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About Richard:
Richard Mallion is a speaker, high-level business consultant, serial entrepreneur and philanthropist who has been in the venture capital and eCommerce industry for over 25 years. Richard has a degree in finance and has dedicated his life to his children’s academic and sports achievements. Richard has traveled all over Europe and the Caribbean and loves sailing, scuba diving, fishing and playing guitar. Richard is currently working with Kevin Harrington from “Shark Tank” and New York Best Selling Author, Mark Timm. Richard’s biggest goal is to change the world with his disruptive non-toxic technologies.
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Why Your Product Launch Formula Will Fail | Richard Mallion
My guest is a speaker, high-level business consultant, serial entrepreneur and philanthropist. This guy has been in the venture capital and eCommerce industry for many years. He loves sailing, scuba diving, fishing and playing the guitar. He’s working with Kevin Harrington, the original shark from Shark Tank and New York Times bestselling author, Mark Timm from Ziglar Family. Richard Mallion, welcome to the show.
How are you?
I’m doing fantastic. I’m bringing the energy. Are you ready to batch?
I’m ready.
Let’s dive in. You’re a speaker. You heard your whole intro, which is fantastic. I love the bullet points. We’ve got venture capital. That’s a topic that I’m sure a lot of people are thinking about, especially coming out of 2020. Before we dive into that though, I want to hear about this. Are you a scuba diver?
I’m a scuba diver. A lot of people don’t know this about me but I was born and raised in Nassau, Bahamas. My dad was from England. He was a banker for Barclays Bank and somehow ended up in The Bahamas. My mom was a stewardess. In those days, being a flight attendant, you had to be single. She was from New York. My dad used to travel and my mom was a stewardess. They met on the plane but physically met at a party. The rest is history. It was pretty exciting. It’s neat to grow up in The Bahamas. It’s a different lifestyle. People see the pictures. It’s very laid back but it was fun growing up there. Once you get to a certain age, you go to school in the United States and I never went back.
Do you ever get back?
A little bit just to go over to Nassau. The kids I went to school with, I keep in contact with most of them. They come over here to the United States when they want to get off. They call the island, the rock. When they come over here, we get together. Every once in a while I go over there. It’s a very slow mentality. The United States is a lot faster. It gets frustrating over there too much but it’s still very beautiful. It’s one of the most beautiful countries in the world water-wise and very nice people.
I’m hearing the transition here that there might have been something. Your dad may have influenced your dive into venture capitalism or VC. He worked for Barclays Bank, you said?
He worked for Barclays for years. In those days, you work 2, 3-year stints and then they move you. He started in Cyprus, then went to Eleuthera. He came over to Nassau and he was eventually going to go to another venue. That’s when he met my mother and worked for the World Bank. Robert Anderson in the late ’60s, early ’70s was Chairman of the Board of the World Bank and Eisenhower. That’s how he transitioned to the World Bank and then stayed over there for another 30 years. He was over there for about 45 years. I got the financial background from him. Usually, you’ll buddy up to all his friends who influenced me. My dad’s best friend was a foreign currency trader for Credit Lyonnais in Manhattan. He became my first mentor. We’ll get into mentorship a little bit because it’s a big part of my life. He mentored me into the financial side of the business. I didn’t get into the foreign currency side of it but I did get into raising money for small-cap and startup companies.
What first attracted you to work with startups?
One of the things I look for is consumable products that are disruptive and have an opportunity to scale. I’ve incorporated raising money with the eCommerce side of the business. I’m looking for products that we can test that people can change and make a difference in the world. We look for those products. We have several that we have identified. We test them through Amazon and through Facebook. With that, we also have a conglomerate of investors that like to get involved, especially when there’s good management. We have the A-team. Mark Timm sold over 92,000 products on Amazon. We have incorporated his team with Amazon.
We get through three stages of testing, then we go into retail when we scale at that point. Every deal I have, I use Kevin Harrington as my spokesperson from the Shark Tank. He gives a lot of credibility to the product. Once we get that going, we fund it with our startup or investors. Once we get to that point, we pass it off to a more seasoned venture capitalist. We get the ball going. We get it off the ground. That’s the most rewarding. Making sure that we can seamlessly get it from an idea to sales, to scaling, to taking it to a listed exchange.
