Alaric Ong Global Revenue & Valuation (2023)

hello everyone my guest today is a lyric on he's got done five different businesses before of which three of them started with zero capital and went on to generate six figures within the few short months one of them went on to generate seven figures within 16 months currently he's the founder of the largest facebook marketing community in singapore with over 1400 paid students he's also been featured in fox market watch and digital journal for interviewing six seven eight and nine figure entrepreneurs like marcos mora who runs a model franchise 120 million dollar a year business grant cardone jt fox and george ross so eric you ready to take us to the top yeah sounds good man all right so it sounds like you're just you're a hustler and you also have a coaching business now today so tell me about the first business you built when did you launch it what year so in 2016 i launched a healthy food delivery business um it basically i served the largest bank in dba the largest bank in singapore called dbs um singapore yeah so this bank has about 10 300 employees and we serve healthy food we serve healthy food in like bento boxes for them yeah okay and how did they like that in 2016 how much money did you make doing that business okay so like when we just still do with dbs um we okay like in my whole business career i've never had a sales and marketing problem it always is an operations problem for me so um the moment i see the deal with them it was a really good deal it's just that my operations um failed within like four days right so what i learned okay so so here's what happened okay so on the first day we had like 70 orders second second we had about 90 orders okay that would have been a run rate of about 30 000 um monthly recurring revenue just from just one uh bank okay and we haven't scaled to like different banks yet so like there's like maybe in singapore hsbc uob et cetera um but the reason why it didn't take off is because on the first day um i caught everyone to come like hey so it's a healthy filipino business they have like 50 floors like this bank had 50 floors so there's no way my operation this will start up there's no way my operations could service all 50 floors so we'll ask everyone to come to our collection point so when i called so i called everyone one by one we had 70 orders so by the time i caught the last the 70th order it was like one and a half hours after the lunchtime so everyone started complaining because like they were receiving their food like one and a half hours later so i wrote a lot of emails apologize to them and say hey sorry uh the second day um i decided sms terms so i sent a text test system so it's faster but on the second day because um our delivery operations we outsource that because we are a startup so we don't have the money to buy a glory like we do have money to buy a truck and everything eric sorry how just just just again because this is a short show so we want to try and get as much as possible so some quick stuff here just to get context how old were you in 2016 i was 90 years old in 2016. okay and how much of your own capital did you put in this business to get it started um my partner put in nine thousand dollars um so we wanted to raise a hundred thousand um but we realized that we didn't need that much money we could okay so so you didn't put it you didn't put in any you you're probably putting 9k how did you guys split equity um it was like uh i owned 30 um my partner owned forty percent his sis you know my partner won forty percent her brother owned thirty percent and we had another forty thirty 30 yeah 40 30 20 yeah yeah that's 100 okay got it so you own 30 of that business uh didn't put any capital and you're 19 years old you drive sales but then you can't keep up operations so what happened when did you shut the business down so after that um the main reason why the business didn't take off is because um the main reason why the business didn't take off was because of the equity speed right yeah so the business didn't work because the equities because one of my partners he had to go for national service and um so he couldn't contribute to the business anymore so when i wanted to buy out but i wanted to like you know respect the equity um he didn't want to give up his equity even though he couldn't contribute to the business anymore so that's why um the business didn't take off so now when did you shut the business down um like six months into starting the business yeah okay guys so shut down in 2016 that same year um talk to me about the next business you worked on uh so after i ran a sales team right so i built a sales team of 140 members i saw all kinds of stuff like tailor-made shirts quality sets personal development courses um health products etc yeah what sales team was this company built for um this company is it's a network marketing company so i joined a network marketing company and then we built the name it's called international entrepreneurs platform yeah it's a singaporean company okay and and did you have equity there or was it just like a job basically um i'm a like it's like a like i didn't have equity in the company but you run it like a business like that yeah so some people run it like a self-employed but if you run it some people run it like a business owner yeah so when you say you have 140 sales people what does that actually mean be specific that means um okay email marketing they call it downlines right so i have i recruited 140 people within 10 months how much did they pay to sign up so they paid from 400 to 13 000 okay 413 000 yeah okay and and how many of them actually ended up building a real business where they drove a sale to a consumer not just downline signups but a real sale to a consumer at least um okay so 140 is like cumulative right so let's say at least 20 of them uh sold yeah at least 20 of them at least 20 to 30 of them yeah so i mean do you feel sort of bad signing up the other 120 making them pay 400 or 13k each and then they didn't end up selling any products themselves at all as a salesperson that's