Summary

In this conversation, Jon Stoddard interviews Josh Marsden, an entrepreneur who has acquired 14 e-commerce companies in a short span. They discuss Josh's transition from running a marketing agency to becoming an e-commerce aggregator, the lessons learned from early acquisitions, and the characteristics of a good e-commerce business. Josh shares insights on evaluating financial health, the importance of branding, and the motivations behind selling businesses. He emphasizes the need for rigorous due diligence and the significance of building a strong brand for long-term success. In this conversation, Josh Marsden discusses various aspects of business valuation, negotiation strategies, and the RM5 formula for scaling e-commerce companies. He emphasizes the importance of understanding market size and the potential for replicating successful business models in different markets. The discussion also covers capital structure for acquisitions, investor relationships, and the long-term strategy of holding businesses for growth. Marsden shares insights on engaging investors, vetting partnerships, and future plans for establishing a private equity fund. Additionally, he reflects on personal growth and the impact of family life on his business journey.

Takeaways

Josh transitioned from a marketing agency to e-commerce aggregation.
Reviving distressed businesses can be extremely challenging.
A rigorous purchasing process is essential for successful acquisitions.
Good e-commerce businesses typically have seven-figure revenues and healthy profit margins.
Financial health is critical; businesses should be profitable from day one.
Brand strength significantly impacts the success of e-commerce businesses.
Long-standing businesses are generally more reliable investments.
Understanding seller motivations can facilitate better acquisition deals.
Valuation multiples vary based on revenue and business characteristics.
Building a strong brand enhances customer trust and ROI from advertising. Valuation is subjective and requires expert advice.
Negotiation should start with a lower offer.
The RM5 formula focuses on authority, reciprocity, and monetization.
Market size is crucial for evaluating business potential.
Replicating successful models can lead to growth in new markets.
Capital structure can include SBA loans and investor partnerships.
Long-term holding strategies can maximize business value.
Engaging investors requires clear profit-sharing agreements.
Vetting investors is essential for successful partnerships.
Personal growth and family life can influence business decisions.

 

 Watch the Interview:

Transcript:

Jon Stoddard (00:01.147)
Welcome to the top M&A entrepreneurs. Today my guest is Josh Marsden out of Phoenix. Josh has acquired 14 e-commerce companies in a period of a year and a half. Welcome to the show, Josh. Yeah, so you're just down the road from me in Phoenix and you and I met about two years ago in a mastermind group. Right, yeah, cool. So, Josh.

Josh Marsden (00:15.99)
Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm honored.

Josh Marsden (00:22.12)
Yeah.

Josh Marsden (00:26.102)
Yeah, that's correct. Yep, yep.

Jon Stoddard (00:30.712)
Uh, you've acquired 14 companies, but let's talk about what you were doing at the time you said, I want to start acquiring a company. What, what were you doing?

Josh Marsden (00:39.626)
Wow. Um, that's a good question. So, you know, this was 2021 and, um, you know, 2021 was my first down year in business when it came to, uh, you know, just sales, you know, I was running a marketing agency from, uh, early 2013 up until the end of 2021. And, um, unfortunately, uh, 2021, uh, started off, you could say on the wrong foot. Um, I had, uh, signed 50% of my company over to someone and, um,

And a few months into the year, he wasn't meeting his obligations and we unfortunately had to dissolve the partnership. But unfortunately, it left me with a business that we had reduced purposely to fit into our mutual plans. And so I had to grind it out from that point on throughout the rest of 2021 to get the business up to a substantial revenue and profit position for myself and...

all the staff that I had to live off of the business. But long story short, I had a plan and a goal in mind anyway to become an e-comm aggregator. And that's what him and I were doing. And then of course, like I said, we had to dissolve the partnership. And so from that point until the end of the year, I was still like, I wanna become an e-comm aggregator. I need to make this transition.

you know, into buying e-comm companies, managing them. This way I don't have to sell agency services anymore, which, you know, I had appreciated for the past, you know, eight and a half or so years, but, you know, it really wasn't serving me as much as I'd like, you know, cause I want, I had bigger goals and I, I wanted to, you know, generate a nine plus figure exit at some point in the future. And so at the end of a 2021, you know, I finally, you know, decided that, you know, I was going to make that hard,

transition from selling agency services and, you know, and relying on that to buying e-commerce companies and imagining those to scale those up this way we can then package them and then sell them in a portfolio roll-up in the future.

Jon Stoddard (02:50.059)
Let me ask you about your agency services. Now, what were you doing in this agency? We were actually helping e-commerce owners build their e-commerce company.

Josh Marsden (03:01.354)
Yeah, yeah, we, we had a lot of successes, you know, and we helped literally thousands of Ecom businesses and I say thousands, because we, we had summits that we hosted where we hosted thousands of people, you know, thousands of Ecom business owners, we sold services, you know, and so we helped a lot of Ecom companies from early 2013, up until the end of 2021, when we decided not to, you know, sell client services anymore. And over the last several years, you know, we really

identified a formula, a process to be able to really get the most return on ad spend from paid advertising for our clients, for our e-comm companies that we were servicing. And we framed it the ARM 5 formula. And there's a meaning behind ARM 5, that I could explain if you'd like, but it all came back to...

Jon Stoddard (03:46.831)
Arm five, how do you say it? Arm five, yeah. Cool.

Josh Marsden (03:57.526)
what we saw consistently from a strategy and a process perspective working in our clients up to that point to get the most return on ad spend, which helped them grow faster than working with other agencies out there.

Jon Stoddard (04:09.803)
Yeah, I'm going to ask you about this RM5, but what type of customer made the best in your agency? And this is all building this context. Is it e-commerce and it's a physical product or is it a coaching product or what did it look like?

Josh Marsden (04:27.094)
Yeah, so from 2017 on, we only wanted to work with physical product ecom companies and our marketing really focused on speaking to that niche. We rarely took on companies outside of that niche from that point on. So most of our experience from that point on was 100% physical product ecom.

Jon Stoddard (04:48.595)
Was it FBA or Shopify or high price point, low price point?

Josh Marsden (04:55.346)
Yeah, yeah, it's okay. So I laugh when someone says that because to me, Amazon's just a sales channel. There's no such thing as an Amazon business necessarily. It's just a business that relies on the sales from Amazon, but they're leaving direct to consumer that channel door, you know, uh, dormant and they, you know, should focus on it. So, um, we were, uh, we're really helping companies apply, um, direct response.

digital marketing strategies and processes to the direct to consumer channel. So that would mean that we would work with companies that were built on Shopify or on BigCommerce or WooCommerce, one of those e-commerce platforms, typically Shopify.

