Full Transcript – Pat Yates – Wild Business Growth Podcast #246

This is the full transcript for Episode #246 of the Wild Business Growth Podcast featuring Pat Yates – HappyFeet Slippers and Quiet Light. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Pat Yates 0:00
Go out and find people that are in the same situation as you are. Keep working hard and things will work out for you.

Max Branstetter 0:20
It’s that time to roll your eyes again. Welcome back to the Wild Business Growth Podcast. This is your place to hear from a new entrepreneur every single Wednesday morning, who’s turning Wild ideas into Wild growth. I’m your host, Max Branstetter, Founder and Podcast Producer at MaxPodcasting. And you can email me at to save time with your high-quality podcast. This is episode two plus four equals six. Don’t you just love it when the math works out like that it happens like once every now and then. And today’s guest is Pat Yates. Pat is the President of HappyFeet Slippers, creating some of the cutest slippers you will ever see and a crazy amount of really cool licensing deals, and is also an Advisor at Quiet Light, an M&A brokerage. In this episode, we talk Pat’s insights from growing an eCommerce business, growing and selling multiple businesses, their game-changing deal with the one and only Snooki, and the thing Pat used to do and sometimes still does every Friday. It is Pat. Enjoooooooy the shooooooow!

Aaaaaaalrightyyyyyyy we’re here with Pat Yates, the dude behind HappyFeet Slippers as well as a big part of Quiet Light, and some really cool businesses in pretty different spaces. But also there’s some overlap there as well. Pat, super excited to chat with you how you doing today.

Pat Yates 1:56
That’s great. I’m great. How are you today?

Max Branstetter 1:59
I’m great. Better now that I’m talking to you. We I know you, you live in Louisville, and I got family in that area. So we could talk the entire time about that and the proper way to pronounce the city name. And maybe we’ll get to that a little bit later. But before that, of course want to talk about your entrepreneurship journey. Was there anything growing up that first sparked your interest in maybe starting a business one day?

Pat Yates 2:24
That’s a great question. You know, I’ve never really had anybody asked me about youth and how to contribute it. I mean, I think from a young age, I had interest in being involved in businesses owning companies. I was fairly an independent thinker. I think sometimes when, you know, people grow up and they’re sort of self sufficient. And they like to go out and sort of forge their way of I was always one of those guys was first out the door and last to come in when I was a kid hanging out with friends and stuff. So I think that I always had sort of initiative to go out and be a self starter and go getter. And when I went to college, I studied some entrepreneurship classes, which sort of gave me the bug to own a business. And then when I had an opportunity right out of college, I started a company, right when I was two or three months out of college, so I had the opportunity right away to get bitten by the entrepreneurship bug. I didn’t really stay in the corporate world for any period of time. So I think that just grew it. But as far as stuff when I was young, it’s just a probably been around business and understanding it shadowing and understand what my dad was doing when he when I was growing up, things like that. All that.

Max Branstetter 3:18
Yeah, it’s fun thinking back to like, you could tell just based on some traits that like early traits of independence or just curiosity, a lot of future entrepreneurs have that are in your case present entrepreneurs. But when you look back, you know, shadowing different businesses being an interest in business from early age, what was it about I guess, kind of going against the grain and going into the entrepreneurship world that you think attracted you from the first point

Pat Yates 3:48
I think it’s definitely the independent nature the ability to put a stamp on something you know, earning something when you grow it. I mean, I think that with me my first company was really kind of an interesting one to own it was service based, which I think is huge for anyone that’s working you know, people that are starting product based businesses now like I go out and speak quite a bit with like the United inventors Association some other people and you know, people are always taking their product they’re trying to find the next version of it improve and improve and improve and and people spent three or four years improving a product never take it to market I think there’s just different personalities out there. There are people that want to you know, develop items or people that want to develop businesses and grow them. For me, I kind of always said that bug to work on my own and control my own income as well as my day which you know, sometimes is a little bit of a negative because there I’m sure there are people out there that would say you know, working on your own as a solopreneur sometimes it’s not the easiest thing in the world when you outsource. 80% of what you do our business is a lot different than happy flippers you know that it was many many years ago, we just have a 30,000 square foot warehouse we consolidated put everything on a three PL we really don’t do any retail anymore. We’ve sort of changed the business. So it’s one of those things that I’ve had to adapt in many different capacities throughout. So for me, it now it’s just sort of putting me in a position where I’m trying to find the right kind of businesses that sort of fit with my lifestyle. as well as you know where I want the future to go for me.

Max Branstetter 5:02
I’ve always said that being an entrepreneur is the easiest thing in the world. I mean, it’s it’s no sweat, you just snap your fingers. It all happens instantly.

Pat Yates 5:10
What was it Barbara said it’s entrepreneurs, the only people that will leave a 40 hour a week work job to go work 80 hours a week, that’s pretty much how it is, it’s pretty much true as

Max Branstetter 5:17
well. It makes total sense. And I’m somebody who, who, before starting my podcast production business, I’ve interviewed entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs like yourself, and always been interested in this space and grew up with it. But I think you don’t really, you don’t really know and fully appreciate the time commitment and energy and potential for burnout with it, until you actually start doing it yourself and get smacked in the face as people say,

Pat Yates 5:40
it’s a much bigger thing that people think, you know, like I had, I had a zoom today with a new seller that was talking about, and they asked her why she wanted to sell her business. She had all these different reasons why but one of the main reasons, she said even when I was sitting and reading a book to my daughter, I’m thinking about business. And that’s taking time she said whether that seems like it’s work or not. It’s a distraction. It’s something that I really at this point in my life don’t want to mess with. So some people have a different tolerance for the amount of time it takes. And you never really sort of shut it off. You’re working 365 days a year in some capacity, which some people are billed for. And sometimes I’m not. So I understand that completely. Trust me.

