Episode 305 - Gabriel Suarez - ENHANCED VIDEO
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Corey Kupfer: [00:00:00] Gabriel Suarez is a seasoned entrepreneur with 20 years of experience specializing in retail business models. His latest venture, Natural Life Franchise Company, has grown to 27 locations and continues to expand. Natural Life offers plant based solutions to enhance quality of life, reflecting Gabriel's commitment to health and wellness.
Beyond his professional achievements, he's a dedicated family man with three young children. He balances his entrepreneurial endeavors with his passions for skydiving and piloting, holding licenses in both. Gabriel's diverse interest and dedication to his ventures underscored his dynamic approach to life and business.
Gabriel, welcome to the podcast.
Gabriel Suarez: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be with you today.
Corey Kupfer: Yeah. So, wow. I mean, I've been skydiving. I didn't know you can get licensed. I mean, are you licensed? This is not my usual opening question, but I'm curious, like licensed in skydiving, like pilot, I get licensed in skydiving.
Are you like an instructor or do you, you know, how does that [00:01:00] work?
Gabriel Suarez: I'm technically a coach, but I'm not an instructor. The way that it works is if you want to be able to walk up to any skydiving. Establishment and be able to just hop on an airplane and jump off without anybody questioning you, you need that be a licensed skydiver.
So that's just really all that it does for you. Is it allows me to be like, Oh, I know how to do this. Here's my license. And then I don't have to jump out of a plane and not be liable for the fact that I could die. Yeah, pretty much. So that's all there. So you don't get any much more than that, but.
It used to be a big hobby of mine as I was younger, I still do it. I'm still current, but nowhere near as often as I used to, you know, kids and business, have been blended into my time management, so I don't have as much time for it, but.
Corey Kupfer: And apparently your spouse is not banded with three kids.
Yep.
Gabriel Suarez: Yeah. We have three little ones. So I have a full household and schedule at the moment.
Corey Kupfer: Awesome. Well, listen, I'm looking forward to talking about your experience in business and franchising and [00:02:00] capital raising and all this kind of stuff. But before we get there, I want to take you back to when you were a little kid growing up, because, what did you want to be back then?
Cause I'm guessing a, you know, a serial entrepreneur and franchisor, was probably not it when maybe you were eight, 10, 12 years old. Do you tell me though?
Gabriel Suarez: No, you know, I always think about this. It's funny you asked that question because it comes up in the conversations a lot. with friends or colleagues.
And the farthest back that I can remember, it was probably seven, eight years old. And I was convinced and solid was going to be an astronaut. And that's what I was going to be. And for a while, there was no questions and no doubt about it. It was an astronaut. And then I think after that, it was firefighting for a short period.
And then my memory kind of starts to blur at that point. And I'm not sure. But I do remember the first, when I first made a decision of a career, around seven, eight years old, it was to
Corey Kupfer: be an astronaut. That's all right. Well, I mean, maybe we can throw some conclusions about being a pilot and jumping out of planes.
It's quite, who knows, [00:03:00] maybe they're unrelated. One other question, looking back, what is the first deal of any type you can remember doing? Whether it was something small as a kid, early in your career, maybe, you know, an early venture, whatever comes to mind.
Gabriel Suarez: Ooh, the first deal of any kind. I should have figured that was going to be a question.
Corey Kupfer: It could be something later in your career. Yeah,
Gabriel Suarez: no, no. I mean, I've been doing all kinds of little deals all my life. The first, the farthest back thing I can think of, you know, in my young teenage years, maybe 12, 13 years old. We used to skateboard a lot. And there was a friend of ours that was just trying to learn how to skateboard.
And I was a little bit better than him. I didn't, I couldn't drive. He was just old enough to have gotten his license. And we went to the same high school. So when I was starting and he was ending up toward the end of it, maybe he was 13, 14 on my age. But, I remember trading and saying, look I'll teach you how to do an Ollie or I got whatever these basic skateboard tricks were, but I need to, I want to ride to school.
And it was, you know, that was the [00:04:00] first, farthest back deal making I can think of is I'll make you a deal, man. I'll be your teacher, coach and this skate thing, but you gotta be my driver. I don't, I'm done with this bus. I want you to pick me up. We're going to school.
Corey Kupfer: I love it. I love it. That's definitely a deal, you know, a little negotiation, a little trade off.
I love it.
Gabriel Suarez: Yeah. Yeah. So very minor and to the comparable to today's days, but that's the thing we're not with the first negotiation. Yeah. So
Corey Kupfer: I want to go back and fill in some gaps, but let's just, you know, we obviously, I read in your bio about a little bit what you're doing now with natural life and the franchising.
But, you know, let me give you an opportunity to spend a minute or two, just given some more details about what you're up to now. And then I want to delve into how you got there and talk about franchising and all this kind of stuff, but tell us about the business a little more.
Gabriel Suarez: Yeah. So, you know, we're in a place right now where we're growing, we're actually trying to continuously structure everything to be able to grow and scale faster.
I feel like I am. If I were going to describe it in terms of like my, my, oldest son, [00:05:00] it was only eight, you know, I'm still putting the final touches on the rocket ship and we're really. Really getting ready to launch it soon. And it's not really launched yet. When we launch it, I want that baby to go to the moon fast, quick, you know, right, straight up.
And right now I think, we're growing, we're taking on franchises. You know, you mentioned 27 at the beginning of the podcast, but that's how many we had when we spoke last. We have 29 today. So we've a couple more since we've spoken. And we are growing, but organically, and. Just really getting that, that rocket ship ready for launch.
And then really want to do an outstanding job when we do a launch here in the near future. So that's kind of the stage we are in the growth of the company.
