I’ve been busy interviewing a lot of my friends in the industry, and this series will introduce you to all of them! Our first episode was with Don Henig, founder and CEO of AcccrueMe. Don’s company is a totally unique thing – AccrueMe provides funding to Amazon sellers – without taking permanent ownership in the seller’s company, charging interest, requiring monthly payments…they don’t even need your credit report. You can learn more about their model here, because we’re not really here to talk about Don’s COMPANY. The whole point of the Cool Kids of Ecommerce is to put the focus on the PERSON.

Note: at the beginning, we were calling these “fireside chats,” so you’ll hear that in this recording. Don’t worry, because Don is a Cool Kid if I ever saw one.

Don is a guy who has done just about everything. He started out in financial planning, opened his own business, and found himself in the mortgage world. He built one of the largest mortgage companies in the state of New York, then sold it. After a time in publishing, he built and started a mortgage broker franchise nationwide, but that still wasn’t his thing. So he sold that too. He didn’t really know a whole lot about entertainment, but he built an entertainment company that made eight feature films with some huge Hollywood names and the Broadway show, Rock of Ages.

After building and scaling and growing and selling company after company, Don took some time off, and may have been totally retired, but the world of Amazon sellers popped up on his radar. As a person who has mentored many small business owners, this industry appealed to him greatly, and he wanted to help. So he built AccrueMe, and is helping Amazon sellers grow faster and faster.

Don is actually the person who told me that in these interviews, I need to ask some fun questions, in addition to questions about the business and the person’s career. So I asked, “What does a day start like for Don Henig?” His answer blew me away. He gets up at 5:30AM, has a cup of coffee, and then sits down with his gratitude journal. (Don sent me one of these journals as a gift – you can find it here) He puts out pictures of his parents, who have passed, his grandparents, aunts, uncles, in-laws and all the people who have given him love and support throughout his life. He says, “And I, every single morning, say ‘Thank you.”‘ And I mean it from the bottom of my heart.” He fills out the gratitude journal, then either does a high intensity interval training workout or an intestinal ab workout, stretches, and does a 45 minutes infrared sauna session for detoxing. Don says, “now by 8:30, I am ready to go – body, mind, and soul.” Great way to start the day, right?

AccrueMe continues to grow, and continues to offer financing to Amazon sellers in a way that makes it work for them. When he’s not on podcasts, at industry events, and heading up virtual summits, Don posts some of the most amusing dad jokes ever on Facebook. Here’s an example:

Transcript

Liz Downing:
Hi everybody, welcome to today’s edition of Fireside Chats. I am your host, Liz Downing, ecommerce marketing manager at Teikametrics. I’ve got with me today, my friend, Don Henig. He is the co-founder of AccrueMe, which is a really disruptive, cool company in the ecommerce space. We’re going to learn all about it today. Don, thank you for joining me, how are you today?

Don Henig:
I’m doing great, thanks Liz. I’m excited.

Liz Downing:
I’m excited too. It’s a Friday, we’re all tired, we’re still doing this COVID thing. I know that doesn’t make this evergreen, but you guys have to know what’s going on. It’s crazy times. I know that every seller, every brand that I’ve talked to, has said that there’s something going on that just makes it the weirdest year ever. But I want to use this series to introduce you to industry people that we trust here at Teikametrics, that are personal friends of mine, so that we can develop a community of thought leaders. And we know who to turn to when we’ve got questions and we’re all part of the same big ecommerce family. So without further ado, Don you’re in the hot seat, I’m going to ask you a couple of questions.

Don Henig:
All right.

Liz Downing:
Through the discussions that we’ve had, you have had a very interesting life and career. Tell me a little bit about your career, prior to ecommerce.

Don Henig:
It’s been interesting and fun. I’ve done just about everything, but mainly finance. So I started as a financial planning… Opened my own financial planning business, which led me into the mortgage world, opened a mortgage company, built it to one of the largest in New York State and sold that. Just one thing after another, publishing company, publishing soccer newspapers, at the time. I started that and sold that. I built and started a mortgage broker franchise nationwide and sold that. I built an entertainment company, never knew anything about entertainment, just like I never knew anything about publishing, or the mortgage business. And I started an entertainment company, did eight feature length films with the biggest names in Hollywood and a Broadway show called Rock of Ages, which was a huge hit. A lot of fun. You have that look on your face.

