In this episode of the Creative Dealmaker podcast, Carl Allen and his business partners Ross Turner and Crystal Carson discuss strategies for building a billion-dollar e-commerce brand and the power of equity crowdfunding. Carl shares a vision of creating a brand with a large consumer following, emphasizing the importance of investing in the companies behind the products consumers regularly purchase. The conversation opens with Carl reminiscing about a phone call where his friend proposed the idea of building a billion-dollar e-commerce brand, sparking a discussion on how consumer spending can be leveraged for investment opportunities.

Crystal Carson, a media and real estate professional with a background in equity crowdfunding, shares her journey from hosting a real estate TV show to helping companies raise capital and go public. She discusses her role in storytelling for companies and emphasizes the importance of investing in products and brands consumers believe in. Crystal advocates for the concept of investing in brands one supports, particularly in e-commerce. She explains how equity crowdfunding allows everyday consumers to become investors in the brands they are passionate about, creating a symbiotic relationship between customer loyalty and financial growth.

The podcast delves into the potential of using equity crowdfunding to finance business acquisitions, specifically within the e-commerce space. Carl and Crystal discuss creative deal structuring, where issuance platforms could be leveraged to raise capital to acquire businesses. They envision using equity crowdfunding to not only raise money but also turn loyal customers into shareholders, thereby enhancing brand loyalty and customer lifetime value. This strategy could significantly impact various industries, including e-commerce, CPA firms, and home services, by providing a new avenue for raising capital while simultaneously boosting customer engagement and brand awareness.

Carl and Crystal also explore the role of women in e-commerce and investment. They discuss the significant consumer buying power women hold and the untapped potential of female investors in the market. Crystal emphasizes that only a small percentage of venture capital goes to women, which she sees as a missed opportunity, given the data showing women as successful business operators and shareholders. The discussion also touches on the upcoming wealth transfer, where women will own a majority of wealth and assets in America within the next decade, presenting a prime opportunity to empower female entrepreneurs and investors through equity crowdfunding.

In the latter part of the podcast, Carl and Crystal shift focus to the broader theme of wellness and longevity, discussing biohacking and personal health practices that align with entrepreneurial longevity. They share experiences with biohacking technologies, such as stem cell treatments and sensory deprivation chambers, to enhance personal well-being and maintain peak performance in business. The conversation highlights the connection between health, wellness, and entrepreneurial success, suggesting that a holistic approach to life can support sustained business growth and achievement.

Full Transcript:

And then and I remember it was a Saturday afternoon. He calls me. He said, “I got an idea for you.” Right? I said, “What is it?” He said, “I wanna build a one billion dollar e-com brand.” And I’m like, shit. Like, that’s like big boy pants stuff.

You know, I say this to women all the time. It’s like, what do you spend your money on? You have eighty-five percent of the consumer buying power in the household, and you’re spending that money on behalf of your husband, your children, yourself. So, are you investing in Aritzia when you buy only Aritzia and Lululemon clothes all year? Are you a shareholder? Then they’re like, “Oh, I never thought about that.” And I’m like, yeah. Aritzia went through the moon the last couple of weeks. You could have been in and out on that stock. So, you’re spending money on it. Why aren’t you investing in that as well?

A very warm welcome to the Creative Deal Maker podcast. I’m Carl Allen. I’m your host, and I’m gonna be interviewing expert guests sharing investor strategies that will completely and utterly disrupt the market when it comes to buying and selling businesses all over the world.

Hi, guys. Welcome to the Creative Deal Maker podcast. Got two very special guests on the show today. I’ve got my, well, both my business partners, actually. But I got Ross Turner, who, as you guys know, is my wingman, my business partner in eComfolio. And we’ve got one of our partners and advisers, Crystal Carson, with us. And Crystal’s got a great story, great background, the absolute queen of crowdfunding, and there’s a whole bunch of really cool stuff that we’re doing. So, we got her on the show today. So, Crystal, welcome to the Deal Maker podcast.

Crystal: Thank you. Thank you. I’m so excited to be here. So nice to see both of you too. Yeah, pretty exciting year.

Carl: Yeah. So Ross is in the Dealmaker house with me. We’re going to NASA tomorrow. We were actually gonna go and watch a SpaceX launch tonight, but they canceled it. It’s taking off tomorrow, but we’re actually gonna be at NASA with—I don’t think you’ve met Chris Moore, our other business partner, and Jared. They’re flying in today. We got a big, operational mastermind that starts tomorrow. In fact, we’ll get you to the next one in Tennessee. We’re doing it in May, which will be really, really cool. But, yeah, for our listeners on the podcast and our viewers because we stream this on YouTube as well, just tell everybody about you, where you’ve come from, what you’ve done. I know you’re up in Canada right now, but, yeah, appreciate you coming on. So, who’s Crystal Carson?