Corey Kupfer: So let's talk about that, you know, because obviously a franchise model, we've had a couple of folks in the past, you know, one most recently who was, you know, we're like a franchise broker and that kind of stuff.
We've had some folks on both sides, but it's been a little while. And being, listen, running in a business and being a franchisor, [00:06:00] right, two separate things, right. Absolutely. You know, so when you talk about, so in the context of that conversation, you know, I'll ask you as a question.
Corey Kupfer: I mean, in terms of sort of, getting the rocket ship going, are we talking about more in terms of the franchise model and service and system to be really able to, Take care of, you know, identify, you know, bring in a service, take care of, help them grow all of a sudden the franchise side, or the also things that are, you know, tweaking in the core business model.
What are we talking about there?
Gabriel Suarez: What I'm talking about there is really, putting the gas down on growth and just scale and just scaling. So really just putting. A lot of, attention and resources into more leads, more prospects, more franchises sold in a larger, footprint, territory wise market share wise, you know, faster.
We, we are in a industry in a space that's new, but getting a lot of attention rapidly, getting a lot of acceptance [00:07:00] rapidly. A lot of people want to eat organic that didn't before, a lot of people want to, you know, be more conscious of what they're eating that they didn't before. You know, we see, smoothie chains and juice bar chains and organic grocery stores in a way that we didn't see 10 years ago.
So I would like to prepare this business. So we are like that, but in the wellness side. So we want to be, provide those services, but not in smoothies or in groceries, but in wellness products. But same idea, so you can solve problems naturally. So, you know, we can help you solve for your problems naturally.
So really, this is gonna, this industry is gonna grow and it's gonna, it's only bound to explode from here for a long time. Because we're only gonna become more and more conscious of what's bad and what's good. And as we learn that, well, guide more towards what's good. So I'm just I really want to do it correctly and want to be what, you know, just Starbucks is the coffee or, McDonald's has two burgers, you know, and, but to do that, you [00:08:00] got to really launch and you can relaunch, you got to launch and go and do it correctly.
So, and I've been lucky enough to have mentors and continue to have mentors and I've seen people do it right. I've made my own plenty of mistakes up until this point too. I learned a lot of lessons and realized that, we have a really good thing and a good opportunity and we're, and the timing is also really good.
Everything kind of seems to be good. So I'm just carefully putting the pieces together. As we learn what they are really, and as we, the resources are available to really get ready to hopefully, you know, go from a few dozen locations or even a hundred to in the thousands, in a shorter span than we've gotten from zero to here.
Corey Kupfer: Yeah. So I want to go back into that side of it, but just so people know in terms of the services products, you know, give some examples of the kind of things that, you talking about the, you know, not smoothies, you know, what,
Gabriel Suarez: yeah, so we want to be, you know, like an alternative, all natural pharmacy, that's like really, that's how our customers describe us, the word pharmacy is really [00:09:00] tied to like licensed medicine, so that's, we don't call it, sell it a pharmacy.
Literally. Right. But every customer at the hospital is like, yeah, they replaced my needs for the pharmacy. They're, they are my pharmacy. We call ourselves a natural wellness store, but we have things to help you sleep better, things to help you have energy naturally, all of these things naturally, things to relieve your pain naturally, things to relieve your anxiety and your stress naturally, your inflammation.
I mean, and our product offering continues to grow. It used to be, you know, half a dozen things, the most common ailments, and now we can help you be aware. a few dozen things, you know, gut support, digestion, appetizer, presents, all kinds of things on natural herbs, plants, roots that do the same thing or better sometimes than the, you know, synthetically formulated thing that usually also has a long list of side effects where we become an attractive choice.
Most of what we sell. It's relatively harmless and you could, there's no abuse [00:10:00] potential or harm potential with it, even if you ate the whole store, you know, comparative to the alternative, if you take more than the recommended dose, you might end up, you know, in a hospital or something like that. Yeah.
So,
Corey Kupfer: so when did you launch and did you do a number of company owned stores first, you know, and lead us through that initial journey and then just lead us through that initial journey and then we'll talk about when you pivoted. Yeah.
Gabriel Suarez: You know, I honestly never thought this big originally.
I started thinking really small and it was with one location. I had a family member that had their life changed from natural products, natural solutions when doctors had failed previously. So I had this personal and direct experience with it. And then I got, I was an entrepreneur. I had opened a sandwich shop in 2008, early 2008.
It was successful, but I quickly learned and hated managing like a food business. It wasn't my thing. I hadn't retold. It just seemed I had done well, and I just thought I could do anything. So maybe eight months into the sandwich shop, I sold it. I paid some debt and from [00:11:00] financing it originally a few things, and I ended up with like 35, 40 grand in my pocket, literally in 2008 at the end.
And within a few months, I had opened the first natural life store. And on my own, on that and some credit card debt. And I deal, my first deal, natural life related deal with a landlord. He owned the same building that I had the sandwich shop in. He was very impressed with what I had done with that sandwich shop.
And I told him that I was gonna do the same thing with his other model, but I was starting from scratch. And if he could just give me these many months for free, then, you know, I would be his tenant for a long time. And so that was like maybe one of the first little baby deals. So I knew that it may be able to open the first store in 2008.
By 2009, I was, you know, Already thinking, okay, I have to open another one, but I wasn't thinking franchising just yet. So I went to my high school buddy who had some money because at this point I had just gotten out of my head about water from all my overhead from the credit card bills from opening the first store.
Sure. So I used my high school buddy's money, [00:12:00] worked out a deal with him, went across Florida to Jacksonville, that next big city nearest us, and opened up the second one there with him. It was immediately successful. So then we both took my first location's funds. I took personally all the revenue from that and started working on the next second Tallahassee location and together we took all the revenue from that location we opened in Jacksonville, started working on the second Jacksonville location.
