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All-In-One: Product Design, Development and Manufacturing

Zack Leonard is the COO, Founder, and President of Gembah, a company that helps entrepreneurs and small businesses navigate the product development life cycle. Gembah champions product innovation and is working to democratize and simplify the product creation process by aiding businesses with the research, design, and manufacturing of new products.

Before his work at Gembah, Zack held positions as the Director of Strategy at Dropoff, the Team Lead of Forecasting, Scheduling, and Scaling at Instacart, and more.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[2:42] Zack Leonard talks about Gembah’s mission of promoting creativity and optimizing product creation
[4:30] Gembah’s ideal clients: entrepreneurs, mid-size businesses, Amazon aggregators, and more
[8:21] How does Gembah help its clients de-risk their supply chains in a post-pandemic world?
[15:51] Zack walks through the product creation process at Gembah
[21:40] How Gembah optimizes the production and distribution of existing products
[22:21] The typical timeframe for constructing and shipping a new — or existing — product

In this episode…

As an entrepreneur or business owner, building an efficient product creation process is essential to your brand’s success. After all, without innovative and imaginative products, how will you continue to grow your company and encourage customer loyalty? Unfortunately, the creative process is fickle — and it’s easy to get stuck in a rut. So, how can you optimize your methodology for creating new products and jumpstart your company’s growth in 2021 and beyond?

This is where Gembah comes in. Gembah helps entrepreneurs and business leaders improve their process of researching, designing, and producing products. By providing expert advice and assistance every step of the way, the team at Gembah helps innovators everywhere make their dream products a reality. And, not only does Gembah help you create amazing products at lightning speed, but it also ensures that you avoid any risks in your supply chain — so you can experience growth and success like never before.

In this episode of the Quiet Light Podcast, Joe Valley sits down with Zack Leonard, the COO, Founder, and President of Gembah, to discuss the secrets to scaling your business through efficient and innovative product creation. Listen in as Zack talks about Gembah’s target client profile, how the company helps entrepreneurs de-risk their global supply chains, and its step-by-step process for inventing and developing a market-changing product. Stay tuned!

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Quiet Light, a brokerage firm that wants to help you successfully sell your online business.

There is no wrong reason for selling your business. However, there is a right time and a right way. The team of leading entrepreneurs at Quiet Light wants to help you discover the right time and strategy for selling your business. By providing trustworthy advice, effective strategies, and honest valuations, your Quiet Light advisor isn’t your every-day broker—they’re your partner and friend through every phase of the exit planning process.

If you’re new to the prospect of buying and selling, Quiet Light is here to support you. Their plethora of top-notch resources will provide everything you need to know about when and how to buy or sell an online business. Quiet Light offers high-quality videos, articles, podcasts, and guides to help you make the best decision for your online business.

Not sure what your business is really worth? No worries. Quiet Light offers a free valuation and marketplace-ready assessment on their website. That’s right—this quick, easy, and free valuation has no strings attached. Knowing the true value of your business has never been easier!

What are you waiting for? Quiet Light is offering the best experience, strategies, and advice to make your exit successful. To learn more, go to quietlight.com, email [email protected], or call 800.746.5034 today.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:07

Hi, folks, it’s the Quiet Light Podcast where we share relentlessly honest insights, actionable tips, and entrepreneurial stories that will help founders identify and reach their goals.

