're kind of basically saying like, Hey, first and foremost, we just want to know if your stuff's authentic. Could you just send us a receipt or some, you know, just let us know, you know, how did you get the stuff so we can verify that it's authentic. Now that's cute because. If they were to then, if I were to ignore that letter, and they were then to go file a brand registry takedown, I'm not sure we could argue malice, right, on their part, because they could say, look, hey, we just asked, where did it come from? Right? It'd be harder for us. So, so they kind of create an interesting line. You know, paradox, whereas, like, in some letters from worries and the others, you could probably just you could ignore them. I'm not saying you should always ignore them. We can get into when you should or shouldn't or why you should or shouldn't or what's the what's the thought process there. But I like the way that they, they other firm does it where they kind of give you that little and that's why it's important to read every letter, not just assume they're all the same and throw it out. It's kind of like those little nuances can change the entire scope of what's happening. So. You know, they may go to brand registry and file an IP takedown if you don't respond with a basic, like, here's my receipt from Walmart, you know, just because, you know, they say, well, look, you know, we suspected it was counterfeit. They never answered our reasonable letter asking where they got it from. You could argue that's not malicious, right? That's not necessarily a violation of Amazon policy, because what else are they going to do? You're not responding. So that's sort of the spectrum of this sort of scare campaign that these law firms have come up with. And it's very lucrative. I mean, the stories were, I don't know, five years ago, I heard Boris was charging, you know, people I know who'd been in the presentations as brand owners were hearing, you know, hearing like 50, 60, 70, 000 a month for this process. I mean, that's a lot of money. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, like, I'm doing the wrong side. I mean, if I was in this for the money, I'm clearly on the wrong side of the business, like, clearly. But it's just not our spirit. I sat in on one of the Vorys, you know, pitches as a brand owner supposedly. And that was their, their whole pitch was to try to find that middle middleman, middle woman, whatever, that's diverting the inventory, the wholesaler that shouldn't be, and that was their angle that they were pitching at the time. But that was a few years ago. Okay. So yeah, letter, if you, if it says that. Hey, we want to know if it's authentic, where you got your stuff from, like, what are the keywords that we need to look at to say, okay, maybe I should respond, maybe I shouldn't, you know, kind of what are the steps that you would. Advise. Yeah, I mean, if they're asking for like some evidence of authenticity because they suspect it might be counterfeit. There's an argument you should respond, right? I mean, look, you can take the argument that that's just they could have just bought test bought it. They could, you know what business is it? There's about saying that that's that this is the right answer. I'm just saying, you know, in order to avoid the hassle or to or to better. Set yourself up for a better case. If there is a brand registry takedown in the future, it's to say, no, I provided those receipts, right? Here's a Walmart receipt. So, you know, with advice, I don't think people should do this on their own as much as it's routine. Again, I, you know, we have a service. It's so cheap. I think you should use a service like that where you have somebody who can look at it and just run you through it and make a decision. But yeah, like if you get those letters, but like, you know, like I tell everybody in every letter, you know, there's sort of the same thought process, right? People always say. Well, what about the first sale doctrine? We get these huge philosophical debates with our clients about does the first sale doctrine govern the first sale doctrines, this, you know doctrine, this old doctrine of law that keeps getting, you know, for the most part, you know, Supreme court said it was, you know, valid most recently, I think it was 2016 and a textbook case involving overseas textbooks being sold in the U S. And so people kind of like latch onto this notion that, you know, we do have the right to sell anything, right? Like if I have this Apple battery pack, I have the right to sell this. It's not counterfeit. It's not illegal. It's not, you know, it's, it's a perfectly good version of the Apple battery pack. It's used, I can sell it, but where it gets murky and where the law gets gray is because of how you're selling it. If you were selling it on eBay. The, the threshold of risk is lower. If you're selling on Amazon, if you sold it as like, you know, you know, that category of like use sold as new, sorry. Is that right? Use like, no, use like no, sorry. Use like no, use like no, like that actually. Wouldn't offend these brands as much where you're getting into trouble is the notion of selling is new, but you have to sell this new. You have to move the inventory. If you don't sell this now, but where that that's the line, because what the Williams and Sonoma case teaches is that human. We already know this. We didn't need that case to know. This is that people perceive Amazon, especially prime offers that are prime through the buy box as yes. Like new is if you're buying it from Amazon, like people still don't understand what's going on behind the scenes of Amazon, they see prime. They see Amazon. They don't know that they're not getting these products from Gillette. They think they're getting it. You know, Amazon went to Gillette, Gillette, you know, they don't realize it's like, no, I just bought a bunch of these at Walmart and I'm selling on Amazon. So what these brands are sort of saying is there's a lot of confusion going on with these platforms, with Amazon in particular, when you sell as new, and then they also add on to the mix. What's called these material differences, which is the exception to the first sale. Actually, the material difference means that you're not selling the same product as the original product. So if I'm selling this Apple battery, let's say it's brand new, but Apple says they don't honor the warranty. Or this because I'm not an authorized reseller. I don't go through the same quality control procedures as an authorized dealer would that this makes this product, even though it looks and acts and is the same, and it came from Apple, it is not the exact same thing. It is material different, materially different. It lacks the warranty. It doesn't mean it's counterfeit. It's not counterfeit, right? It's still from Apple. But it's just not the same because it lacks those intangible benefits of like warranty, quality control, which courts have upheld. So if you, if you're following along at home, Google the OtterBox case, Google, my favorite one is Skullcandy. Skullcandy is probably the best explanation of what the competing doctrines are of trademark law versus the versatile doctrine. Read the Skullcandy case out of Utah. It's just a motion to dismiss. Skullcandy obviously lost that motion, but it's just, it wasn't it wasn't determinative of the case. Case, I think we've settled, but it's just a great explanation of the dichotomy of these two issues. So that's where we're at. We're just kind of like living in this world of gray. And what we find is, is like, is, you know, who's right or who's wrong? It's very debatable. And our clients get really upset and our members get really upset and they want to have these, like, you know, I want to sue the, like, for what? Sending a letter? You can't sue somebody for sending a letter. I'm sorry. Like, you're just not going to sue for, they're just telling you what they think. But what they don't realize is like, what I always tell them is, look, you know, first things first. I understand that you're upset and I understand that you feel like you have the right to sell this and you shouldn't be a veteran. These brands are massive. For them to take you to court and spend 100, 000 on a lawsuit is like a rounding error to them, right? They're spending more than that a month just annoying you. Yeah, really, they don't care. So people have to understand, like, there's no justice in our justice system. That's really the message I deliver to my clients more than anything. It's like, there's no, don't look to our court system as a means of getting justice, because it's not for you. It's for, for really rich people, for big corporations, right. For people who are so injured that they need to do this. It's expensive. It's not accessible to the average show. So. You can debate right and wrong, and I can tell you who's going to win in a lawsuit, or who I think might win a lawsuit, or what the challenges would be, but that's a law school exercise that a law school professor would have with their students. It doesn't take into the realities of what we call the hazards of litigation, the cost to actually fight something like this. So, when you realize, like, so what I say is, let's say they sued you. Let's say you, you know, you kept on selling those. Apple battery packs not that that would ever happen on it, you know, it's Apple, but let's just, for the sake of this argument, let's say you kept on selling those Apple battery packs and Apple sued you. What are you going to do that? Are you going to raise 100, and try to fight them off? Or do you want to get out of that lawsuit as quickly as possible? And usually the answer is. I probably want to get out of the lawsuit as quickly as possible, like, okay, so be prepared that that could be, you know, if you're lucky, it could be under 5 grand to get out of the lawsuit as quickly as possible. If they really want to make an example of you, it could be 10, 20, 30, you don't know, or they may not let you out because they just want to make a point. They want the case law, right? My argument to them is. The only, the only thing you have going for you in these cases is that if it's, you know, if we have, you know, if we, if we argued it right, we actually won, that actually might be scary to these law firms and to these brands because the precedent would move the other way. But right now, there's a lot of bad precedent supporting because most of these cases are what we call, if they win, they're default judgments, meaning nobody challenged it. You know, Otterbox, I don't know if it was argued as well as it should have been that, but that was a rough loss out in Colorado. That wasn't favorable. I mean, there's, there's, the law just isn't great, but I mean, again, it's just, it's when, when you're actually being targeted by it. And you realize how expensive it is to assert your, you know, your rights. It's just, it becomes economically prohibitive. So what we try to tell people is, and then some people say, well, then can I sell it or can I not? I'm so well. You