So with that same buddy, we opened up three stores in the Jacksonville area together. And then I opened three stores in Tallahassee. By then it was 2020 and I was putting a whole franchise thing together. And in the end of 2019, early 2020, I had met with a colleague of mine that knew a little bit about franchising, just enough to convince me that I could do it because I knew nothing about franchising in 2008 when I opened the first Natural Life and, worked out a deal with him that if he would help me structure it and set it up for launch and help me raise capital for it.
You know, we know we were working on our compensation. So it's kind of in deals like this along the way, cause I've never had something, I didn't come from money [00:13:00] with immigrant grandparents. I'll have high school diplomas. I'm the first kid to graduate from high school, or even go to college and my family.
So it's all been like, you know, how do I leverage the resources that I have? Which is usually just my network. And that's all I had, you know, until now and leverage all that to get to where I'm at here. So then we launched the company and then. And you mentioned, you know, but the deal I had I got some capital raise.
Do a connection of a mentor and we're going to deal with them. And that, that got us all the way to like 2013 to where like now we're actually structured and cashflow positive and have a good momentum. And then I worked at a deal with a colleague of mine that really wanted to help us out, to be like a good COO that can help me make sure this rocket ship has all the final bolts on perfect.
So when we launched this thing, it's kind of hum it to the moon. So, but he is a, relatively high price individual. So, and I'm having our work that I deal with him. So he could join the team and help us get this baby ready. And he's been with us for almost a year now. We've gone night and day from what we thought was ready to what [00:14:00] we now realize is ready.
And, and just, that's been kind of the name of the game. So now we're here and just kind of put in the final touches on getting a few more stores open. We have eight stores into development. Four of those are going to open through the end of this year. And then, I believe, I think next year is when we're probably going to do a capital raise or, and put the gas down and really start taking over a larger market share.
Corey Kupfer: So that's great. So let's go back. So, you do, and obviously you don't have to share anything specific so that you're not coupled with whatever, but, you know, just conceptually. So, you say, okay, I got my buddy, he's got some money. So we're going to do, you know, we're going to open some stores together.
Right. So is that some sort of, you know, business partnership, equity share, whatever your partners in those locations? Yeah.
Gabriel Suarez: And so, the deals that I've made have always been a combination or one or either equity partnership or some kind of loan debt deal. So with him in the early days, I was more naive.
And he got a better end of the [00:15:00] stick on that, you know? And so I wouldn't know. And I offered to wait too much. I bought it. That's all young and naive entrepreneurs do. And, and realized later that, wow, I didn't have to offer that much, but he, he wasn't a good friend. And if it wasn't for him, this might not exist.
So I do have to go back and I'll. Give him credit for that, and that we worked out a good deal. He enjoyed it and he made his money back in like less than a year. A hundred percent of the investment and it was all profits after that. And, and then we've opened more stores together, maybe even more money.
And then about a year ago, I've actually bought him all out and bought all the shares back and I'm a hundred percent owner of all the stores. And I've slowly started kind of doing that. I said a lot of deals that I needed to do along the way. Now, as soon as the resources were available, I've kind of gone back and like, okay, so now What does it take to like kind of end this deal?
You know, because I also don't want a bazillion, deals that a lot of ends, a lot of times end up with different types of partnerships, you know? So. They're really just stepping stones. And then I do my best to go back and kind of, okay, you know, you've [00:16:00] made a good amount of money. We get it where we need to go, you know, let's buy your shares back and call, you know, and move on to the next thing, sort of,
Corey Kupfer: yeah, I love, I mean, listen, one of the things that I talk to my clients about all the time.
In an ideal scenario, right? I mean, if I happen to have a client that has significant capital up front, or maybe they're, you know, they have a backer or whatever it is, you know, I always say, listen, the ideal scenario is that you create a model on the way you do deals, right? If you can have an equity class, you do that.
If not, whatever. And you do those deals consistently. And you have a way you do it and it's real well thought it out and you offer it, you know, that's, and people either take it or leave it if they don't, they're not great partners and, you know, I still believe that's the ideal way to go.
So you don't have a crazy cap table or you don't have all these different deals to manage, but the reality of a startup is, you know, and I've been there myself and I, you know, and I've had plenty of clients where. Listen you do the deals you need to do at the time to get you where you get, you know, especially if you don't have [00:17:00] significant capital on your own.
And then sometimes, you know, you're fortunate enough, and it sounds like you was fortunate enough to sort of be able to clean it up later, but again, not that there's anything wrong with it. You did what you needed to do at the time. Absolutely. Okay. Now, as we know the law is not a hundred percent that's thing, you know,
Gabriel Suarez: No you're kind of, you hit a nail on the head pretty much, you know, and I did the, so what you're saying, I've kind of learned myself along the way from experience.
I'm like, you know, I need to just start cleaning these things up. And as I do more, they need to be like this, you know? And, so you know, I didn't start with like my background, but I have a college degree, but I have a fine arts college degree. Just for, you know, disclaimer in here. So I am just a passionate person with big ideas and that's how I've gotten this far.
And I've learned a lot along the way. And now today I would say I'm not a, you know, naive and in business or deals and we're 20 plus years in on business, but. Or the early days, you know, just big ideas and a lot of, drive and, motivation and beliefs that I could do it a lot of times through ignorance, [00:18:00] you know, thank God, because if I had known, it probably wouldn't rain away.
So,
Corey Kupfer: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And so one of the things I love to say, it's always like. It's actually great as an entrepreneur that you can, even if somebody says something to you that you never really understand what it takes, because I think if you have this truly understood what it takes, a lot of people wouldn't do it.