Jon Stoddard (05:38.063)
Yeah. And what would you do? You redesign the site, build a nice funnel, get a lead magnet, find the right channel to advertise, use PPC and SEO, all of the above or whatever.

Josh Marsden (05:51.514)
Yeah, just about all the above. I mean, you know, paid advertising was our biggest, you know, selling point, you know, because when you do paid advertising at a very high level, and you're, and you're scaling and you're spending, you know, 100,000 plus a month in ad spend, and you know what you're doing, you know, you can grow a business very, very fast. And so, you know, a lot of people came to us. Because of that, I mean, it helped to that I published a few books on Facebook advertising for e commerce, and one of them was international best seller. So

you know, that was really what drew people to us. And that was the biggest strength we offered to all of our clients was paid advertising. But the thing is, is that you can't just do paid advertising alone, you know, you have to really have a strong brand to get the best possible results from paid advertising. And so we always published content consistently, which is an SEO play as well for all of our clients. It's part of the Arm 5 formula is publishing content on a consistent basis.

We would also use funnels as well, not just drive people to a Shopify site, funnels typically and traditionally.

Jon Stoddard (06:57.919)
about YouTube and maybe Celebrity of Sponsors. In there too?

Josh Marsden (07:03.77)
Um, well, we would use YouTube, like YouTube ads, but, um, but we wouldn't, uh, you know, do a whole lot of like, you know, celebrity partnerships and stuff like that.

Jon Stoddard (07:06.844)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (07:12.775)
All right, so I could tell you about being a horror story relying on one channel of ad spend, Google AdWords in my past. So when did the moment, so this partnership with this guy didn't work out and you go, okay, forget it. I don't need anybody, I'm gonna do it my own. Yeah, and you did what? What was the first steps? Like I am gonna go buy an e-commerce company, a distressed one, a-

Josh Marsden (07:30.998)
Yep. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (07:40.839)
a great overvalued one or a profitable one or what was the thesis on this and the buying strategy.

Josh Marsden (07:48.818)
Yeah, yeah, such a good question. I mean, you know, it's, it's funny because, you know, we've grown and I've grown so much since the first purchase we made, you know, at the time when we made our you know, first purchase, I mean, you know, you think you know, you know what you know, but you really don't, you know, you know, right. I mean, well, meaning that, you know, even you know, back then we were buying like we bought a group of businesses in

Jon Stoddard (08:09.104)
Every day!

Josh Marsden (08:18.806)
or early spring 2022. And out of that group, only one of them was a really good business that we should have bought. The other businesses we shouldn't have bought. But we bought those other businesses because we thought that we could buy those businesses. They were good purchases that we could turn them around and because they were beat up Chevy's as I call them, that we would have to put some work into to get good valuations out of those businesses. But the...

The problem was that once a business is dead, it's super hard to revive that business. And some of the businesses we bought had been not profitable throughout 2021 or had a previously working marketing strategy that was not working anymore because of changes with Facebook ads, for example. And we hadn't had marketing and sales running for...

several months prior to us purchasing it. So we were buying like businesses that, you know, we were really, you know, wasting our time and energy. Yeah, distress. Yeah, we got great deals. Unprofitable, yeah. Unprofitable. Yep.

Jon Stoddard (09:22.847)
distress businesses, were they distress? When I say distress, do you mean unprofitable or profitable? Unprofitable, so you could not put the cardiac arrest machines on there and get them back going, even though with a guy with a worldwide book on Facebook. Yeah, and I'm not saying that's, you know, yeah. I'm just saying it's a difficult task to revive a dead business, yeah.

Josh Marsden (09:34.968)
No.

I know. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It was okay. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, they were. It's it. It is. Yeah.

Oh yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, because you know, sometimes businesses have inherent issues, you know, like one of those businesses, their cogs were, you know, pricing were, was way too high. And there was just no way that we could buy customers, um, you know, profitably, um, with the cogs the way they were. And we didn't see that until we really got our, you know, some time in the business. Yeah. But we couldn't because. Correct. Yeah. I love how you said that. It's a.

Jon Stoddard (10:09.635)
Even if you increase the double the price, but you couldn't double the price because there was no elasticity in the market.

Josh Marsden (10:19.05)
You just spoke economics there. Um, but it's true. A hundred percent true. That was the case with that one.

Jon Stoddard (10:24.187)
Yeah, I mean, that's always like, everybody looks at the business, cogs are big, and they go, well, let's say increase the price. I go, well, five of your competitors are below your price. So they're just, your customers, they're just gonna swim over that pond. Yeah, they're not gonna work. So you came out with this strategy, you got a lot of lessons with it. How many of those businesses did you shelf that you originally purchased? Did you say, we can't get it going?

Josh Marsden (10:38.222)
That's right. Yeah.

Josh Marsden (10:49.935)
No, no, it's okay. Yeah. So we've, we've shelved for businesses so far. Yeah, I mean, you know, and the one good business out of that initial group of purchases, unfortunately, the partnership didn't work out which can happen. And, and that got dissolved, you know, maybe I think it was like two months into it. But you know, it's, it's night and day, like where we are now versus then I mean, when it comes to like our purchasing process.

I mean, it's so rigorous now and you know, there's so much detail to it. And, and we also are just much more stripped on like what businesses that we would even consider purchasing and also our buy boxes changed. Like back then we were just like wanting to buy businesses. We didn't care. You know, we didn't know. Yeah. I mean, like one of those, you know, one of those businesses we bought for zero down, we were like, yes, we bought a business for zero down, but it was a shit. It was a crap business. You know, I mean, yeah.

Jon Stoddard (11:35.729)
You can like it.

Jon Stoddard (11:44.712)
Yahoo!

Josh Marsden (11:46.69)
But but now it's like we're buying businesses value between one and 5 million, we're buying, you know, multi seven figure businesses, you know, businesses are going to help us get to our big hairy audacious goal faster, and also with less headaches along the way versus those early businesses, you know, with businesses that, you know, are going to help us accomplish that 100 million annual goal that we have, because, you know, we're looking to build a portfolio of businesses that are doing 100 million annually, this way we could package them up and then go sell.

Jon Stoddard (12:16.699)
Yeah. So you're looking for a hundred million portfolio, the total price at some point. Yeah. It's a 10 year goal or five year goal. Gross revenue. Yeah. So looking at a baseball metaphor, you definitely took some swings at some pitches outside your strike zone and you fouled or bunted out, you know, ground out or something, so you learned a lot of lessons. Now, what is a good business? A dis, you stay disciplined.