can sell it at your own risk. You can sell it at the risk of knowing that, you know, you may end up in court. It's a possibility. It doesn't very happen very often, but it does theoretically happen. And usually you don't know when it's going to happen. If we, you know, if we knew they were going to happen, like, we would tell you, but we don't have crystal balls. We're not that good. But if you're willing to take that risk. Go ahead. And if you understand that, if you get sued, you know, the hopefully the outcome we're looking for is a less than 10, 000 exit as quickly as possible, you know, but there's even a risk. They could press you for more. They could really press you and say, No, I want to make an example of you. So with all these risks in mind, you have to decide what's best for you. You want to roll the dice. Go ahead. And many of our clients and do want to roll the dice. And many of our clients don't want to roll the dice, right? And then what happens when they do what they don't? I'm happy to kind of walk you through that decision tree, you know, how do you respond to them when the answer is I just want to sell through? I have a different theory about this. I like to say. You know, what I like to say to them is I really like to deliver news. I like to deliver something that's useful and meaningful. Like a lot of my clients say, why don't you just write back and give them the whole first sale doctrine, you know, folklore and like all that stuff, folklore. But you know what I mean? Like give them the, give them the business, show me arguments. Like, cause we've done it a thousand times. Like we know each other at this point. Like we were, we're already like. It's an exercise in futility. Like they know what I think. I know what they think. Like it's, it's irrelevant. It's just a matter of what are we going to do about this situation? So when my client says, Hey, I look, I needed to sell, sell through this. Give me like 60 days. I don't even ask him for permission. I just tell them my client is going to sell through. They will be off the listing within 60 days. And they get so pissed at me. They're like, well, we need a closing agreement. I'm like. But in my opinion, I feel like, and again, it's not legal advice for you, every case is different, but I think that that's a really telling message, because I don't think, you know, and I will say most of these were sourced from TJ Maxx or these were sourced from, you know, whatever. So that does a couple of things. One, it's really the, you know, the expression, these aren't the droids we're looking for. That's what I'm getting at. Right? If they understand that you're not a diverter, you're not working with their, this, this secret diverter who's been, you know, slipping from their, you know, grip every time they try to get it, you know, try to try to, you know, the jackal diverter type person. Once they realize you're just selling from, from a reseller situation, that you're agreeing to just let it go and that you're off the listing. I mean, at the end of the day, why would they sue you? I mean, they could. But logic would dictate that would be, there'd be a stupid response, right? Why, you're already, they already win, right? If you're like, hey, I'll be off this thing in two months and I'll never do it again, they've already won. So I don't really see the reason to go into like heavy settlements and stuff, but that's news, right? That's worthy of letting them know. The other thing is to say, you know, But, like, if your intention is to just keep selling and tell them to go fly a kite, I don't know if there's, I don't always know if there's a reason to say anything to them, right? Like, what am I telling them? Like, go fly a kite? Let them just keep chasing. Like, you know, understand that there's a risk if you do that. But I'm not sure I have anything to tell them in that case, right? So, in that scenario, maybe I would condone throwing a letter away. Again, not legal advice, but just sort of like what the thought process is. Like, I don't, it's almost like My client does disagrees, have a good day, you know, I could do that. Or I could just, you know, tell you to throw the letter away and, and, you know, I had, I had one and I emailed them and I said, Hey, you know, like most of this is Amazon flips, you know, I buy it from Amazon. Will you whitelist me? Like if I give you the invoices, will you kind of approve me and leave me alone? And they responded, yeah, sure. Let us see them. I gave the to them. They're like, okay, thanks. And I've never heard from them again, knock on wood. And that does happen, and that happens, again, because people don't understand. It's not the law firms, it's the brands that make these calls. Some brands just want to know you're selling authentic stuff. Some brands send their own takedown letters under their own branding, you know, it's their own in house system. And sometimes that's all they're asking for, is they just want proof of authenticity. In that case, I actually think you give it, because again, I think you give it to them, because that's all, they just want to know where you got it from, right? That's sort of how this law is supposed to work. Like, it really is intended from a sort of... I say from an FTC perspective, like really what's supposed to happen is. You know, the way map is meant to be enforced, the way these things is, is what you're supposed to do is you're supposed to deal with each individual reseller sort of like individually, right? Not across the board horizontally, right? Just 1 at a time, right? Now, you could have the same terms with everyone, but you can't collectively bargain with all of your. authorized resellers. You have to do one on one. And the idea is, if one reseller is not falling in line, like they're breaching MAP, if they're diverting, your remedy in that case isn't to suit the reseller. It's just to stop, you know, you have the right to just stop working with them. Like, no, there's no law that says you have to work with a reseller who won't fall in line with your MAP policies or your other policies. But what you can't really do, and this is what these brands and, and, you know, Voorhees is. Much better at this than some of these other brands. I love when they write about map policies in their letter takedown letters. Those are great. They've just really shot themselves in the foot at that point. Oftentimes, but what you can't do is you can't, right? You can't really take people to court over like failing to adhere to map. And that's sort of how we ended up getting to this whole trademark warranty stuff, you know, all these things because Over time, these these brands have realized that map isn't really enforceable. In fact, it actually could backfire. So now they kind of do what's called these, you know, these material difference arguments, such as there's a warranty. That's not adhered to. Now, there's this defense to that that people don't often realize. This is thing called pretext. Right? So. If you were in a court case against these guys, one of the things you might argue is you'd say, this is all pretextual. What this is really about is about map enforcement, about protecting who can resell the product. None of this is really about your warranty because at the end of the day, like if I'm getting the letter from the people who make earnest goes to camp on DVD saying, you know, our warranty policy is really important. You kind of look at them and go, who the heck. Would get a warranty claim for Ernest goes to camp on DVD. That's just kind of idiotic, right? I would take it back to Walmart. I mean, I bought it from the dollar bin. I'd probably just throw it away. I wouldn't. So how many warranty claims do you actually get? Ernest goes to camp on DVD people. Like that's just such an idiotic concept. So you can sort of argue pretext. In a lot of these cases and not how that's proven is going to be through a long discovery. And litigation, so really, it's going to be a long haul if you want to do it, but there is that sort of defense to their, you know, claim that this is material difference. This is a notion of pretext. This is all just sort of made up to really just knock off. People who are not authorized and not adhering to map. And you, you can certainly find that through discovery. But the reason I use Ernest goes to camp on DVD as an example is because could you imagine a more ridiculous claim for quality control or warranty than some of the people who make Ernest goes to camp on DVD, you buy it at the dollar bin at Walmart on your checkout. You know, I just couldn't imagine. Yeah, exactly. Award winning, you know I love Vern. He was awesome. But so, you know, Do you think that I have a lot of Canadian listeners, obviously I'm Canadian, but do you think that like, do these brand protection agencies operate in countries in silo or they do the deal and they enforce it in Canada, U S you know, like what's the likelihood do I, because I find I get a few less in Canada, but then I get the odd one, like Crocs, it seemed a little bit more aggressive. You know, I feel like the bar and the pain in the ass factor for them to try to sue me in Canada. Or, you know, as a Canadian, I think it's a little higher than. In America, but it's a little harder to sue, but it's like, when we sue people in China who are counterfeiting our clients products, like Canada is an easier country to collect from, but the further away you get, right? Like, you're less right. 