But when you get into it, you have the mentality and you just tackle things as they come and deal with, you know, one issue after another, you just keep going. But if somebody said. If somebody listed the 27 issues or things you'd have to deal with along the journey up front, you'd be like, what?
Gabriel Suarez: Yeah, absolutely.
They can be even more spot on that either. And that a lot for me. The difference between being a franchisor and a business owner, a retail business owner. So I was really good at running these stores and I thought that would make me really good at franchising these stores. And I've had to learn a whole new business and a whole new, you know, franchising is, doesn't matter what you're franchising.
Franchising is a whole nother skill and business [00:19:00] on its own. And then being able to operate the business that you're franchising, it's a different thing. And, and that was, that's been a lot of the learning over the past few years as we're scaling at the franchise company. Is that, yeah, we might be really good operators of these stores, but we have to be able to make anybody a really good operator at a store.
And then I'll have our personalities or our ways of doing our thinking, our operating. So this needs to be. You know, I'm a natural store, so I hate to use like McDonald's, but like a clean model that like you can plug anybody into like a McDonald's. So that's been where we've really tweaked the nuts and bolts.
And we're in my mind, what we really needed to really launch was, you know, something that we could put anybody in a setup so easy to follow that you're set up for success. You just run the business model. As long as you don't deviate from the business model. You know, there's this very predictable performance that we have here.
Corey Kupfer: Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to oversimplify it, but you know, what comes to mind for me is like the fran being a franchisor is about systems [00:20:00] training and maybe, you know, marketing, right? You know, you're selling a se I mean, in fact, if we speak a lot of franchisors, they talk about you're selling a system, right?
You know, you're Absolutely right. You know, again, an example, they have a system that You know, they don't make, you know, the hamburgers aren't made differently. Their fries aren't made differently any anywhere else. They shake. So they shake their equipment. They use, they, you know, the, their branding and the golden art, whatever.
It's all, you know, you want to be a McDonald's franchisee. That's what you do. Absolutely.
Gabriel Suarez: Now, and we know we've known that and we've always had systems, but I think. You know, really, we didn't realize what the system, what we thought the systems were ready for the world. And the systems were really just really good for us in the small group of franchisees that were running them.
And as the group gets bigger and bigger and bigger, we start to cover every type of individual that we're not going to have ever. And that's when we've had to really take those systems that we thought were ready and really tweak them and fine tune them [00:21:00] to the, You know, it's, everybody can be successful and it's not 80 percent of the people that run the system.
It's a hundred percent.
Corey Kupfer: Yeah. And try and train them. And I would guess also that I know from other situations also, I mean, I'm guessing there's also a learning journey on identifying and picking the right franchisees, the ones who are more likely, you know, to be successful. Oh yeah,
Gabriel Suarez: absolutely. A lot of my mentors early on said to me, look, cause I kept asking them, you know, what, how do I know who's the right person for my first five or 10, you know, I want to have the right people make sure that we.
Grow from their beginning with the bright franchisees and now a few people said to this to me and I didn't get it at first. I was like, what do you mean? I think I felt like they were almost just blow me off And I remember the last one that said it to me and I was like, okay, this must be more, like, this must be real.
It was John Tessa from Jersey Mike's, who at the time he was working for Jersey Mike's, and he is known and actually was recognized in like the International Friendship Association for like scaling it way faster and bigger than like the [00:22:00] guy before him could, right? Yeah. So, I'm asked, you know, I'm wearing this little franchise or bootcamp thing that we got paired up.
So I'm asking him all these mentor questions and ask him that. And he says, look, it's your first few. Does the person have a heartbeat? Do they have a finger count? You need to just sell a few franchises. No sophisticated franchisee is going to be your first franchisee, my man. I'm sorry to tell you that.
Or your second or your third. He's like, so just sell them to your best, make them successful scale. Once, once you're, you know, everyone had a different number, but between 10 and 30, you know, you'll really start figuring out what your perfect franchisee is. And then you need to really hone down on that, honor that, be strict with that.
And then as you grow up, you teach those earlier ones how to do it the right way or over time, you know, sometimes. You have to be, you know, a new incoming franchisee that is successful. So I'm buying out those old ones because they do want more territories, things like that. And, and so I kind of ignored that and I was like, no I'm going to [00:23:00] find the right franchisees.
But you know, data on the head, we're at material number 27 or 12. We were, when we talked, we're at 29 now. But, And we are now, I think we really figured out exactly what personality type of individual that it's like perfect that it's almost effortless to onboard. And, and so now we're like our sales team and all the brokers that we have, you know, Pitching our franchise are all like very aware now of this profile.
Like this is the perfect profile.
Corey Kupfer: And as we get better with that, So that profile, like what have you identified?
Gabriel Suarez: Yeah. So we have found that they need to have, an entrepreneurial mindset as, and they have to understand that it's a, the business model relies on Basic like four basic leverage levers, like good training, good marketing, consistent processes.
You know, like just the basic things that you can pick up in your business book, you know, and look up, and they're not like stuck on just, I want to, you know, sometimes just, they just want to be their own boss and that's how they're stuck on and they worked for [00:24:00] corporate our whole life, but they really don't understand business.
So that, and then it really has been really beneficial when they have an experience whether it's personal or, direct through like a family member or a loved one where a natural substance, a natural plans, a natural remedy has helped somebody that's in their network that they've witnessed, not because they've heard about it or not because they saw a movie.
Gabriel Suarez: Because they know their neighbor who had cancer and cured cancer with this route. And so I know that nature is better than whatever the, you know, when they've had that experience, whether it's a neighbor themselves and they understand business, that combo is like fire. And because then they have a really big passion because they're, they see the mission that we're after.
Yeah. And so then they're all saying the same thing when they joined the board, they're like, look, we were looking at a lot of franchises and then this price range. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a hundred options, you know, we're in a very popular price range, you know, we're not very, it's not very expensive investment.