Liz Downing:
I liked that one a lot.

Don Henig:
It was a great show. Oh, it was a great show, it was so much fun. Really so much fun. I got into buying and selling foreclosures for 18 months, I bought and sold 300 houses. It was great, but I didn’t really enjoy it, so I stopped. It was a very profitable, but it just wasn’t for me. Built another mortgage company nationwide and one of the largest in the nation, actually two more. Then I took another period of time off, I’ve done that a few times, and this last time I took five years off, and then started talking about, what’s next. And I really wasn’t looking to get back in, but an old friend of mine started talking to me about Amazon and that led me to coming up with a completely unique model. So I don’t know if you want me to continue-

Liz Downing:
Before we get into that, I want to draw a comparison between our shared experiences because I was the same way. I wasn’t getting ready to retire or anything like that, I think you’ve been in and out of retirement, this is the third time for you. Where you’re like, “Oh, I don’t need to work anymore, but I want to work.” For me, I was a freelance writer for years and years. I learned about third-party Amazon sellers, and I was like, “What? This is so cool.”
And I got obsessed with entrepreneurship, I got obsessed with how difficult it is to sell on Amazon, but how rewarding it can be, and I geeked out hard, basically, and just dove headfirst in and said, “What can I do to support this community because this matters to me?” And I think you’re the same way, when you and I met the first time, I was like, “We’re on the totally same page because we both feel the same way about this community.” So I have tried to support this community with great content and with a listening ear and a good shoulder to cry on. You, however, got a big bucket of money to give them, so why don’t we talk about that a little bit?

Don Henig:
Sure. But you know what? Just like you actually, what intrigued me about the Amazon seller world is that, for the most part, they’re small businesses and they’re small business people. And what I do… I hate to say it is a hobby, but what I do as a part of my life is mentor people and help people and help them start businesses or grow businesses, not to make money from it, but just to help them. So I saw this as a great opportunity to help a lot of people. And then we put a model together so that we could make money at it too, so even better.
But we come up with something completely unique. Something that’s never been done before, nobody’s ever tried it. Where we will actually double the capital that an Amazon seller has. So we’ll give them more money than any bank or any lender will give them, so that they can grow that much bigger. And to make it even better, we don’t require any monthly payments. Which is completely unique, obviously, there’s no interest rate, there’s no payments, and we don’t take any ownership in the business either. So that when they sell the business, they keep all of the benefit. Go ahead Liz, you have that questionable look on your face.

Liz Downing:
Well, I think it’s probably the same question that everybody asks you, is that if you don’t charge interest and you don’t require monthly payments, how do you make money? Or is that something you can’t disclose?

Read The Transcript

Don Henig:
Right. No, we disclose anything and everything. What we do is very simple. It really is more simple than alone, actually, but there’s been lending going on for 2000 years, so people understand it. What we’re doing is something a little unique. What we do is we take a percentage of profits for as long as the seller wants to use our money. So if the seller doesn’t make money, what do we earn? Zero. We get nothing. We take all that risk. And I’ll tell you that last February, March, April, we had sellers that were doing great, really kicking ass. And then all of a sudden breaking even, and a couple of them losing money. They owed us nothing. And one guy actually said to me, he goes, “Don, if I had to make monthly payments on this, I’d be out of business.”
And he’s right, he would have been out of business. Not only, he didn’t have to make monthly payments, but he owed us zero, nothing, we earn nothing. And what do we do with that? All we want to do is help. And you talk about having a shoulder to cry on, we had to talk to these guys and help them through it and give the long vision of a business. It’s not, you’re in it for a month.
No, you’re in this for a long, long time, and you’re going to build a real business and you’re going to have ups and downs. So I’ll give you a quick thing that I remember from years ago, I saw when I was starting in my business career and I was in somebody’s house, they were a landscaper. And I was taking a mortgage, writing a mortgage for them. And I’ll never forget the sign that was on their refrigerator, and it stuck with me this long, this was a long time ago. It said, “Sometimes owning your own business is as overrated as mom’s apple pie.” So your mom’s apple pie might be great-

Liz Downing:
Not overrated at all.

Don Henig:
I don’t remember my mother ever making it.

Liz Downing:
If mom’s watching this, she knows, she knows.

