SLP534 Small Business for Bitcoiners with Bobby Shell

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Should Bitcoiners consider Small Business? What are some of the important considerations here? Bobby Shell of Voltage and Imprint Digital joins me on the show to talk about his experiences in SMB and why Bitcoiners should also think about it. 

  • Why do SMB
  • Earning more and making an impact
  • His experiences with digital and physical businesses
  • Why not just stack sats?
  • The latest at Voltage

Links:

Sponsors:

Stephan Livera links:

Podcast Transcripts:

Stephan (00:00.621)
So when it comes to acquisition, entrepreneurship, and some of these home service businesses or whatever business the person is going into, do you have any comments around skill sets that are required, right? Should the potential person acquiring this business, how important is it that this person has an already existing skills set that’s applicable for that business? Like if you’re gonna buy a restaurant, do you need prior experience working in a restaurant? Or whatever it may be.

versus trying to go into something new because you just have a passion in that area.

Bobby Shell (00:36.498)
Yeah, so I’ll start off by sharing this. There’s a book I have on my shelf here from the Harvard Business Review called Buying and Selling Businesses. And this is a playbook they teach in

like Ivy League schools, like how to buy and acquire businesses, like this playbook’s 30 years old, so it’s a very competitive market. These are typically folks with MBAs, but I think nowadays the information asymmetry is there where you can go on YouTube and learn a lot about running a business, and if you’ve worked in businesses prior, and you’ve kind of worked your way up and been intentional with career growth, you totally are capable of doing this. So buying small businesses by the Harvard Business Review, and there’s also a book

called Buy Then Build, where one of the gentlemen who kind of played a major role in this playbook and helping normal people do it, his name is Walker Dybul, he wrote that book. And those are like the two playbooks anyone who pursues this needs to read. They’re very key. But to a more pointed answer to your question, like the skill set, understanding finances and the basics is pretty important. You know, you’re going to be analyzing deals before you buy a business and you want to

are good and whatnot. Operations is also meaningful and it matters because you’re going to be now managing people. You’re going to be managing customers.

For me, I have some operations experience. I don’t necessarily love day-to-day operations. My background has always been in sales and marketing. So my partners are typically like the integrators and the operators, but sales and marketing skills are tremendously important. There’s a lot of these older businesses that use fax machines or do not have automation in place or marketing strategy. And just by doing that and adding that, I’ve had countless clients who come into our marketing agency and we just do what we do on that front and they start experiencing, you know, 50 to 60%.

Bobby Shell (02:31.46)
year-over-year growth after being stagnated like you know five to ten percent yearly. So it depends on your skill set but I think key ones that matter is like finance operations and sales and marketing are great entry points and today on the internet every person in the modern world needs to be a marketer so I think there’s a specific slice of users the marketers who are going to do well and I’ve spoken with Mark Moss about this just to kind of give him a hat tip.

talking about buying and acquiring small businesses and he was bringing up the fact that while he loves that and he’s friends with Cody Sanchez who’s also a popular person in this kind of topic in Wheelhouse, he said the blue ocean strategy of creating values based businesses is also where you can make a deep connection with customers. And so Jeremy’s Razors, have you heard of them Stephan? Yeah. So.

Stephan (03:26.269)
Right, yeah, I heard of this story. I think, you go on, tell us.

Bobby Shell (03:30.906)
Yeah, it’s so fun. So Harry’s Razors, they sponsored Ben Shapiro or whatever, and he basically said there were two genders, right? Biologically true. And Harry’s Razors was like, if you don’t take that back, we’re going to cancel our sponsorship of you. And he said, better yet, I’m dropping you as a sponsor and I’m going to partner with a razor company, Jeremy’s Razors. And now they are growing tremendously fast, multi-million dollar company.