Joe Valley 0:29

Hey folks, Joe Valley here. Thanks again for joining us on the Quiet Light Podcast. Today’s episode is brought to you by I’m going to do it. I’m going to talk about the book. It’s The EXITpreneur’s Playbook. Thank you everybody, for your support we launched a week and a half ago, we tripled the number of reviews that we were shooting for and the number of sales. And the more the more folks that can talk about it and do reviews of the book, the more people we can help. I wrote it for you, the entrepreneur that is out there, slinging it and doing everything they can to build their SaaS content or ecommerce business. Secretly though it’s great for buyers as well. I didn’t expect it to be so good for buyers. But the feedback I’ve gotten is that, you know, they’re, they’re learning things that they never realized that they should be looking at when they’re buying a business. So it’s great for both. Thanks for helping get The EXITpreneur’s Playbook off the ground. Now, today’s guest is somebody he was on, we were just talking about it prior to hitting the record button when the last time he was on, I feel like it was yesterday. But we’re both so busy and businesses growing so fast. It’s actually been almost two years since he’s been on. He runs a business that at the time was just amazing. It was like perfect for everybody in the audience. And today it’s even more perfect for everybody in the audience. Zack Leonard from Gembah. Welcome again to the Quiet Light Podcast

Zack Leonard 1:50

Joe, thanks for having me. It’s crazy to reflect on how long it’s been since you know, we last even saw each other in person or over zoom or something. But always, always a big fan of yours. Congrats on the book. And it very excited to be here and just talk shop with you.

Joe Valley 2:07

Likewise, likewise. So you know, as I said beforehand, I often these days in preparing a full fancy introduction. I think the world of you and what you’re doing the first time we met, you remind me I don’t know if I ever told you you remind me of my, my my college roommate slash best friend that I’ve known for? Oh, I don’t know, 34 years now. So I feel like I had a connection with you. And then it turns out that we are very similar in many ways. You’re you’re running a company that is I think, necessary, right? People asked me why I wrote the book. I said, because it had to be written. I think you started this company because it had to be there to help the folks in the e commerce world. Can you can you just give a summary of what you do at Gembah? And what who you’re serving, if you would mind? Sure.

Zack Leonard 3:01

I think the high level is humans are innately creative, right. And they’re the only species we know on the planet that can actually go out and create. And so what Gembah does is help really enable that creative spirit at the end of the day. That’s the high level. Now, if you’re talking like tactically what we do, we help businesses, entrepreneurs, small midsize, whatever, create a manufacturer of products. And we do that with a team of designers and engineers, that is, you know, open source network that we find at places like under armour, Weber grills and at Boeing. And help them create the collateral that you need to go have intelligent and professional conversations with factories about creating these products. And then you go into the other side of the business, which is the manufacturing side, where we connect you with factories in eight different countries, trying to get competitive bids, ultimately, to get your product out in the wild. And so you can’t really have one without the other. I think that’s the big part of what we bring to the table is that we’re, we’re taking the end and starting there and saying, okay, you want to launch this product, or you want to resource this product? Where does it start? How do we do that? We have to look at the design first, is there something from the design perspective that we can add more value to the customer experience? If it’s something that’s already out there in the wild? Or if it’s something completely new, you have to look at what what the what the competition is doing? Can you can you make the enhancements that you want to a product or create something that’s never been made before for a price that someone will actually buy? There’s a lot of research that goes into that there’s a lot of feasibility studies that go into that. There’s a lot of then collaboration that goes into it, but it’s ultimately on the trajectory of trying to get a product out in the market or trying to figure out the next best version of your product. So that’s what we do,

Joe Valley 4:48

and who you’re doing it for who’s the typical Gembah.

Zack Leonard 4:52

We have a few different customer personas, if you will. You know we have entrepreneurs that you know want to just have a passion For a product or an idea that they want to pursue, that helps solve a problem. We work with small to midsize businesses that, you know, maybe have a hero skew and they want to create the next few or they want to reengineer their existing skew to be more more, you know, they get all that feedback from the customers through reviews and everything. And they start to analyze and say, Okay, what do I need to change to make this better, they come to us to help them with that, or they want to create an ancillary skew that can be complimentary to the existing skew that they have. It could be a scaling SMB, that, you know, I have problems with my supply chain, and I want to go find a better solution, whether that’s pricing whether that’s finding a de risking China, de risking Vietnam, wherever their production currently is finding more funding more producers over there. And then also a bunch of you know, we have Amazon FBA aggregators and sellers that come to us to help try and quick turn all those things I just talked about, so that, you know, the, with, with Amazon, specifically, it’s a very, very fast business, things change every single day. And so for them to react, they need to have a partner or fees or a team in house that can actually do those things for them. And so that’s who we help, you know, along the along their path in their journey of creating products and get them out in the market.