your number one job not really because when they sign up they get value from the products itself so um that's that's how i decide whether a network marketing model is ethical or not is based on whether if they don't recruit other people do they still get value from the product itself if they feel that how do you measure that how do you measure if they get value from the product what if they got a bunch of the product and then it's sitting in their kitchen right now and then a kitchen cabinet that's never been open in the past 10 years so if so let's say they get made to measures right so if let's say they were to buy these meshes even if they didn't have the opportunity to sell it would they buy it or if they if they could if they go for this personal development cost based on the market rate let's say they sign up maybe a thousand four hundred dollars for a certain development course would like would other personal development causes in the market there's about a thousand four hundred dollars and says yes so um as it means as a consumer if they would get value like if it's a fair market value then then um that's how i define whether it's a it's a ethical or unethical marketing yeah the personal development course i mean look if you're trying to get into business and you want to learn entrepreneurship and you sign up to an mlm company to learn your number one thing is can you get customers can you sign people up of which only 20 of them signed up so how can you argue that paying 1400 bucks to get in helps them in personal development when 120 of them never actually signed up their own customer they never actually learned what it took to be an entrepreneur and drive their first sale no but it depends okay good question i i like i like discussing that with you but it depends so um if let's say okay let's say they go and buy a shirt and they get a shirt so so them getting the shirt is the the value that they're getting no it's not it's if they wear the shirt it's if they wear their shirt and it keeps them warm during the day not is the shirt sitting in their cabinet and never gets worn the you and i find it very differently but they wear a shirt you know as like they do wear the shirt so if they're getting the value from the product itself then then that's a ethical networking model okay so what happened in this business this was from what 2017 to what year so um this was from um the mid of 2016 to the mid of 2017. yeah okay so if you sign up 140 people in your downline sounds like it was successful at w and why it only lasts a year so um the last year like i just the branding of the company wasn't very good because of the previous things that they did right and i didn't want to be associated with the branding that's why i left the company okay but you said you did analysis when you joined to make sure it was the best thing possible and it was ethical and everything else and then all of a sudden the branding stopped working no correct so the the business model for this current company is ethical right but because in the past there were a lot of things where they didn't deliver their promise to the customers in the past few years before i joined okay that means it's not one people yeah okay um so that so that's the past so it's like how to say like maybe if in the past it was not ethical but right now they are doing something ethical okay and which i didn't acknowledge about the past like i didn't have full knowledge about the past then um yeah so the current so it's 20 it's 2017 you're now 20 years old you make some money selling 140 of your friends 400 plans into a network marketing company you quit that in 2017 then what so after i started sales and marketing agency yeah so i help like hotels uh property agents insurance agents network marketers i help um people who generate sales through i help entrepreneurs to generate sales through like facebook ads and digital marketing and how did you make money doing that did you take a percent of ad spend uh i i charged on my retainer fee yeah okay how much was the fee it's like uh some something like a 2 000 a month some pay like a thousand dollars a month it really depends on the service yeah i was making about five to ten thousand dollars yeah from my five to ten thousand per month and and uh what was the name of the sales and marketing agency it was called the the apple method yeah it was called private limited yeah the apple method apollo method private limited yeah yeah got it um okay so you do that between 2017 and then is that still running today or how long do you do that it kind of still is running like sometimes i still do that for you services for clients so it kind of serious running yeah how much did you make last month from the apollo method um about last month in terms of done for you services i made about maybe 20 000 yeah okay and and who were some of my customers that paid you last month to twenty thousand dollars what did you do for them okay so there's a client that paid six point seven k who runs a tuition business in myanmar uh no it's not tuition business a preschool business in myanmar there's another training company uh that they pay 15 percent of profit uh 15 revenue uh they sell like emotional healing causes spiritual causes and all that um i've got um people who uh okay there's an insurance director so they pay me 15 of what the agent makes so let's say the agent makes 50k per year i'll get 7.5k per year something like that yeah and is this what you're spending most your time on today um i spend that my time is spent on debt and coaching yeah and yeah and coaching the businesses that i own equity in okay what are some of the companies that you own equity in so right now i own a tuition business right uh so tuition in singapore is a hot thing okay it might not be in other countries but tuition is basically um after people go to school after like kids go to school they have extra classes on top of their um school curriculum because like the parents just don't trust the school system enough and they won like supplementary lessons so they'll pay like 50 per hour or 75 dollars per hour