Crystal: Who am I? Crystal Carson is in Canada right now in the first blizzard snowstorm of the year, which is not like Miami at all at this time of year. So, Canadian girl, grew up on the West Coast, and raised by my two entrepreneurial parents that taught me how to start businesses and grow businesses at a young age. My background is actually in media and real estate. And interestingly enough, the two worked really well together through my twenties and into my thirties.

I got the opportunity to host a real estate TV show and be a co-host on a real estate TV show. Vancouver is one of those anomaly markets, global markets for real estate, where you can sell incredible properties all over the world. So, it was a big opportunity for me to be on the show. Next thing you know, the magazine that I’m working with is getting a call from Entertainment Tonight, Global News, all the major news outlets. They’re wanting me to be a contributor, be on air. I was suddenly not just on this TV show, but I was a personality in the media nationally.

Storytelling. I fell in love with meeting people, talking to people. So, I really pursued my media career and then built my personal brand that way. I got approached in 2016 or 2017 by a fifty billion dollar tech fund out of Asia that was investing in the North American market and moving into emerging industries, which were cannabis at the time, blockchain, renewable energy, lithium battery tech, and just basically everything that was going to impact the world and change the world in a different way where people would actually see and feel it in their homes. They approached me to start telling the story for their companies as they were raising capital and taking them public.

I was like, I have no background in finance, and I have never done it. I have no interest in the stock market either. I’m not sure I’m the right girl for this. They’re like, “No. No. No. No. There’s a new retail investor audience coming. If you can figure this out on your own and tell the story, then you’re gonna be able to help us create this market, and you’re perfect for it.” And I was like, really, really didn’t want to do it at first. They finally convinced me to do it. They said, “We promise we’ll mentor you. We’ll guide you back. We’ll support you through it.”

I dove into it. As I was starting to meet these companies and started to understand the impact of what these businesses and sectors and industries are doing, I got obsessed with the fact that you weren’t just starting a business; you were starting an industry. I was sitting at the table in these meetings, and I was the only girl back then even, you know, this is pre-COVID. This is 2016, 2017. I was really the only girl in the room at that time, especially at my age and with no background in finance, but these guys really supported me through that.

I got to end up taking my real estate brain, and I started realizing, “Oh, okay. Stock market is just press releases, which is media and storytelling. And then there’s assets, which is real estate.” So, I ended up selling a piece of land in Nevada to a lithium company to go public on the TSX, and I was like, “Oh, I can totally do this.” So, I just jumped headfirst into the capital markets, and I guess the rest is history from there.

Carl: Nice. So, the real estate stuff’s really interesting. So, like, where is he from England, right? Ross lives in Austin. I’m moving to Austin in a few months. But what’s crazy about America is how you can get really creative when you’re buying real estate. Like in England, you can’t. Right? If you wanna buy real estate in England, you’ve gotta pay cash or you get a mortgage, and you typically put twenty, twenty-five percent down.

I’m looking at some real estate in Austin. These are like three, four million dollar homes, and I can buy them on these lease options. So, I can put a couple hundred thousand dollars down. Yeah. Like a lease have that. Yeah. Oh, they made that illegal in Canada. They took that option out of the market. That’s incredible. That’s when I was in real estate. It was great.

Look at this house. Right? Three million dollars. Brand new house. It’s stunning. It’s like six thousand square feet, like, huge. It’s massive. It’s a show home, so it’s got a quarter of a million dollars worth of furniture in it, and they’re selling it to me for three million bucks. I gotta view it, though. Right? My wife and I are flying over next week to see it. She’s flying from England, and we’re meeting there. Right? And, like, what’s crazy, three million bucks, it’s, I think two hundred fifty thousand down and then ten grand a month for five years. And then in five years’ time, I gotta pay the rest. Right? That’s crazy, right? It’s absolutely crazy, and you can’t do that in the UK.

You know, this is why I wanna live in the States full time. I get my green card in May, June. It’s like insane. And what we’re finding in one of the businesses we own, which is Dealmaker Law Society, we’ve got all these real estate investors that are coming in, and they’re wanting to hedge away from real estate to do business acquisitions as well, which is pretty cool.

Obviously, we’ve got the econfolio brand that we’re running together. We’ve raised all the capital. We’re looking at doing tons of deals. But let’s talk about your portfolio for a minute.

Yeah. You’re gonna be in a great situation there for a CF. You’ll you’re good. Like, because that’s really think case. So that’s you could do one point two of this every one, financial review and your CPA. And the auditing process and the criteria is much lower. Like, if for the reg CF, the legal is still the legal’s a little bit more of the heavy lift, and that’s where you get into the all your documents, bad actor checks and stuff. But it’s a lighter weight approach.