1 of the principles of litigation is recoverability, right? It's not just like, you know, okay, you ran over me with your bike. But if all you have to your name is your bike, not a lot of personal injury lawyers are gonna be foaming at the mouth to like, sue you, right, you know what I mean? Because that's all you have, you know, like, so recoverability is key. And obviously, the further away you are, certain countries make it easier. I don't know if Canada is really outside the norm of collectability, but. There may be different nuance rules in Canada. It's certainly more work, but certainly they're looking at it from the perspective of who's selling the United States, right? And they certainly go after like parallel imports from Canada. They try to make a case against those, even though they can't unless the labeling is different or the product's not approved in the United States. Depending on the nature of the product, and that brings me to one other point I want to make about this whole thing in terms of the spectrum, because, you know, I mentioned Ernest goes to camp, but there's another argument here on the quality control. I want people to keep this in mind because a lot of people love cosmetics. And I don't love cosmetics on my favorite subject, not my favorite thing in the world to resell because it's high counterfeit high risk high. But imagine you were selling. Imagine you're a reseller. You came into like a pallet of fish oil, right? And you're in, you're in South Florida reseller. And you're like, okay, I'm going to. You know, it's, it's, it's July in South Florida. You're like, okay, I'm going to get these to FBA after I go on vacation for a couple of weeks. I'll get these into FBA, you know, expiration date's pretty good. So you put your pallet of fish oil in your garage in South Florida, 200, it gets like 200 degrees in the middle of the summer, right? You come back a month later and you ship that in. Do you think the fish oil people actually have a case of that in, you know, to say that there is a quality control concern in that scenario? Absolutely. So what I always tell people when we sort of say it's, there is sort of a spectral. Element to this, like the more likely somebody can get hurt from this handling, the less the less you should go deep on that product, right? Like, Ernest goes to camp could be the more, you know, is certainly 1 side of that spectrum, but I want you to consider people to consider the other side because the brands do have stronger. Arguments when you're selling products that, you know, can be not handled properly, people can get hurt and get sick. So keep that in mind, you know, medicine, supplements, stuff you're putting in your body, right? All that, all that stuff tends to be higher sensitivity. The brands certainly have a stronger case. But that, again, that doesn't mean, you know, people get sued for selling, you know you know, beer koozies. So who knows sometimes it doesn't have to indicate who's going to get sued, but. So what's going on now with this whole section three listing under generic brands. I've, I've lately, it seems to be really hot. People are getting issues with getting kicked off listings that have generic, then there's the whole, it seems to be around beauty too. And there's a lot going on right now. Just, can you give me a quick update on. Let's shake it. Yeah, so I'm definitely not the 1 on the ground floor, but we've had a fair number of these people coming to us and we prepared their help, you know, prepare their entire appeal packets going through their invoices doing an audit. You know, we actually, excuse me, we actually go through. So, the way, like, my cellar basic scene will handle it is they'll basically. You know, ask the member to submit all of their stuff and we actually check it off and make sure it aligns. We don't want people sending in bad invoices. We don't people wanting to send and miss improperly notated invoices and voices that look like it could be considered fake. We want to make sure it's packaged correctly in the right way that it's not too big. Like, there's all these little nuances and we just find over time. That when we do it, it's just better for the members. It's just, it just saves us a ton of the day, that little ounce of prevention we put in by making sure. It's good. We don't just sell our members, submit your invoices and write this little appeal with it. That doesn't work. We like to, you know, it may work sometimes, but it's risky because it's really don't know what they're selling. But the broader issue here to just kind of take a step back to your question is. Yes, when people buy stuff to resell, there's a lot of listings out there where maybe the UPC is a match. Maybe it's just what you find when you're searching for it in the back end when you're looking. If you look at the product being sold and you look at the word brand, like the tiny word brand, right, where it says brand and next to it, if it's not the brand you're selling, if it says generic. Amazon's getting was just enough of it because Amazon sort of process that is like as passing off, right? Like you're trying to pass off your product is their product, right? You're trying to basically replace their brand with the word generic and sell their product, which is called like a reverse pass. It's pass off. I don't get into that, but. And it sucks because you didn't create the listing. You don't necessarily control the listing. You know, the UPC is locked into that listing. You can't do anything about it. So, but people don't check. And so we always tell people like, you need to check the listing because the listing is corrupt and you're on it. Even if you don't sell a single unit, if you're on it at the wrong time. You can be you can be kicked off, right? We had somebody who was kicked off for months. They were kicked off for months. They came to us. They thought they had no hope we were able to get, you know, we were able to get them back on. But it was, you know, took still took a week to week or 2 for us to do it. I mean, it's it's really, but it was really sad because I don't think that any, any, any was actually ever sold. It was just they were just by virtue of listing on the list thing. Amazon, like, you know, it's like when there's a Copyright violation. You ever seen that where if a listing has a picture that was stolen from the brand, like, you know, set up, so even like, even if you're selling this Apple product, if you take the pictures from Apple's website and put them on Amazon, that's a violation of copyright law because Apple didn't authorize those pictures to be on Amazon. You have to take your own pictures of the product and put it on that Apple to create your own listing. Again, you know, Apple is just an example of this call for this podcast. And what happens is if Apple tells Amazon, Hey, our pictures are being used illegally on your website. It's not the person who created the listing who gets stinged, it's whoever's on the listing at the time that the report happens. So even if you've never sold a single unit, you get hit with a copyright, take down IP claim just because you were on a listing and you, you had no control over. So Amazon kinda has an unfair way of handling these things, and which is, which is why you delete old listings that you're no longer gonna sell on a Please god. Yes. Delete your listings, GI mean. You know, I don't, I'm like, I still get, well, I still get messages. I got something today about a compliance issue, something I haven't sold in 10 years. I get the pricing error. I love, this is my favorite one. I get pricing errors for selling Madden 2011 at really high prices of like 39. 99 because the average price for Madden 2011 in the year 2023 is probably like 2, right? And I didn't realize I haven't had, I haven't sold that product probably in, in since 2011 or probably 2010. But it doesn't matter. I forgot. I didn't close the listing. So I get the error messages. I get the claims. I get my accounts pretty much dormant. I don't really care anymore. But they still haven't suspended it. It's like I've never, you know, but it's I do get these messages, but yeah, close your listings. First and foremost, if you're done, delete the listing, get it off. You're just don't don't, you know, once you're done, be done. But It is. It's just sort of, you know, people have to check. The other thing people have to look for, because it's the other issue people are making, misbranded listings. So. For example, C's candy, C's has an apostrophe, but if you list it on C's without an apostrophe, Amazon views that as illegally passing off, and you can get nailed to that. So even the littlest diversion from the brand spelling can get you in trouble. Like if things are misspelled, if there's spaces where there shouldn't be spaces, Amazon views that as like trying to manipulate the catalog, but trying to basically circumvent the brand's, you know, the brand, you know, their place in the brand register, the catalog. Yeah. You're trying to circumvent it as a different brand. And so Amazon's name. And again, you may not have been the one who did that. You may just saw, Oh, sees candy. And that's such an easy thing to miss the apostrophe on C's game. This is a true story. Like this happened to a lot of people. The apostrophe on C's candy and Amazon was not very empathetic to be honest. It was very hard to get people relief for that because it was like. Amazon's like, well, you know, but I'm like, come on. It was an obvious mistake. They just didn't see the apostrophe was missing. They, you know, the UPC was there. They didn't make the listing, but you know, Amazon's really paranoid about these people trying to sort of, again, sort of like reverse pass off. I don't, basically, you know, trying to pass off their own brand as another brand. And that's how they've gotten one. I've gotten one on hookah and it's owned by Decker's and they're like, no, hookah is not the manufacturer. Decker's is, yeah, you should put a podcast. You should bring my head of compliance joy on here next time. She'll, she'll tell you, she'll tell you those stories all day long. Like she's got the worst stories of that stuff, but yeah, she, she's, she is the preacher. She tells sellers all the time. Like that is such a great example. Like the manufacturer is wrong. Right. Classic case. Like it's just exactly. So it's like, so give me the top five right now, top five brands that you would say absolutely ignore other than the obvious, like obviously Apple beats by Dre, all that jazz, but give me who is aggressive in the space you're seeing right now that just like, dude, don't touch their stuff. I'm a little concerned about was it blue, blue Nile? They've been, you know, I look for who suits right. Blue Nile is one. I don't like the MLMs. Like anyone, anything that's multi level marketing, Amway. They like to sue. What's that other one? Herbalife. Any of the MLMs are really a problem. I'm trying to think of who else. There was a wine corkscrew company that sued recently. I can't remember their name, but I don't, I don't know. I mean, I'd have to ask Joy, because she's the one who deals with you know, who deals with the intake of all these people and sees the pile of crap. And then Bethany, my, my, my trademark attorney is the one who kind of deals with it. But, I mean, you know, I just look to see who, who stews and who's aggressive. Paula's Choice, I wouldn't go anywhere near Paula's Choice right now. They're Unilever's subsidiary. They're an absolute, you know, I just stay away. A lot of these cosmetic brands, I think, they tend... You know, they tend to have, you know, there's been a lot of historical counterfeiting in the cosmetic space. So they sort of have a little bit, there's sort of, you know, you're coming in like at negative one, as opposed to even, even like, there's sort of a presumption that they're, you know, victims of this mass counterfeiting ring. So it's called Alibaba, man. Like just go on Alibaba and search some of these guys and you're like, there is no way that's the original. Right. Super duper expensive makeup. Yeah, just, and they're, and they're very well funded. They're very aggressive. And I just, I don't love those things. You know, Dackers, they've been yapping for years. I don't know if I'm necessarily worried about them. I mean, they still shoot, you know, I, they've been screaming a ton. But, you know, Crocs, you know, very aggressive, but I don't know if anyone who's selling Crocs has actually been affected for sure. Like, I mean, just like they, they make a lot of noise. They're very scary. And that's the thing. Sometimes it's like, you just don't