to send their kids to those extra classes yeah okay got it so you have a tuition business where people pay you 50 70. tuition business yeah how much revenue did that do last month um okay this this business just started not long ago so it's still growing right now it's doing about five thousand dollars a month yeah okay and um why don't you why don't you why don't i 100 because this is someone else's business and she gives me equity in the business in exchange for advisory and like my connections and like my help is helping her to grow his business before she was meeting me she was thinking about 2.5 k per month now she's making five to seven thousand dollars a month okay so do you think she's happy with her decision to give you 20 definitely yeah okay what other companies do you own equity in um i own equity in another social media marketing agency and uh right now he runs a call center that has like doing that has like five people every day they said like every month they set thousands of appointments and about a thousand appointments and uh they're selling like uh government approved courses here how much do you own of that business so i want 20 of their business and how do you plan to make money from your equity stake in that business um okay so for one i've been receiving dividends from my businesses how much last month did you receive in dividends from the social media marketing agency okay so for this social media marketing agency they're not very profitable okay they did about maybe 30 to 50 000 in sales but because it's just over what period of time over as in like when sorry 30 to 50 thousand dollars in sales in a month like last let's say last man um the highest man was about seventy thousand dollars and that that quarter yeah that quarter then they paid out dividends so not every so only when it's profitable that i get dividends for that uh for that quarter yeah so my plan is we just own uh equity these businesses because i get paid like i i get the dividends right to me passive income is always more valuable than if you come yeah but it's not passive it's not passive in the first business the same tuition business is 20 you said the lady gave you 20 because she wants your help and advice to grow the business that's not passive that takes your time energy and money same thing with the social media marketing agency correct but eventually this eventually this would be passive yeah that's the bet you're making it's a big bet but that's the bet you're making great great yeah yeah if it doesn't happen you end up sweating working like crazy the businesses stay on profitable you never see dividend checks and you spend all your time energy and money making no money from these things if if it doesn't work out okay so first of all i'll make it work out okay but if it doesn't work out then like i deserve not to get paid right because if i did i wasn't able to value the business that i just want to get paid um at the same time once it works out so let's say i own 20 right my game plan would be to like to sell small percentages um of it yeah so so far like yeah so so i'll be selling small percentages of it to cash out so i'll i'll be left with maybe 10 of equity and i i own 10 of the dividends here and who would you be selling these equity stakes to so um for me i've got a network of uh like i got 1 400 clients right from my coaching business so it's not hard for me to sell but i can just tell my students and say hey i have a tuition business do you want to own a one percent of my tuition business two percent my situation business five percent my tuition business you just pay maybe fifty thousand dollars or something like that yeah it's doing five thousand dollars a month in total revenue why would they pay that amount of money for a business doing that amount the whole year in revenue okay so this is where it gets interesting okay so i have a very different model of raising um funds okay um for this business right i was making even when he was making 2.5 k a month okay i raised it at 600 000 i i saw shares at a six hundred thousand dollar valuation within three days we raised eighteen thousand dollars for three percent of the company okay and people say but why would you raise it at a six hundred thousand dollar valuation that's a twenty times p ratio so my peaceful investors would speak i said okay my game plan is to run this business okay even though it's a sole proprietor like even though it's a it's a right now it's a one-man show okay but i want to run it like as though it was a public listed company okay so what do i mean by that i told him this i said okay so if she's making 150 net profit per month okay net profit that's 30k a year so i say uh i'm gonna sell you one percent for six thousand dollars okay now when you own uh one percent of six thousand dollars that means if she makes 30k per year you're going to get dividends of um three hundred dollars if now if you buy an investment that you get five percent dividend means you invest 6k you get 300 per year in dividends that's completely passive income because they are um like investors right is that a pretty good deal uh five percent dividends not counting i'm not even including capital appreciation just the dividends alone would that be a good deal for them they say yeah it's a pretty good deal okay because if they put in a bank or they put in a fixed deposit it's less than five percent that's it on top of that we haven't counted the capital appreciation so if let's say she starts making 5k per month in profit okay that's 60k per year now their shares will be worth double because um the next investor won't mind paying 12k to own this same one percent so that they can get 600 per year individuals so that's my picture and um and out of the three lessons uh we raised like it was 100 closing rate yeah so so like this might be that just that just means you're good at fundraising the best place to fundraise is to have real customers right so like listen you can raise money all day long at crazy high valuations but eventually the music stops and you've got to actually validate that violation