It's also not the cheapest. It's like, you know, [00:25:00] where most people that are shopping on a franchise can afford, but everybody says, but, you know, I want to be able to, at night you go to bed knowing that I'm doing something good and I want to help people. And I saw my sister or my neighbor or my cousin and how their life was changed.
And I want to do that for more people. And that's why we chose this franchise over the subway or over the. Whatever the other one is. So in that, before we, you know, we had that, but it wasn't as, you know, they just wanted a business model and they wanted retail. And this was a growing industry. So they saw it as an opportunity.
But they had no passion or care or thought about natural things and they could care less if they even took natural things or not. And, so it works, but it doesn't work as well as when you have that combination I just mentioned, that's really like pouring gas on the fire. Love it.
Corey Kupfer: So I want to go back.
You said one of the deals you did, You know, earlier on was to, was, with a private lender, you know, I mentioned that upfront. So what was talking about the stage you were at then and what, you know, were you obviously needed to raise capital? [00:26:00] Did you look at other options? Were you not bankable?
Were you, like, yeah, exactly. You can, so
Gabriel Suarez: this is, you can. Absolutely. Yeah. And this is a great question because you wonder like, why didn't you just go get an SBA loan or something like that? And it's our industry and it's something that's probably unique to most people in this and your podcast or that you even have in your business network.
And it's unique to even everyone that I have in my mentors and everyone that I go to and they have to burn it with me. Along the way, a lot of times, but in our business model, we sell all kinds of natural alternatives and natural remedies and in that product offering, it includes CBD oil. And because we have this one thing in our, and it's out of this fleet of products, believe me.
Yeah. But you know, it's on there and it is listed on our website, and it is, you know, we don't hide out, we sell it. So the second that comes up, and it always does, sometimes we'll be months into underwriting, sometimes we'll be on day one, so now I just lead with it because I'm tired of time being [00:27:00] wasted.
But most banks have run away, eventually when that comes up because we are somehow, in some way, indirectly, distantly linked to cannabis. Even though, you know, we're not a medical marijuana company, we don't, we're not even a CBD store, but we do have CBD, but the thing is, GNC has CBD on their shelves.
The grocery stores got CBD on their shelves, but you know, that has been a big problem, so we, cause we're a new business and it's hard. You know, I'm not sure exactly. Why? But we've gone all the way to the franchise director at the SBA. We've got like as high as we can go. And we had to talk to him.
He said, look, pretty much I'm just following protocol and hemp and cannabis are too close together. And you have a product in your store that's made from hemp and therefore you are in the cannabis business. And therefore we don't do business. We don't lend to anybody in the cannabis business, you know, it's a long chain of reactions.
So I mean, I've had all the roadblocks, but I've had this mission to do it. So, you know, that's been the biggest roadblock, one of the biggest. [00:28:00] Finding good bink with you. We found them, but we had to go through a lot and credit card process and all of these things. Now we have great partners and we're everything's great and smooth, but there was a lot of rough times kind of finding those perfect partners.
And we've always had to resort to private lending or people or individuals that wanted to purchase equity, and their, whatever project or business that we're working on. Doing at the time, for anything related with natural life. So for this deal that you were asking about, that's kind of what happened is I went everywhere else.
I had the SBA actually approved, pre approved us for a loan. We thought we were getting all this funding. We had a, an agent working with us, like a loan agent. We had an estimated closing date. We were like beyond, we had provided everything, the menu, everything about me and our business. And they had asked for more and we were very far down along.
And when we're like, okay, closing is in two weeks or in three weeks, everything's good. We just need time to pass because the SBA has to do all their underwriting stuff. Like, as we get close to one of the final little things, we're like, oh, we're done. Hold on. We noticed in [00:29:00] this one place it says something about CBD oil.
You sell that? And we're like, I mean, we can't, I can't lie to the SBA. So, I mean, yeah, if you walk into a store and you look hard enough, there's a spot on a cabinet in this one place, but there's a bottle of CBD oil. And that's the whole loan out. And then once, so then we started going to the banks, but there was pretty much the same thing because they all wanted to be SBA backed.
And then, so it all just came down to private lending. So I'm done really good at. Working, getting capital and resources without doing a traditional, what to me are like a piece of cake methods. And if you, then like, I wish I had access to all these easy things. Or along the way, we've had other challenges in the marketing sector, big challenges, because a lot of that are big giants like Meta and Google.
They control the majority of the digital marketing sector and they have policies against cannabis and hemp. And similar to the SBA, you know, eventually they figure out that there's this one product in our store that's CBD oil and it piles in that category. The second we get put in that category, [00:30:00] everything becomes very difficult.
And so we work every day to be this natural pharmacy and not the CBD store. And for the most part we are and it works really well. But when you get to technicalities like banks and things like that, it's when it becomes usually a problem. Yeah.
Corey Kupfer: And you got to believe that's going to evolve but who knows when, right?
I mean, you know,
Gabriel Suarez: Oh, it's getting better every day. And I do see, I try to think, you know, there's always a positive side of everything and the reality is. Because of these challenges that we have learned to maneuver now, and we're successfully maneuvering, most people don't play in our playing field.
They're like, no, I want to wait for that to get fixed before I come in. It's a barrier,
Corey Kupfer: it's a barrier to entry, which is actually good.
Gabriel Suarez: Yeah, so exactly. So I tell my team members and, you know, my team all the time, and we're happy and frustrated with one of these shots, like, look, but. We figured out how to get around and we have partners that will work with us and bank with us and do marketing with us.