Josh Marsden (12:20.29)
Correct. Yeah, well, that's the gross revenue amongst the entire portfolio that we want to hit.

Josh Marsden (12:37.655)
Yeah.

We did.

Jon Stoddard (12:43.899)
What does the characteristics of a good e-commerce business look like? Like, okay, the revenue is has to be a top line. What.

Josh Marsden (12:48.279)
Yeah.

Josh Marsden (12:52.95)
Has to be at minimum like seven figures in the last 12 months at minimum. Yep.

Jon Stoddard (12:56.403)
All right. And the bottom line has to be what kind of margin on that? Above double digits to what?

Josh Marsden (13:00.234)
Yeah, so at least.

Yeah, I mean at least a 15% net profit margin on that.

Jon Stoddard (13:06.967)
Okay, and the cost of goods would be what? 50% somewhere right around there or less?

Josh Marsden (13:14.87)
Yeah, I mean, it's hard to say just because, you know, in some markets, you know, you pay less per click and so therefore you can afford a higher cogs, you know, in other markets, you know, it's a little tighter, there's more competition. So you know, you need a lower cogs to actually, you know, be competitive. So it really depends. But

Jon Stoddard (13:32.575)
And so it depends on what you have to pay per click and cost of acquisition of a customer, right? Yeah, through that funnel. When you look at the expenses, what do you look for when you're looking down the chart accounts and you see expenses? Hey, these are in line or these are out of line. It's a red flag I'm passing. Or you discount it.

Josh Marsden (13:38.626)
Correct. Yep. Correct. Yep.

Josh Marsden (13:56.018)
Do it. Yeah. I mean, it would be a red flag. I mean, it wouldn't be a red flag. It would be a yellow flag if, for example, because we have P&Ls, you know, we're reviewing in the acquisition process with the new potential acquisitions. And then we get to a stage in our due diligence process where we have to go through their business account and really verify all the transactions. And if something shows up that wasn't showing up on the actual P&L, you know, that's a yellow flag. And then we're going to reach out to the owner seller and be like, hey, what is this?

Jon Stoddard (14:06.076)
Right.

Josh Marsden (14:23.938)
Can you explain what this is? Why wasn't this on the P&L? And that wouldn't be something that we would completely decide right away that we don't wanna buy the business. It just really depends on what the owner seller says and we'll go from there. And also what it is and what the amount is. Because if it's a high liability, obviously that's gonna be a reason for us to walk away from the deal. But we're...

we're working with some successful businesses here and business owners that are a little bit more seasoned and usually aren't trying to hide stuff from us because they don't want to waste their time and we don't want to waste our time either. We haven't found that too much as we've increased our buy box into businesses that are ran by seasoned, experienced entrepreneurs.

Jon Stoddard (15:20.083)
So what you're translating, now that you're not swinging at these pitches, these outside your strike zone, these bigger businesses are more honest and transparent about their business. Not always, but yeah. Yeah. Let me go back to that balance sheet. What do you do if you do see the debt on there? You know, if it's a debt to equity ratio, it's really high. Is that a red flag? You...

Josh Marsden (15:33.382)
Usually, not always, but usually, usually. Yeah, usually.

Jon Stoddard (15:49.127)
or yellow flag you pass on immediately or go, what was the debt used for?

Josh Marsden (15:51.11)
Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, because we don't want to buy any negative net profit businesses, you know, and, you know, so if something like that shows up, you know, we won't even consider it. I mean, it won't even get past step one. Like in our first step in our due diligence checklist, there, you know, we looked to find out whether or not there is that much debt in the business. And if there is that much debt in the business.

Jon Stoddard (16:17.896)
Yeah.

Josh Marsden (16:20.19)
you know, it's not a good business because we want to buy a company that's profitable on day zero, you know, meaning that we're stepping into a profitable business with good cash flow. And so we don't want a business that doesn't have.

Jon Stoddard (16:33.231)
Yeah. Uh, when you buy a cashflow business, what do you look for in paying in a multiple on these seven figure businesses for an e-commerce, what does it like standard like, Hey, this is, do you use, do you use all the formulas, discount cashflow, or do you do use comps or all of the above?

Josh Marsden (16:53.534)
Yeah, so one of my mentors is the CEO of DealFlow, a brokerage, and also it's co-owned by several other mentors, Josh Snow and Lois Hussle. And they've told me fairly recently that a business that is doing up to five million annually can get up to a 4X multiple in e-commerce. If it's...

Jon Stoddard (17:17.507)
Five million annually. Is that top line or bottom line? Top line, okay, okay.

Josh Marsden (17:19.778)
Top line, gross revenue, top line, yep. Yeah, and then if it's doing over five million annually, then it could get up to a 6X. So that's how we view multiples when we're applying multiples to potential acquisitions.

Jon Stoddard (17:34.235)
Yeah. And how much multiple do you bake in if the business is like, Hey, we got a lot of reoccurring customers or there's a really big profit margin. It's going to help that. Yeah.

Josh Marsden (17:45.086)
Yeah. Oh yeah. No, that's a, that's a very desirable, you know, those are two very desirable traits having, you know, reoccurring revenue and also having, you know, high profit margin. Um, yeah, I mean, we would definitely, you know, um, give it more of a, you know, increase on the multiple, uh, if, you know, we were looking at a business that has those characteristics. So if it's doing less than 5 million annually, you know, there's a chance that it'll get around three, 3.5 maybe. I mean, a four is rare.

you know, when it's up to a 5 million annual revenue, it really has to have like a lot of characteristics like trademarks, IPs, patents, you know, unique product that can't be ripped off, you know, that nobody else sells due to maybe a worldwide patent, for example, and it has those characteristics you mentioned, then maybe we may make the argument that there's a Forex there, but usually it's about a three to 3.5.

Jon Stoddard (18:38.043)
And do you have a committee that you go around and talk to in this group? Or as you go, now that you're by yourself or

Josh Marsden (18:46.082)
Um, you know, I've got a great team behind me. Um, you know, my, uh, head of acquisitions, um, you know, he's a. Stellar guy, very experienced in the M&A space and, um, you know, he runs our acquisitions now, um, you know, at one point I was the man doing a lot and including head of acquisition. Um, but, uh, luckily, you know, he's on the team and he's doing a great job there. So, you know, I actually defer to him, um, in a lot of cases, but then if there's, you know, if we need outside wisdom.

We'll reach out to the mastermind that we're in. We'll get feedback from different people. Luckily, I've been in the space now for over 10 years, so I have a solid Rolodex. I've got people I could text that are very, very experienced M&A people that can give me feedback. So if we need that feedback, we'll get it, but usually we can handle it internally.