Max Branstetter 6:15
There’s definitely a balance there. And you mentioned your first service based business. What was that service? What do you focus on for that first bit? Yeah, it

Pat Yates 6:21
was it was an office and restaurant coffee service, actually, which is a business that probably barely exists anymore, because you have Keurig. So it used to be like, if you remember, when you wouldn’t remember this, but your parents might remember this, they go into an office and in the break room, they have a coffee machine, they provide the coffee and you just make it they’d have two or three pots sitting around and the business provided as well as the vending machine. So my first business was, I bought a franchise in Columbus, Ohio, which was 1/4 of the city basically. And it was through John Conti Coffee Company, a regional Coffee Company here and another friend of mine, Tony Conti. And I bought a territory there. And I went up and ran it for two or three years and then sold it back to the company after after building it up for two or three years. But I had to walk in offices and sell accounts. So I had to go talk to the owner, or the person that was in charge of that decision, I had to demo my product, I had to give a pricing and I had to go in and work the account every week. So cleaning the pots and filling it driving my own old white truck at white van at the time making deliveries and filling coffee machines, but and vending machines, but I had to work really hard. And it was it was a lot of work for not a lot of money at times. But I sort of got the bug of being able to do something like that. And it was a great business because I got to touch every facet of it. And that sort of taught me the you know the ins and outs of what’s good and bad about a business. I mean, just right in the office where sales just ramped and I sat in an office, I got out there and had to create it. So it was tangible. And that was much different to start a businessman.

Max Branstetter 7:43
That’s a great image you in this sketchy white van it looks like you’re at you know security van or something.

Pat Yates 7:48
Not if it’s around schools, you don’t want to take that van around schools have barely any logos on it’s just a big white van. Like I’m snatching kids or something. But it was I mean, it was a great business. I mean, honestly, it was as simple as some of the stuff was as simple as going to Costco and filling my truck with soft drinks. So I had to go fill a vending machine so but it was just a lot of work. And it was it was kind of thankless work. You know, you just walk through the office and you take care of it. But it was great. I sold it back to him three years later for pretty good amount of money.

Max Branstetter 8:15
Let’s get to some of your more recent businesses though. HappyFeet Slippers. I know you started more than two or three years ago. HappyFeet Slippers and Quiet Light. Let’s start with HappyFeet Slippers. So awesome story. Anybody who’s not familiar, some of the coolest and most comfortable just awesome slippers around and so many cool licensing and partnership aspects of it. But how did you stumble into this slipper space in the first place?

Pat Yates 8:41
I mean, it’s really kind of weird how we got started this business. You know, I mentioned to you how I had a coffee company, Columbus, Ohio. When I sold it I had a 200 mile noncompete and my mom lived in Nashville and actually I’d lived in Nashville for a long time. So I moved there. We had just had our first son in 92. My wife and I who Sandy still married, and we moved to Nashville, Tennessee and which is outside the 200 mile noncompete and I started a brand new coffee company from scratch. I knew how to do it. I knew how to source I didn’t need to pay a royalty for it. I took the whole city of Nashville versus 1/4 of Columbus built that up and sold it to standard Coffee Company. So I started another one and sold that one as well in Nashville. But during that time, a couple of friends of mine who I knew from when I was younger. We started doing kiosk businesses in the mall, just temporary stuff at Holiday and the first one we did was a golf driven one it was like golf gifts. And like the worst mall in Nashville. Well I’ll say that it’s still there though RiverGate Mall in Nashville, Tennessee. It’s in Hendersonville action just north and we started there and then we moved to CoolSprings Galleria with another concept of golf and they were moderately successful. I enjoy doing it I still have my coffee company we only do it for like November December to make extra money on holiday. And then my father and his wife Sharon were retiring and they decided to go the Atlanta gift card try to find something they could do and chaos in Louisville where they live And just so happens they ran across the slippers with a guy who had originally you know, trademarked the designs and they contracted with them just to do the kiosk business. And that was in 1995 that we bought 4000 pair and basically stocked one kiosk in Louisville, Kentucky, not knowing how it would work. And then basically a long time later, we’ve we’ve been around for quite a while it didn’t really start I bought the company from everyone in 2001. And that’s when I started by afifi.com, which is our domain name started from zero. It was literally $0 startup. I bought it off GoDaddy and started it fresh. So we had $0 in sales. Now it’s a multimillion dollar site is still owned. The story around Happy Feet is a long one because we’ve we’ve done kiosks than we had Snooki which was licensed we sort of backed into and then we were on Shark Tank and then we’ve done DreamWorks, we’ve done NFL we’ve done Disney, we’ve done just about anything you can imagine. It’s all been exciting. There’s been real highs and real lows, like any other entrepreneur, it’s not been as you know, my dad and my grandpa would say that hadn’t been shits and giggles the whole time. It’s just been a lot of business a lot of work and you know some strife at times. But you know, that’s that’s what businesses are made up of. That’s That’s why you when you build a brand no one is immune from going through those things.

