I was speaking at a conference in New York last week.

And one of the emcees, he's chairman of the board for IM8, the David Beckham brand. And I noticed he was wearing these really nice shoes. And I was staring at his shoes before we went on to speak. And as I was staring at his shoes, he walked up and I told him where I was going. He's like, where are you going? I'm like, I'm going to Lake Como next week.

He's like, oh my God, and he put his shoes.

He's like, this is where I got these shoes from, right?

And never even asked him about the shoes. And he's like, yeah, these are these like super craftsmen shoes. And these are shoes that typically, you probably buy them for like a grand or more. but he's selling them for like $100 or $150, right?

There's this brand called Rolando in Lake Como.

So anyway, I go to his store. but he's selling them for like $100 or $150, right? There's this brand called Rolando in like Como.

So anyway, I go to his store and then I buy from him.

But then the hotel that I'm staying at is like a pretty, it's a pretty, pretty decent hotel.

And I noticed that there was this little, I don't know what to call it it's it's like this

little display of his shoes and like all the stuff that he makes and um and every day i was walking by

it but then when you have like i was just thinking about the hotel traffic you have all these

people um that are you know doing pretty well in their lives um to stay at that hotel and they're they're just walking

by that that case every day that display case right and then so i went back to the store and i asked him

i was like how much are you paying for that advertisement um per month right now what do you think

he's paying for that um for that advertisement zero percentage of sales instead?

No.

He's paying, it's actually really good deals.

I'm not going to reveal it, but he's basically paying like a couple thousand dollars a month, right?

And if you think about it, if you're having, you know, pretty affluent people visit the store, like, it pays for itself many times over. But not only that, Neil, he has a fourth generation store, which means, you know, his grandfather started the store, right? And then that hotel was also a fourth generation hotel, too. So these connections go a long way. So it just kind of reinforces that it's more about, sometimes it's about who you know, but also when you have a really good advertising budget, you blow it all on that ultimately, right? And then what ends up happening is, and, you know, there is, I was thinking about it, I was looking at the quality of the build, right? Like, sure, you can have private equity come in and then they could definitely charge four to five extra price, so they can definitely scale. But the other business lesson here is like, sometimes you don't need a scale. Like I was doing the math on the business.

I'm like, maybe he's making, you know, four or five million dollars a year, maybe a little

more than that.

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