Jon Stoddard (19:17.447)
deal flow guys. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (19:27.955)
What are your thoughts? Yeah, yeah.

Jon Stoddard (19:36.859)
Yeah. What kind of decision making do you put on if a business has, you know, 90, a hundred percent of customer acquisition comes from PPC, uh, versus a business where, you know, 50% comes from PPC and 50% comes from a great social media following, like let's say a hundred thousand Instagram followers, a hundred thousand Facebook followers, and he's done a great job of building a community there.

Josh Marsden (20:05.59)
Yeah, yeah. So basically you're talking about a company actually has a brand versus a company that doesn't have a brand but uses paid advertising and has had success. Yeah, we would definitely give more weight to the company that has a brand and also is using paid advertising. And we've seen, you know, through the application of the ARM 5 formula that when a company has a brand and then you do paid advertising, the potential for the ROI...

Jon Stoddard (20:06.493)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (20:10.044)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (20:13.832)
Yeah.

Josh Marsden (20:33.346)
from paid advertising is massive versus, oh yeah, well, not the click through ratio, but just the return on ad spend. So, you know, like, you know, for example, I'll just use this as an example. We worked with a successful supplement business back in 2020 and 2019. And in 2020, we saw days where we were spending like $1,200 and we were making back $135,000. Ridiculous.

Jon Stoddard (20:35.68)
is a higher click through ratio. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (21:03.555)
What for what kind of what kind of product was that?

Josh Marsden (21:04.53)
Yeah, they had a whole suite of supplements. And the reason why, it was like cortisol, formula control, for example. There was, what's it called? What's the supplement that helps you with your stomach? Probiotics, that's right. Yeah, like I take their probiotics still, for example. And yeah, that company saw a 600%...

Jon Stoddard (21:09.734)
Oh wow, yeah.

Jon Stoddard (21:23.847)
Yeah, probiotics.

Josh Marsden (21:31.618)
ROI from every dollar spent on ads throughout 2020 with us. And that's because they had a strong brand coming in and we maintained the brand and kept pushing more valuable content to, to build the brand up even further. And so a brand, a brand that actually has that, you know, there's so much potential for, for paid advertising and, you know, the return on ads and we can see that. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (21:54.299)
Yeah. So do you like supplement companies, the vitamins line? And there's a reason I guess like I clicked on something at Jaco WikiLinks and he's, he's got a huge brand with his podcast and his background. And now he's selling vitamins and his little protein cookies. And he's going to follow you everywhere. If you click on his product, he's got to be making a ton of cash on that. Yeah.

Josh Marsden (22:08.011)
Mm-hmm.

Josh Marsden (22:16.088)
Yeah.

Josh Marsden (22:21.377)
Oh, I know. Oh yeah, yeah. No, I've seen a lot of examples like that where you've had someone build a very strong brand for themselves and then they've added e-commerce and then that e-commerce company just blows up because he has a brand, he has trust. It really makes a big impact.

Jon Stoddard (22:37.072)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So is it, how would you score it if it's a celebrity versus a, it just a great product. And I'm, and I'm, if I think about looking at a brand, uh, I can't think of one that was not led by a celebrity. Like if they didn't have a celebrity versus having a celebrity, how do you score that? And he goes, okay, we're going to, it's a 4X. No, it's a 3.8X.

Josh Marsden (23:02.69)
Yeah, well, you know, I hate to say it, but you know, products are kind of a dime a dozen, you know, I mean, there's always going to be competition, there's always going to be other, you know, products that are competition, whether it's the same product or similar products. And so, you know, what really gets a product to stand out is, you know, the brand and you know, what's attached to it. And so for brand, if a company has a celebrity attached to it, I mean, that's going to be a much more valuable company, and they're going to command a higher multiple easily.

So, I would give like an e-comm company that has a great product, but not a really good brand. Let's just say to your questioner a second ago that it's a company that lives off of paid advertising, 90 to 100% of their sales comes from that. They would probably get like a two to 2.5, more or less. Whereas a company that is more established and has maybe some sort of...

ambassador or some sort of influencer behind the brand, they're more eligible to get like a 2.5 to 3.5 depending on other characteristics in the brand.

Jon Stoddard (24:08.371)
Yeah.

Yeah. And what about longevity? Do you look for companies that have been around for five years or longer, 10 years? Or, you know, you can say something like growing, Hey, one of your guys is like three years into this and he's doing real well with it, but he wants to sell.

Josh Marsden (24:20.702)
Yeah, I mean, we, Red Gate is waiting.

Josh Marsden (24:29.278)
Yeah, no, that gives weight. I mean, you know, we're always looking for 10 year companies. We don't want to buy a company that's only been around for like a year. It hasn't really been around long enough. You know, that could be just a flash in the pan success. Like our next two acquisitions that were closing at the end of this month to mid September. You know, these are both 10 year companies, especially one of them. One of them has been around for six years, for example. So we're always looking for companies that have been...

Jon Stoddard (24:37.768)
Right.

Josh Marsden (24:58.072)
around for several years at minimum.

Jon Stoddard (25:00.771)
Yeah. And what, what do you, what do you put on the motivation for selling? What's the motive for selling for that? I mean, it's like, if it's a 25 year old, he just luckily got, you know, he hit a home run and the first attempt versus a guy that's, you know, been doing it for a while and he's just tired and wants to retire. That's kind of a, both ends of the spectrum.

Josh Marsden (25:07.185)
Um...

Josh Marsden (25:23.73)
Yeah, I hear you. I wouldn't put a whole lot of weight either way. I mean, you always want to try to meet them where they're at and appeal to their why for selling in order to get them to the finish line. So that's the way that I would apply there, is I would try to find a way to make it a win-win in our conversations and the offer, et cetera. So this way, it's good business for everybody involved.

Jon Stoddard (25:34.812)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (25:53.499)
Yeah, what do you do with businesses you seem to be overvalued? I mean, it's a nice business and it's a little bit overvalued, maybe just by 1X.

Josh Marsden (26:01.802)
Yeah, I mean, you know, for example, I'll use an example I have right now on my table, or my desk, I should say. So I've got a business that is owned by a friend of mine that I've known for about nine years now, quite some time. And it's a great business. I mean, and that's two million annually. And he literally works maybe like two days a week. He's got five team members. I mean, it's

It's a very efficient business and it's very well known in the entrepreneur space. It's a media company. It's not a physical product e-commerce company, but I see a lot of synergy.