in the market for example publicly traded stocks since that's the comp that you wanted to use if they ever change their dividend lower their stock price gets nailed it gets hit very hard you just told me some of these businesses sometimes there's dividends sometimes there's not it's certainly not predictable and they're very doing very small amounts of revenue right so isn't that a bit of a dangerous thing you're getting into so so to me i look at it that do i think that she will make at so when i pitched up at the 600 k evaluation i just looked at yes do i think that she'll make at least 2.5 k per month in a net profit you know so if she will if she would then then it's not worth 600 grand making two and a half of net profit is not a six hundred thousand dollar business i don't care how you cut them out anyone listening right now if you take 2.5 times per month times ten months right so it's called thirty grand a year in revenue and profit that is not worth six hundred thousand dollars as a business so how much do you think it's worth well it's not worth six hundred thousand dollars right of the market anything is worth what you can convince the market to convince it to be worth so the fact you convince people that it's worth 600k is fine but my point is the music stops at some point if you don't tell the story it's stopped and that's the music stop when you stop when you the music stops alert when you stop paying dividends and you just told me that two of these businesses have not paid you personally dividends and you're a big owner right so you you have to stick to one of the stories here either you're paying dividends and you're guaranteeing them or there's no dividends okay so she is okay so so far she has been consistently paying and even more than the dividends that what and even like i'm saying even at the current level even if when she was making 2.5 months now she's making more but even when she was making 2.5 k per month uh it they will be happy with getting fight like they will be happy with the dividends that they receive so if they invest six thousand dollars they get three hundred dollars a year they are happy with that dividends so and i and i tell them upfront i tell them that hey if you get these car dividends are you okay then you say yeah yeah i'll be pretty happy with 300 uh per year dividends because it's passive income right so um so so that that was the moment like yeah so so it's it's different from how and and like you said the value is based on what the market decides right yeah but you can control that because you're a good sales guy that's my point you are basically a great sales guy i mean you're selling me you're trying i mean you talk for five minutes and you sell me on an idea you're a great salesman your background picture here on zoom is you in front of a massive audience you understand soft power all you you're very good at sales right so i don't it doesn't it doesn't surprise me that you can convince your best friends who have money to give you money at a 600 000 evaluation that's not what i'm hitting on here what i'm trying to understand is how do you actually grow the actual value of this business where the dividends can be consistent they can be guaranteed and you do grow revenue higher than five grand a month in revenue i mean we're talking like peanuts here this is nothing yeah so so this is why so so this is how i how i did how how i structured a deal um the cool thing is that this founder she she owns let's say um sixty percent shows about seventy percent of her business okay you're talking about the tuition business or the social media marketing agency tuition business institutions let's just talk about tuition business right so she doesn't get paid until uh she doesn't get paid the salary the the money that she makes is based on the dividend that she pays off so she decides how much her dividends to pay out but she doesn't pay any dividends then she herself won't have money that's why it will motivate her to pay out more dividends she wants more money right and motivated her to uh no lyric what that means is if the business doesn't grow she quits because she can't feed her kids because she has no salary that's like a publicly traded ceo saying we're not making you and giving you any salary unless you pay out dividends so guess what they quit and they leave and you lose talent if you don't pay out the dividend right so so how is that cool that's not cool no but in our agreement i made it this way like we made it this way and we agree on it this way okay which we agree it's fair is that if let's say she leaves this business and she starts another business then what's gonna happen is that she like she will have to split that business based on the same shareholdings so for example let's say if she she closes down on speech and business and she opens a bakery baking shop or something right um whatever profit from the baking shop she was stupid have paid the dividends based on that yeah okay i think this is a terrible business model but i'll let the audience listening decide let's talk about your coaching business you have 1400 folks that pay you on a coaching basis what are they paying you to coach them on um uh to coach them on sales marketing and branding yeah so like facebook course okay so how so what what are the what are the 1400 people paid you um so um 500 to five thousand dollars yeah okay and is it a one-time thing or is it recurring one time one time yeah okay got it and when did you want this when was your first customer i launched this in 2018 um around june around yeah july 2018 yeah okay and you would have been what twenty two twenty twenty two when i did that yeah yeah okay got it so you launched in 2018 you've got 1400 people that have paid 500 bucks so what you've done 700 grand in sales at least through that the coaching business um i've done about 1.2 million dollars in the first 18 months yeah yeah okay and uh and how much do you think you'll do this year total this year okay so so this year my plans are to focus on acquiring more businesses rather than uh like i still do coaching like