EP 395: Survival Frog Does $4.7M in 2015, 25% Gross Margin, 10% Net with Founder Byron Walker

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Nathan Latka

Ceo, Entrepreneurs, Founders, Software, Business, Entrepreneurship, Saas, Startups

4.6 • 683 Ratings

🗓️ 23 August 2016

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Byron Walker, owner of Survival Frog. Byron is passionate about scaling businesses that will change the world. Hear the breakdown of Survival Frog and what launched this company into huge success.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Ready Aim Fire!
What CEO do you follow? — No
Favorite online tool? — Evernote

Do you get 8 hours of sleep?—Yes.
If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? — Welcome adversity.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:10 – Nathan introduces Byron
01:40 – Survival Frog
02:00 -- $4.7 million last year
02:20 – Started in 2009
02:30 – Info publishing company
03:00 – One product exploded in 2012
- 03:30 – 500000 purchases
03:50 – How they got the first sales
- 04:00 – Paid traffic
- 04:10 – Banner ads and paid email
04:20 – What is paid email
- 05:15 – Conversations are around 3 to 5 percent
05:20 – Split testing to find the right price
05:55 – Upsells make money for them
06:15 – Average profit is $5
06:30 – Over a million spent on paid marketing
07:00 – How to buy email lists
- 07:15 – List brokers
- 07:40 – Dedicated Emails, Bryan Litman
- 07:50 -- James R. Whalen
08:30 – Short emails get people to the landing page
08:55 – Now they are 100% physical products
09:50 – Gross margin is up to 35% this year
10:15 – 15 team members
10:40 – Products are sourced and bought in bulk
11:50 – Buying power with companies
12:10 – Forecasting the right amount of inventory
12:45 – LinkedIn or survivalfrog.com
14:40 – Discovery Channel on Blue Collar Backers
16:30 – Hundreds of thousands of units moved
17:00 – Profit in 2015 was $500k
17:35 – Valuation for the business
18:10 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Adjust your business model to improve your margins.
Challenges in your life will put you on a better, more rewarding path.
Continue doing what you are passionate about.

Resources Mentioned:

Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible.
Freshbooks - The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts.
Leadpages – The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+
Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5 hour drive) to listen to audio books.
James R. Whalen and Dedicated Emails – Email list brokers
Evernote – Byron’s favorite online tool
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base.
0:09.0	You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have.
0:16.0	I'm now at $20,000 per talk.
0:18.0	Five and six million.
0:19.0	He is hell-bent on global domination.
0:21.2	We just broke our 100,000 unit sole mark.
0:23.9	And I'm your host, Nathan Latka.
0:27.7	Okay, Top Tribe, this week's winner of the 100 bucks is Jose Avila.
0:32.3	He is a 17-year-old that doesn't want to go to college and he wants to start his own business.
0:37.1	For your chance to win
0:37.9	a hundred bucks just like Jose every Monday morning, simply subscribe to this podcast on iTunes right now
0:44.0	and then text the word Nathan to 3344 to prove that you did it. This is episode 395. Coming up tomorrow
0:51.8	morning, you will hear from Kevin Davis and why he raised
0:55.6	three million dollars then merged with his number one competitor
0:58.7	Top it's tribe what is up this morning our guest today is Byron Walker and he's an online marketing and sales flow optimization expert.
1:15.6	He's the owner of Survival Frog, an e-commerce store in the survivalist niche, and a founding partner in TireConsumer, the world's first tire price search engine.
1:26.6	Byron's passion is in building and scaling
1:29.3	profitable businesses that change the world. Byron, are you ready to take us to the top?
1:34.5	Yeah, let's do it. All right. So you've got two things here, tire business and a survivalist niche
1:38.0	business. Which one makes more money? Survival frog. Okay, let's talk about that. What does it do
1:44.0	and how much money to make in 2015?
1:47.6	So we sell physical products in the survival and preparedness market, like an e-commerce site.
	...

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