Bobby Shell (04:00.98)
up for what their customer believes is the truth. And their marketing stick is don’t give money to woke companies that hate you. And they’re killing it and they charge a premium. So these values based businesses when it comes to digital, if you create a product or service around standing for your values, there’s 50 to 60% of people out there that agree with you and they will take their money away from a woke corporation and give it to you because again, if you want to see the world

operate in your community operate in the way that aligns with your values You need to be an entrepreneur because clearly people vote with their dollars You know we always talk about voting with our feet in Bitcoin like moving to jurisdiction Jurisdictions that respect our values same with money people vote with their money every day where they spend it and entrepreneurs have a great opportunity to capitalize on that Psychology and truth of how consumers think and vote with their money

Stephan (04:55.785)
Right. And so there’s different ways to go about that. Like one way could be, as you said, sort of if there’s like, I mean, in that example, if, if the criticism is that, or the concern is that there’s all these kind of left-wing woke companies and everyone’s putting their money there and make a right-wing company. And then I think another approach is sort of just to say, we’re just going to make a company that just does the thing. We don’t care about left-wing right-wing, whatever, like we’re just making the thing.

You know, and there’s different approaches and different approaches can work. So I think it’s totally valid and it’s an interesting story. And it seems like that seems to be what some of the Daily Wire guys are doing. They’re trying to sort of say, oh, look how woke Disney is, we’re gonna make the non-woke version of that and have children’s cartoons or do a non-woke version of Snow White. I mean, just as examples, right? And so, yeah, lots of opportunities in…

Bobby Shell (05:32.108)
Yeah.

Bobby Shell (05:43.422)
Yeah.

Stephan (05:49.601)
the world out there and it’s really about, you know, being a skillful entrepreneur, sort of sensing, okay, how can I pull together these different, let’s say, ingredients of a recipe to create something that’s obviously creating value for the end customers out there? And so I think that’s kind of, at the end of the day, that’s really what the message is. But it’s also about being intelligent with how you take risks, because obviously there are downsides too.

Bobby Shell (06:06.588)
Yeah.

Stephan (06:19.485)
So could you just spell out maybe just to give some perspective for listeners, what are some of the challenges you’ve had to face, you know, being an entrepreneur rather than just being a W2 employee?

Bobby Shell (06:30.706)
yeah so i mean i have to do say over the last um…

12 years I am still a W-2 employee. My last agency I was and then started my own company but also quickly got hired into Voltage which I’m still a W-2 employee but you know having my lawn care company I definitely face challenges as a startup entrepreneur you know I got my business but there’s no money coming in what do I do? You know for me, my father taught me this and it’s still true today you’ll see SMB bros write twitter threads of going door to door but for every hundred no’s you get one yes and I would just go door to door to people and I’d say you know I’m

to do a hundred doors a day, some days I do more, but by the time I do a thousand doors I’m going to have ten customers and I just let the odds be in my favor. But one thing I know about me is I know how to look people in the eyes, talk to them with respect, you know, build rapport, use emotional intelligence and actually listen to people’s needs and give them value. I had a much higher conversion rate than 1% and I think people out there that understand these principles will do that. So that’s one thing. Now the next thing is I think once you have the business, you know, sustaining those relationships

systems in place to where you can build referrals. 75% of people look up a review of a business before they use a business. So obviously the Google My Business piece I mentioned at the beginning, it’s important to get reviews from customers, but also to ask people for business. A lot of folks are too afraid to ask for something. A lot of people think sales is just getting people to buy something they don’t need. I think they have a kind of a twisted view on the world.

We don’t need to let other people’s perception of the world and sales change what we know is true. At the end of the day, it’s about creating value for others. Those are the companies that are the best and those are the companies that sustain and as entrepreneurs we need to always be seeking to do that because the rest will take care of itself. But yeah, when it comes to entrepreneurship and acquisition entrepreneurship specifically, over the last four months, one of the businesses I have has been going through an acquisition of rolling up another company under ours.

Bobby Shell (08:35.04)
peachy keen a lot of times until you get to the end. And then there’s always stuff that comes up. You know, the seller may get a little squirrely because they’re making a big career and life shift, so nurturing that relationship is important. But also things may be revealed in the financials or other things as you go through diligence with a lawyer and whatnot. And that can be incredibly challenging and I know that can be really discouraging for people. So if you are making the leap, I would definitely, you know, try to connect with

and get some insight and just try to educate yourself a little bit.