And we can do it all. It might've taken us 12 months, 24 months, maybe some bad investments along the way to figure it out. Well, now we're ahead. So let's leave that barrier there because we got on the other [00:31:00] side of it now. So, you know, it's not a big deal, even though it would be nice eventually for things to get better at the moment, the positive side of it, it is a barrier for everyone
Corey Kupfer: else.
Yeah, yeah, no, that's great. And it reminds me something I say to my team pretty often in these situations, when we're in a challenging situation, I would say to them, you know what? If it were easy, everybody would do it. You know, that's one of my favorite phrases, you know? Oh yeah. I can't tell you how many times I've used that.
I love it. So in terms of, you know, just so if there are other people in the audience who are thinking about franchising, because, I'll tell you what I thought, like in my experience, I'm not a franchise attorney per se in any way, but I, but obviously I've got so many entrepreneurial clients who run businesses or whatever, and they, you know, some of them are, you know, consider or at least raise the compensation of franchising, and then I'll refer them to a franchise attorney for the legal work, but we may have set up all the corporate structuring, entity structuring, do some of that capital raise stuff, you know, all that kind of stuff or whatever, and we'll continue to work with them, but we just don't handle the [00:32:00] franchise side of it.
So, I come in contact with it and, I think, for a lot of people, you know, they just hear about franchising and it can go both ways. Like one way, I think, oh, it's like, could this be this magic bullet, the way we grow or whatever. And then they find out that their business is not really good, a good candidate for franchising or they really start to understand what it takes to build, you know, and that it is a totally different business.
And they're like, Oh, I don't know if I want to do that. And then there's this other sort of crew that like, I don't know, looks down upon franchising you know, like they have like a negative view of, yeah, a major franchise, like, you know, a major name. So. And I'm sure like there's misconceptions on both ends of that spectrum who think, you know, prejudice is a magic bullet or think it's the devil or whatever, tell me, yeah, give me your thoughts on that.
Gabriel Suarez: You know, it's interesting. I go to a lot of conventions, franchise conventions, or just the retail business, all that stuff. And I run into the different scenarios and in, inside of franchise and the franchise community is super supportive. I found, and, and, inside of [00:33:00] franchising, you can get ahold of almost any CEO, any.
And I'm like, Hey, I have this other franchise business, totally different than yours, not competitive. I'm having these problems with my franchisees. You know, I'm like, will you talk to me for 30 minutes? And I've been shocked at how many people are happy to help, you know, and contribute and open up a lot of information that I'm like, wow, that is very, very nice because I don't know if anybody else in other industries do that kind of stuff.
So I found that in franchising. And, but the second that I go and talk to. Large scale retailers that did it outside of franchising. And it's funny because one of them is my mentor. So one of my mentors is Eric Malpeck and he started the Art of Shaping. You've probably seen those stores and he grew it to a few hundred of them and then sold it to P& G that owns Gillette, you know, a big company and had a wonderful exit and I'm trying to learn from him to do the same.
But, he didn't do it through franchising. And that, so individuals that grow like that, for the most part that I've met along the way, and Eric is actually not one of them that, that has these views on [00:34:00] franchising, but a lot of them have done what he's done. I'm like, Oh, well, you know, if you're in control, then.
You can, you know, then this and that and this, but in franchising, good luck, you know, and, just, you're not going to pull it off. You're not going to be consistent. And the reality is if you have control of everything, yeah, you have control of everything, and I totally see the perks. It takes a different level of.
Resources, capital, manpower, skill, even, I mean, just, stress and with, you know, all types of things, to be, you know, the stakeholder on everything across the whole board and have no, you know, shared interests with anybody. That's like, and by the way, the operators have essentially, but through franchising with it, I thought for me, it worked better for some, you know, I was under capitalized.
I've always been. And I can, the person at every one of these outlets, it has a stake skin in the game with me. So I've been able to use that and leverage that to be, that'd be more beneficial than the negative of like, well, I don't have full control. Well, but I can, that doesn't, I have such a good [00:35:00] simple model, realistically, that's easy to run.
But to me, it's more important to have those operators have skin in the game, so then we can scale quick and I don't have, I don't have the experience of running hundreds of outlets and thousands of employees, you know. That sounds just like stress that I don't necessarily, it doesn't seem inviting to me or attractive, you know, but the people that have done it look at that, that'd be in the right way and the correct way and franchising being maybe a shortcut or a way of cheating maybe, or, and maybe that's exaggerating, but it's, you know, in that direction.
But it's interesting, the second I cross into the franchise industry is the opposite. Super welcoming and warm and helpful. So, I, you know, bounce around and enjoy talking about.
Corey Kupfer: I love it. And listen, I think, you know, most successful people aren't like this, but some are like, I don't, like, there's no one right way to do anything.
Right. You know, it's really it's along the lines of what you started talking about, you like, oh, that other way I'd be stressed. I mean, like, you know, as the entrepreneur, you have to know thyself, you have to figure out what is the model, what is the, you know, what [00:36:00] is the way that aligns with your goals, with your vision, with your personality, with, you know, your skills, You know, all that kind of stuff.
So, I've seen, you know, a lot of people really be successful, in franchising, and for some, they find out it's not for them and I, both of those results are good, right? You know?
Gabriel Suarez: Yeah. Yeah.
Corey Kupfer: As
Gabriel Suarez: long as you are learning a lesson along the way, that's the best, you know, then that's fine.
Yeah. Yeah. Good
Corey Kupfer: stuff. So you said now, you know, you're on the verge of getting ready for a bigger launch, you know, at some point in the foreseeable future, let's just say. And you talked about, raising capital in connection with that. Right. So, you know, give us, again, to the extent you want to share, you know, give us an idea of what, like when companies at your stage say, okay, we're ready now to go from, You know, tens of locations to hundreds and thousands.