Max Branstetter 11:11
All for shits and giggles. That’s life in a nutshell, right? Yeah. I love the variety of products. So you are with a coffee service based business? Well, really, it’s the product is coffee as well. So from coffee to slippers, what is it that jumped out to you and family about slippers as a potential exciting business idea.

Pat Yates 11:32
Honestly, it was just happen to walk by booth and think they look kind of eye catching. And when you when you when you touch them, you had to you had to feel them to know the difference. So the key to kiosk businesses back then was being able to have a touch and feel where you could demo the item and people get excited about buying properties. You really can’t do that on the internet. So we sort of eliminated that from our abilities when we did the.com. But it’s always been fun. And what we’ve tried to do is put a personal stamp on it. It’s not the largest business in the world. It’s a smaller lifestyle business, and I enjoy it. But we’ve had so many fun things that we’ve been able to do so much media, it’s just incredible. You know, going on Jimmy Fallon, we’ve been on Letterman, we were on Shark Tank. We’re on Jersey Shore clearly, pretty much every late night show every morning show, you can imagine we’ve been on all of them. So it’s been a fun ride. It’s one of those products that you don’t have to get up in the morning and say Damn, I gotta sell another anvil. You know, it’s no fun. It’s slippers are fun, we get a lot of great feedback. Matter of fact, I was sitting as much as bad as this is to admit I was sitting getting a pedicure with my wife this weekend. And a little girl was making some TikToks. And she’s a huge Disney fan. So we get struck up a conversation about our stitch slippers. She’s a huge stitch fan. She just went crazy. And we sent her a pair. So those are the kinds of things that I really enjoy in this business. That’s one of the reasons I like having it and, and ironically, haven’t sold it as an m&a advisor. So

Max Branstetter 12:53
that’s so great in selling anvil is that I think the only people that can do that is ACME Corporation from Looney Tunes. They were big on the anvil, but also no shame in the pedi

Pat Yates 13:04
all for it. That’s right.

Max Branstetter 13:06
So so many cool partnerships, amazing collaborations. How did the Snooki duo – Snooki and HappyFeet Slippers – how did that come up in the first place?

Pat Yates 13:17
My oldest son who was in middle school, high school, I don’t remember which was probably high school, early high school, came in my room one night and he just legit said Dad, Snooki’s wearing your slippers on Jersey Shore. And I’ve said this before I said only have two questions. Who the hell Snooki and what’s Jersey Shore? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Because I had never seen the show. I had no idea what it was. That’s no joke. And so I’ll walk in and he rewinds it and we look and there she was wiping something up with the pink slippers on it. She was just a fan of the product she bought it took it the house was playing on wearing it around, it would have been so hard to think about getting product placement that show in the very beginning of it. It just wouldn’t even you wouldn’t believe it. But she wore it. And somehow I was able to mine out who her agent was. And I was talking with the guy the very next day. And I drove to Chicago and negotiated a license deal for her to design her online. Because at the time she had a million Twitter followers, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but that was a lot in 2008, 2009. And she was really had a ton of following. And when we did this license, we built a leopard slipper a couple of other designs and we launched them on the site, she crashed it immediately the moment she tweeted it, it just had so much traffic. And then from that point, we’ve worked with her passively and really for the last eight or 10 years and her leopard still remains. It’s one of our top selling items we’ve ever made probably the top. So it was just kind of by accident. But it was like, even when I did it. It’s like one of the things I tell entrepreneurs all the time is to try to trust your gut, you know, really trust what you think because a lot of times you’re gonna frame decisions into, you know, personnel and other people and things you have that are constraints. You always have to trust your judgment because if I listen to every single person other than me, I would have never done it. Because every person I’ve talked to said You’re out of your mind. There’s no way you pay this woman money to be in front of your product. And I said no. I said first of all, she’s a great lady. Add, she’s much different than you would think. And I said, I liked that idea that publicity, I think we’ll get a bump. And we did. And I stuck with it, I stuck to my guns on it.

Max Branstetter 15:10
At the time of this recording I heard recently an interview sneaky was on, pardon my take. And she is one of the most likable people like one of the most enjoyable people to hear from. And so it just sounds like a blast to partner with. And it really helped it take off your business. Like if you look at your website right now, there are so many different styles of slippers and so many fun. Like I guess I’ll just use the term again colabs. There, how did with Happy Feet Slippers, you start to diversify and come up with so many different designs that kind of accelerate that.