Joe Valley 6:10

You mentioned hero skew, and then I’m going to define it for those in the audience, because I think this is a really, really important thing. For those that have just bought a business with the hero skew, or those that are running a business with the hero skew. Hero skew is defined as a, a skew a customer, a whatever it might be, that is generating the majority of your revenue. And that is a riskier proposition because things go wrong, right? You have competition, comments, supply chains, break, whatever the issue might be, if you’re relying on that one hero skill or that one hero customer, your businesses, rescuers, and therefore your value is lower, right? Because buyers are looking at going there’s a lot of risks there. I’m not gonna pay five a multiple because it is a riskier proposition. And then they’d come to you, Zack, and say, Okay, look, I’ve got this hero skew. How do I get upsells? for it? How do I create SR products for it and, and go through that whole process. I know, personally, back when I was manufacturing products and doing it over in China, it was a royal pain in the butt. Right? It was really, really hard to get pricing and send materials and all this different stuff. I was just skimming your website, and it looked like he had relationships with 500 different manufacturing companies. Is that right? Am I am I reading that? Yeah,

Zack Leonard 7:33

I think that might be outdated at this point. We’ve expanded quite a bit. We have

Joe Valley 7:38

500,000 by founders and not an impressive enough numbers.

Zack Leonard 7:43

I don’t know. Don’t stroke the ego too hard here, Joe. But no, I mean, I think the goal is that we’re as we continue to add different products and different categories that we can facilitate that we’re always trying to find the best partner for that specific business at the given time. So you know, are you or are you just starting out? Are you looking for lower mo Q’s, then you probably have to go to you know, lower tier factory? Are you are you bringing in millions of dollars in business, right? That’s a tier two tier one type factory, it’s a very different conversation, different expectation, you go into those different with those different factories? And so yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, I think what you’re talking about is exactly right. Like there’s a hero skew. And what customers come to us to help do is say like, okay, where’s the risk involved? Is it patented already, maybe that can de risk it a little bit. But if you want to create something that is defensible, that’s where we can help the most.

Joe Valley 8:40

In terms of de risking, and manufacturing. You know, it never really seemed to be a big issue that you had, you know, one primary manufacturer, those relationships, transfer that manufacturers and business to, you know, develop and produce your products. But in today’s world after COVID, we’ve got supply chain issues and, you know, problems where people cannot get enough inventory to sell their wares. With with that going on. Is it a service that you’re providing and helping people get, you know, a second or third option that can produce the same product so that you are de risking in terms of the supply chain?

Zack Leonard 9:17

Absolutely. We spun up operations over the past two years, you know, since we last chatted, and we were primarily in China when we talked we have India, Vietnam, Mexico. A few other places in South America like Colombia, is there.

Joe Valley 9:33

This is I’m sorry to interrupt. Is there one country that is more up and coming that you’re saying, Okay, these guys are doing a great job, there’s a benefit to going to Venezuela versus versus China? Or is it still China’s the best choice?