When you go into the reg a, you almost gotta think about it like it’s pre IPO preparation. So tiers of audited financials, you’re much more but what I will say is that the SEC one thing about America, Canada’s not doing such a good job with this. Canada’s making it complicated. But the US, compared to everything else in the financial markets that tend to be very complicated, heavily regulated, a lot of throwing down the gauntlet on issuers and businesses from the regulators. The equity crowdfunding is still getting through with a lot of thumbs up and a lighter process because they want to see these these things happen. Like, they understand the value in it and the proof of concept out there has been successful.

What I will say, though, is, like, that those two processes is really one’s about sixty grand. The reg A is about sixty k to get to that get live versus you’re looking at few hundred thousand dollars to get live with the CF. So it’s or sorry. Not a few hundred thousand. Ten couple ten thousand dollars, twenty thousand dollars. Like, you’re looking at different fee structures. And just depends on who you work with, it can go up to, like it can get more expensive depending on your business, but it’s a lighter lift depending on who you work with on the CF. And it’s a lighter process. You can be live in four to eight weeks on a CF. Whereas you are looking at, reg a, could be three to six months. Oh, nice.

So your time to market. So a lot of what people do, they’ll go issuers and and founders will go, okay. Either they’re gonna do a reg d because they have a network of a credit investor. They wanna get some capital in, and they know how to do that. Or and they have access to credit investors. So they get up and live in a day and go, or they go the reg CF. They can be up and be running the reg CF, test test the market, run their marketing campaigns while they’re doing the reg a in the background, and then they’ll flip to a reg a.

So a couple of questions for you on this. Right? So first question is, like, you go out to, like, an issuance or a platform, and they they provide the infrastructure. It’s like a fintech. They you raise all the money. And let let’s say, let let’s say you sell ten percent of your ordinary shares, and you’ve now got ten percent shareholders in the business. So let let’s say there’s a thousand of these shareholders. Right? Because there’s there’s a low minimum. Clearly, they’re not all now on your board. So does issuance act as like the board adviser, the shareholder that sits to check that everything’s being done correctly, or is there, like, no oversight from any of those investors at all?

Yes. It’s a great question. So think of issuance as the fintech that’s actually the compliance software for the transaction. So literally the same thing as Shopify, like, in that capacity. Right? It’s a but you need it to be able to receive the funds, transfer the funds, and sell the sell the shares. Behind that, you’ve got your legal team. You’ve got your broker dealer. Now the broker dealer doesn’t act like a typical broker dealer. They do one percent across the board, and it’s literally just a compliance element. Yeah. They’re very light. They’re just basically their compliance back in the backdrop. And then you’ve got your accounting team, and then you’ve got your, transfer agent. So you’ve got a few different pieces going on behind the scenes.

At the end of the day, they become your shareholders, and how you manage your shareholders is gonna be the same thing as if you manage a public company. You’re now gonna have to have communications. There are shareholders, though. Right? So you’re not looking at this. They’re not getting on the board. They’re not in controlling interest. They’re not partners. This is like literally, you gotta think about these retail investors just like you would look at a retail investor in a public company. They need to be updated. Material information needs to be disclosed, the same way that you would run a private any private company. It’s just that you have a few more of them. So you wanna have a communications plan and for how you’re gonna handle your investor relations.

Basically, that’s what it is. And in St. Manny That’s so cool. So, like, in England, like, if you go to, like, a funding circle or a crowd tube or any of the UK guys, what they do is they’ll they’ll they’ll go and raise all the money. So they got a big network of, like, investors that that put the money in. And then what they do is they take a free piece of equity as well. I think they they take eight percent free equity of whatever’s raised. So let’s let’s say, let let’s say you’re raising twenty percent equity. Right? They’ll take eight percent of the equity as their fee. They’ll sell the other ninety two percent of the twenty percent, but then they sit on your board, as a shareholder and then disseminate all the information down to all the Oh, interesting. So it’s really cool that Issuance doesn’t do that. So here’s my other question.

Yeah. Yeah. Here’s my other big question. So can you do this? So this issuance model of raising equity, can you do this on a business that you’re about to acquire? Right? So so let let’s say you find let’s say you find an ecom company. Mhmm. And it’s got a big following. Right? And you wanna buy that business. And let’s say you wanted to do, like, a there there’s a loan program in America called the SBA seven a loan program. So so the way the SBA works, let’s say you let’s say let’s say you find a business and it’s doing a million dollars a year of EBITDA or cash flow. Right? And let’s say you agree to buy that business for five million dollars or five times multiple. Right? Even though the deal that we’re doing, we’re paying two point seven times EBITDA, and it’s doing six million dollars of EBITDA. Alright? But, normally, you’d pay five times multiple on a million of cash flow. So five million deal.