Pat Yates 15:46
I mean, some of the, like the colleges in NFL we’ve been doing for over a decade. You know, we had some issues with Amazon for NFL, there’s a lot of restrictions go on to some of those things. We’d worked for some of the team stuff for a long time. NBA NFL Major League Baseball, and college is sort of passively for a long period of time. But when I went on Shark Tank, we did DreamWorks right out of that. So we did polo and Shrek and some of those others that you see on the site right now. And we did those and it was moderately successful. I mean, DreamWorks was, you know, seems like it’s got some big names, it didn’t hit as high as I really want it to. And you sort of learned a lot about licensing, we first got into it, because it takes your skews, and it makes it much wider. It’s great to be able to use someone’s brand, but it’s not super inexpensive. And then you only have it typically for two years to be able to show that you can make the thing happen. And that became kind of a negative when we did Disney based on the length of contract. But I think that, you know, we try to look at what some relevant things are there going around the world, we tried to sort of develop other things like a couple years ago, I develop one that’s a print on demand. So we didn’t have to rely just on manufacturing overseas to make something custom. And that sort of morphed into what is now a coloring type of item that we can do as a craft type of item for slippers. It’s kind of cool. We started doing crafts, where we do all over prints and wrap the slipper in it so it can look a lot more consistent throughout. And we’re doing some work with some NFL designs and other standard print designs. So our product has sort of morphed and designed itself over the years. And I think that there’s no rhyme or reason as to what license we did. It’s just when we had the opportunity to partner with a plush toy manufacturer make the slipper line for Disney, we definitely took advantage of that. Like if you go to that one, it’s it’s one of the best listings you’ll find on Amazon for slippers 2500 or so five star reviews, basically, like 40 or 50 different characters, extremely complex and expensive to build, it took about a year to even make the line. Unfortunately, Disney doesn’t have a lot of vision. And I say that with all passion, I hope they watch this. And I tell them they have no vision, because they decided any direct to consumer license they didn’t want to spend a lot of time on what they really want to do is have someone that comes in, sells a million dollars to Walmart and then paste in their fees. That’s kind of what they want, they don’t want to see a lot of build. So after two years, we doubled every year, but it still wasn’t big enough for what they wanted. So they decided not to renew the license. So now we’re partnered with another licensor for slippers because they had four or five anyway. So now we’re in even better position working with them develop them to great things for them, while we’re looking at doing some other licenses in the future. But right now, it’s probably not the best time to introduce things when you’re dealing with an economy that is, is not supporting, you know, a lot of discretionary items anyway. So it’s, it’s one of those things, we slow down a little bit. So to give you an idea of how we decide on which products we want to make and which ones we want to develop, it’s no real rhyme or reason to it, we just look at market, you know things at that time and see if there’s something that would make some sense for us to add value in areas, we did a mess around in COVID, a little bit with people with corporate logos to where we can make 80 to 100 of just a corporate logo. So people working at home, they had a touch point with their company, we had a few people do that. Sort of a nice little take off with that. But our product is it’s kind of simple. I mean slippers or slippers. It’s not that great. But we’re very definitely known for tennis shoe style and character styles. Not as much the open back that you would see in Walmart and everywhere else all the time. That’s not really our market,

Max Branstetter 18:59
slippers or slippers. I think that’s Words To Live By there. And you’re the eCommerce success with HappyFeet Slippers i think segues naturally into something that you’re spending a bit more your time on each each year, the past few years. And that’s quiet light. So we’d love to get to the Quiet Light story. So how did you hear about this business called Quiet Light in the first place?

Pat Yates 19:22
It was oddly because I was considering selling my company. So when I started looking around, you know, there was a lot of stuff out there and I just happen to have a conversation with Mark downs to if people don’t know Mark, I mean, he’s just such an amazing guy, the founder of quiet light he and Joe Valley have built you know two owners acquire LIDAR just, you know, amazing guys. We’re really fortunate. There’s 15 advisors there that are some of the smartest people I’ve ever seen. I mean, the only way people what people don’t understand we kind of define what quiet light is quite light. It’s basically an m&a brokerage that sells nothing but online businesses. Now we will get into wholesale a little bit if it’s mingled in but it’s mainly content. It’s either content SaaS or eComm/Amazon software. So all those companies in 2015, Mark and I talked and we had a great conversation about my business, but we had a bigger conversation about business in general and life and family and just sort of struck up a great relationship and 15 I think it was 2020, they came back to me, you know, I was super busy. And they said, Look, you know, m&a is exploding. We always talked about if you wanted to get involved, and it just kind of happened to be the right time at that time, because we had talked in 2017, or 18. And I didn’t join quiet like we had made a run at doing it, I went met with Brad Whalen, who’s one of our leaders are quite light. And it didn’t work out that time, which was better, because they came back in 2020. And I was in a much better position to think about doing it. So I went in and started selling companies with quite light, which, you know, the only way that you can do it, the 15 people have to, you know, exited multiple businesses or started I’ve started multiple businesses sold multiple businesses, we’ve all been through the process. And we’re currently entrepreneurs. So every one there is an entrepreneur. And I think that’s why we think different, you know, our hourly metric we really worry about a Quiet Light is the quality of the number of conversations that we have, we want to prepare people to be able to exit their businesses, there’s no ego, like, you have to list it with us, we want to take a look at your numbers, take a look at your structure and try to give actionable tips to get you in a position to be able to exit at maximum value. So when they came back to me, I thought it was a good opportunity. So I decided to go after it. And it’s interesting, because it changed my entire view. Because the thing I’m most passionate about now, because I get to make way more impact with entrepreneurs, you know, I’m having, you know, 2030 conversations a month with people that are looking to go out and sell their companies. And if I’m not selling it for them, that I’m helping them in some way. And that’s just the kind of thing that I’ve really enjoyed my life at this stage of my life doing, you know, the Econ thing I still own on passive in it, but it’s still, you know, a very close thing to my heart. But definitely M&A has been the best thing.

Max Branstetter 21:48
How would you characterize the shift from, you know, full time hands on entrepreneur to the advising side?