i still earn income from coaching and everything but my main plan on why i do coaching so that i can find more businesses to acquire so why go talking about the investors you give events to in the tuition business earlier why go sell someone three percent for 18 grand when you made 1.7 million in sales over the past 18 months why do you need to go waste your time energy and money convincing someone to give you 18 grand why wouldn't you keep it equity for yourself and take dividends yourself um because because us raising the funds at that valuation makes like that creates the valuation of that company so so like how to say um because if let's say i tell you that this company's worth six hundred thousand dollars that's based on what i tell you right but if i was able to get three people say that yes this company was worth 16 600 000 and they actually voted with their pockets right then that validates the idea that this that that the values it doesn't validate any idea raising capital does not validate an idea it means you're a good it doesn't value the idea by evaluating it validates nothing except that you're a good salesperson that's all it validates is that you found three suckers to overvalue business and put in 1800 i don't think that suckers because they get the dividends they did get paid and they don't get dividends they don't get dividends if there's no profit they don't get dividends yeah if you don't get dividends and you're a 20 owner yeah so if they do if they do get profit which it has been profitable for the last uh one year you just told me you didn't get dividends personally as a 20 owner well that's that's a social media marketing agency but for the tuition business everyone got got their dividends yeah okay so it's doing five grand a month total top line revenue and everyone got dividends okay great yes yeah it's still not worth 600 thousand dollars okay bye so so yeah and i i and i like i like that people don't i like that people disagree with me i like that you know and and uh i just want you to acknowledge that you love selling you get a dopamine hit and you go post in your coaching group when you say our company just passed a 600 000 valuation we brought in three new investors that turns you on you get so excited from that and that's why you do it that's the only reason you do it it's not validating the business idea it's doing nothing else except turning you on okay if you want to put it that way but it's more of like helping her to have a business as well six hundred thousand dollars not so much just for me you know yeah because i mean she can't pay herself by being a salary much less get equity value in the valuation she can't even pay herself a freaking salary to live on if she's not paying out dividends it's not a good which is why i'm testing this model because i agree because i feel that a lot of ideas in the market like a lot of ideas will be uh controversial okay until when it is successful then other people start copying that idea yeah okay to be honest you're not putting somebody on the moon it's a twitch in business we know it works there's hundreds of tuition businesses right but no one runs business this way like no one raises funds for tuition business this way you know what it's not about the tuition business what i'm trying to see is okay does this play out is it win win win for everyone and so far okay based on so far it has been win-win win right so i'm thinking oh okay so can i scale this to can i do this can i apply the same principles the same valuation model and everything for bigger business so that's my my game plan is to see if this works and if this works at a small level because if it doesn't go at a small level it's okay i can pay like 80 000 or the 18000 to the company by the way didn't go to mia so it's okay i i i can uh you know i can figure out how to help this company pay back the money and all that so i just want to see whether this model works and if it works then i will scale that for 50k per month business which there is and i will scale it to a you know a few hundred grand a month business it's the same like if it works small it would be if you feel small you'll feel good it sounds like your biggest ability to generate wealth for yourself is to sell more coaching products nothing else that you've done the food delivery business that you shut down after six months the sales team in the network marketing company that you did for under 12 months after signing up 140 friends for 400 bucks a pop only of which 20 of them actually sold products the tuition business now doing five grand a month the apollo method which where you're making 5-10 grand a month on none of those even come close to matching the sales you've done in your coaching business so why don't you just double down on coaching business and and grow that to a 10 million dollar business i could yeah which yeah which i am planning to do yeah we'll see what happens aler appreciate your time thanks for taking us to the top thank you and and i like this discussion [Laughter] where can people find you online what's your link where can people learn more about you i'm just searching rick moses on you can find me on facebook rick moses on you can find me on instagram a-l-a-r-i-c-o-n-g-g and my website is www.elricong.com nice very high thank you so much for having me on the show nathan and i and i appreciate that all right guys cut in studio one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every thursday at 1 pm central it's called shark tank for sas we call it deal or bust one founder comes on three hungry buyers they try and do a deal live and the founder shares back end dashboards their expenses their revenue arpu cac ltv you name it they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live it is fun to watch every thursday 1 pm central additionally remember these recorded founder interviews go live we release them here on youtube every day at 2 p.m central to make sure you don't miss any of that make sure you click the subscribe button below here on youtube the big red button and then click the little bell notification...