What the SBA will do is they’ll say, right. The buyer’s gonna put half a million dollars in of equity. The SBA will fund four million dollars over ten years in the high eights, low nines, and then there’s a five hundred thousand dollar selling out. So the buyer’s gotta find half a million bucks. Doesn’t have to be the buyer’s own money. It can be, it can be a family office. It could be a VC. It could be it could be anything. Down payment that they need to flow through into the company. So it’s a down payment. So can you use, like, an issuance type platform to go and raise the half a million dollars, of equity to form the buying group to buy a business, or does this stuff only work if you actually own the company in the first place?

You’ve been dying to ask this question for ages, haven’t you? I have. Yeah. Yeah. On the like, from from what I understand, although there’s lots of creativity happening in this sector as well, which I don’t, it’s like a more of a conversation, on how things are evolving, but you do need to own the business. It needs to be done through the issuer and the owner on the raise. So depending on yeah. So you can’t do it to fund loans is basically, like, you can’t do it in that capacity. They are one thing I just actually saw come through the mayor’s office in Miami and they forwarded it to me, was a group that is raising capital almost like a fund that is financing businesses and and then getting involved in the management. So and that wasn’t you wouldn’t see that a year or two ago. Right?

Like, they’re really blinds in the sand, and we’re starting I think market conditions are obviously impacting access to capital. So we’re starting to see creativity in this industry and this sector. And I will say, actually, we’ve seen a group, investment group in the UK that’s figuring out a way to bring equity crowdfunding like it is in America overseas into the EU UK market. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s it’s it is. It’s expanding, and people are trying to figure out how to make it work in their legal frameworks and their regulatory frameworks. Right? So with that, I think it brings ideas because you’re not just in your own pond anymore, and America’s the most creative pond. But, you know, there’s different ways things are done around the world, and we’re starting to see those come into play and those conversations start.

So, I think it’s worth bringing that up to our legal team and seeing how because they’re really expertise. Nate and Chris are actually, I found I actually found them and brought them met them at a conference and brought them in as partners for issuance, and they’re domain experts in in the equity crowdfunding. So it’d be worth a conversation for them to know when it would be possible. But I I’ve just had this really cool idea. Right? So, like, what so what a lot of my students are doing in Dealmaker Wealth Society is, they’re happy to go out and do SBA loans. Right? But the problem is a lot of the sellers that are selling those companies, they’re saying, well, you know what? I don’t wanna wait four months for you to go through the loopholes of the SBA. Right? I wanna sell my business now.

Right? Is there a way we can structure a deal? And we call this an annuity deal, right, where you can start so you take the business over. You start paying me a monthly payment for, say, three months, six months, and then that’s gonna give you time as the new owner to refi of that what would be a ten year seller note by doing an SBA loan and then cashing me out in, say, ninety or a hundred and ninety days. Right? Now so that’s perfect because what that does is that takes away all the brain damage that the seller has to go through answering due diligence questions, jumping through all the SBA loops. The buyer, the new owner, can handle stuff. The the the seller can check out, retire, new owner of the business that they’re getting income on a monthly basis, but then they can get that big check-in, you know, three or six months’ time.

So where I see this working is so let let’s say you and I went and bought a company, an econ company, and let’s let’s say, you know, million dollar cash flow, five million dollar deal, and we said, well, okay. We’ll we’ll start paying the owner twenty five grand a month. And then in that six month period where we’re gonna go do an SBA loan, we can leverage issuance to go and raise the half a million dollars. And what we can do is we can target all the socials of the business we buy and all their customers. You could do an email campaign. If it’s got, like, TikTok following or Facebook or Instagram or whatever. Do you know how much gold we’ve just got there? Do you think? So that I I just had that idea. That’s that’s absolutely gold. Have that idea. Right?

And Of how you do Well, let’s set up a partnership with that because that’s what I do with issue. It’s just partnerships. That that would that would be do it. That would be really cool. Right? So, yeah, I think we should definitely, Perfect when when You’re you’re you’re Carl, you’re getting it, and it’s not that complicated. Right? Like, someone like you that’s so sophisticated in how you structure and manage these processes, once you see how simple this really can be, it’s it’s crazy that you’re not doing it already. Right? Like, that’s how you’ll feel. Because you’re like, wait. This isn’t that complicated. Like, this is really done for the founder and for the average retail investor. This is not for the bankers, the brokers, and all the guys that usually control everything in these transactions.