Have you heard the phrase, “Impact investing?”
Yes.
It sounds like that’s your wheelhouse. You’re looking for products that are disruptive. They’re out there to change the world. How do you even figure out if that’s it? Do you have a checklist? I know you probably have some.
Not really. An example would be we have SinoFresh nasal spray, throat spray and travel packs. That was our first product when Mark came. We’re looking for something that’s going to identify with people that have issues and problems and make their problems a lot better. With SinoFresh, we knew that there was a huge nasal issue. With the pandemic, people need to clean their noses, clean their throats, wash their hands. If they do that, the chances of getting COVID, flu or anything like that is extremely limited. I’m not saying they’re not going to get it. We’re coming out with a travel pack, which is a nasal, throat, hand sanitizer and wipes. We’re getting a good response that we think it’s going to scale very quickly because of airlines and cruise ships. People who want to get on a plane want to wipe off the table in front of where they sit.
What’s disturbing with the airline business is they’re handing out alcohol wipes, which the CDC is recommending alcohol wipes. Our wipes are non-toxic. They’re non-alcohol. They’re water base. It’s what we call the high IQ formula. It’s a physics reaction, not a chemical reaction. We’re going through EPA and FDA approval. If we get this out there, people are going to understand that it’s non-toxic. If you swallowed it, you don’t have to go to the emergency room. We’re excited about that. In a plane, if you have 3 or 4 napkins together, it could create a fire. I’m mystified that the airlines haven’t picked that up when you still have to go through TSA. They’re taking bottles of all these cosmetics. They’re like, “Go through there.” That’s mind-boggling.
Don’t you love the aroma on airlines these days when everybody takes out their alcohol wipes and rubbing down everything, including themselves? I see people giving themselves a dry shower with those alcohol wipes sometimes.
Ours is moisturizing. It’s craziness but we’re getting there. It’s out there. We’ve got a lot of retail stores. We got hand wipes. I got a hand wipe here. I’ll bring this to the Board of Advisors and give them out to people. We can private label them and put them on backpack for kids for sporting events. I’m trying to put this in Disney World.
The alcohol wipes, you know that with the airlines. That’s a freaking marketing tactic just to give the illusion of safety, “Here’s a wipe.” How is this little square that you’re going to get me on a soapbox or whatever going to protect me from getting COVID, flu or anything else like you said?
They claim they clean these planes. I don’t know. The plane comes in. Everyone comes out and they come back in. When did they clean the plane?
I feel you on that. I love how you’re taking these products. These are things that are disruptive. I’m curious about the sinus spray. I put off a surgery because I’ve got to raise some capital for a different project. I have to be able to speak. I have tonsils and nasal stuff going on from allergies. I’m going to try your spray to see how this rolls.
I’ll get you some SinoFresh nasal spray. It’s homeopathic and all-natural.
Thank you. My nasal thing is allergies. It’s always constantly inflamed. Is that where you fit in?
Absolutely. You try it. You’ll like it. It’s non-addictive. A lot of people rave about it. It’s getting a lot of reviews on Amazon. We like Amazon because you have to buy the product to give a review. On Facebook and Google, you do not. Amazon is so much better with their reviews. We like getting reviews on Amazon.
That’s huge for anybody who’s looking to put products out there too for eCommerce. It sounds like Amazon is the platform. They’re more credible than anybody else.
You have to start with Amazon. You have to go slow. One thing about Amazon is people think you can just throw money at it, but you have to organically grow. They’ve been very seasoned. The product organically grows. With your own website, you can spend as much money as you want to build it. However, our experience is a lot of people will go to our cart. They do the research on our website and because they pay shipping with us, they go to Amazon and it’s free. A lot of people do that. The more we advertise on our personal brand, the more our Amazon sales go up.
That’s an incredible concept too that a lot miss out on. You still have to advertise your personal brand but when they complete the transaction, it could be somewhere else. Amazon’s the behemoth that’s out there. I’m assuming your products are all Prime on Amazon.
One of the things you have to have with Amazon that a lot of people don’t know is not only the trademark but you have to have the R. You can sell on Amazon without the R but you cannot do streaming video. One of the things that we found out is a consumer is 1,200 times more likely to buy a product that has a streaming video than any other type of media advertising. Video is so important. For any product, the first thing we do is video. We spend a lot of money on professional videos. We don’t do it half-ass. We have professionals that do it. Before we even buy inventory, we’re doing our videos. We want to make sure that the presentation is done properly.