Pat Yates 21:55
Yeah, that’s a good question. It’s, it’s definitely been a struggle at times to manage the time, you know, because especially, you know, when I stepped out of my company, I was drawing downtime. So it was I was drawing downtime, I was drawing up time with Quiet Light. So it’s definitely was really an insane time when I was trying to onboard go into quiet light. But it’s been amazing. I think that my results were at the top of about anyone that is there. I mean, I know that in the last couple of years, if I’m not the top, I’m one of the have sold as many businesses about anyone there. And I don’t say that to impress anyone, it’s just that I really dig in and I try to help the entrepreneurs, we’ve had some great success people that I still talk to all the time. And you know, the great thing about quiet light is you get to win on both sides, you get to get an entrepreneur life changing money that they worked hard for. And then you get someone else who’s buying a company who has a brand new idea and an entire goal that’s different than what that entrepreneur was. It’s truly an amazing opportunity. I’ve had toasts on FaceTime, when people closed, I had one guy that that had a disease that kept him bedridden, no one would even take his listing because of the way he wasn’t his business. And I’ve sold it and you know, the guy basically cried on the on the zoom with me, you know, it’s those kinds of things that really what I enjoy doing with it. So it’s more a passion project than anything, and you’re lucky enough to be able to make good money at it. And that’s a great thing too.

Max Branstetter 23:13
You can feel the passion and fulfillment with it. I mean, just sounds like a rewarding space to be in. And it’s a shame you just don’t know business. Well, I mean, you have no experience, you’re not just getting

Pat Yates 23:25
funny how all these steps have added up to one thing that I’m even trying to leverage as well as I am now like I’m going on the road with Chris Guerrera from the United Inventors Association. If people are trying to take a product to market or you’re trying to invent something, look up the UIA United Inventors Association. This guy’s amazing. And he’s been on Shark Tank twice. It’s good friend of mine. I was in Chicago, I was in Orlando, and I was in Vegas with them speaking. And they’re doing pitch panels like Shark Tank, to try to help people with their products and help them develop it and grow it before they decide. So I do speeches there on how to position all of this I do all my own, because it’s more about them than it is about me. And building a brand isn’t easy, and people need help doing it. So that’s, that’s really what my passion is now is trying to add value for many directions.

Max Branstetter 24:07
And shout out Chris and his buddy, probably your good buddy as well, Carmine, we had both of them on the show before you go there awesome. In that nature of growing and selling businesses, I know that your advice when you’re, you know, advising in your role can be really custom to the business and there’s so much variety there. But I’m curious if there’s some common themes are common bits of advice that you find yourself giving off. And so like, I want to start with growing your business and your mind no matter what industry you’re in, no matter what type of business you’re in. What is one of your favorite ways to grow a business?

Pat Yates 24:43
Look, I think you have to look at the vertical a lot of times like I was just talking what was the CBD business is limited scope that you can do now you can’t get it on Amazon you got to advertise directly. It’s an interesting market regulation on you know, the top end of that it’s gonna be something to watch. So, with that business, the idea is keep doing what you’re Doing keep advertising try to do on page SEO do things that are inexpensive to build traffic, because their scope is limited. I talked with another business that is just starting their Amazon presence. So they have a great econ presence, their best opportunity right now is to go to Amazon, expand their offering, and be able to go out there advertise, get into FBA, and watch how that sales is gonna grow. That’s in the infancy of growing Amazon. But then there are other brands that I have that are doing 500,000 million dollars in Ste that it’s a little more complicated. Sometimes those ways to grow, that business could be three or four different things, it could be improving our Amazon scope, it could be maybe buying a content site that pushes traffic that’s going to raise your SDE, it’s another asset you own, and it’s pushing traffic. Um, there can be many different ways. Truthfully, just like anything else, I think the main way to be able to grow is to look at your advertising and make sure that you’re that you’re doing really good advertising that’s paying off from a ROI standpoint, you know that it’s adding value to your bottom line that is growing your Ste what I try to do when I look at financials and say, let’s cut these things that you know that you don’t need to be spending, put that into your marketing budget, when it grows, that’s going to work radically grow the bottom of your business. So I think it’s tailored to the company. If it’s a SaaS company or a content company, it’s much more complicated. But I think that you look at what your 8020 as you figure out how to get around other people that can give you ideas of the best way to market it, go to masterminds go to shows, listen to speeches, all these things are gonna be great ideas, listen to a lot of podcasts, and then find ways to be able to help grow. It just so tailored it to the individual. And it’s hard to say one thing

Max Branstetter 26:29
it is but there’s some awesome bits of advice there. And I think going back to the actual data, going back to your actual finances and seeing where you can cut but not just like a cut, like oh, we got to hold on for dear life, cut from certain areas and apply it back to marketing, to fuel life back into the business. And to get the word out there. I think that’s something a lot of people struggle with, but also can be very valuable for your business. So I think that’s spot on

Pat Yates 26:53
us a question about what are some of the things that I would look for the first and foremost is always accrual accounting, that’s the one that people mess up the most. If they’re not doing the accrual accounting, where your cost of goods is on the products you shipped that month, not what you purchased from your vendors, then you need to make a change in your books, and you need to do it immediately. Because it’s the biggest valuation add, you’re going to find if you have the correct bottom line, cost of goods sold for your products. That’s something you definitely want to make sure you do. Shout out

Max Branstetter 27:23
to cruel and it’s ingrained in my head from accounting classes and in college, all those all those accounting definitions? How about for somebody who really, really wants to sell their business? What’s, what’s a good way to position your business to potentially be sold one day? Yeah, that’s

Pat Yates 27:40
a great question. And here’s the thing. I mean, I think that the biggest thing I can tell people stay ahead of the curve, get in and talk with an advisor, look at where you’re at get a baseline, I think the interesting thing about entrepreneurs is they all think there’s smartest people in the room. That’s one thing that sucks about an entrepreneur,

Max Branstetter 27:53
I don’t know, I’m just,

Pat Yates 27:55
I mean, on this podcast, I’m clear this smarter guy you’re sitting.