So it’s a different way of doing business, and this is exactly the model that I do wanna see with eComfolio because I see that, that that a lot of these brands, they’re you know, I say this to women all the time. It’s like, what do you spend your money on? You have eighty five percent of the consumer buying power in the household, and you’re spending that money for on behalf of your husband, your children, yourself. And are you looking at the life cycle of your dollar? So are you investing in Aritzia when you bought it by only Aritzia and Lululemon clothes all year? Are you are you a shareholder? Then they’re like, oh, I never thought about that. And I’m like, yeah. Like Aritzia went through the moon in the last couple weeks. Like, you could have been in and out on that stock. So why aren’t you getting an early stage companies where you even may know the founder or something that you’re actually you know, you’re spending money on. Why aren’t you investing in that as well? Right?

What’s really cool as well, like, if you think about econ, like, especially with women, like, they’re not just customers. Right? They they become like raving fans. Like, some of the deals that we’ve been looking at some of the deals that we’ve been looking at, the customer base, like, the the the lifetime customer value of some of these customers is off the charts compared to, like, guys buying supplements or all those different things. Like, there’s a lot more loyalty with women in in ecom. And, you know, what why I like this crowdfunding play for these businesses, whether it’s to raise extra working capital or to, you know, refi an acquisition or to even do bolt on acquisitions.

Like, a lot of those people that will click to invest, you could almost have that, a, as part of your product marketing. Say, hey. You know, we’ll we’ll we’ll we’ll give you a hundred dollar free sample box if you buy five hundred You’re getting this. Shares. So that these investors, right, they’re not gonna think like investors normally. They’re not thinking about returns. They’re thinking about, like, I’m passionate about this product. I wanna see it thrive. I’m gonna be a customer for a long time. I’m investing this because I believe in it. I love the product. I love the team. I love the customer service. I love the brand. Like, I wanna I’d love to be a shareholder in this. Right?

It it’s like my deal maker proteges. Right? I got a thousand proteges down my program, and literally, we thought, let’s go out. Let’s raise a couple of million bucks from our community. We thought it would be a stretch. And, I did a thirty minute presentation. I said, hey, guys. Here’s the business. Like, here’s what we’re doing. Here’s the the roll up that we’re doing. Like, if you’re passionate about wanting to be part of the of the journey, like, we’re gonna give you an opportunity to invest. And, like, we had a fifty thousand dollar minimum. Right? And we we got massively oversubscribed just from our students saying, you know what? Like, you’ve helped us close deals. We’re making all this money now.

Like, we wanna invest in you guys, and we wanna be part of the journey and be part of the evolution. And I can see that transcending a lot of industries, particularly econ. Like, I’ve got students that are rolling up, like, CPA firms. Right? So, like, Nick Elias buying CPA firms, like, left, right, and center. You can almost, like, go to a CPA firm’s customer base and say, hey. You know, we’re gonna roll up. We’re gonna buy all these other businesses. We’re gonna turn it into a much bigger entity. I can see a lot of those customers of, like, people that do tax returns, like, you know, grandmothers in Nebraska that do these little tax returns. So I can see this working in professional services, in ecom.

Even, like, I’ve got students rolling up in home services, so they’re buying plumbing businesses, electrical businesses. And and those customers, they’re loyal to those service providers. So I can see those customers thinking, well, yeah, why wouldn’t I be an investor in this business through these crowdfunding platforms? Like like, this this is absolutely insane. Like, the this is this is, like, freaking my brain in. Like, I think that I’m so glad that you love it. The way the way this could be deployed is is crazy. So so one thing, though, right, I I I’ve gotta get you onto my protege program. Right.

We we do, like we coach them four times a week for ninety minutes. One of our calls, we’d like to bring in really, really smart people. Like, we’ve had Ross on talking about capital raising, building relationships. He’s speaking at the Echelon Mastermind this weekend to have you do the same. So I’ll have I’ll connect you to my team. Let’s get you on the roster. Like, you will blow people’s minds talking about this stuff, and I’ll, like, help segue it into how we can use crowdfunding as a tool for business acquisitions. Because I’ve always known you couldn’t use it, in your cap raise to buy, but I think the way we’re being creative now structuring deals and having these, like, deferred payments.

Like like, we we’ve just put an LOI in today on this deal. This this sixteen point five million dollar deal, was staging the closing payment. Like, a closing payment by nature is the day you close the deal, you gotta cut somebody a check. Right? You can now stagger that. So you can buy the business and make the closing payment later. And I see crowdfunding as the vehicle to raise that capital from a raving fan community that wants to support the business and the brand. Then here’s the thing. It gives the everyday the everyday person the ability to become a part of that business and part of that story.