Zack Leonard 9:49

I think right now for it depends on where you’re at in the business. If you’re just starting out, it’s still going to be China. If you are Be able to, to de risk and send a good amount of volume to another place, I think India is a really good option. Vietnam is also a great option. But it also depends on the type of product, electronics, you’re still looking at Taiwan or China, cotton. So type of items, those could be, you know, outsourced, probably to, you know, India, Vietnam, they’re starting to get into plastics. But again, it’s about finding the best partner for you. Regardless of like, if you’re up and coming, or whatever it is, your business needs to be able to survive whatever happens in the supply chain. So if you start to see logistics prices go up 5x, you want to start looking at in Mexico and seeing you know, if that’s viable for your business? Do you want to look at looking in the United States, even if that’s viable? Right. And that’s the that’s the environment we’re in right now. And then couple that with the increased competition that’s been coming in the amount of think since we last talked the amount of million dollar, Amazon sellers has doubled someone from like, 30,000 to 60,000. Over the past couple of years. Yeah, the amount of people who started a business over the last year with COVID, I think, has increased significantly. So the competition is getting chat more challenging on top of this supply chain issue that’s going on. So right now, I think is a perfect time for a company to really decide, you know, what do they want to be in the next five to 10 years? And as you’re kind of as you preach? Like, what is your exit strategy? Do you want to do you want to stay and keep this a lifestyle business? Do you want to sell this off to one of those larger players? Well, what’s going to get you there the fastest? Is it that he rescue is diversifying your supply chain or is just continuing what you’re doing. And that’s that’s kind of the decision as your as an entrepreneur as a business owner that you probably want to think through in the next six to 12 months while we have this crazy supply chain thing going on that may not end for, you know, the foreseeable future?

Joe Valley 11:49

Yeah. Yeah. At first, it was the the trade war with China now supply chain issues. Something else would come up next. You know, I’ve had Mike Jackness on on the podcast a lot. He’s a great guy. He’s one of the one of the good humans host of Ecomcrew Podcast. And, you know, he says that, that generally speaking, entrepreneurs are just trying to keep the wheels on the bus. They don’t have enough time to think about, you know, their eventual exit and all these different things. But But he really says as this industry matures, and as that individual entrepreneur matures, they start to really hone in on things like supply chain, how can I save $1 a unit, whether it’s in the manufacturing, or the shipping, or whatever it might be, because then they translate that into? Well, I sell 5000 units a month, that’s $5,000 times 12, that’s $60,000, my business is worth how much jail three and a half. Wow. Okay, that just said a $200,000 to list price raises, all of those little details and all that work. And all that minutia has to be paid attention to. And I think people are getting smarter about it, because the services like yours, they used to just, you know, look at top line revenue and brag about that, because that was good for their ego. But the bottom line profits and working with a company like Gembah to diversify de risk, reduce their overhead and still grow their product line is is where the mature online entrepreneur is going, in my view, when you say

Zack Leonard 13:21

absolutely. You know, I think you hit hit the nail on the head there as far as the mindset that needs to happen, as you you know, as an entrepreneur, as you try and get through this, you know, craziness that is like you have to at the end goal in mind in order for you to understand where you need to go to get there, right? Yeah, and like you said, top line revenue is a vanity metric at this point. Bottom line is what your valuation is gonna be determined on. So every penny, every dollar actually does count, especially when you get into the larger volumes. That’s how people value your business. And so, you know, taking a look at what we do, and kind of translating that into this conversation. It’s more about how do you how do you get that bottom line? larger? Right? Is it on the cost side? Is it de risking the cost? Or is it heading on the revenue? Is it adding new skew? Is it complimentary skews that can be packaged together with your existing skews, right, there bundling opportunities? Can you start on the logistic side? like can you start bundling those things in one container, right? There’s all these different things, which I think is what makes what I like to do so much as just solve the puzzle of all these different challenges that happen from the product businesses, right? Like everyone comes at you with a different angle of what they want to do what their goal is, then you get to translate and say, Well, if I can help you on, you know, this side of the business, whether it’s logistics, or de risking the supply chain, or create a new product that’s going to make your success path much larger at the end of the day. That’s what I love.