Max Branstetter 27:59
I’m clearly the most humble. Now,

Pat Yates 28:03
the most important thing is to try to do the research ahead of time to go in and say, I don’t know what I don’t know. So please teach me what I need to do to be able to fix my business, right? So what we do is we try to look at it because what people don’t understand is like, if you have one expense, let’s say there’s one expense, it’s costing like seven or $8,000, more than it shouldn’t a year, let’s say that’s the case, and you’re going out of 3x Multiple, I just told you that I can find you 21 to $24,000 in your on your business, if it’s 7000 bucks on a 3x multiples $21,000 You would be shocked how much money leaks out in a business that adds up really, really big. So I think that first of all is to have an advisor, look at your financials, look at the Add backs. If you’re paying yourself a salary, that’s going to be an add back. If you have interest expense, it’s an add back telephone, things like that internet interest expense, things like that all of them add up to add backs. And then you’re going to find out that your profit is much different than your thinking. So when you apply multiple to that you may be in a better position towards an exit than you think. But if you say to me, Pat, I want to exit at 5 million, we do your math, and you’re at 2.2. Okay, great. That means you got a ways to go. So let’s talk about what actionable tips are, and how you can keep going and how you’re gonna get in a position to do it. We all want always want people on a little bit of a growth, you never want to be stagnant or dropping, because that’s going to hurt your multiple, and you’ll get beat up by buyers. So I think it’s a lot of times it’s important to watch your run rate. And if you’re getting to the point where you’re growing 2530 35 40% a month, it might be time to start thinking about it. But the true time to think about selling your business is when you you actually decide that you get up in the morning and say I just don’t want to do this anymore. And then it’s all going to fit together and we try to make the process very seamless and easy. We can use to get people to market in, you know, two and a half, three and a half weeks somewhere in there. Very simple client interview very simple financial work, we just really work with them to make the business the hero and then we go out and list it publicly and hopefully have good success with

Max Branstetter 29:54
it. More shrewd advice from the smartest person in this podcast episode. About that It’s true. And if you want to hear from the second smartest person in this podcast episode, which I do all the time, you can sign up for the Podcasting to the Max newsletter, it has entrepreneurship tips, podcasting tips, and terrible, no good, awful dad jokes from yours truly, it comes out every Thursday, short and sweet email, and all you gotta do is sign up at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter. Now, let’s get back to the smartest person in the podcast episode, Pat. So let’s switch gears a little bit, let’s get to more you on the personal side and how you, you know try to keep things in balance. And we talked in a way early on in this interview about entrepreneurship. And when you start a business, how much it starts to take over your life. And you know, even many years after running, it could still take over your life. So there’s, there’s a balance there, a lot of people are striving for. You got quiet light, you’ve got HappyFeet Slippers. I’m sure you do other mentoring in addition to that, how do you find any sort of time to unplug and unwind or just chilled to keep your mind? Right?

Pat Yates 31:14
That’s a great question. I mean, it’s it’s not easy. And I think that the more that, you know, some people say, Well, you get the opportunity to work at home and do whatever you want to do sometimes, and I’m like, well, that’s still not good. I mean, it’s like, you know, you’re still going to be working a lot. It’s it’s been a real challenge. Because you know, we have to, we have to really work in the, in the eyes of the entrepreneur very effectively, I try to respond to my emails really quickly, I try to keep them as empty as I possibly can. I try to stay on top of it. But it’s not easy. I can’t I can’t replicate myself. So I won’t lie and say that it hasn’t been a struggle. There’s still struggles, and finding time management and making sure things are done when I’m really busy on on some of those things. But I think the more that I’ve developed, you know, my outsourcing over the last couple of years, it’s become easier. You know, I used to coach high school basketball for a decade before I even did quite light. So I sort of had another thing that I was doing. As an assistant, I just didn’t volunteering, because I love basketball, you know, so that kept me hopping. So I’ve been kind of used to multitasking and doing a lot of things. But this has become more and more challenging. And the more that I build my brand, for lack of a better way of putting into the M&A space, I’m getting a lot of people coming in. I spend a lot of time with entrepreneurs, so that time gets you know, shrinks even a little bit more at times. But I’m still working on it’s an ongoing process. It’s not the easiest thing for sure.

Max Branstetter 32:27
You weren’t in a wonderful plan there. I don’t even know if you notice you didn’t you said keep basketball keeps me hopping. Which is a great word for basketball.