What Crystal said before is it’s all about the story that you tell. It’s Yeah. That’s everything. It’s all about the story you tell. The vehicle is there, like, you’ve just delivered some absolute gold here. This you’re gonna is there. Like, you’ve just delivered some absolute gold here. This you’re gonna blow people’s minds. Yeah. Oh, that’s so awesome. Well, look look. I pitched EcomFolio and what we were doing to Venture Miami and the mayor of Miami, was updated on it, and key was blown away. He’s like, wait. What? Like, everybody’s got female founder mandates, and that’s great.

Even the city of Miami does, but nobody’s actually doing anything other than empowering. And he’s like, this is the first business I’ve heard of in America that’s actually putting the money where their mouth is and actually going to to figure like, make these women successful, capitalize them, grow them, scale them. He said, we gotta roll the bread department for this. Like, that was the feedback I received from the team. It’s like, this is somebody that’s actually actually doing it. And that’s what’s, like so and then on top of that, like, I really wanna tie that that like, the story together, the democratization and access

to being part of the journey. Because, you know, not only do you wanna empower women and and and, you know, finance them and grow them, But there’s a bigger opportunity in America right now because only three percent of venture capital is going to women and only one percent of women of color. What a shame. That that is just a shame. And I think women make world class entrepreneurs. You know?

All the data’s there. I wanna know another fun fact. So I’ve been talking to Darren about this because he’s like, Crystal, I want you to go out there and get these women. And I’m like, yeah. Like, I I’m all about it, and we were talking about stats and how can equity crowdfunding move the needle without VCs, without the banks. Right? And so we were talking about all that, and then I started diving into, like and I’m not sure if you’re familiar with this, but the great wealth transfer is happening in this decade. Right?

And there’s thirty trillion dollars. Women in the next ten years are going to own the majority of wealth and assets in America. That’s amazing. Yeah.

And, like, McKinsey, RBC, like, all the major banks, all like, KPMG, there’s actually reports. Fidelity Bank’s the only one that’s done anything about it that I’m really, really aware of, like, publicly, but there’s not many people talking about that. So, like, not only do we have the opportunity to, you know, finance these with founders, but there’s a whole female funding network that’s not being dealt with properly, not being communicated to properly that we can also tap into and help grow on these businesses.

And they are the data’s in. They’re better. They, you know, their businesses succeed and are managed better. Women are a lot less emotional with money, and they’re able to multitask, like, the the at a higher level when they’re operating a business. So, like, the data’s proven that women are better. Shareholders are better. They’re better business operators. Like, the data’s all backing this as a opportunity, from an investment perspective.

Like, such as, like, oh, go help your friend. There’s data to prove that investing in women isn’t a good idea and actually sound idea, on a financial level. So the it’s just and that’s the thing. It’s like, that’s what I’m so excited about econfolio because the timing of this and what we can utilize to make this all happen with the equity crowd funding and with, you know, with this great wealth transfer, we we’re kinda gonna own this category.

It is a cool story. Right? And and, like, you know, chops to you guys for kind of developing this. So so initially, when when I started looking at this, like, I think there’s a difference between being an aggregator and being being being a roll up professional. And you’re right. It’s all about the story. Right? Now when when we pitched the Wall Street card, it was like when we set up the the facility, the hundred and twenty five million facility, they looked at how many deals? Thirty deals? Fifty. Fifty deals. Years. And they they batted them all away, and they they looked at our story.

And they said, well, hang on a minute. Right? You you’re two guys from England. You’re you’re doing a a roll up of, ecommerce brands for women that are gonna be acquired, gonna have a woman c suite that’s gonna run this. Mhmm. And you’re buying, like, traditionally, businesses and brands that are owned by women. So it’s it’s by women, for women, serving women in in the marketplace. And I think the cool thing is, though, like, when we when we ring the bell on the Nasdaq, Crystal, you can be there ringing the bell because you’re part of our team. I won’t.

Me and Ross are in the Irish pub down the street. We’ll be rather crawling. Staying out staying out the way. Yeah.

But funny story, when when Ross and I were trolling New York, back in March, do you remember that day when we we we took the helicopter from JFK to Manhattan? And then I I was walking Ross around Wall Street where I used to work. Right? When I was an investment banker back in the nineties, and I was working on Wall Street. There’s an Irish pub literally across the road from, the Bank of America Tower used to work. And I used to go in there like most nights. And, we went in there for a Guinness. Right? So we’re drinking Guinness in this in this pub, and I I showed him the chair where most nights I would fall asleep. I feel so tired, and they would wake up in the morning, and I’d go back to the office.