I see all the time these internet gurus or eCommerce gurus that start throwing things up on ClickFunnels. They’re saying, “I’ve got a seven-figure funnel.” Even Russell Brunson from ClickFunnels has the Two Comma Club. I’m sure you’ve heard of this where you have at least $1 million because that’s two commas through a single funnel. He gives you this nice, almost like a platinum record kind of thing as an award. He says, “Here you go. Welcome to the Two Comma Club.” The videos that I see on those funnels versus videos that I see in Amazon, they are almost holding up their phone and saying, “You got to buy my sinus spray.” They’re snorting it up. Is that converting as well as something like you’re talking about, the professional video?
I think it’s converting. My mentor is Mark Timm and he is a lot of people’s mentors. He taught us to be very reserved. One of the things that we do is we go in three stages. We can’t do it with Amazon but we do it with our own platform. We go 500 clients and we spend about $10,000 grand a month on advertising getting to those 500 clients. We’re testing 45 to 50 different ads. Some of them work. Some of them don’t. Once we go to stage two, which is 2,500 clients, we spend about $25,000 a month. Our third stage is 5,000 clients and we go to $80,000 a month. We’re testing the whole time. We are not worried about making money. The reason why we say that is we’re going to find out how to scale. We’re not looking to make $300,000 on a product. We’re looking for the next. It’s like think big, grow rich.
We’re looking for that $100 million company. Whether we get there or not, we’re going to know after we test if this product works. If you do it this way and you scale properly, then you go into retail stores, you’re going to 10X the company. I know a lot of people don’t do that. They throw things at the wall and hope it works, but this formula works. Kevin’s taken 21 companies to $100 million. Not every company he works with is successful. We know that if we get it out for testing and it works, we can see what ads work and we start scaling, we know we’re going to have a successful product. That’s what this is all about. It’s finding products that consumers want that will help them. We know if it’s going to help in our testing, we know that we can help the world.
You’re talking about these three phases. What timeline does that follow? Is it flexible depending on the product or do you have a set staging?
It’s flexible. Five hundred clients generally take a month. It’s a six-month process to do this properly. A lot of people scale before they’re ready and the deals end up. They might spike their sales but the company won’t last because they don’t know what their demographics are. Is it a 30-year-old woman, a 60-year-old woman or a 50-year-old man? We try to find as many in Facebook, Google, Spotify, which is a music station. People go to Spotify. With Spotify, you could tell the demographics of somebody by the music they listen to. It gives us a good brand or good idea of who’s buying our product and then we scale to that demographics.
Your testing phase is not, “Is the product functional or not?” You’re gathering data during those six months so you can hone in on your target market after that six months is over to blow it up. You’re not just trying to throw a wide net and spread yourself too thin from a financial perspective remarketing.
We’ll spend $100 here, $200 there, $500. We had one ad that 240 people went to the cart and didn’t buy. We knew there was something wrong but that was the same week that our Amazon sales skyrocketed. We found out that this ad is getting people to our cart but they’re going to Amazon. They had to be. When we took the ad off, our sales on Amazon went down a little bit. These are all things that we need to know before we scale and we’re going to go spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising.
It’s free Prime shipping. That’s where everybody goes.
Once we scale, if we spend 10% of our dollars, we know we’re going to get 8 to 10 times in revenue. We know that for a fact because we’ve done thousands of products.
That’s how it’s supposed to be. A 1 to 8 or 1 to 10 ratio is what identifies a successful campaign. That’s what I think a lot of individuals will miss out on. They’ll think that they might get a 1 to 20 or 1 to 50 ratio. The unicorns that are out there don’t have to spend a lot, especially on product sales and then you get to the point where it’s like, “No. That’s not how it works.”
In fact, if you go down and all of a sudden your sales and your advertising dollars are 6% or 7%, you know that you have to boost up your advertising because you know the company stock or the product needs to go wild a little bit. It works both ways.
I’m assuming you’re not developing all these products in your basement. You’re not coming up with all of these thoughts. People bring products to you and say, “What do you think about this?”