Pat Yates 32:35
Yeah, that was pretty good. Yeah, so I mean, it’s but it’s, it’s, I’ll be honest, it’s not easy. And I’m still working on doing that. You know, I’m, I’m fairly fortunate I have three sons that are all out of the home. So I’m an empty nester, which makes things a little bit easier. Because, you know, I have a little bit more time when my sons were in sports and in high school, and even you know, when they were going to college, or spend a lot of time going down and stuff, and I see them a lot. But, you know, I have a lot more time during the day in the evenings to be able to do things. So I tried to bide my time a little bit. But it’s definitely there’s no question. I’ve slipped on a lot of things. I hate some of the things I’ve done the last two or three years, you know, with my business, and I wish I would have changed and gone a different route. But it was because I was trying to normalize all this opportunity. But I have I feel like I’ve done everything I can do for every client that I’ve been working with. That’s all I can really do. I’m just work as hard as I can.

Max Branstetter 33:23
You mentioned time management. How have you gotten better at the years is a time it like how do you learn from a time management perspective?

Pat Yates 33:29
quite light is my priority period. It is it’s my it’s the main thing that I do most of my stuff that I do with my econ I do in the evenings, mornings and weekends. So I’ve started to really prioritize that I take one day a week where I really try to concentrate half of that day on on one the eComm business. But other than that pretty much full time doing the quiet light thing. The good news is is that it happy slippers, our products don’t change a ton. So we don’t have a lot of stuff that we have to do to update it. It’s just, you know, getting marketing schedules, orders and things like that together. And I’m getting the business where it’s a little more operationally, I don’t want to use the word autopilot. That’s the wrong kind of thing operationally a little bit better. So I think that that’s been a work in progress. But I think every entrepreneur would say, you know, they changed the way that they tried to structure their day a lot as things develop. So I’m continuing to try to do that.

Max Branstetter 34:23
So let’s try to get into the realms of the unusual, this is called the unusual This is pet peeves, quirks, weird talents, so this stuff, you could try to tie it back to the business if you want but most the time this is kind of more just you on the personal side. So what’s your biggest pet peeve?

Pat Yates 34:41
I probably end up going to something odd like someone who has 500 emails in their inbox all unread? I don’t know. I don’t really see people’s inbox. I think my biggest pet peeve is when I continue to have to repeat myself on things. So that’s probably what it is. I don’t know. That’s a terrible question because I’m kind of a jerk sometimes. If I really don’t want to be nice, so I don’t really know. That’s not a go give me another question that one. I gotta make myself sound bad. I think there are things that hurt me. But what’s interesting is they probably are more about me. It’s like when I say it, you just did this yesterday and said you weren’t going to do it anymore. I’m my own worst critic. So probably my best pet peeves are one that I can say to myself.

Max Branstetter 35:20
I get it. Yeah, it’s very easy to be tough on yourself. How about, I call them Weird Talents. Some people call them party tricks, which is something that has no impact on your business. Just maybe it’s something around the house or a memory trick, something you’re really good at.

Pat Yates 35:35
I’m actually really good at cleaning the house, like some people wouldn’t believe that I used to. I got in the habit a long time ago that every Friday, I would clean our house top to bottom in the afternoon, I just take the afternoon off play to top to bottom. So when my wife came home, she had a clean house for the weekend. That’s honestly the truth. That’s why I did it. And I’ve gotten away from that because first of all, our kids are gone. So it’s not as hard. But I haven’t had as much time but I think that was one thing that people will be shocked at. The other one probably I talked about it a show is that I kind of have a weird thing where I bow my wife’s clothes. That’s kind of weird, though. You know, like, she I kind of have an eye for what she likes. So it’s like one of my weird habits. I buy all her clothes. Some women out there probably like that. But you know, it’s kind of weird.

Max Branstetter 36:19
Well, does your wife like that? Oh, yeah,

Pat Yates 36:21
she definitely does. Yeah, okay. Good. I mean, she says that at least she says she does. You know, send it back when? I don’t know.

Max Branstetter 36:31
That’s awesome. So you’re buying her clothes? You keep the house crazy clean? I think. I don’t know, Pat. I think you’re a total catch. I’ll give it to you.

Pat Yates 36:40
Yeah, I think that at my age, I probably am not a catch anymore. But you know, I’ll, I’ll deal with it. But yeah, I think I think you know, I’m a pretty simple guy. I love playing golf. And I work a lot. And I have great family life. And I have three great sons. And so you know, I just liked spending time with them.

Max Branstetter 36:58
And then what is a quirk you have and I won’t let you say any things you just listed off something a little quirky about your personality, but it’s who you are.

Pat Yates 37:07
I talk way too fast. You’re already seeing that. That’s just Yeah. I mean, even like Chuck Mullins and Joe at Quiet Light they’d always dog me about that. I talk way too fast. That’s definitely my worst thing.

Max Branstetter 37:17
I am. My wife Dana always says that, like, I’m slow at life. Like I do everything slow. So I think she’ll appreciate listen to you talk on this episode.

Pat Yates 37:26
Yeah. Questions, though. It’s like, I gotta think about how can dog myself a little bit more? I

Max Branstetter 37:31
don’t know. Exactly. That’d be tough on yourself. Yeah, there you go. All right. Well, let’s wrap up with some Rapid-Fire Q&Aa. Are you ready for it?

Pat Yates 37:38
Absolutely. All right, let’s

Max Branstetter 37:40
get Wild. You mentioned your mall kiosk businesses, those are in this isn’t the question. This is like a preface of it. Those are like the actual stands, like in the middle of like the walkways in the mall that can, you know, sell a variety of things. Right. Okay. That’s a

Pat Yates 37:56
terrible business anymore. It’s not a very good business anymore.