Like, what does that take? And where does the capital usually come from? You know, from that, are you raising from strategic? So there's specific franchise investors. Are you going out to the market generally? Like, you know, what does that likely going to [00:37:00] look like?
Gabriel Suarez: Yeah. You know, so we've been entertaining a few different things throughout the last six months or a year to really find the best avenue for us, including just internal friends and family, our own shareholders that, you know, don't want to be diluted or willing to invest more and have a little company race inside.
But we also think that we have a model now that we can put as many leads as we want into the funnel and they can process, and we believe that the system, you know, we can't clog it, at least from what we. I've learned along the way and the changes that we have made, we know we can just add more sales reps and add more leads and just build over more franchises.
So we really want to, and because of what I mentioned earlier with the, in the natural wellness, just awareness and the industry and everything, the timing may be so well, and we think that we're going to, it's going to be a combination of internal and external capital racing and just have, you know, basically a.
An open round and have, I think that our network and the network of our network extended will [00:38:00] probably be enough. But we have, which has been new to me, but it's been brought up by my partners and people that I trust, so we are in it. Is, crowdfunding and, and I've never knew, I don't know anything about, oh, I'm learning now, but I didn't know anything about it.
But apparently there's a certain type of brand and natural life aligns into this type of brand that is attractive to the consumer, and the sch can really get behind, and the consumer loves to throw in a few hundred dollars or a few thousand dollars and feel like they're part of a mega bigger mission and get behind of, you know, this.
Thing that's real beyond the investment, but like it's an investment in this thing that I believe in because of what I mentioned, the same thing that we look in our franchisees, you know, yeah, we need you to understand that how the basics of business, but if you have a little extra fire in you because of some.
Experience in this realm really helps with, there's a lot of people like that. And a lot of them can't be franchisees. They can't afford it. They're a full time job. They're no, they're a curious and I know whatever the thing might [00:39:00] be. But they might, you know, they, they would probably, consider. You know, be able to tell their friends or family that they own 500 worth of equity in this thing called natural life.
So we are entertaining that. I don't know that we're going to do that. I'm still learning a lot, but it's really interesting. And this seems like a wonderful way for a lot of brands to raise capital, if I'm correct.
Corey Kupfer: Yeah. And I think you're right. I was gonna say, I think you're right. I mean, again, I have clients who've explored this and some who've done it.
And in fact I just referred a buddy of mine to, a, a guy who literally wrote the. He literally, he's a lawyer who wrote the book on equity crowdfunding, Oh, wow. Criminal books. And, and, you know, in this particular case, and I won't say too much cause I don't have his permission to make it public, but yeah, but he's got a very clear brand that like has a geographic element to it.
Corey Kupfer: And specific products, the way he develops it, like, you know, where there would be some sort of reason for loyalty or interest, like, you know, from a similar to what you're saying, you know. Different, but the same [00:40:00] concept. And you know what, I think most of my listeners probably understand this point, but just in case you don't like the original crowdfunding that we all heard about was not equity crowdfunding.
In fact, it wasn't even legally allowed back then, you know, it was more like, Oh, you send it in, you're sort of pre paying for the product or you get some discount or you get some perks, you know, along with it. But for many, for a number of years now, there's been this ability to do equity crowdfunding where people do get small ownership pieces, you know, in the firm, they may get perks on top of that, you know, as it may be, packaged in and for certain kinds of companies, you know, it's certainly, pretty much never going to be your big round that, you know, where if you need, but it's often a stepping stone to that big round where you can like create, that next level of expansion, which could be advantageous in that, you could get it to the next level, meaning that when you go for your bigger round, you now can get better terms because you, you're going to them at a later stage when you're now, as opposed to, I mean, just, I'm making it up for you.
As opposed to be in 29 [00:41:00] locations, you now got it to 75 'cause you could, you know, or 50 or whatever the number's gonna be, right? Yeah, absolutely. Ground funding got you to the next level. So now when you got more for your professional capital, you know, you're at a better level and you don't have to give away as much equity.
So that's, you know, a place where I've seen folks using it as that could be a replacement for an angel round or, some, you know, interim round when they've got the kind of reason why. People might be passionate and I can definitely see in your business, how, you know, there's a community that loves this stuff.
Right. So for them to yellow piece of it, yeah, I mean, I obviously I'm not making any recommendations specifically, but it certainly makes sense to explore it as an option.
Gabriel Suarez: Yeah, I bet. And that's exactly what we're doing. I was putting the table a few months ago and. I've learned so much, but the biggest thing is, you know, if you have to be this niche type of thing that people can get behind, you can't just do a crowd funding for another set of car tires, you know, but, and we fit so well.
And then I'm like, well, okay. All right. All right. Let me learn more. Let me just, I'm open to it. I'm [00:42:00] open to it, but. It's something that, you know, just we're learning about, we'll see, you know, maybe we'll talk again and I'll give you another update when the time comes. But, and as you said, it will really be a stepping stone to get us probably into the early hundreds.
And that's what we like to, you know, this to take us, you know, between one and 200 units. And that'll probably take a few years, a small amount, and then we'll really at that point, you know, even though I'm calling launching the rocket ship, you know, maybe we landed it on the moon and now we're going to have a shoot around the galaxy or something, you know, but the next round would have to be some level of professional capital and, you know, that would take us.
The rest of the way into the thousands. I think if we had that kind of capital now, we might not even spend that responsibly or correctly or smartly, you know, I've already I've from experience, you know, I, the first time I raised capital. I thought I'd spend it the best way looking back at it.
I could have done twice as much with that money if I knew what I know now, you know, but overpaying for anything from marketing services to labor to this and that in the early days, not really, you know, just not [00:43:00] knowing what I know now. So I, and I think that there's a lot that I know enough to know.