Jon Stoddard (26:36.479)
Does this guy drive around in a Rolls Royce and Phoenix? No, okay.

Josh Marsden (26:39.346)
No, no, but so he's valuing his company at a 7x, which is really, really aggressive. You know, I don't know if it's really worth that, you know, that in this case, like I would turn to people that have more M&A experience than I do. And I would get their feedback on this, you know, and see what they say, you know, when it comes to approaching this business and talking to him about buying a majority share of his business.

because I've got people around me that have been doing this much longer than I have. They really know how to value a business properly and they'll advise me accordingly. And I'll go from there. I might keep the 7X. If it's his offer, then it's our terms. Because I go according to this rule. Their offer, our terms, or our offer, their terms.

But it's hard to answer that question just because every business and every situation is unique. But if a business is overvalued, you typically ground it and come at them with a much lower offer and then you start from there. It's just like any negotiating. You try to get them to start low with you and then you try to work your way up and meet somewhere in the middle where it makes sense.

Jon Stoddard (28:05.071)
Yeah. Let me go back to the armed, uh, five. Is that a process of, uh, building a company or, or is that buying a company? Is that you put them.

Josh Marsden (28:18.258)
No, that's a marketing strategy and a marketing process. There's actually nine key systems in the RM5 formula. So there's nine systems. But you know, that's just our methodology for scaling an e-commerce company.

Jon Stoddard (28:22.088)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (28:32.751)
Okay. So yeah, you know, Michael Baraslawski out of Thailand, he will buy these small content companies and he does four things, right? You know, he gets the backlinks up, he creates more content, you know, and he gets it SEO ready and, and then he monetizes it. Then he sells it for 10X what he bought it for. And he's worked on a couple of funds himself. What do you guys do? Tell me about this RM5 or this these nine methodologies that you do.

Josh Marsden (29:00.378)
Yeah, sure. Well, you know, ARM-5, I mean, it stands for authority, reciprocity, and monetization and the five profit amplifiers. And so basically what it means is that if you establish an authority in a market, if you create real reciprocity by putting out valuable content on a consistent basis, and you have good monetization strategies and processes in play, that you're going to see success, you know, in growing a business. And so we really focus on those three pillars.

with all of our companies by applying the ARM 5 formula. And then the nine key systems, I could pull up what those are because there's quite a bit here, but there's omnichannel advertising, for example, there's scaling methodologies, there's our testing matrix, there's content marketing. There's nine key systems that in a way are fundamental to running an e-comm business, but most e-comm business owners...

or teams in Econ businesses or agencies, they're not running these nine systems the way we are, and they're not running it the way we are at the level that we're running it at too. Cause I've got a team too behind me that's done over 650 million indirect marketing, literally over the last two decades. So I've got a very tenured experienced season team that know how to really apply our strategies and our processes at a very high level.

So that's what we do with the ARM 5 formula and that's what the ARM 5 formula stands for.

Jon Stoddard (30:29.271)
Yeah. Let me ask you, go back and ask you about the market size. What does the market size have to be for you to say, you know, for instance, I'm just thinking about this one company that I looked at over Christine McDaniel has a company, but it's a, you know, it's probably a limited market. And, but it's cranking out, you know, 200 K of SDE year over year for the last 10 years, but it's a small market. It's not going to go.

to $1 million. What do you need to see in a market for this to be an exciting project for you or an acquisition target?

Josh Marsden (31:07.703)
Yeah, um...

You know, I mean, I don't know much about the market or the business besides what you've just said. But my initial thoughts are how deep has this business gone into the market? You know, meaning that how much have they really monetized their customers? Because there's probably some opportunity there because I've seen it, you know, time and time again, in consulting with Ecom companies, advising Ecom companies, or just working on Ecom companies that, you know, typically a lot of Ecom companies aren't, you know, really maximizing their profit on the back end. So there's probably, there probably is more there to tap into.

Beyond that too, let's just say we're talking about a US market, right? Okay, so the US market is very limited and they're doing a great job but there's maybe a little bit more there they can tap into. But then once they tap into, what's next? Well, replicate the business. Replicate the business for other markets and other languages. I mean there's plenty of customers out there around the world and so that's the direction we would take that business is we would replicate the business for a different market with a different language.

And we would just run advertising in those markets. And the nice thing about that too, is that, you know, let's just say it's a U S based business, it's going to be more competitive in the U S and you're going to pay more per customer per click. So we take it to, let's just say Germany, for example, you know, this is a much smaller market, a much cheaper market, not as sophisticated as the U S. And so we're going to probably see a lot more profit anyway, coming from expanding, you know, to Germany, for example. So.

So there's always opportunities is basically what I'm getting at.

Jon Stoddard (32:39.419)
Yeah. You know, I saw MrBeast on Joe Rogan and he goes, you know, only, you know, five, seven percent of the population speaks English. That's like the rest of the world does not speak English. So then he goes, what are you gonna do? And he goes like, we just translate it to the, you know, the language in that country.

Josh Marsden (32:53.634)
Right.

Josh Marsden (33:00.098)
Yep. Yeah. No, it's a, it's a very, you know, uh, easy scaling, you know, uh, methodology, you know, I mean, you know, there's a lot of entrepreneurs that do that. Um, it's, you know, it's really easy to be able to expand a business when, uh, when you scale horizontally like that.

Jon Stoddard (33:17.039)
Yeah. So what, what does your cap stack look like? You, let's say you find a $5 million e-commerce business. It's got great potential, clean books, owner wants out, uh, very flexible, ethical, everything looks like a green light. Okay. We need to make them an offer. What, what are those offers look like? Is it a lot of cash down or 5% cash down or, or what is it?

Josh Marsden (33:39.894)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it depends. It depends on, you know, for one, you know, what they're looking for, you know, in the sale of their business, you know, because again, you know, you always want to, you know, have a win win. And then two, it really depends on the size of the purchase, because if we're purchasing a business, you know, let's just say in our buy box between one and five million, you know, we've got various ways we can buy a business like that right.

I mean, we've got SBA loans with partners in our investor community that we could possibly use towards a purchase here. And SBA loans are very favorable, 10 year payment terms, interest isn't too bad. Maybe, right. And that's why we have partners. That's why we have partners. That's why we've invited investors in our community to co-own businesses with us and apply for SBA loans with our partners at Ecom Lending.

Jon Stoddard (34:20.859)
Yeah, but you can only have, you as an individual can only have one SBA lot. Yeah.