Max Branstetter 37:59
What is it? The most people would be surprised by about those businesses and types of products sold there.

Pat Yates 38:06
How inflexible the malls, malls are, I mean, they care about the rent, they really don’t care about you. It’s a difficult business. I mean, you need storage, you need to find a product that could sell there, and then you’re paying a high per square foot charge because you’re going into the holiday season November, December. You have to understand it’s not an easy business and malls don’t have the traffic they used to so I’d say that’s first thing.

Max Branstetter 38:26
How has running a coffee business impacted your consumption of coffee today?

Pat Yates 38:31
Oh my gosh, still the same. I still drink all day long. It’s terrible. Actually, I shouldn’t drink any drink. Occasionally in the afternoon. I used to drink in the afternoon a lot because I would fill my accounts in the morning and then I would go sell accounts in the afternoon. So we’d have to taste test it which meant I was drinking coffee until like five o’clock. I’m still probably three or four cups a day. I still love it. I’m sort of hardcore. I don’t ever put anything in it because I like to be able to see the taste of it.

Max Branstetter 38:54
What was your favorite type of food or favorite single food item to eat in Nashville?

Pat Yates 39:01
It’s good. Actually, we had a place called The Playing Field which was a sports bar that was really close to us. They had the coldest beer and the best wings I’ve ever seen anywhere called beer invest wings. That sounds I don’t think they I don’t think they exist anymore. They used to be like in the Antioch area right off of like Bell Road or something like that. I don’t think it’s there anymore. He ran it. He ran an amazing gambling organization out of the box. So it’s very good chance it’s not there anymore.

Max Branstetter 39:25
I would explain it was it baseball themed.

Pat Yates 39:27
No, it was just Hooters themed, like every sport. Right a lot, a lot of guys hanging around a lot. That’s pretty much what it was.

Max Branstetter 39:38
Sounds like the name of a book or movie or something. Yeah. And then last one, so we always have a debate about this. The town that you live in. That starts with L major city and Kentucky. How do you pronounce it? Louisville. Okay, that’s,

Pat Yates 39:55
I mean, you know, my wife is gonna kill me. If you got to draw a global look we go, there we go. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it all works.

Max Branstetter 40:04
Sent on my dad’s cousin Mike who who taught me that it’s, it’s like it’s spelled L-U-L-V-U-L. Louisville.

Pat Yates 40:12
I always say Louisville, I don’t know, sort of I sort of enunciate it and people do it all over the place. But if people haven’t been to Louisville before, you should come here, especially first Saturday of May. If you get here for the Kentucky Derby. It’s something to see, really.

Max Branstetter 40:23
Oh, yeah. Yeah, it’s a great town. I think as long as you don’t call it Lewisville, then you’re good. So perfect. Well, Pat, this has been an absolute blast. Just awesome. Talking. All things from slippers to coffee to advising to Snooki. Really appreciate you coming on? Absolutely. Where’s the best place for people to try out HappyFeet Slippers as well as learn more about Quiet Light?

Pat Yates 40:48
Yeah, so you can go to BuyHappyFeet.com if you’re looking at the slippers, but if you have interest in understanding where you’re at in your business, then eventually maybe exit or just want advice about it, it’s at QuietLight.com pretty easy. And you go to QuietLight.com Check out our listings anytime. You know people that haven’t looked into this, if you don’t own an econ business, you’re out there thinking about it. One of the best ways to do this is to buy an existing profitable online business which you can do apart. Like, it doesn’t make me any money. All our listings are done by individuals, but you should check it out.

Max Branstetter 41:15
Perfect. And the last thing, final thoughts that could be just whatever final words of wisdom could be a Muhammad Ali, quote, whatever you want, send us home here.

Pat Yates 41:22
Yeah, I don’t have a Louisville Muhammad Ali quote, but I’m sure that’s kind of like, I need to do that. But I just think that any of the entrepreneurs out there listening, no matter what area of life you’re in, if you’re thinking about having an online business, there’s a great way to go and talk to an advisor about buying one, it can change your life. If you’re looking to exit a business, you don’t like working in an office, you don’t like being in you can control your income and control your life. I think it’s a great way to go about it. If you have a current econ business and you’d like to know where you are in your process of potentially selling reach out. Advisors are there to help and then you know, as far as an entrepreneur, it’s just it’s it’s a really, really tough time to be an entrepreneur right now too, because you know, businesses are having struggles credit markets are shrinking. There’s all kinds of reasons why things are tough. So you just got to dig in, keep working hard. Be committed to what your vision is. And open up your network of people go out and find people that are in the same situation as you are. Keep working hard and things will work out for you.

Max Branstetter 42:19
Forever shoutout to Mike Mills. Will always remember that LULVUL lesson and and thank you, Pat so much for coming on the podcast sharing your incredible business-building stories and all you do cleaning the house. And thank you, Wild Listeners, for tuning in to another episode. If you want to hear more Wild stories like this one, make sure to follow the Wild Business Growth Podcast on your favorite app and tell a friend about the podcast. And then, HappyFeet Slippers and Quiet Light it up with them. That sentence really rolls off the tongue but you know what I mean. And you can also find us on Goodpods, where there are really, really good podcasts and podcast recommendations. And for any help with podcast production, you can learn more at MaxPodcasting.com and sign up for the Podcasting to the Max newsletter. That’s at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter. Until next time, let your business Run Wild…Bring on the Bongos!!