Stephan (09:09.545)
Right, and so as you said, you may need a lawyer, you may need an accountant, you may need some kind of quality of earnings. There’s all kinds of aspects that go into diligence to make sure that you’re not buying a lemon, let’s say, that you’re buying a proper business, and that there’s certain risks that have been de-risks. So as an example, concentration risk, or maybe it’s like the founder is like a one-man band, and if you take him out, then there’s not really a business there. So there’s kinds of things people have to think about.

Bobby Shell (09:21.329)
Yeah.

Bobby Shell (09:36.17)
Yeah.

Stephan (09:36.585)
Let’s bring it back to one other area for, obviously we’re talking for a Bitcoin audience, and a lot of Bitcoiners might be thinking, well, how do I do this in terms of making sure I’m still earning Bitcoin on net, as opposed to, you know, because for them, rightly or wrongly, maybe they sense that, hey, it’s more safe for me to just have my W2 job or some kind of.

way that they’re earning just, you know, fiat mining and then just buying Bitcoin. Whereas, you know, taking the leap into entrepreneurship, it’s sort of higher risk, higher reward. And so there’s maybe some potential that you could lose money. And, you know, obviously, as a Bitcoiner, you’re trying to stack stats and not go the other way. So do you have any comment there for, you know, speaking to specifically to the Bitcoiner audience?

Bobby Shell (10:24.454)
Yeah. Um, I think the big thing, um, at the end of the day is you have to have.

free cash flow, you know, you’re gonna pay yourself to take care of your family and live your life, but that additional money, you know, you can either use it to invest back into the company, whether it be marketing or hiring new people, or, you know, just reinvesting into growing the company, which there’s, you know, tax benefits for that, you’re kind of deferring, you know, it’s low time preference, I’m deferring having this money now to spend on what I want to reinvest in the company.

where it’s like there’s so much money I have that I don’t necessarily find, I don’t see a way to reinvest it into the business, then it’s hey, let’s maybe acquire Bitcoin and hold that money on the balance sheet and use it because I believe in the future, it will have more purchasing power and that will give me the ability to go through maybe a merger and acquisition position. And why that’s enticing is as businesses scale and they get into like larger amounts of revenue, the multiple may go from three to four X to six to eight X

10 to 12X and that’s where economies of scale again if you can grow a business so let’s say a hundred million in revenue it’s going to sell for a much higher multiple because these capital allocators that say hey we only cut 50 million or more dollar checks or a hundred million more dollar checks they’re going to pay more for that business because it’s very sustainable there’s systems in place the likeliness of it going under is very low. So I think there’s benefits for entrepreneurs who do have a business or acquiring one to

Bobby Shell (12:01.608)
return and growing the business now and that’s where saving in Bitcoin to grow your business or simply holding for you know a rainy day when you might need it is very important.

Stephan (12:11.061)
Yeah, great answer. And I think that the other really challenging point sort of related to what you were saying is, now, none of us have a crystal ball. We don’t know exactly what Bitcoin is gonna do over the next five or 10 years. But if you look back at history, Bitcoin has probably done 50% cagger, maybe a little bit less or more, depending on where we are in the cycle, right? In the bull time of the cycle, maybe it’s like 100%, but maybe in the bear cycle, it’s maybe more like 40% or so.

It’s difficult to beat that, right? Like just with a business, because as any Bitcoiner, right, as you and I and any listener, they’re probably thinking, oh man, if I put this money into the business, if I just otherwise had it in Bitcoin, I might be getting, let’s take a guess, 40, 50% per year. A very high growing business could grow faster than that though, right?

Bobby Shell (12:59.774)
Yeah, I mean the thing about the business, and this is where I think a lot of folks kind of get stuck in a pickle, is you could put your money directly into Bitcoin and just wait on Bitcoin to go up. Or what you could do is create a business and an engine that actually grows faster. And that’s where I think businesses like Zaprite are really important, which you know, John,

brought on Will and Parker and yeah.

Stephan (13:31.005)
Will and Parker, yeah, I had Will on recently as well. We’re going.