Josh Marsden (34:36.942)
and hold the guarantees while we do all the work. Oh yeah, I know Stephen, yeah, I've spoken with Stephen. He's a good guy. So that's one option. But then we've also got relationships with different investment groups. We also have relationships with companies that actually raise the capital for a purchase. So we've got different ways we can skin the cat. And in the future, we're gonna have our own private equity fund and company too.

Jon Stoddard (34:38.808)
Steven Spear.

Yeah, yeah.

Josh Marsden (35:06.442)
And we're going to have different funnels driving people to invest in the fund. And our goal there is to raise at least 10 million. And then we've got financial partners throughout the world that can forex that cash too and turn into 40 million even. And now we have a much bigger fund that we can go and buy really good businesses with, using our now very sophisticated, rigorous process that has come out of...

pain that we felt from our early acquisitions. So, that's how we're able to buy businesses right now.

Jon Stoddard (35:39.167)
It, yeah. Are those investment groups, for instance, like Justin over at Empire Flippers, you know, they've got a group, you know, a lot of the e-commerce lenders, e-commerce sellers that they sold to didn't want to do it over again themselves, but they willing to put their money behind somebody else operators. So they started a fund. Are you talking about those kinds of groups or are these?

Josh Marsden (36:02.987)
Mm-hmm.

Jon Stoddard (36:07.531)
separate groups that you've created relationships with, or are they always looking for new products to invest in?

Josh Marsden (36:12.234)
Yeah, these are separate groups.

Josh Marsden (36:17.014)
Yeah, no, these are separate groups that just my network has led to, or different masterminds I'm in, different groups I'm in has led to those connections. I'm familiar with Empire Flippers and their private equity fund. Our private equity fund is definitely going to be very similar to that. The difference is that obviously we own it versus us collaborating with them and they own it.

they're in the driver's seat there, so they have the most leverage, which is why we haven't reached out to them and tried to work something out there. We want to do our own thing. But yeah, the rolodex of financing options has come from just our own work and our own network.

Jon Stoddard (36:59.751)
Yeah. How long does that process take? So you say, Hey, we love the business. You get an LOI, you sign it, and you put some kind of presentation together with the investors and say, this is what we can do to it. These are the opportunities and this is what we're going to. Now it's a buy and hold, right? It's not a buy and sell, right? At the moment.

Josh Marsden (37:20.866)
Yeah, no, no. Yeah, we're not trying to immediately flip businesses. We're not in that business. We're in the business of holding a business for at least 12 plus months and scaling it up during that time and increasing its valuation and selling it. But we also don't wanna sell them individually necessarily. We may consider it if a good offer comes along, but we wanna package them because when you package businesses, you get a much higher multiple and it also benefits everybody involved.

since each business will also have max value since we're getting a bigger multiple. And so that's why, you know, right now our model is inviting investors one-to-one into our companies to be a part of these companies as we purchase them.

Jon Stoddard (38:03.207)
And these are separate LLCs of a holding company.

Josh Marsden (38:06.974)
Yeah, yeah, we have it all, you know, structured, you know, correctly. I laughed just because I've learned so much about, you know, the things that I'm doing right now. It's just crazy how far I've come over the last 18 months. But but yeah, I mean, we have our holding company that owns or co owns all of our companies and each company has its own LLC. So we're doing things right, clean, organized, segmented, you name it.

Jon Stoddard (38:31.035)
Yeah. And when you send the presentation out to these investors and it's a, you said it was like, we talked a little bit before we got on the phone, you got a, about a email list of a thousand potential high net worth individuals. That's what you said, something like that.

Josh Marsden (38:43.266)
Well, actually we have 17,000 in our database. Yeah. And, but we have a private Facebook group of over a thousand that are investors, you know, that have been attracted to the opportunity of investing into EECOM due to the returns you can get in EECOM. But our entire list, even though it's primarily like EECOM business owners from the last 10 plus years, a lot of them have converted over into becoming investors being interested in what we're doing.

Jon Stoddard (38:45.683)
17,000 investors.

Jon Stoddard (38:52.658)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (39:10.011)
Right. Yeah.

Josh Marsden (39:11.827)
So we actually have a very large audience.

Jon Stoddard (39:13.935)
And what do you ask for them? Let's say you've got a business that's a 5 million top line and it's doing 15%. So, uh, you're going to buy it at a four X. Um, and you're going to bring, you always bring how much cash to the party and then some debt, and then you have a gap that you need investors to do. What does that look like?

Josh Marsden (39:39.626)
Yeah, so you're talking about $3 million purchase if my math is correct. Yep.

Jon Stoddard (39:42.063)
Yeah, about a 3 million. Yeah, 15%, 4X of, yeah, that's 750,000. So 3X, yes.

Josh Marsden (39:48.926)
Yeah, I mean, yep. So that would be like probably an SBA purchase, first and foremost, you know, just because we have, as of right now, and I'm sure we can get more of them, we have a pre-approved SBA loans up to 3 million, for example. So that would be probably, you know, what we would use as a vehicle to be able to purchase a business like that. Obviously, it's gonna come down to the offer terms and, you know, there might be less money upfront, you know, we might do like,

Ideally, we're going to always do some sort of like at least 75-25, meaning 75% of the value, which is 2.5, I believe. 2.5 million would be like upfront while the rest of it would be like on an earn out. And the reason why we'd like to do a deal like that with those offer terms is because the fact that it's going to encourage the owner seller to really care about the ongoing success of the company and also in the handoff.

Josh Marsden (40:48.07)
really invested in our success with the company. And so we're always gonna do something like that in every single offer that we put together.

Jon Stoddard (40:55.459)
Yeah. Well, what do you, what would you say if they didn't want to do that? Would you kill the deal? And the reason I say that is I referred a business to another guy that, uh, puts MSPs, IT companies in front of private equity and they ask him to stay on. They didn't want to stay on. So they just killed the deal. Just that simple. Yeah.

Josh Marsden (41:13.458)
Yeah, I gotcha. Yeah, I mean, it's a case by case basis. You know, I mean, if the business for supremely confident, we can step into the business, and we can have success with the business right away. You know, we may not care as much about, you know, having some sort of earn out like that and having the owner seller really invested in our success. But in most cases, we

would want the owner seller to be invested in our success. It just really depends on the business.

Jon Stoddard (41:44.911)
Yeah. And when you say you bring these partners in with investors, and I think the SBA 51% has to, you know, you're going to put a personal guarantee of like, who are these people? How do you vet them and say, okay, this is a brand new guy. Would you like to run this? And how do you know this guy's going to do the job for you or guy, girl, whatever.