Joe Valley 14:44

So yeah, and it’s great that you love it because if it was me, I would not love it. So I would absolutely, if I was in the e commerce world, you know, selling physical products again, I would definitely use your services, because it’s I’m good at other things and that’s that’s what I think the entrepreneur has to figure out is what are their strengths? And what are their weaknesses. And if they don’t love that stuff, it’s such a critical part of their business and what what they need in order to grow. It just one little change can make a huge difference, we just sold something for, you know, five and a half million or so. And the person had bought the business and all she did was improve the supply chain made sure she didn’t run out of inventory and got a little bit a better deal on cost of goods sold. And she, you know, she bought it for, you know, a fifth of the price that she sold it for, right? So turned around and sold it and in 24 months, and, you know, a life changing number, because she did it, that part of it. I wouldn’t be good at that part of it. So anybody that, you know, had somebody, I was on a podcast yesterday, we talked about, you know, one of the most important things that an entrepreneur needs to hone in on is what, what are their true strengths? And what are their true weaknesses, and making sure they don’t promote themselves to their own level of incompetence? And I think what you do and the level of details that is involved is such a necessary service for a lot of folks. Let’s talk about that a little bit. Let’s, you know, conceptually Walk walk me through this process. I have a hero skill, or are three of them that are that are balanced. Okay, yeah. What do I do I have a concept. I have an idea. I’m terrible at drawing. I don’t you know, I don’t have a CAD man. What do I do?

Zack Leonard 16:28

What do you do? How do you help me? Yeah. So I’ll talk you through kind of the, the the journey and then I can start plugging in where Gembah can help. So let’s just say that you, you have a hero skew and you’re like I need you know, I have an idea to complement that, you know, let’s say you’re selling a water bottle, and you’re like, well, now I want to go sell an icemaker because you need an icemaker for water, right, you want to keep it cold. Great. So if you have if you don’t have the competence in house to do that, you have two options. You can go hire someone, either internally or externally, or you can try it yourself. If you don’t have the competence, you probably shouldn’t try it yourself. You should go hire externally. So once you have made that decision, if you want to go hire externally, there are some other there are a vast variety of options that are out there, you can go to a design firm, you can hire, you know, team, yourself or the people yourself, you go on Upwork. If you came to Gembah, what you would do is you go through an experience where we try and understand what you’re trying to make. Do some sort of, you know, get the team that’s assembled to create the product. So if it’s an icemaker, let’s say that it’s electronic, at the, at the bare minimum, you need an industrial designer, mechanical engineer and electrical engineer on that product on that on that project and a project manager. So we assemble that team for you, we find we find the folks that have worked on similar products like that. So let’s say that they’ve made you know, icemakers. And so in vending machines before, whatever it is, we put that team in front of you, and then you’d be off on your way through the journey of the creation process. If you’re doing it on your own, you hired someone else, whatever, that’s great. They would take you through the design process, and they’d say, here’s your design. Now go talk to a factory. If you work with Gembah, what we do is we get the factory involved much earlier on the conversation and go through we called design for manufacturing phase DFM phase. That phase is specifically meant to get feedback from the factories, you’re involved with them much earlier on in the process, so that they can start telling you what can and can’t be done in mass manufacturing. So you’re saving tons of time and tons of money to do to go through that process. And it’s not unique to Gembah, by any means. But we do at every single time that we go through this process. So we take the we take the factory search out of the equation, because we already talked to the factories that want to go through this process with you, then when you get to the final designs ready to go, that factory has already started thinking about, okay, I’m excited about this, I can price it much more effectively, you cut down what we call the discovery time, much quicker. If you didn’t go with them, you’d have to go on Alibaba, or find a guy or a sourcing agent or use some outlet to go find the factory, go to China, whatever it is to verify them get the audit reports, we take all that off the table, obviously going through our service. And then when you get into, you know, the sampling process, we do a bunch of QC work, you’d have to hire that out externally, if you don’t want to do that through us. And then if you get into mass production again, same thing, you’d have to do QC if to handle logistics, like all that stuff. You’d have to do on your own find a freight forwarder I mean, you know, the game, I think all that stuff