Every day I get somebody who has a product or an idea. We have a committee of guys. They give me some samples and I send them out to 4 or 5 people. If we like the product, if they work and the committee says, “This thing is scalable,” we then go to the next step which is, where do you manufacture it? Do you have the ability to get this thing to scale up? If they don’t have the capital and we like it, we’ll go find the capital.
If it’s a good product and you have the right backing and the right person there, the capital is easy to find.
There’s a lot of money out there.
In 2020, it was pretty conservative. Even my thirteen-year-old son has a fantastic idea for a product. It’s amazing. I’d love you to meet him someday. Someone like him, let’s fast forward in ten years, maybe a 23-year-old will say, “I’ve got this amazing idea.” You see the show Shark Tank, which is where Kevin was from, one of the original sharks on Shark Tank. First off, you sound like a shark, which is pretty awesome. You’re examining these deals to see if you want to throw money at them. When somebody comes to you to say, “I’ve got this product,” what exactly are you looking for from them? How can they make it more attractive to you to say, “This is scalable and I want to put my heart and soul into this thing?”
We’ve narrowed it down. Is it a disruptive technology? I have a hair rejuvenation company. I know that it’s a big business. Do these gentlemen have the ability to scale or to run a business? Is there management? Do they have integrity? It comes to core values. For a long time, I was trying to figure out why was I not more successful? I identified with core values. The core value is part of our team. Do they have integrity? Do they have the work ethic? Do they have transparency? Are they willing to work as a team? We’ve created a culture here. You know this from some of the players that I deal with. It’s the same thing. They’re consistent day in, day out. They believe in our culture.
If we have a product that’s scalable, disruptive, consumable and can scale, we created a group of people that we feel all have the same values. It then comes down to numbers. Do these numbers in testing make sense? If you have those three, culture, people and numbers together, then we think we have a successful product. We might look through 40 products and get 1 or 2. It’s not like we take every product out there. Not only is it a product but it’s the people involved and their core values. What are their core values? Do they fit in our core values?
I love that perspective. Those are the only people that I ever want to do business with from here on out. There have been years in the past where it was almost inverted. Is this person a good business fit? It wasn’t, “Is this person a good fit for me as a person? What kind of culture do they exemplify in their company?” I had that reversed and that was a hard lesson to learn here and there because that caused some heartache. It caused not only financial losses but also some emotional taxing and banging my head against the wall.
Mark Timm who’s probably the most influential guy to elevate my status here as a mentor, recommended that I read Zig Ziglar. You hear Zig Ziglar and you hear all these things. When I started reading Zig Ziglar, I started changing my attitude. Mark accepted me and brought me into his fold. When you start having a positive attitude, integrity, goals, being consistent, doing the same things over and over, people see that. It’s the Law of Attraction. They want to be involved with you. When I did that, it made my relationship with my wife better. My kids call me and they want advice. Before they were like, “Dad’s doing so much. Who knows if it’s going to work or not?” When they realized that I had core values and I started building this relationship with these mentors that are very successful and consistent, it helped in every aspect of my life, whether it’s getting on the Peloton or reading every day.
One of the questions I got is, “How are some of these guys so successful?” I go, “They read every single day. They gather knowledge every day about everything. When they open their mouth, whatever comes out of their mouth is knowledge and information.” I don’t need to talk to Mark for 10 hours a day, 10 minutes a day or 10 minutes every other day. Whatever comes out of his mouth is extremely good knowledge. It’s going to help me be a better person, not only to myself but to people around me. When that happened, all of a sudden, all these things started happening. I got to get involved with Kevin. I got to the Board of Advisors, which is a great mastermind that we’re involved with. I started meeting with Rey Perez from 360 and then the Inner Circle. I have a group where I talk in the Inner Circle. All we do is feed information that’s going to help us elevate, be more successful and help other people. It’s this philosophy of the more you help other people, the more it comes back to you.
That’s the truth right there. That’s putting it out into the world and the world always gives back. Whatever you throw out, they’re going to smack you back in the face, good or bad.
It took me a long time to accept that. The more I help you, the more it helps me. It’s the craziest thing but it takes a lot for someone to understand that.
There’s a theme that I’ve read about you. You’re looking for disruptive technologies but specifically, you’re looking for non-toxic technologies. I know we’ve given some examples like the non-alcohol cleansing wipe. With some other products that you have, what are you looking for as far as non-toxic? How did you come up with that?