know. Like, they just make a ton of noise. And you're like, and people just, it does affect people. Like when you're the seller, right? Because they really want me to just say, it's going to be okay. You can throw it away. I'm like, I will never say that. That's not true. Because like, one day they may just break and they go, all right, we're suing some people. We got to make an example. Dude just wakes up today and he's like, okay, roll the dice. Who's it going to be? And it's Jim from Iowa. You're going to be my example, Jim. Sorry, buddy, but I'm absolutely going to destroy you today. And God forbid there's some Brad bad press. Like somebody gets like, you know fake, fake hocus from Amazon. And then that just becomes like a rallying cry for the entire, you know, for them to go after people and say the cleaning up shop. You know, where's like, you know, Nike, Nike, surprisingly, if you're on game, Nike, I mean, like he's pretty has been pretty cool. There's been incidences where Nike has actually sued us sellers by accident. And they've been very cool about it. We actually, you know, because what they do is that happened yeah, like a year ago, more recently there was another, they do it like every so often they do a roundup of the, they're, they're going after the factories in China that are making fake Nikes. Once in a while they hit us sellers just in the process, because it's a very broad. Broad brush. They're, they're, they're, they're, they're going with well, they've actually been very cool. Like when I tell them, Hey, this is, you know, somebody in, you know, Iowa, who's been buying at the outlet. They're just like, sorry, we're so sorry. And they just, you know, so we, yeah, we did a thing where we did free Nike. Complimentary our firm just took on all the, anyone who needed help with Nike, we just took it on just as a courtesy because it was, it was just so simple. They were just being too nice. I was like, you know, so we're just like, you know, we don't want people freaking out. But I would prefer you ask, if you ever bring Joy on, I want you to ask her, because she'll, she'll give you a list. She'll read you the right act. I mean, this is, this is her day to day world where, you know, once, once the lawyers have cleared the issue and realized like, okay, now she takes over Helps us with the compliance stuff and dealing with Amazon, which is a whole different world on how to deal with. Now I want to shift gears. I want to talk about something happy hopes and dreams. I want to sell my company. Everybody wants to sell the company. I'm creating my private label brand. I'm going to sell it out to some aggregator for five X, six X. Can you just walk through. Like, first of all, like how does the sale transaction work? How do you sell the account? What are you seeing right now? Like people that are selling, how is the kind of the deals they look like? What's some advice to like, obviously get your bookkeeping sorted. I mean, we talked about it before, you know, your cost of goods sold correctly, matching revenues, you know, basic accounting, things like that done correctly. Yeah, I know. Do you use, do you use A2X? I use taximate personally. Yep. I have clients who use A2X. Yep. Yeah. I think that those softwares are really important because if you're, well, I mean, like, as long as your accountant kind of knows the Amazon space, knows what the API is, because their accountants don't even know what an API is. You know what I mean? And they don't understand where the data is coming from and they don't know the feed and I feel like that can, that can be bad. So it's more important to work with like folks like you who know what they're doing because that will affect valuations. Like I've seen bad accounting almost cost people millions of dollars, right? There's a, there's a client of mine who she's been on a Bradley Sutton's podcast talking about the story. But it's like, like messed up, like, like bad situations, like. Or poor, poor bookkeeping can really, really screw you up. So, but let's take a step back to your question. So how do you sell your business? So, you know, it's, it's a really interesting time. So how do you sell your business for five X and four, you know, six X to an aggregator, unfortunately, you probably need a time machine for that. I'll be honest with you. You know, so at that price point, but those five, six X multiples were a thing, you know, 2021, there was an absolute bubble that just fell apart, you know, with these, with these brands, but that doesn't mean there isn't a market and that you can't sell your business. You can absolutely sell your business in those markets. So what are we typically saying? So you're an Amazon seller. You want to sell your business, you know, just to give people some sense of where I'm coming from. I'm not a broker. I don't do brokering deals, but we do a lot of M& A legal work. So we've helped our clients do the legal side of exits, which is super complicated. And we're I think we're at roughly a half a billion in terms of dollars in terms of actual dollars in pockets for our clients. So we've seen a few of these deals to put it mildly. So basically, you know, what it starts out with is your relationship. Usually, like, these days, you really need a broker. Like, I think in 2020 and 2021, you could get away without a broker because it was just like, if you're the kind of person who can. Run, you know, deals like if you were somebody who was like a realtor who's done multiple offerings, multiple bids, gone to market and the strategy like that, you might be somebody who could handle going to 20 aggregators at once and handling multiple offers and trying to pin them against each other and get the best offer. In this market, the aggregators really aren't the buyers anymore. There's not many aggregators left. There's only a handful that are still buying. Most of those that are buying are paying pretty low. Two to three, you know, brands that are making millions of dollars a year are getting like less than a three X offer for closing cash. And I only consider closing cash because 2021. I can't believe you only got a 6x. You should follow your broker. I got a 10x and then you dig into it. You realize like, you know, 70 percent of that 10x is like complete contingency payments, earnouts, stability payments. They're including their inventory in the multiple, which, you know, is actually the right way to do it, but not the way we do it in Amazon land. You know, the trend with Amazon was to separately account for the inventory separate from the value of the business as opposed to sort of a more of a working capital model that you would see in, you know, typical investment banking deals. So people would exaggerate, but but realistically, like you know, the brokers today, you need them because. You know, we did almost probably we did a quarter billion dollars in 2021 for our clients. So when I say we're at half a billion notice that in 1 year, we did about a quarter billion. The volume of transactions has come down a lot. The multiples have come down a lot, but. What brokers have been able to do is find buyers who are not aggregators. So a lot of the deals we're working with are people who may already own Amazon brands are looking to expand, going with this sort of buy then build model. It's my friend Walker table at a quiet light. It's his book is called. Buy and build which is, you know, a model. A lot of people take you've got private equity, sometimes, you know, private office, like those types of folks. The brokers, good brokers will have those contacts. Not like I just became a broker last week because I sold my business and I think I can broker because those brokers aren't going to help that much because they're not. They don't have this like long history of a big network and a broad network of potential buyers. So, you know, people who just became a book broker after they sold their business and, you know, really only know Amazon. It's not where you want to focus. You want to focus on brokers that really have, and you really want to, that's what you want to talk to them about. Is there, who do you know? Who can you sell my business to? Who's out there? How do you get people who, you know, how do you get that random guy who just wants an SBA loan? People think themselves, I don't want to work with a guy who gets an SBA loan. Yes, you do. In this economy, right now, where things are, SBA loans are the best way to get, you know, people who can have access to SBA loans they're actually the better candidates these days, some of the better candidates we're seeing, because they're willing to pay but loans are not as complicated as people think they are to get, and, and we're closing a lot of deals with people who get SBA loans they're, they're, it's actually pretty reassuring, so. So, the SBA loans are something that's specific in the States, like, we don't have that in Canada, we've got the Development banks and stuff, but our banks in Canada, you do have something else. I just worked on a weird deal. You do have a version of that or something. I think because I was working on a Canadian deal not that long ago with a distressed sale and the buyer came in with some sort of like some sort of maybe it's not SBA. Maybe it's just a maybe it was just a loan from a Canadian bank, but it was like. Some sort of business. Maybe, maybe that's what it was, but there's, I know that most of them, most of them in Canada, like they don't, they only want to lend against hard assets. Right. So you basically just have inventory to lend against. Like they don't necessarily want to take that risk of, well, here's the goodwill. Here's my brand. I'm brand registered. I have, you know, 10, 000 reviews. Like there's obviously goodwill on my brand here, but they're like, well, I can't sell that if you go sideways. Right. But it sounds like the SBA, and you've said this before, they are way more lenient, willing to take that risk and, you know, dole out cash to potential. Absolutely. They do not. Yeah. They're, they're looking at, you know, PNLs 12 months, you know, they're not, and they're barely looking at it, honestly, that's the bet, you know. Really the trust in the banks to make into the banks that are, that you go to are the ones that really put the loan together. SBAs are just guaranteeing the loan. But they're perfectly fine lending out to these, for these deals. And, and, and those are good buyers. I mean, people shouldn't be afraid of SBA lenders, SBA buyers actually in this market, especially. So I'm structuring a deal. I want to get a bunch of cash, you know, if I'm going to sell it want a bunch of cash up front. We close it. Now it's your problem. Most of the operators, I guess, usually have to do a consulting agreement, stay on for another, I don't know, six months, a year or something like that. Can you just like, what are you, how's the user structure? What does it look like? So, okay. So, yeah, I mean, there's, there's the negotiation of them. So you go through this process. You find the buyer, LOI, letter of intent, you go