I don't know. So I think that we are at this day from here to a hundreds. We can do that. Well, I think that's in a very much in, in our, what we have in our model now. And it's a big, still a big jump. And then the next one. Yeah. So when the crowdfunding thing, it should, you know, it's right in that amount that, so from, but the other examples of just other brands, I'm looking at how much they raise and they're comparable, so I'm like, okay.
All right. I think the most range between like two to 10 million and the races that, that I've, that we're seeing that are comparable to what we would do.
Corey Kupfer: Love it. So before I ask you my final two questions, is there anything else about deals, about your journey, about the company, anything else you want to share with us before I ask you my final two questions?
Gabriel Suarez: The only thing that comes to mind that I would say is really important to me. Is, you know, I start, cause I, I started with just, with nothing literally is I've always been really humble [00:44:00] and friendly to everyone, but I've always paid attention to like who's around me and kind of strategically, you know, friend and people my whole life and not in a selfish way, but like just, you know, not completely by accident way sometimes.
And, and I think over the last, you know, I'm 37 now. I think maybe in the last six, seven years, I've in my thirties year, you know, if I'm doing this as I was in my early twenties, I think that my network has really allowed me to even have the possibilities to do what I've been doing. And if not, you know, I would still be able to do it, but I would be chipping away a lot slower.
I would be opening one store at a time. I would, somebody would probably see what I'm doing. They were just getting, it's a great idea. And then go do it in a way that, that we are going to do it. But you know, somebody else would have, and it's just. Anyway, being able to at least have the right friends to say, look, I have this plan.
You have, you know, what I don't have, let's team up and let's make this happen. It's really been a blessing for me, and that, so [00:45:00] that's super important. I think everybody says that, you know, your networks your network is your net worth or whatever, something like that. But your network is really, I mean, I could say firsthand has been the most important thing to help us get this far.
Corey Kupfer: Yeah. I mean, listen, you know, I wanted to put it in the old terms of, you know, building strategic relationships or whatever, but it's just, you know, it's just having amazing, great people around you. I mean, I value my network so much that even, you know, I mean, yes, some of them, some of it is actual referrals of business, that kind of stuff, whatever.
But a lot of it is just having, it's one of the reasons why I love being an entrepreneurial organization member because EO is, you know, a global organization of entrepreneurs and you know, you don't, it's actually a non solicitation environment. You don't solicit business, but it's that sharing of best practices of the mistakes that people made of the journey of the support of just letting you know, you're not alone in this crazy journey that, you know, a lot of your.
Friends and family may not understand because they've never, you know, built a business. And again, no judgment that may be right for them, but they'd have no clue about what you're going [00:46:00] through. So to have folks that you can go to and that those situations are just absolutely crucial. So I'm glad you mentioned that.
Gabriel Suarez: Yeah. A hundred percent. And EO is almost every mentor that I have. And from there, you know, from the early days, you know, I've always been in and talked about EO. It's a great network and that great association to be part of. So yeah.
Corey Kupfer: Yeah. Yeah. I'm a big that we've been in for a long time. All right. So, Gabriel, before I ask you my final question, my second last question is how could people find out more about natural life and whether it's because they want to go buy your products or maybe they're interested in becoming a franchisee or, you know, whatever.
Gabriel Suarez: Absolutely. So, if you just go to naturallifefranchise. com, that website, it's, will tell you all about the franchise opportunity. That's a nice little spot to put your name and your email if you're interested and we'll send you some information that you can learn more about the franchise opportunity.
If you're interested in buying natural alternatives and solving problems naturally, and you end up at that website anyway, there's a shop now at the top right corner that will take you to the retail e commerce storefront. But if you also [00:47:00] go to shopnaturallife. com. That goes directly to our online store.
And there, there's an, store locator. You can find the natural head near you. Hopefully you have one. And if you don't, the inventory is all online and, you know, anywhere you can shop.
Corey Kupfer: So my final question on the podcast, Gabriel, is always about my highest value in life, which is freedom. And for me, that means everything from freedom around the world for all people from oppression to why I've been an entrepreneur for decades and haven't had a boss, what does freedom mean to you and how does it impact your life and business?
Gabriel Suarez: Yeah, freedom, for me is freedom time, that's like, for me, the one thing that, you know, you can't buy back or get back or get more, everybody's got the same amount, whether you're born inside of a, you know, whatever, you're homeless or in a mansion, everybody's got the same, so. Having the freedom of time to be able to use the time as much, however I want at any, you know, and ideally a hundred percent of that time, that would be total freedom.
So if I, for me, a hundred percent freedom would be a hundred [00:48:00] percent time freedom.
Corey Kupfer: So what I would say. Love it. Love it. I, one of the things that my friends, though, I say that, You know, I mean, it used to be half joking, but I realized really, it's, you know, like what would be a symbol of my ultimate success and it would and I'm somebody who doesn't wake up on my own.
So this is a key point. I know there are people who wake up with alarms, but you know, like, for me the side would be never having to set an alarm again. Right. Nice. Yeah. Nice. Yeah, that would be like, that would be exactly that. It would be, timeframe would mean like I get, like there's nothing I have to wake up for that I, trust me, there'd be plenty of things I'd wanna do and I'd be involved in, but it would be like in nobody else's schedule.
And you know, like, so that, that's my little way of like saying like, if I achieved the ultimate, I'd never have to set an alarm again.
Gabriel Suarez: That's a, yep. I could get behind that a hundred percent. I'm the same. And I'm my little alarm person too, by the way. So, you know, I could relate with that very much.
Corey Kupfer: Love it. Gabriel, thanks for being such a great guest on the
Gabriel Suarez: DealQuest podcast. Hey, thank you for having me. I've enjoyed talking to you today.
Corey Kupfer: It's been great.