So you and I will be in there when Crystal’s ringing the bell. Ringing the bell. And the rest of the women are ringing the bell, Chris. We’ll stay out anyway. Yeah. So, like, I I love this whole Venture Miami thing. Like, I love, like, the going public TV show that we get to kinda go on. It’s gonna be crazy. It’s gonna be absolutely And it’s yeah. Exactly. To your point on the I wanted to just bring this up too is, like, you’ve made a point point earlier that actually no one really recognizes as well as you did, that by going and doing equity crowdfunding and getting people to understand your product more,

they actually it has on the going public series, most of the issuers have not only seen capital raised, but they’ve seen their revenue go up because people buy more of their products. So people that may not want to invest will go purchase their product. Yeah. So whether you’re raising capital or raising your revenues, at the end of the day, you got money in the bank. Right? So, like, it there’s a two there’s two ways you can win by doing this that I think is really strategic, and that’s one of the coolest things. For me, the going public series is the coolest thing that’s ever happened in finance because you actually can watch It’s gonna be crazy. It’s gonna be very influential.

Like, when when we do that and we have some brands, like, some really, really strong brands under our umbrella, it’s only gonna be it’s only gonna help the brands. You know? It’s gonna I know. Expose us to a wider audience, and it’s only gonna help drive revenues and and awareness of everything. What what’s crazy about this, right, so, you know, being a math guy that I am, right, he he calls me Russell from the beautiful mind. Right?

Us ability to do, like, mental math on a whiteboard. Right? But I’m thinking about think about the math of this. Like, the the the way you win in ecom or the or the way you win in in most businesses generally is is the concept of, like, lifetime customer value. Right?

So so, obviously, if you look at an ecommerce business, and we’ve looked at thousands of them. Right? You you look at the income statement, and it’s crazy. When you go to the income statement, the cost of goods sold for the product, whether it’s a haircare product, a skincare product, eyes, teeth, nails, doesn’t matter, the cost of the inventory that the subject to the customer is always less than the marketing cost to acquire those customers. Right? And a lot of ecommerce brands, when they win a customer for the very first time, they might even go in the hole. They might even lose money.

They might even lose money because they’re betting on that customer being a repeat customer and driving that lifetime customer value. So think about lifetime customer value for a customer that’s now a fractional shareholder. Right? Like, let’s say they’re investing in a haircare product.

So one of the businesses we’re buying soon is a volumizing haircare brand. So if you’re a female and you’re buying that product because that’s what you need, are you going to buy the product of the company you’ve just invested in, or are you going to buy somebody else in the market? Because it’s a market with lots of different companies. You’re going to buy your own company’s brand. Right?

So not only do you make an investment as a shareholder, you’re probably ten x’ing that customer’s lifetime value. And that drives multiples when you sell. It obviously drives cash flow. The margin on a repeat order is way higher than, you know, you might not make any margin when you first get that customer into the business because you’re having to invest in that customer’s acquisition.

And I think this model can transcend a lot of industries. Right? To your point about, you can raise revenue and raise capital at the same time because that investor’s going to buy the product or the service, and then they’re psychologically going to want to keep trading, a) because they want to support the company, but b) as long as you’re investing in a business that’s got that repeatable custom.

I never like to do deals where it’s a one and out type of model. I always find businesses where the product is a consumable. And when you lock them in, it’s like one of my favorite businesses in the world is Lifeway. Right? So we use the Lifeway patches. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it, Crystal. We’ll send you some stuff. Right?

So the stem cell regeneration patches. I’m obsessed with stem cell products right now. This is crazy. It’s like, what, couple hundred bucks a month for a month’s supply. And they send you, you put one patch on your stomach, like, just below your navel, belly button. Right? And then one between your shoulders. That’s called the X39. The X49 goes on the back of your neck, and you stick them on. You put them on for a day. And then if you want, they have these energy-enhancing patches, where you put left and right. The white one’s base goes left.

You put these on, and literally within thirty minutes, it’s crazy. Right? It’s absolutely crazy. I think that’s the world of biohacking. Right? Like, that’s biohacking. That’s longevity. Well, like, that investment theme and that sector because one of our themes is wellness, as I’ve been talking to Ross about this, but, like, longevity as an umbrella of both investment.

Because Melinda Gates just partnered with Techstars to finance the next innovation in the longevity sector. Thirty-two billion from Saudi Arabia to invest into the longevity industry this year. Thirty-two billion? Hopefully, no. To deploy. No. It’s we’re about to see if there’s Chopra Axe. It’s another group that, friends of my, a founder of where Deepak Chopra’s got an incubator and fund for going into longevity because I have a theory that it’s actually going to become the next ESG because we’re not going to retire at sixty-five.

We can’t, we’re not, so we can’t afford to in the system. So it’s going to become mandated to have longevity healthcare implemented in the corporate. And you’re talking that’s stem cells. That’s biohacking. And that’s wearables, that’s at home, and that’s subscription-based, and it’s immediate impact. I just had a stem cell facial this weekend.