through due diligence, then you close the deal which is a crazy process. And we can talk a whole section on, we can do a whole podcast session on the risks of a purchase agreement because it's insanity what they do. But, but let's say what you're talking about is a trend, typical transition services agreement. Interestingly, during the aggregator bottle bubble, most of these aggregators wanted, like, So that's It was like crazy. It was like, we want you for two weeks, 40 hours a week just to do some transition and then. 40 hours over the next six months total, like 40 hours divided by six months. So not a lot of time, right? That's because these aggregators thought they knew it better than the seller. They had no respect for the hustle at the time, zero respect for the seller's hustle. They just assumed, assumed that their, you know model, you know was economies of scale and leverage is just going to, you know, a hundred exit by Tuesday. That's literally the mindset of the average aggregator circa 2020, 2021, even 2019. Well, that was wrong. So they would literally, our clients would resell their businesses and they would be like on a beach within a week. Like they didn't even want the 40 hours that they wanted. Yeah. They would just be like, all right, you're good. We got it. You know, we may have a form you need to sign just to officially transfer the trade, you know, like they'd have the dumb stuff, but they're like, go to the beach. We don't need your input. So that clearly failed. And then we saw like a 2nd crop of aggregators. There's a handful of ones out there that are doing it a lot better. They recognize the hustle, they recognize that that was a mistake. So now what they want, sometimes they want 1 to 2 year transition services. They actually want you to be like an employee. So they're not really exits these days. They're more like you know, you've taken the risk off the table, but we still want, they still want these businesses operating in silo. And then they, and once they have, you know, in other words, they don't want any disruption. They want you to run the business just as you work for them up to two years. Maybe they create like little masterminds around like the owners and stuff, but they want them, all the owners involved. For, you know, two, three, four. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it can be very long. So basically you're just, you're just taking some of the cash off the table in your brand. And, you know, a lot of these guys see that, you know, guys or girls, Hey, I'm a PL seller, look, I know there's risks selling on Amazon if I'm only selling an Amazon, Hey, why don't I de risk it a bit, take some of that cash off the table, find one of these guys, continue to operate it, but you, you know, I think it's very important that you do continue to operate it because if you have any sort of earn out and you're not operating it. Then that earner can just be instantly whacked with, you know, one order, one shipment of bad quality. These guys mess something up and, you know, a bunch of negative reviews and you're done. You're cooked. Right. It happens. I mean, look, we told our clients, you know, we always said, look, you know, I can write the most ironclad contract in the world. And, and, you know, I give you the Harvey, what's that guy from suits name? The Harvey version of the contract. It's all done right here. Just sign the dialogue. You know, you're that, that kind of, you know, we can do that, but contracts don't create money. Right. So, you know, as the expression goes, you can't draw blood from a turnip. At the end of the day, if your business is all messed up and there's no money, right, the buyer's not going to probably have any money either. They're probably going to be distressed. So suing them isn't going to be a great idea because even if you win, where are you going to get the money from? Because there's always like a lender or an investor, right? These guys raise a ton of, ton of money to get these things launched. They all have first priority. They're going to get all, any, any assets in the business are going to go to those people before they come to you. So that's one problem. So it's like, even if you could do, and then to go back to what we talked about earlier about access to the justice system, unless your deal is massive and your earnouts, like in the many millions, it may not be legally worth it just to even try to sue. Because again, one, it costs a lot of money to sue for MNA issues, right? It's, it's, it's hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like it's not cheap. So if you lose, you got to pay their bill. So, you know, if you're, you know, if, if, if you got, so that's why we always really taught our clients to. To make the deal at the door. That's your real deal. Like the cash at close is your most important asset. Everything else, just gravy. Just if hopefully you get it, you know, hopefully the contract works, but like look at Benitago, right? They're, they want, they filed for bankruptcy, right? I know people who, who sold to them. They did not get their, you know, what can they do? They filed for bankruptcy. There's nothing you can do at that point. How, no, no contract. Right, unless that contract makes you like a senior lean, but they'll never let you do because their lenders will never let you do that. You're, you know, you're hosed. So, yes, I mean, certainly running the business is a key element because. Some of these businesses are also poorly run in the sense that, like, they bit off more than they can chew. Their eyes were bigger than their stomach, as they say. So sometimes they didn't have the money to even fully fund PPC. But you didn't know that because you were out, you were out at the beach, not realizing that the scary things were going on. But, like, they literally, this is real. Like, they, they, you know, and we would try to put in the contracts. We would put in, like, we literally would put in tacos, acos, whatever. They cost tacos, things like, I, don't ask me. I don't understand those things, but my clients do. And they would explain it, like, you know, I need it to be less. They would try to create minimum thresholds. You know trick, you know, do on, you know, do on stockout provision. So, like, we would do, like, if the, if the business ever stocked out for, you know, substantial period of time, the earn out would just, you know, become do unpayable at that point in time. Again, great clauses if they'll accept it. But again, if they don't have the money, doesn't matter, right? Things can go bad. So a lot can go wrong in these, these sort of earn out situations. So we just really encourage people to make. Make cash deals that are where you're comfortable with the cash in your pocket, which if you did it in 2021, you probably got a deal because let me tell you what the multiples are like, right? So I'm going to be doing two, 3 million in 2021. Two to three x, I'm sorry, five to, sorry, five to six x, maybe seven X closing cash. I'm not kidding. Right. Even people who were doing like half a million could get close to four x sometimes more closing cash. Right. Four and a half x. Right. I mean, we saw it sort of progress, like when I was sort of started like under half a million was like two to 2.5. Then it sort of progressed to under half a million to a million would be like. Three to 3. 5. And then above, you know, that's how it works. The more value, the more money you make, the more higher your multiple is. It's people understand, like it scales with your business typically. So if you're doing a million, typically you'd start at four, but then by the time by the time the bubble really kind of peaked, it was like five, five to six, it really got up there. Now, today, a 2 million business, I'm not even seeing three X closing cash at close these days. Three and a half X maybe is probably the best you're seeing in terms of actual closing cash, right? Maybe a four, you know, if the trends are really good. But like we are a long way from the multiple. So if you were getting those fives and sixes in 2020, 2021, you did good. You know, you're doing better than most people are doing right now. Cause the money supply sucks. Like people can't borrow. They can't. So that's another issue. There's no money. There's no money to borrow. It's when you're borrowing. You know, some of these aggregators are paying like 20 percent on their lending right now, right. To borrow it's credit. I'm not kidding. A hundred percent. Like this is real. They had adjustable loans and they're up to like 20 percent and we've heard that. So payday loans, payday loans, kind of thing. It's like payday loans. And you're trying to do private equity level deals. Like it doesn't work. Right. You know, meanwhile, sales are coming down. Profits are coming down. Like not many are growing. Right. And they bought a lot of toxic crap, you know, a lot of our. It was like a junk rush. I call it, you know, like there was a lot of people selling like the 23rd best avocado peeler on Amazon and somehow they just buy a Holly Bob and they're getting, it's worth a 10. It's now it's a 10 million business because they managed to boost it up, you know, using all sorts of review manipulation, you know, good for them. But hopefully you disclosed it too, because that can get you in trouble. That's what we do. But it just, it's just was, it was a nutty time back then, but yeah, that's just talking about that before. Yeah. We're talking about that before you, before we even did the show, you were talking about making sure that you disclose everything, including, yes, I did the shady review things. And then you're saying that the buyers don't necessarily want to hear it because they're like, ah, right. I don't want to hear it. Right. We want to, we want to maybe simulate for it. Right. And they really didn't. And, and a lot of what I think happened with a lot of these aggregators and the early ones, they bought a lot of toxic assets. I mean, they were buying stuff that was heavily regulated and they didn't have like, they'd buy stuff that's like FDA, not, not just FDA regulated, but you need an FDA approval to sell the product. And Amazon didn't use to enforce half this crap because it was like the whole, like, we're just a flea market. Now they're under a ton of pressure to like. Clean up their act so that those are coming down, but they didn't even know that that stuff like we would tell them, you know, in our disclosures and then they're like, well, we don't want to hear that. And then what eventually happens is now you can't sell the product. FDA approval is a 6 to 12 month process and they're screwed. They just lost a ton of money. They just paid, you know, because they didn't even have a compliance person on their team. Right. In the early days, it was a real Wild West situation. They were just literally did not care about any of those things. My joke was, there's this, right? There's this thing you do when you investigate the company. It's called due diligence. And I'm like, you actually have to do the due