Josh Marsden (42:08.106)
Yeah. So we have really good relationships with all of our investors that we brought on and we've had several investors show interest and apply and get approved for SB8 loans. And they've done so with the terms that they're going to own 25% of the company that they're purchasing with us, but they're not going to be doing any of the work. They're not going to be doing anything. They're just going to basically just...

sit on this as an asset for them. And so that's the structure that we've been following with all the investors that have been approved for SBA loans that we're exploring purchasing businesses with. Those are the terms we've been using.

Jon Stoddard (42:40.54)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (42:51.251)
So they're gonna put their personal guarantee up. Do they put in any cash themselves also? Yeah.

Josh Marsden (42:53.974)
Yep. That's an option. We don't require it. So, you know, we go into the, you know, those agreements with some of our investors with the notion that we are going to provide the cash upfront to close on the SB8 loan. So this way they don't. So it's a very favorable deal for them because, you know, they're, they are putting some risk up front, obviously with the guarantee, but no cash, you know, I mean, so they're going to be, you know,

that could produce cash for them, you know, basically for free, you know, which is incredible and ridiculous that we're doing that. But yeah, yeah. Yeah, they get 25%, you know, net profits, you know, whether we do it monthly or quarterly or yearly even, they get 25% of the future sale of the company, you know, even though we're doing all the heavy lifting, you know, from

Jon Stoddard (43:30.663)
Yeah. Do they get dividends or percentage of the profits or, or are they just, okay. Yeah.

Josh Marsden (43:50.23)
point A to Z, you know, when it comes to identifying the business, buying the business, you know, managing the business, growing the business, you know, setting the business up for sale, selling the business, we're doing all.

Jon Stoddard (44:01.831)
Yeah. And this LLC that they purchased, this entity here, how does that, is it just the value of their equity in the holding company? Let's say you sell this in five years to a private equity company for a hundred million dollars. And do they get a percentage of this holding total, holding company?

Josh Marsden (44:24.478)
No, right now we're doing one-to-one deals, meaning that we're doing deals on each of our individual companies that we're purchasing. So the holding company is 100% owned by me. And in the future, when we go to package and sell, in a portfolio roll-up, what we'll probably do, and I'll lean on people smarter than me and more experienced than me when it comes to this, but what we'll probably do is we'll probably just transition.

Jon Stoddard (44:26.931)
Yeah.

Josh Marsden (44:51.806)
all these companies into a new holding company. And that will be the holding company that we're basically packaging and selling.

Jon Stoddard (44:58.963)
Gotcha. And when you go to these people that are smarter than you and done all this stuff before, what are they saying? They say, keep doing this SBA partner stuff? Or do they say, hey, you need to raise a fund so you can go take advantage of opportunities fast?

Josh Marsden (45:14.666)
Yeah, no, I mean, I mean, they think altogether everything I'm doing is smart so far, you know, and they do recommend that we work towards having a private equity fund and company and, you know, right now we're in the midst of making that transition and actually having like a reg D and reg A company, which is exciting. It's definitely something new, you know, that I never thought in a million years that I'd be doing, you know, at one point in my life. But, but it's cool that, you know, we're about to unlock, you know, that

exciting opportunity for ourselves and also for investors out there. You know, cause, cause we'll be able to use the reggae side to really appeal to the masses. We'll, we'll be able to market to just about anybody, drive them into using a phone app where they can use Apple pay to, you know, invest a hundred bucks even, you know, and then we'll be also working with, you know, accredited investors in the reg D side of the company and, and working to raise capital that way too.

into our private equity fund and company that we're building. So we have some exciting opportunities on the horizon.

Jon Stoddard (46:15.795)
Yeah, I always thought I've worked on reggae and I always thought reggae's are great for e-commerce companies. Cause you have a big list you can go to. It goes, hey, you like the product. Would you like to own part of the company too? They go, well, what is it? It's just a hundred dollars. You mean I gotta go part of a company for a hundred? Yes, I'll do it, right? Yeah. So when you guys, when you go in, do you have a mastermind that you actually go to that?

Josh Marsden (46:32.068)
Yep. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (46:43.195)
when you start asking these questions or is it a loosely, hey, I got this guy in my speed dial and I'll just give him a call because we've done some business together in the past or something. Both, yeah. What kind of masterminds do you go to? Do we know them? Yeah.

Josh Marsden (46:53.158)
Both. I've been in a lot of masterminds. Well, I'm in the Powerhouse mastermind currently ran by Josh Snow and Lois House. It's an e-com centric group. And so I'm officially a part of that right now. I've been in other masterminds over the years. I've been in the digital marketer certified partner program at one point was kind of like a semi mastermind. It's now a

Jon Stoddard (47:22.019)
Is that Ryan Dice, digital marker? Okay, right, yeah.

Josh Marsden (47:23.562)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I was one of the first 12 and that was late 2014. From that point on, I mean, I've been in baby bathwater. I've been in Ollie Billson's next level business. You know, I've been in.

Jon Stoddard (47:39.775)
Well, he's doing something different, isn't he? No?

Josh Marsden (47:42.782)
Yeah, well, I mean, when I was with him, and I think he's still doing this, he's teaching basically like service based companies to transition into a more scalable one to many model is what he's been doing for a while now. And you know, he's awesome. Yeah, and you know, I've been in some other groups too over the years. Ryan LeBex, Next Level, funny they both have the same name actually, now that I think of it.

Jon Stoddard (47:57.16)
Yeah.

Josh Marsden (48:10.842)
Ryan Leveque's group was called Next Level Mastermind also. But you know, yeah, there's too many next level masterminds out there these days. Yeah, but Ryan's moved on to bigger and better things. I was there for the closing of that mastermind as he transitioned out of it.

Jon Stoddard (48:16.903)
If you're starting a mastermind, don't call it that. Just pick something different. Yeah, yeah.

Jon Stoddard (48:30.611)
Yeah. How long have you stayed with your masterminds? I mean, I was introduced to a couple masterminds recently. Now everybody knows like Tiger 21, you got to have a net worth over 10 million or something. Rob Dyrdek's in there and he's increased his wealth and they stay for a long time. What do you look for in a mastermind for what you put in, you get out or what is it? Like you're looking for somebody that's done 10x what you've done.

Josh Marsden (48:59.082)
Yeah, it just depends on what I'm looking for. Like when I joined Powerhouse, I was looking for a group that was e-comm centric. I mean, I thought about joining Genius Network. Joe Polish used to be a client, Genius Network used to be a client of ours when we were an agency. We did some great work with them and I've still got a great relationship with Joe.