Is it good? Oh, insane. And then I went in the hyperbaric chamber. So my boyfriend and I, we went to this place where he was doing the biohacking, and I went and did this, like, stem cell. Instead of PRP, which has been a big trendy thing with your plasma, well, over thirty, your plasma probably isn’t going to do much on your face.

But I’m a lot of good things about the hyperbaric oxygen chamber. Well, I went in. I did a level three, which normally I’d be out for two weeks if I did a level three on my face. I’m three days later on a podcast. You guys would never know that I just like, I was twelve-three, all over my face for, the microneedling, but they put on stem cells before, and I put on stem cells after.

And I did the hyperbaric chamber for an hour after my treatment. I came out of the hyperbaric chamber, fifty percent inflammation down, fifty percent recovered. I would say you do look glowing today on the podcast.

That’s that. I biohacked my face. I didn’t inject any toxins. I didn’t put anything in my body. I simply hacked my own system, right, with the collagen production, putting stem cells on, and then I went and sat in an oxygen chamber. That’s amazing.

So something I did last week funny story I’ll tell you before we wrap. So, so last week, I was speaking at Wealthcom in Vegas at Ryan Pineda’s event. And, Chris, Chris and Jared and few of the other people were there. And, one of the things we did on one of the afternoons is we went into one of these sensory deprivation chambers.

When you go in, it’s like they put all this salt in the water so you float. It’s like being in the Dead Sea. And then you close the lid, you put the earplugs in, and you can literally float. And there’s, like, no sound, no light. It’s pitch black. And, you know, you basically I ended up falling asleep. And one of the really weird things about me is, like, I always sleep on the side.

I’m, like, forty minutes into the hour, and all of a sudden, like, I was having this dream that I was drowning. And I moved over to the side, started swallowing all this freaking water. And then I’m, like, coughing and spluttering, and I’m barfing in this chamber. So I literally had to get out, and I get out, and I shower, and I go into the waiting room.

And Jared’s there looking totally green. Same thing had happened to him. But he lasted about four minutes. Four minutes again. He’s, like, swallowing all this disgusting slug salt water. But it was pretty painful. Since then, my sleep, like, you know, we all wear the Oura rings. Right? I’d only average about four hours of sleep a night. I just do. My brain’s so active. I can’t sleep.

But ever since that event, and I did that chamber, I’m, like, seven, eight, nine hours a night. So I’m waking up. I’m feeling, like, so restored in my sleep, and I’m wearing my patches. And it’s really got me thinking into, like, this whole biohacking thing. Like, you know, we’re going to go out this afternoon and drink a few beers and do that stuff.

But now, you know, I take supplements now and all this kind of crazy stuff. Like, well, I’m fifty-three now, so I’m a lot older than you guys. And I, like, I wanna be doing this slightly in my sixties and seventies like, you know too. Yeah. Start now.

You could you’re basically the real the unfortunate fact is that your body starts to actually age and deteriorate rapidly at the age of thirty. So you don’t wanna wait till you’re older. You wanna start now, and that’s how longevity works. And I will tell you a principle of longevity. I’ll send you should watch, the blue zone, live to a hundred on Netflix.

Watch that series. Because part of longevity is not just all the medical stuff and the biohacking. It’s actually community dancing and drinking, wine every day. How about that? The longest in the world, they all get together. They have community meals every day. They drink wine together every day, and they dance instead of exercising every day.

Julia and Jess. They don’t go to the gym. If Drake is fine every day, Julia and Jess will be two hundred years old. Exactly. I was like, converted converted. Take me with you.

That’s awesome. Well, hey, Crystal. We’re conscious of your time. I know we’ve been chatting for nearly an hour now. Really appreciate you, you coming on, and I think it’s been a really interesting conversation. It’s really got my greater juices flowing. So we’d love to connect further on this stuff.

But, where can people find you? People wanna reach out to you and connect. Where where can people find you? You can find me on my website, crystalcarson.ca, because I am Canadian. Canadian. As a dot ca, not dot com. And then, follow me on Instagram, Crystal Carson Report. I’m on LinkedIn, and spelled like Johnny Carson, c a r s o n.

Right. Thank you very much indeed. I love this stuff. Love this three-way ref. Appreciate your time. We’ll catch up separately about, eComfolio and Venture Miami and all this amazing stuff. And I’d love to have you come and talk to my proteges about some of this stuff. They would absolutely love it.

So, appreciate you. Have a great rest of your day, and we’ll see you soon. Alright, guys. That’s a wrap for the Dealmaker Creative podcast.