diligence. Like the do is the important part and they didn't do it. So we had to, so what we did as the lawyers, like you said, we would do the, just with the due diligence sort of from a protection standpoint, because what they also say in all these contracts, it was like anything you disclosed, like a data room where you upload all your. Stuff. None of that counts. You have to make a nice pretty package for us. You know, index it, label it based on, you know, the clause of contract. It's related, relates to it's called disclosure schedules. Put in a bunch of exhibits. You can't bury materially important information in like a thousand words. You have to make it really obvious, like create a sentence like this is, you know, not EPA compliant, or this is not compliant with the California processes. If you don't do that, you're not disclosed. And yes, we had clients, we would do 800 pages because their review, they were using all the tools that they shouldn't have been using, but like, we're not going to, you know, and, and they, the deal would still go through, we'd have 800 pages of disclosures and they hated us. No, the buyer hates us, but they didn't want to lose the deal because there was a huge rush to use or lose the money that were being offered. A lot of these, you know, announcements of funding, they like, they had to close the deals, didn't just have a pool of money. They had every deal was like a draw. They had to go to their investor committee, go to their lender, get approval. And, and there was always a ton of pressure to get that done fast. And it just, it was just like all sorts of stupidity that led to this sort of bubble that, that, you know. was crazy, but good for our clients who were the seller, mostly sellers at that time. And we, we do both. But at the time we were just, you know, we didn't, we had a very no Agra policy. We didn't support big Agra, as we used to say we didn't like representing aggregators during the bubble. We just felt like our position as a law firm is pro seller advocacy. And, you know, if, if, if it's, if my client was a seller, just buying another seller, I'd be happy to represent them. We did it all the time. But like these ginormous aggregators who could afford the top lawyers in the country. Like, I just don't feel like we just really didn't feel comfortable playing both sides of that. We really wanted to be pro seller as, as it pertained to the aggregators. So that's what we did. Oh, I don't know, man. We covered a lot of stuff. I know this is probably the podcast that I've had to speak the least, which is amazing. But no, this has been It's, it's been good, man. Hey, I know we, that's why when you and I first got on a call and just chatting about my account, I think we talked about all this and it's been super helpful, but you know, like, what would you say right now going forward? I think we've covered a whole lot. We've talked about the letters, you know, making sure when you're listing, you're actually checking the listings, looking at the brands, things like that. Anything else, advice going forward? You know, now's the time. Hey, let's talk about seller basics too, which I'm a client I've signed up. That's how we got hooked up. You want to. Walk me through a bit. I mean, I don't want to... Joy, Bethany. I've chatted with them on some cases I'm working on. Yeah. I don't want to end on a plug, but I mean, Seller Basics is an interesting program. It's it's a legal, it's, it's really an account health plan. It's designed, you know, it's really main focus is an Amazon account health. Things that you don't necessarily need lawyers for, but what it comes with is access to lawyers. So what, what, what is the way it works is there's a... number of lawyers. And my law firm isn't the only law firm that does this. We have a whole network of different lawyers who, who will take phone calls from our members, right? Read the member, right? And they'll do that because they get, you know, the, the relationship going forward goes to that law firm. There's no money changing hands between basics and law firms that they work with. And that's really important from a legal compliance standpoint. And this is based off a business model that MetLife does, you know, they have those legal plans that they sell the businesses and sort of like kind of taking that concept, but putting Amazon spin on it. Right? So that's what seller basis is. But the reason why I think it's important to, you know, people love the people, people love most of us. Our basis is this notion that you can pay 100 a month or less if you have like, you know, code or whatever. And you're covered like, like anything. If your account, your ASIN goes down. If you have IP claims, we kind of handle, we'll handle five or five IP claims on a rolling basis. And, and, you know and that's all a hundred bucks a month. So the idea is it's almost like, I always used to say it's kind of like insurance, even though it's not, but sort of like modeled to be somebody else. It's kind of like a gym membership, right? Like, like we don't want you guys, we can't, we don't really want everyone to use the gym, but we know some people will and some people won't. And that's how we're pricing it. So cheap. It's not that we're a cheap service. It's just that we're looking at a risk profile. And so people love that account health stuff, and I think it's great. And Joy leads the account health and Amazon compliance side of our business, and she's phenomenal on that side. Bethany is one of the lawyers who, she's a trademark lawyer who supports the Seller Basics members, who helps, you know, if you have a letter, you're going to talk to Bethany, a lawyer at a law firm. You're not going to, you know, that's not Joy's decision. That's, you know, so things are being routed the right way. What I love about that, what I like is the lawyer side, and I'll tell you why, because when I started out, I Six years ago, writing a blog post about sales tax by, you know, just that blew up into this massive law practice. I met a lot of people with issues, sales tax issues, other IP issues, counterfeit issues, whatever it was. And a lot of times they would get in a lot of trouble. They'd be in a lot, by the time I'm talking to them, they're already like deep into it. And I'm like, dude, if you just called me before, you know, if you just called a lawyer before you made that one stupid decision to do whatever that was. We could have stopped this whole, none of this, you'd be in a very different place right now, not on the verge of losing your business, not on the verge of having spent, you know, a ton of litigation or having to pay, you know, like a lot of issues, like, and so I always would tell my clients in the early days that once you're my client, you're my client for the life of my practice, meaning like, I will always take your phone call. If you're something, if you need help with something, if you get a scary letter, like I'm not going to charge you for that 15 minute, just, you know, like Geico 15 minutes could say, you know, 15 minutes with a lawyer could save your business, right? I'm not going to charge you because you're a bonafide client. And that was great. But then how do you extend that kind of a business model to people who are not your clients? That's kind of where Seller Basics came from is partially like to serve that need that, hey, now you've got a way to run it by. And there's no, there's no bill. You can't, you're not signed up for anything where you can get a bill for that, right? If you want a bill, or if there is a bill, that's a whole separate process. You have to sign an engagement letter. You have to put down a, we call it retainer or, you know. Like there's no surprise bill in the mail, right? Some lawyers who just meet off the street, like the roof, the great billers, you know, the rates are low, but they will bill you. They'll be like, I thought about you while I was on the toilet. So I thought about your case. So that's a 30 minute, you know, 300, you know, here's a bill for that. And it's just, it's just amazing. I'm impressed with the way those, you know, impressed, but also like, it's kind of ridiculous that lawyers can do that, but that's not us. You do it the same as I do, like my accounting practice, if I take on a client, they pay deposit up front and I'm like, okay, look, that gives you access to me. Send me an email. I'd rather you send me an email and ask me that question before you screwed it up. Hey, I want to pay my mother. I want to pay my sister. I want to do something. I'd rather you message me first. So. You don't mess it up, but we do it correct now. And, you know, I don't nickel and dime you and charge you for that. You know, the same thing, law of averages, some people use it, some people won't. Usually it's, you know, new people obviously use me a little bit more because they're doing new stuff. Right. I like the model. I think, you know, I think our law firm has made a lot of money. Investing in our clients, like, I will tell you that during the aggregator bubble, a lot of people that I met in 2017, 2018, we're doing barely under a 1M dollars in sales. Flash forward four years later, big exits, 6 million, 10 million, 15 million. Like these are people that we knew and but it's just, it's nice to be able to see them grow to that point and then have a business model where, okay, now we're working on because I like billing people when it's happy. I don't, you know, it's why I hate litigation. I don't like doing people when they're like, you know, defending themselves in court. It's depressing. to be fair, I run my law practice. We're not a heavy litigation shop. I always tell my clients, like, if you're in a courtroom, I probably haven't done my job that well, you know, if you're coming to me and we're ending up in a courtroom. That's, that's not, that's not good. That's, that's a bad place. So that's how I feel. Sorry to interrupt. Oh, I want to ask you about sales taxes. Obviously you've, you've talked about sales tax. That's how you kind of blew up at this whole thing. The whole nexus discussion, the good thing is now Amazon is collecting on, I don't know if it's like 48 different States or, you know, 49 States now. That's great. And I think eBay is now doing that, but what about, you know, a lot of people start to evolve their business and Shopify site, your own e commerce site is kind of the next evolution, but Shopify isn't necessarily a marketplace and they're not, you know, which I'm, I'm, I'm waiting for that to happen. Hopefully that'll be the next move where, you know, they'll start regulating Shopify to collect on your behalf. I don't know what that would be huge. Yeah, no, no, that would be a huge one. I've talked to Shopify about this. I've told them it's actually probably in their best interest because right now Amazon, as you said, if you're on Amazon, if you're on a marketplace platform, Amazon eBay, probably tick tock, because once you hit, you know, a very low threshold as a marketplace, you have an obligation to collect it just about every state that