Joe Valley 19:20

TSD from the last time I did it, and I had to do it all on my own. So and I’m praying and honestly that I’m thinking to myself, the last product that I did, my wife designed it after we had a baby, right? You just had a baby and there’s you know, challenges of ideas

Zack Leonard 19:34

that come out of that because of ideas

Joe Valley 19:36

right and we had one created a product and built a brand and and and sold it right? But it was such a challenge to do all the things that you’re talking about because we did it on our own. And it was so hard to communicate with the manufacturers because the language barrier the process, the design the materials and good lord, were were you back in You know, 2010 that’s what I want to know,

Zack Leonard 20:02

housing. I was in college and sorry, I wasn’t smart enough. Yeah, no, I think you actually hit on a really good point. Because our philosophy is that we put, we bring you closer to the factory. So a lot of a lot of, you know, sourcing agents or whatever out there, they, they’re, their goal is to be the layer in between you and the factory. And our goal is completely the opposite. We want you to be the one calling the shots and use our expertise to get you the results that you want, right. So we actually have people in those countries that are going to the factory, getting you photos and videos, basically being your eyes and ears on the ground through that entire experience that I just talked about. So it’s not just doing it from afar, remotely, it’s sending someone to the factory. And if you look at all the big product companies out there, either on the factories with their own employees in there, or they’re having someone in there all the time, and the big thing that people, once you get through that first iteration of the product, it goes beyond that with us, then you have to start understanding the next phase of production, which is how do I how do I lower the amount of waste? And how do I better engineer my product for the next iteration that comes out. That’s ultimately what a lot of the factories bufferin is a 5% understanding of the cost of goods sold specifically on waste, right? So they get a bunch of products in from different suppliers. And then they go and say, Okay, I can make this but I’m going to, I expect that there’s some amount of waste of the raw material that I’m going to use for whatever the dimension of the product is, or whatever. If we send a production engineer in there every single month, and just sit there and watch them, look at the production line and understand how we can get that waist down, then their cost of goods sold goes down, which means your cost of goods sold gets goes down. And so it doesn’t just stop it at launch, it continues through what we call production management. And I think that’s a big thing that people miss on a regular basis, especially if you white label a product, you don’t know what the waste is on that you’re not sending someone to the factory to understand that. That’s what we do. And since we’ve created the product from beginning, we can help get that, that that hurdle crossed even faster. By sending a production engineer in there on a regular basis,

Joe Valley 21:59

can you take an existing product that is designing that hero skill and find a way to eliminate some of that waste?

Zack Leonard 22:06

Absolutely. There’s other things like also making it more more packaging ready, right. So if you can have if you have a big bulky product, or even a small product, and you say, Well, if I had a hinge here or something that can make it collapsible, then you save on packaging costs, which again, if you’re selling on Amazon, or if you’re selling in retail, that’s what people look at, they look at how much is going to cost me to store this good on my shelf or my warehouse. So those are, you know, we’ve seen products that we put out that came to us for that example, and we’ve saved them 25% of their cost of goods sold as a result of that.

Joe Valley 22:36

So that’s a big number. That’s a big number, especially with volume, timing, let’s reverse engineer path to actually getting that new skew or new iteration to that upsell, listing and being sold on your store on Amazon. How let’s back that up. Let’s say that my objective is to have it in the warehouses ready to ship to customers. October 1, when do I need to back up and start working with Gembah? I know it’s not October 1 2021? That’s not going to happen. I know. already too late. Just for sure. Yeah. What’s the process? Yeah, timewise.