We’re coming out with a liquid vitamin brand. Vitamins are very big. We have TacuminPro which is a turmeric product. It’s a complete detox. It’s a turmeric plant. We found a way to make it soluble with a drop of the protein molecule. We’ll have a sports drink out with that and a meal replacement. I’m doing that with Mark and Kevin. We find these products that are US standard hemp, which is a CBD deal, which we’re going to do an anti-inflammatory deal. CBD is still big out there. We have a Price Club that’s coming out. We’re going to be cheaper than anybody else in the industry. We’re going to sell multiple products. All those products are non-toxic products. They’re good for the body and healthy. Not only do you have to have a sign to make money but you got to take care of yourself and take care of other people. If we do that, we’re going to make a change in people’s lives and the world.
Being in the industry for a long time, what life lesson do you have that’s inspired you the most to get where you’re at?
Be a good person. Wake up every day and don’t let the small things bother you. I have an older son. He happens to be a lawyer. He’s always like, “Do what you got to do. Smile at everybody. Be nice to everybody and mind your own business. Stay within your lanes.” You don’t know what the person next to you is going through. If you smile at them, it could make a difference.
Sometimes that’s all it takes. There was a story that I saw on my Instagram feed. It was My Story. I was at a grocery store a little while back. She was 80 years old. I know this for a fact because that’s part of the story. She was buying ice cream because it was a gelato stand within the grocery store. It was a competitor of Whole Foods around the Chicago area. It’s called Mariano’s. They’ve got the hot bar, Starbucks, a gelato stand and a juice bar. She was at the gelato stand. She wasn’t struggling financially but she was struggling to find her money in her purse.
At this moment, I walked up and said, “Here, I got yours. I’m getting gelato too.” She broke down crying. She goes, “Today is my 80th birthday.” I said, “Happy birthday. Have some gelato. This is awesome.” It’s little things that, a smile or stepping in when you see anybody in need, even something small like that. Did she need it that day? Not from a financial perspective but it made her day just stepping into that. I love your perspective. I love your heart. Richard, thank you for being on. Everyone can find you at Richard360.com.
Absolutely.
If you’ve got a product you need to pitch, yours might be 1 out of 40.
I have a sanitizing machine. I’m going to bring it to the Board of Advisors. I’m going to offer your readers a great opportunity. If you go into the airport, you walk in and see this machine, you go to the machine, you take your temperature and it will tell you. If it’s green, it means you don’t have a temperature. If it’s red, the alarms go off. You walk in and it sanitizes you with our high IQ, all water-based mist. It’s called Sinomist. You walk in there. You turn your body around and that mist will rinse any of the pathogens or any of the viruses that you have on you. It has ultraviolet light on either side. The mist comes up. The ultraviolet light will kill anything up here. It’s 150 to 175. Anything over 250 is dangerous so it’s not dangerous. That has an ozone generator.
If anybody is interested in being my partner and doing a joint venture, I welcome you to contact me on Richard360.com. It’s generally a $1,000 webinar fee. I’m giving it to the first five people that contact me for free. I’ll give you the opportunity to do a joint venture with me and sell this to the world. It’s great for casinos, airports and businesses. If they’re in a business, you know that the person in there is not going to have a temperature and you know they have been cleaned. The mindset of anybody or their customers in these restaurants, casinos and everything else is they feel comfortable that somebody is not spreading the Coronavirus or the COVID-19. You can discuss it with me and maybe have an opportunity to do a joint venture with me.
It’s an awesome opportunity to do a joint venture in this amazing thing. I want to walk through it and catch an experience of it.
If you’re unhappy with your job and you want to have more time with your family and you want to make more money, contact me at Richard360. By the way, I’ll also give you a pre-signed Mentor to Millions book from my two partners, Kevin Harrington and Mark Timm. By contacting me, I’ll send you a free book signed by them.
Richard Mallion, thank you for being on.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
Important links:
- Kevin Harrington
- Mark Timm
- Richard Mallion
- SinoFresh
- Board of Advisors
- Zig Ziglar
- Peloton
- Rey Perez
- Mentor to Millions
- https://TinyURL.com/hbdcrvdn