has sales tax. So you raise a good point. But Shopify is not a marketplace. It's just a place where you build your own business website. So people who sell on Shopify have to figure out their own sales tax situation. That can be extremely burdensome because it's not just 50 states or probably 45 states with sales tax. It's, it's 12, 000 local jurisdictions, right? Like the state of Colorado has 70 different tax filings within the state for sales tax and income tax. Like it's just 70 different jurisdictions you could file in, right? I mean, you could spend your whole, like you could. Okay. Hey, people, you can spend millions of dollars in payroll trying to get your tax compliance. Perfect. Right? You know, who does that? Walmart, Amazon, really big companies, Wayfair, right? But for the average small business owner, it is really prohibitive. And Amazon actually knows this, and they love that Shopify is too risk averse to even think about. Taking on compliance because what happens is a lot of Amazon sellers will put their products on Shopify, but they will use a link back to Amazon. So they lose the commission. They lose the commission. They lose the lower fees. They lose the knowing their customer like they lose it all. But at least they don't have to deal with tax burdens and income taxes and sales taxes. So you're 100 percent right. It is a mess. The way I approach it is really from a Risk standpoint. So you look at how much are you selling? Like, you know, if you, if I start my Shopify site tomorrow, it's probably going to be a while before I hit a hundred thousand sales, even if I'm doing millions on Amazon, it may be a while before I hit a million sales. So what I tell clients is you gotta watch the data, right? Because. If you're doing 200, 000 in sales and Shopify evenly distributed throughout the states, like as, as based on population or census, I mean, most likely to 100, 000, you probably haven't hit that many thresholds. If, if, you know, the thresholds are kind of based on 200 transactions or 100, 000 or 500, 000, depending on the state sale, sort of variations of thresholds. But the point is, even if you hit the threshold, because some states say 200 transactions of threshold, like, okay. Look at the tax liability, right? If you hit the threshold in Mississippi and now you owe Mississippi 150 in sales tax for the year, but it's costing you hundreds of dollars, if not thousands of dollars to register, to file a tax returns, to file an income tax return, like maybe the move. Is to just not file and let them send you a bill for 28 and 99 cents, whatever, you know, whatever it is, right? Let them send you that bill and whatever interest and penalties they tack on may actually be cheaper than having hired the tax professionals. And I had a client once who was, I think they were paying Washington state like 12 a quarter because Washington has this oppressive B& O tax, which is like a separate sales tax on the gross that you pay. It's like a quarter percent or something. It's really small, but it's, it's, it's a business occupation type. Anyway, the number was small. The fees the tax jar was charging was like hundreds of dollars a year to pay like Washington 60 bucks or 70 bucks, whatever it was like. So to me, like, really, the way you handle Shopify is if you're getting into it is it's a risk management approach. You just look at the data, right? I don't think the states are correct. I do think the states are wrong to go after small Shopify sellers. I don't think the Wayfair court case stands for that. It actually. You know, the court made a very big distinction about small businesses who sell the Internet and Wayfair. Wayfair is a huge company. You walk out a government center in Boston. You look up. There's a giant tower. It says Wayfair. You don't get that unless you're a multi billion dollar company. They can handle the burden of sales tax. The Supreme Court just said, hey, all these great arguments about small businesses that we're reading in the amicus briefs and reading in our. Great, great, great discussion. But not this case. Bring it up in the next. Bring it up. Bring your own case about that. Like, that's pretty much to the court punted on the question of does this law apply evenly with small businesses. They also said that it potentially could if the burden is eliminated. In other words, if sales tax would become super easy to do. And comply with then thereby eliminating any burden, like it didn't cost, you know, 2, 3, 4 employees or hundreds of thousands to deal with a full tax compliance docket in your business. Yeah, if you remove that, right, like, let's say you filed, like, we call, like, we, we, we follow the international fuel tax agreement model, which is what the truckers use, because back in the day, truckers, Canada too, right? We had to file use tax reports for all the fuel that they burned in the different states. And that was really burdensome. Like you're just a Joe trucker. You're like, what? I have to like report my taxes in all these states and Canada. And that's like, it was insane. So the United States mandated, it started as an experiment with like Oregon and Washington. The United States mandated, Congress mandated in like the eighties, that no, what you're going to do is you're going to report your miles and fuel burn in one report to your home state. And then we're going to take it from there. Right. So you pay. Like a central clearing, you know, you pay to one state, you give them the report for all 50 States, and then the States just divvied up among themselves. And we're sort of saying, we testified before Congress about this. Unfortunately that was like, you know, three days before lockdown. So that didn't go anywhere. But you know, we've said like, why don't you just copy that model for sales? Like, why are you making these stupid, like small business? That's stupid. But like, why are you creating this stupid policy where small businesses have to like file the same number of tax reports as Walmart? That's just idiotic. And then you have income tax in Pennsylvania last 2 years ago, 2021, tried to impose income tax on all these Amazon sellers saying that, you know, the use of the FBA warehouses creates income tax nexus. Well, we thought we called BS on that. And we've been saying before, like, the other problem with registering your business in all these states for sales taxes, that it's going to trigger an income tax demand in most of these states, because most of these states are going to claim you owe income tax. There's an argument you don't. It's called Public Law 86 272, but. I'm not going to go into that, but it's an argument. And like I said, when you go to litigation, it's very expensive. So what do you do? But income tax is really more expensive and more burdensome than sales tax, because it's it's can't be streamlined. It varies. You know, my income tax is gonna be very different than somebody else's income tax who may declare all their dogs as independent. It can't be streamlined the way. Other tax sales tax and be so it's really, really burdensome, not just at the sales tax returns every state, but in every state and local jurisdictions that the father's income tax returns. It's brutal amount of work. It's not the money because the money kind of gets divided up like the pizza based on the size of your sales and other factors potentially, but it's the burden is insane. So what we're saying is like. It's just so what Pennsylvania did was they were sort of like this test case where the states kind of get together and plan how to screw people like the state governments do this. It's called the multi state tax commission. And they had this, you know, plan where Pennsylvania was going to go after Amazon sellers and say you know, file this you amnesty for the sales tax. But now we have you locked in for income tax. Right. And if you don't file it, we're going to go back for sales tax going back. How many years, you know, 2016 or something that no, they gave Amazon a huge sales tax pass in that same period. They said, we're not going to bother you. We're never going to make the argument that you might have sales tax for all those past years. We're just FYI. So talk about equal treatment. But we challenged that court case. We filed a lawsuit. We went to federal court, got kicked out of federal court because federal courts hate tax cases. I think it's state issue. We decided, you know, let's just take it to state court, see what happens, because Pennsylvania does have a good state court remedy for tax claims where you kind of go straight to appeals. You don't have to do a district court case. You can go straight to an appellate body called the Commonwealth Court. And we won. We won about a year ago, a little over a year ago, or it said no Nexus FBA warehouses is not enough to establish Nexus. It's 1 state, but it was the 1st and only state where we've ever had a ruling on that question. And then if even if it was Nexus, we had, like, 10 different other arguments, right? We have the Internet tax freedom act. Constitute a commerce clause and all these other arguments, but so, you know, we've been, it's been an interesting fight on the tax front, but yeah, it is, it is challenging for Shopify sellers. I have talked to Shopify about it years ago, but I just feel like the 2 Canadian to get it. I don't know, like, they're risk aversion. Like, they're so paranoid about it. Like, they're so paranoid about the States, man. I don't know what you're doing down there in the States, man. I'm like, it's just a little nuts. I don't know. You know, we can't take that liability, bro. And I'm like, You know, I think it's because we, we watch shows like judge Judy and all I see is all these structured settlements and I'm like, how are you running so many ads? Does everybody and their dog go through a lawsuit and get a structured settlement? You guys just sue everybody down there. Yeah. Was it JG Wentworth? Like I need you to pass. I have a settlement and I need to get cash now. JG Wentworth. Like how do you finance that much ads? I mean, obviously it's judge Judy, so it's a little cheaper, but they, they spend a lot of money. That's obviously a lucrative business. It's a, and then they're targeting the right people, targeting people who watch Judge Judy at like 12 o'clock in the afternoon or one o'clock in the afternoon. So it's like a lot of elderly people. You're sitting at home injured. Yeah, you're sitting at home, you're off, yeah, exactly, you're not working. You know, it's, it's, it's fantastic. It's not fantastic, it's funny. It's pretty, quite funny. So it's, it's, it's a giant mess. And eventually I think it'll clean, you know, I just need the right case. You know, somebody just, somebody who's really hurting. Needs to, needs to just assert their rights and do it the right way. But it's, it's hard because it's like, it's like with everything we've discussed here today about like, whether it's the first sale doctrine and the worries letters or suing for an earn out, there is no justice in our justice system. Please understand