Zack Leonard 23:12

I mean, if supply chain wasn’t so crazy, it there’s a couple of things at play here. One is obviously the supply chain issues that are going on. The second thing is what type of product it is, right? If you have a cut and sew product with no electronics, no injection molds like your you don’t have that you don’t have that ramp of Bill material spend on the electronic side, you don’t have that mold costs to go into the plastic or metal or glass, right. So that’s going to really impact the timeline it takes for you to get up and running. If it’s cutting, so product, I mean, again, the design phase should take from our perspective, a couple months to get through that. And then it’s really gonna come down to how many iterations of samples Do you want to go through each sampling process should take you know, 30 to 45 days if you DHL and ship it pretty efficiently. So I would say like, you know, the design process for cutting so a couple months, finding the right factory, you know, one to two months again, you want to some people can go faster, you can go on Alibaba and try that if you want it really fast response. Our goal is to put you in touch with the factory, that’s going to be a long term partner. It’s not just one fact one iteration and then, you know, have a problem then the second iteration of it. But anyway, so that takes about a month, month and a half, two months to get that factory partner get into the sampling process. Each sampling cycle takes about a month. So if you say it takes two sampling cycles to get it right, you’re looking at you know, four to six months before you can start getting into logistics and then logistics. It’s like Okay, do you want an airship that seven days do you want to go through the portal right now they’re crazy. So it can take another two months on top of that. So you know, I would I would budget six to 12 months for a cut and sew product. And if you add an injection molding, you know you’re adding a mold which adds 30 to 45 days, which adds again, seven to seven to 13 months, whatever you want to call that and Then if you’re adding electronics on top of that, don’t go into it don’t go into automobile parts because the chips are backlogged for like a year or two. So again, it’s just you kind of playing this puzzle game with the different types of products. But I would say at the bare minimum, you should budget six to nine months, and then iterate from there based on the type of product that actually is. That’s a good template. If I would say,

Joe Valley 25:22

yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s something that you cannot turn around quickly, right? If you’re buying a business that you get to plan on holding for a while, you’re not gonna be able to buy it. Yeah,

Zack Leonard 25:32

within a year. Yeah. And that’s something from scratch, right? I mean, if you’re looking to just make a slight tweak on a product, that’s a big difference, right, because they already have potentially all the molds and tools, and that can go much faster, like more like three to six months. But if you’re looking at creating something completely from scratch, it’s going to require new molds, new tools, Bill materials, that from electronics that you need to test, you know, and debug and all that stuff. Like it’s, it’s just a more complicated process. Yeah.

Joe Valley 25:59

Yeah. Sounds challenging, overwhelming, and it’s something I would never want to do on my own. It’s fascinating. You know, I’m just sitting here thinking about that last product that we did, and like, I would what I would do in this situation, and maybe I’m speaking for the people that are, they have busy day jobs, and they’re doing a side hustle. My thought would be if that was me, right. And I’m not, I’m not launching a product people. There’s one I have sitting upstairs. It’s a brilliant product. But I’m not doing that because it got podcasts to get the book I’ve read quietly. But if I was, I would give the product to us and say, find me, you know, let’s design this boats design. It’s cheaper, let’s get the manufacturing nailed. And then I’d say Okay, Mr. Pope, over at my Amazon guy, go ahead, run with it. Here’s the budget, let’s get it up and running. And then, of course, I’d have to find somebody to help, you know, on the Shopify side and do Facebook advertising, I probably go with impact marketing, right there. Some folks that bought a business from us, and they do some great, great social media marketing stuff. So I feel like I know all the people to do it and do it. Well, I just I don’t I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to do idea. Yeah, I mean, that comes to the question of like, you have the abilities at this point in your career, to build your own product, and have your own your own brand, or brands, you know, growing and developing, or at least, to the point where you can ship it to a you know, fulfillment said, I don’t know if you have the marketing side down, but you might have the relationships. Has it ever occurred to you? I know you’re an entrepreneur building Gembah, and that’s your, that’s your joy and your happy cup right now? Has it ever occurred to you, I should just build my own brand as well? Or is it just not what you want to do? And not what your focus is? Yeah, just