Bobby Shell (13:33.938)
Nice. Yeah, so Parker wrote the pay me in Bitcoin theory, how it starts with individuals making the decision and then they get their business to accept it because they’re the individual who likes it and they understand the value and then businesses accept it. It’s not going to be like, we got to sell all the businesses to accept Bitcoin. If they’re not Bitcoiners, they really don’t care. So I think that’s a very important decision for a business owner to make. If you can get 2% of customers paying in Bitcoin, if you’re a profitable business, you probably don’t have to move that over to dollars. You can just let it

The other decision would be sign up on something like you know River, Swan, whatever and just take some of your free cash flows at the end of month and just sweep it into Bitcoin and keep it on the side but yeah so I don’t know if that directly answered the question but that’s where my mind went.

Stephan (14:18.057)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think it’s just a difficult thing. But at the end of the day, you still need a way to ideally be earning something. And so having a business is one way to do that. And of course, you know, Bitcoin still goes through bear cycles. And so you need something to, you know, be able to pay your bills during the bear cycle and you’d rather not spend down your stack during the bear cycle. So obviously having income from that perspective is important. But I guess for a person who’s, you know,

Bobby Shell (14:33.494)
Yeah.

Bobby Shell (14:41.154)
Yeah.

Stephan (14:47.025)
who believes Bitcoin is going to be the future of the world, future of money. It’s just a very tough consideration between how much capital do I allocate to the business versus how much do I just hodl because hodling is going to go, you know, it’s going to do really well for me as well. Obviously if we’re bullish on Bitcoin. Um, yeah.

Bobby Shell (15:01.663)
Yeah.

That’s where having friends who understand finance and spreadsheets are really important because someone debating that maybe hasn’t run the numbers where it’s like, hey, if you can grow your business 20% year over year, and as you’re growing it, you’re investing into the business, but you’re also saving in Bitcoin. If you can take your business from, let’s say, selling at a 3 to 4X multiple where it then sells at an 8 or 10X multiple, you just need to personally do the math.

Stephan (15:25.133)
Brian.

Bobby Shell (15:32.848)
that multiple which is going to yield you four times more money or do you believe that little bit of Bitcoin is going to be worth more than that? And that’s the thing about businesses that I think is really unique is sure you can save in Bitcoin but why not do both and build an enterprise that because you hit these milestones and line in the sand and you create these efficiencies, you now go from a 4x multiple to a 6x, an 8x. That’s a massive return and all the way up, you’re buying it on your personal balance sheet. You’re buying it on the business balance sheet.

and you control the destiny. So it’s definitely a personal decision, but you can run the numbers on it and do your own estimates in a spreadsheet.

Stephan (16:11.721)
Right. And I think longer term, the goal is that, you know, for a Bitcoin standard, you want to make your business profitable in Bitcoin terms, right? But obviously we’re not there yet. So, you know, that’s a different maybe that’s a longer term consideration. But it’s just something that you know, people have to just consider even today. You know.

Bobby Shell (16:20.906)
Yeah.

Stephan (16:32.777)
at a rough level at least, even if they’re not doing every cost in Bitcoin terms. Okay, so, yeah, I mean, we’ve spoken a bit about small businesses. Are there any other kind of key points that you want to hit in terms of why people should do small business? Or why should Bitcoiners do small business? Or you think those are the main points?

Bobby Shell (16:37.344)
Yeah.

Bobby Shell (16:49.406)
Yeah, at the end of the day, yeah, at the end of the day, I mean, we see…

Bitcoiners, you know, I think we’re at a phase right now where a lot of Bitcoiners want to work at Bitcoin companies. Down the line, every company will become a Bitcoin company in some way, shape or form, according to us, right? Because we believe it’s going to be the future of money. So why not build a small business where you’re likely going to make more money. You’ll be able to give people incentives to spend Bitcoin. You can become a core player to your local community.

all things considered, you’re just kind of giving yourself an opportunity a lot of people don’t get. And I think the big question for Bitcoiners to think about is, if you’ve been stacking for a long time and your stack’s getting pretty big and you’re like, okay, I want to go out on a leap and like take some of this and buy a business, like do your research, you know, just holding Bitcoin forever. Like are you just holding it to hold it to talk about it? Are you holding it to improve your life? And I think the big thing about entrepreneurship, being your own boss and owning a company is

freedom, you have autonomy, you have sovereignty in a way because you’re not bending to the will of maybe a leader you don’t enjoy working under. And W2 employees, they are literally like the crux of the world. Like they are the most important people in the world. And I saw a headline the other day where the Panera CEO said something like, employees don’t care about shareholder value. And it’s kind of like, well, no shit, bro. Like they’re trying to pay their bills and they want to, you know, work with purpose.