that in the United States justice system, there is no justice for the average person. And I say this too, like if you sign a contract with somebody, I don't care what it's for, like distribution or a contract, they're going to be your PPO if it's like a 10, 20, 000, you may not have a real remedy. Right. We can send scary letters. I'm happy to write a demand letter, but like. If they don't pay, what are you going to do? Are you really going to sue them for 10 or 20 grand and try a small claims court? Maybe? I don't know, but it's like, there's just not a lot of justice in our justice system. It's reserved for a different category of people for different category of case. And unfortunately people don't realize that, you know, people think contracts, you know, can be enforced and it's just like, there's no, like people don't consider the transaction costs of the contracts they enter into. They only consider or not so much the contract transaction, I should say the enforcement costs that would be required to really make the other party. You know, it's kind of like having a contract with your supplier in China, like, I get those all the time. And we, we do this with our disclosures. We say contracts with sellers in China are not enforceable, especially because they're in English, because they have to be a personalized language or in Chinese. I'm like, but. Even if it were enforceable, like, it may not be enforceable, like, easy to enforce because it's China, and nobody knows anything about the legal system. Because we see that all the time. People have these, like, you know, agreements with their sellers, with their, and I, I think it's fine, like, I think it's fine to have a written agreement with your, with your supplier in China, but just understand it's, it's not enforceable the way the culture of China is. You know, typically what they say is if you're doing good business with them and they see good business in the future, they'll treat you right once they see good business fall apart. That's when you start to, oh, some of your molds aren't coming back. Suddenly, you know, it's a very different, different relationship once they get the sense that good business isn't happening. But, you know, if you're signing an exclusivity, nondisclosure, noncompete with your China, China supplier, that's, yeah. You know, I don't want to tell you what you expect, but that's kind of what, but that's kind of how you have to approach a lot of contracts when you're a small business, because you have to consider the cost of enforcement. So if something's really important to you, what I would suggest is spend more time and money doing due diligence on who you're doing business with and try to figure it out in the front end, rather than having to try to fight for something on the back end, because it sucks. It's a terrible environment for this to do that. Especially now legal costs. Well, litigate, but litigators are charging these days. It's through the roof. Like you just can't, you can't do anything. Like you can't even file a lawsuit these days unless it's a personal, you know, contingency lawsuit for less than 10, 000. And most lawyers will not take your business dispute on contingency. That's just not a thing that rarely ever happens. Contingency is typically injury. Right. So yeah, I can just, I can, I can talk, man. I just it's, it's a jersey. Anything else though? We should have talked about, or we should have covered that we didn't any key. I did. We covered a lot. We can cover more. There's always more we can dig in. Let's let's no, I'm kidding. No, I think we're good. I think I'm white and I think you're white. And I, I, I think it's, I love the story. I love talking. I love delivering our message. I think it's important. And I love talking about this stuff. It's fun. It's interesting. So you actually don't sell anymore. You still have an account, but now, now you told me last time that you're a Lego investor now. So you're buying some hobby sets on the side. I love Legos. I love these sets. And I, I read about Lego investing and it's not like I'm putting my life savings into Legos, but I'm just like a little diversity, like what would be fun for me? Because when I used to resell like post law school, cause I used to resell a side of G I got a basement full of crap that I needed to sell. But because I started this law practice, I. Kind of delayed it. And then some of that stuff I bought, I should sort of go up in value, like the toys, like I bought like WWE figures for like five bucks at, you know, Christmas clearance at Walmart back in 2016, 2017, 2016, 2017 Christmas season. Like those have skyrocketed to like hundreds of dollars, right? Just holding it has actually benefited me more than actually reselling it, which, you know, cause at the time I probably could have resold it for like 50 bucks. Now it's like hundreds of dollars. Right. And then the other thing I got, and I just had a feeling, I knew nothing about Lego investing. I bought the Porsche 911, the orange one, that famous 911. And, you know, whatever I paid for 250 and I, for whatever reason, I decided to buy like three of them just like this is going to be a really good one because I think it was on the, it was near retirement or something. I don't know what inspired me to do it, but it's about 3 of them. They're still in their original box that came from Toys R Us. So that's how old they are. And then he went up. I saw how much they went up during covid like the prices kept going up. And then I started learning about Lego investing from my friend, James McConnell who's a big Lego guy shout out to James if you know him. And, and then I started reading more about it and I just like, this is fun. It's hard though, because you have to have space for it. You have to keep like the part where you have to keep them vertical. You can't let them do that. Cause they'll start to pancake or whatever you call it. Like they'll, you know, you have to keep it like you have to store them in a certain way. It's very, very technical. But I love it. I think it's a lot of fun. And like, my hope is, you know, if I can pay for my daughter's college or at least a year or two of it, like cashing in these Legos and you know, that'd be fun. That'd be neat. I don't know. Maybe it's not probably, that might be a bit of a stretch from where I'm at, but. Hey, call me first. If you want to move them in bulk, you know, like give me, give me right of first refusal to have a look. A hundred percent. I will call you. I will have, I will call you. I always want a good advice on what to, you know, feel free to email me anyone out there who just like what's hot, what's retiring, what I need to be focusing on. Cause I, I tend to fall for things that I think are really nostalgic and I liked them like that Nintendo one. I don't know. I just have a lot of hope that that's, you know, cause that was the first video game they ever did. First video game system they ever did before the Atari, they did the Nintendo entertainment system. I think that this is such a legendary thing that they, how they built that. And we'll see. I like this. What I tell people when they, whatever they sell, I said, you know, try to sell stuff that you like, because then it's fun and you're more interested. And when damages come back, you can benefit from those damages. You know, I've talked to people and I'm like, you sell toys. Do you like toys? Like, no, hate it. Like, well, no, like for me, I'm a. I'm a guy, I like boy type Lego. I don't like friends. So I don't buy friends. And because that's just not what I want to get excited about. So if you're excited about those nostalgia, the Atari, the leg of the the Nintendo, you know, whether it's icons, whether it's the cars, just stick to what you like. Don't. Go off collecting Harry Potter. Cause you think it might be a great investment if you're not into Harry Potter. Oh, exactly. Then these certain ones are just like, you know, that's pretty neat. And then when that retires, like that'll be that, like my biggest regret is I didn't buy the Voltron one. I don't know why, I just think that's going to be cool. I don't know if it will have a ton of resale value, because I don't know how many people really remember. I'm surprised it actually made it as a LEGO. But it's pretty cool that they made it. It's so neat. Oh, they made it, that it can do that. That it can actually like, you know, sort of recreate it. And I think they even did the box in the way that the old ones came in. It was like, it was such a... Such a nostalgia is so valuable in the market right now. People love nostalgia. It just doesn't seem to go away. Right. I mean, look how much money they made selling you. When we were kids, we didn't have the money. Now we have the money and I'm an adult and it's acceptable now for me to go out and buy the stuff I didn't have. Like I bought the transformer devastator. They re released it a few years ago and I put it together like once or twice. Yeah, because I have the optimist prime transformer, by the way. Did you see, do you have the optimist prime, the one that they put, have you seen that where it does the, and it almost looks just like the optimist prime from that time to the devastatingly re release devastated. That's so cool. Yeah. And it was actually bigger than the normal ones. Cause I didn't have them all. You had to try to collect them, but these ones are actually bigger, but, you know, but the transformers are way too complicated to transform. I'm like, no, when I had a transformer, it was like three or four moves and it was done. Now, like my kids get a couple, probably a bunch of lawyers, probably a bunch of lawyers looked at it and said, this is too easy to break off. And the kids will remember the optimist prime hands are tiny that you had to add them on like the little, you put them in the trailer and then yeah, like that, those days are gone. So they probably made it wait, you know, Blame the lawyers, you know but I love that devastated was the first transformer that you could, wasn't that the first one where you could like, cause it was, they came out with the dinosaurs at the same time, but the dinosaurs didn't combine devastated or combined. And that was like the craziest thing ever, how they did that. But, and then from there you had, yeah, all the other ones that followed suit, but yeah, no, we could talk about this all day. 40 minutes. I thought it was going to be maybe an hour, but this was awesome. I appreciate your time. I'll put the links below to Seller Basics and everything else. How to get in touch with you and your firm. Definitely appreciate it. It's. Been fun, man. I, thanks again for coming on. Hey, anytime. And anytime you want to chat again I'm always available anytime. It's you're a fun guy to talk to cause we have a lot of similar interests. And like I said, I'm just super curious about this Lego thing. So especially, so thank you so much. If you want to take your online business further, stop by sellingfromthebeach. com for more episodes, videos, selling tips, and tiki drink recipes.