Zack Leonard 27:40

not today. I’m 100% 120% focused on on Gembah right now. And, you know, we talked earlier, like, you came up to me a couple years ago, like, Where do you want to go with this, and like, I want this to be big. So I think again, I think if we can continue to be and help entrepreneurs and the best new products get out there in the market. That’s, that’s good for me. I’ll be able to live vicariously through their success, if that’s how it works. But you know, I just like I just like the people we work with, I like being at the forefront of technology. And I think just what we’re doing is needed in the market. And so I’m, I’m I’m laser focused on

Joe Valley 28:20

that. Yeah, you built a company that was necessary, number one, and you weren’t used the word help in there, which is key, right? You really enjoy and are focused on helping entrepreneurs, build better businesses and better brands, and better pricing and better manufacturing relationships. And, you know, all of that. And the key word is help. And that’s, that’s what you’re doing. Which I’ll say this, I’ll stop saying this. I might have said it too many times already. But I think the real secret to becoming successful in business is being laser focused on helping as many people as possible, build a better business, build a better brand. And not putting yourself first but putting them first and making their experiences as strong as possible. The end result is it’s going to build your business and you’re both going to win in the end. And I think that’s exactly what you’re doing. I’m I say, I think I told you all right, I may say it out loud. I just thought you’re your nurse, why would you want to take all this on when you first told me you want to get this but you got it down, you’ve got it down. You’ve got the processes down the relationships, the more than 500 manufacturing relationships and building all of that’s just amazing. Just the the industrial designers alone that you you need. You didn’t mention the word industrial designers, but you mentioned people from Weber grill and all these other folks that you’ve you know, got to work for you freelancer, whatever they’re doing, because they have the design skills and then the mechanical engineers you’re pulling in it’s it’s pretty damn impressive. So congratulations on all your success.

Zack Leonard 29:53

Thank you. I appreciate that, Joe. Yeah, it’s it’s been it’s been crazy. growing like crazy. You know, it’s it’s been fun and again, we’ve we’ve been able to work with some awesome, awesome people and make some awesome products. So it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a fun, it’s a fun journey to be on.

Joe Valley 30:11

Well, I’ll personally say thank you for doing it because there’s a lot of people out there that are going to have better businesses because of because of you. And that’s going to help them and eventually help the buyers of those businesses enjoy the kind of life they want to live as well. So thank you for taking the risk and double the business that you’re doing. Thank you. Thank you. You’re welcome. How do people find out about about Gembah? How can they reach you? What are they? What do they need to investigate and start the process of, you know, expanding their own their own product lines and brands?

Zack Leonard 30:41

Sure, the best way to do that would be to go to gembah.com, gembah.com. There’s a form you can fill out. Someone from our team will be in touch with you pretty quickly after you fill that out and start the journey with you. And then from there, it’s matching with the right people, right manufacturers and ultimately getting your product out in the wild. Awesome.

Joe Valley 31:03

Zack, thanks again for coming on the podcast. Appreciate it.

Zack Leonard 31:06

Absolutely enjoyed it, Joe, and thank you. We’ll talk soon.

Joe Valley 31:13

And that’s a wrap. Folks. Thanks so much for listening to the Quiet Light Podcast. As always, Please like, Subscribe, share, do whatever you can to help promote the Quiet Light Podcast and go out and buy The EXITpreneur’s Playbook. Share it, tell your friends about it, post something in social media, post it in your mastermind group. I wrote it for you whether you’re a buyer or seller, I wrote it for you. It’s everything that we talked about Quiet Light everything we’ve learned over the last decade the information that is in our head that we regurgitated over and over and over and one on one conversations is now there in black and white 238 pages, I think in a very readable, digestible, absorbable way and hopefully it’s going to be you know, the ultimate Reference Guide to selling your online business. Thanks again for joining us. We’ll see you next week.

Outro 32:04

Today’s podcast was produced by Rise25 and the Quiet Light content team. If you have a suggestion for a future podcast subject or guest, email us at [email protected]. Be sure to follow us on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next week.