And I thought about joining War Room, War Room obviously closed since then. And then, but at the time I was wanting a group that could really support us as an e-comm aggregator and could support the team too, and give the team access to people that we can lean on and also education and trainings and things like that. And so, that's why I chose Powerhouse. But so, I'm always looking for,

you know, a group to join where it makes sense based on, you know, what our motivations are at the time.

Jon Stoddard (49:59.591)
Yeah, but you stay with them.

Josh Marsden (50:02.142)
Yeah, at least a year. I mean, you know, we've been with powerhouse for a little bit over a year now, I believe, or at least close to it. So you know, I think we're about to cross the year if we haven't already. But but yeah, usually I stay in a mastermind for at least a year.

Jon Stoddard (50:15.379)
Yeah. And what do you do? How do you handle problems? If you've got a significant problem, where do you go for inspiration? Is it just like the mastermind or you go back and meditate or you go out for a 15-mile jog in Phoenix in August?

Josh Marsden (50:34.542)
Well, I'm not that crazy, but I have been crazy. I used to be a marathon runner and I used to run in the heat sometimes. I wouldn't care. I would just suck it up and just go. I wouldn't care if it's 115 outside. I would just suck it up and just do it.

Jon Stoddard (50:42.299)
Oh, did ya? Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (50:50.6)
I always say, like, I drive along, I'm down in Tucson, which is only five degrees cooler, and I'm looking like, those guys are freaking crazy. You're nuts!

Josh Marsden (50:57.47)
Yeah, I know, I know. You know, but there's, it feels good to be crazy. It feels good to like do crazy things and it feels good to, you know, do things that other people won't do. And push yourself physically. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. I definitely like to live on, you know, the edge when it comes to pushing myself physically, but.

Jon Stoddard (51:09.415)
just to know you're alive. What's that song? Yeah, cut yourself to know you're alive, yeah.

Josh Marsden (51:22.006)
But yeah, I mean, you know, to answer your question, I mean, you know, I do meditate just about daily and I do, you know, go to church or at least watch it on, you know, YouTube streaming on Sundays. So I definitely, you know, turn to a higher power for wisdom, you know, every single day. But besides that, I mean, you know, I, you know, I turn to the people that I'm connected with, you know, friends, mentors, you know, you know, trusted advisors.

for feedback when I need it. Because I definitely don't have all the answers. I'm only a human being, and I'm just doing my best. And what I need to do is I need to lean on others or on the higher power to be led in the right direction.

Jon Stoddard (52:04.291)
Yeah, I have to ask you a personal question. So your net worth has obviously grown immensely from an agency now to a, you know, owner of a 14, you know, company. What's changed most about you? I mean, is it the money that's like, oh, that's great, but it's just a marker, it's a scoreboard, it's how I've grown?

Josh Marsden (52:26.146)
Nice.

Josh Marsden (52:35.339)
Yeah, you know, that's a great question. I appreciate that question. You know, I would, you know, it's funny. As this has happened, I've also become a family man. And, you know, I was single for 10 years. I was single for a very long time. And I was, you know, I was having fun, you know, being a single guy, but, you know, eventually it just, you know, eventually it got to a point where I really felt like I...

you know, had to, you know, work on myself and work on my spirituality. And, you know, I did that for several years before I met my fiance. Um, so as I've had this, you know, tremendous success, which I'm super grateful for over the last 18 plus months, you know, I've also become a family man. A lot. I have a baby girl now she's four months old, you know, I'm about a Scarlett.

Jon Stoddard (53:21.619)
What's her name? Yeah. Scar, ooh, that's a pretty name.

Josh Marsden (53:26.382)
Yeah, Scarlett Destiny. So she was named Destiny for a reason. I saw her in a, let's just say, a spiritual awakening back in 2020. I saw her in my dreams, you could say. And it's been a journey. I would say that it's just like what people say. People say that when you have money, it only magnifies who you are. And I'm.

Jon Stoddard (53:28.579)
Hahaha

Josh Marsden (53:54.15)
And, you know, as I've had the success, you know, I, you know, I'm feeling a little emotional even thinking about it. You know, I haven't really changed, you know, who I am. You know, if anything, it's just, it's caused me to remain very strong in my values because, you know, you know, I don't want to get away from my values. You know, I want to stay strong in who I am. And my life has become simpler too. You know, I've gone from, you know, living in.

you know, Scottsdale, downtown Scottsdale, for example, you know, where, you know, if you've been to Scottsdale, then you know that you see, you know, nice cars everywhere. You see, you know, you know, lots of beautiful women left and rights and, you know, it's a different life, you know, and it's, it's a, and when you're around that, you know, that's kind of what you care about. And now I'm living in suburbia, you know, I'm living in Chandler, Arizona, I'm living in a private community and, you know, I go home to my family, I spend time with my family and, you know,

go out much these days. And so it's just, it's different. So I mean, I think the bottom line to answer your question is it really hasn't changed me much. If anything, it's just because of where I've taken my personal life as my professional life has changed and the successes have come from that, that it's really grounded me.

Jon Stoddard (55:09.912)
What forced you, it sounds like your why has changed. I mean, what forced you to go from this living the lifestyle in downtown Scottsdale to nice cars to like, hey man, I'm gonna go clean some diapers, right?

Josh Marsden (55:24.902)
God, you just made me think of like my baby girl's diaper. I just had to change like yesterday. I think it was, anyway, it was terrible. It was terrible. But, you know, I mean, I knew for a while that, you know, I wanted to have a family and I have a 14 year old son. So, I mean, I've been a father for quite some time, but I was a single dad, you know,

Jon Stoddard (55:31.075)
Oh man, they stink, don't they? Hahahaha!

Josh Marsden (55:52.53)
last 13 years. And so, you know, I knew for a while that I wanted to, you know, settle down and, you know, have a family and embrace that life. And, you know, and, you know, what you put out into the universe intentionally is what's going to happen. And that's the intentions that I put out there. So I was okay with walking away from, you know, where I was at before I met my fiance and where I'm at now.

Jon Stoddard (56:16.999)
Yeah, beautiful. Josh, thank you so much for being on this show. I appreciate it.

Josh Marsden (56:23.178)
Yeah, I appreciate it. You're bringing me, you know, into a very sensitive place right now. I feel like, I feel kind of flush with emotion right now. So I'm, you know, it's, it's hard to express myself right now.

Jon Stoddard (56:27.763)
hahaha

Jon Stoddard (56:35.331)
Yeah, I think you're doing a great job because there's no, you can't have intention without emotion behind it. And the emotion is, you know, what's important to you. It's your why. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for being on.

Josh Marsden (56:44.162)
Right, for sure. Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it, man.