They don’t care about shareholders and I think businesses, like enterprises, corporations, they’re going to have to shift their mindset and be emotionally intelligent and have EI and care about people and again build these cultures within their company that lead people feeling excited to come to work. They have purpose, you know, they’re delivering value for those they interact with. And I think from a small business perspective, we have the ability to do that, not only to

Bobby Shell (18:54.172)
and give them purpose, but for you as an entrepreneur, you can kind of help craft and guide your community in the way you see fit, and you get to make a lot of money along the way, which gives you the ability to bless people in need and just spend more time with your wife, kids, partner, whatever. So I think there’s a lot of compelling reasons. It’s not without risk, like we said, there’s a lot of nightmare stories out there and there’s a lot of risk, but what is life without risk? I think you look at nature.

Stephan (19:22.645)
Yeah, it’s like the saying, a ship is safest in harbor, but that’s not what ships are designed for, right? It’s like that saying. Yeah, all right, so while we’ve got you here, let’s talk a little bit about voltage. So what’s some of the latest stuff going on at voltage, just for people who are interested?

Bobby Shell (19:26.462)
Yes, yeah precisely.

Bobby Shell (19:38.218)
Yeah, for those who don’t know, Voltage is a Bitcoin development platform, so you can come and within minutes, spin up the infrastructure and tooling you need to integrate Bitcoin into your platform. You can also source liquidity and the ability to send and receive payments. And then there’s data and analytics tools that give customer support, the accounting team, C-level executives, just the insights and information they need. The full stack platform you would need to build and use Bitcoin.

Bobby Shell (20:08.252)
rebuild of our platform, just unifying it under one experience and adding a lot of new features and benefits that people have been demanding. So that’s really exciting. We’re just gearing up for a big 2024. One thing that anyone who’s in Bitcoin and Lightning for a while has seen is when price goes up, businesses become interested. We see the ETF on the beak of approval, just on the peak of being approved. There’s a lot of corporate adoption and talk and

think that’s going to de-risk Bitcoin a lot for people. So it’s just really exciting to see some of these businesses enter the pipeline, people exploring Bitcoin, and it’s just great that we’re getting this new and improved platform like fully in the hands of people. And I think most importantly for developers, if you’re listening to this, we’re just really excited to continue to be the leader who gives businesses and developers the most access to Bitcoin and Lightning. A lot of these custodial solutions and wallets, they’re coming under flak by the government because now they’re money transmitters and all these

fight to control money. We’re making everything accessible in a non-custodial way where businesses don’t have to hold you know users funds and act like a bank for them like users have their own ability to run a node and it just creates less risk for businesses and also gives people full access to LND the implementation of lightning network and Bitcoin like our service is fully interoperable with and integratable with any open source software and that’s

exciting. It’s the hard way, but it’s the right way to build it. It gives users, it gives businesses the most flexibility and autonomy to use Bitcoin the way they need. And it’s just really cool to see that our founder had this idea and is just kind of leading the industry in that way. So I’m really excited for Voltage and I’m proud to be able to work with Graham and see all this come to fruition.

Stephan (21:57.633)
Well, yeah, that’s excellent. I think really great and important messages for listeners that we’ve gone through in this podcast around small business, why you should think about it. You know,

What are some of the benefits of that you could potentially earn more the you know, the way that you can Impact and have some kind of impact on your local area Of course, there are some risks that have to be considered But you know you have to you have to you have to take you have to take all that together and consider it for yourself And what’s the right thing for you? Um, yeah, so we’ll put all the links in the show notes So bobby shell.com guys check out the links in the show notes and bobby. Thank you for joining me today

Bobby Shell (22:20.726)
Yeah.

Bobby Shell (22:33.951)
I appreciate it, Stephan. Thank you.

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