Don Henig:
Yeah, there you go. But it rang true to me so many times in my career, and I know it rings true for Amazon sellers, very, very, very often, because I talked to so many of them. That you have ups and downs, you have good times and bad times. And when you have those bad times, having somebody who’s been through it before, help you, and guide you, and give you a little bit of encouragement, that’s a big plus, very big plus. Go ahead.

Liz Downing:
And you’re making your way around the industry. I see you on different podcasts and all that kind of stuff, so you’re making the contacts that if a seller or a brand is having trouble in and they reach that point you can say, “Well hey, have you thought about… Obviously, you’ve got an inventory problem.” Or, “Obviously, you’ve got these ASINs you could advertise.” Or, “Obviously, your metrics aren’t good. Your ODR is down.” You’re learning enough about the business and the industry and Amazon specifically, to be able to say, “Hey, you should talk to this person over there.” And that’s probably… It’s the reason we’re doing this series, and it’s probably one of the most powerful things about this industry, is the people in it and the networks we have where we can say, “Okay well, I don’t do that specifically, but let me introduce you to…” And you’re building that network, I’m watching you build that network and it’s delightful.

Don Henig:
Well, you’ve been very helpful and I appreciate it, to tell you the truth. It’s been great. It really has been. But you’re absolutely right, I’ve introduced our sellers on an individual basis, to various people in the industry, that can help them with whatever the situation is that they’re going through at the time. There’s plenty of stories of it. But it’s fun, it’s great. And it’s good for us as well as it turns out, because all we care about is helping the seller make more money. If they make more money, we make more money, and it’s that simple. So we have this concept… Have you ever heard of Einstein when he said, “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world.” And the quote goes on a little further and he says, “Those who understand it, earn it, and those who don’t, pay it.”
So we took the whole idea of Einstein, and Einstein compounding, and compound interest, and we look at it as an Einstein mentality. You can have a mentality in this business or any business, to just go along and just keep moving along and paying your bills. Or you can have an Einstein mentality where you’re going to grow rapidly and really grow that business. And what that means and what we do to help these people, is we’ll give them so much more money than they can get on their own. And by not making monthly payments and leaving that money in the business, obviously, they can grow that much faster.
So for the Amazon sellers that are looking to really grow, there is nothing better than what we’re doing. We are like fuel on a fire. If they’re looking to pay their bills and all of that from week to week or month to month, that’s not really us, there are plenty of great options for them with that. So we love the whole Einstein mentality, the Einstein returns… Really looking for those sellers that are looking to really just bust it out and get to their dreams, make something really big happen for themselves.

Liz Downing:
I love that.

Don Henig:
That’s what we’re in it for. It’s really great.

Liz Downing:
To get into the nitty gritty, what’s the process? So I’m a seller. I realized, “Crap, it’s Q4, I need more inventory.” And I go to you, what happens next?

Don Henig:
Well, it’s pretty simple actually. We ask for their credentials so we can see the inventory. We’re not looking at their credit reports, we’re not looking at their financial statements, their tax returns. This is not a loan, we’re actually investing in them. So what we’re looking at is their inventory, how it turns over, what their profit is on that, and we’re analyzing them as a real business and what they’re doing. And then we make an offer, we make a proposal from there. But it’s typically, a hundred percent of what they have in the business and what do I mean by that? How much money do they have in inventory at cost, plus whatever amount is due from Amazon, plus whatever cash is in the bank. And that’s how much they have in the business. And we’ll match that, we’ll give them that amount of money. But let’s say they have a $100,000, and we offer them a 100,000.
They don’t have to take a 100,000. What we suggest, is to take the least amount that you need today. It might be 10,000. Great, take 10,000. Come back in two weeks and say, “Hey, I need another 20,000.” Beautiful, it’s there the same day, an hour later. Come back a month or two later and say, “I need 50,000.” Beautiful, if you can use the money, that’s the whole idea. There’s only one way an Amazon seller can lose with us, there’s only one way. And that’s if they take our money and they leave it in the bank. Then they’re paying us and they’re not getting any benefit out of it. So we do everything we can to coach them not to do that. Use our money, but use it to grow your business.

Liz Downing:
So it’s a very personal interaction is what you’re saying? It’s not like you’ve got an automated… And nobody talks to you, nobody talks to a person, it’s a conversation about investing in a seller’s business. And I love that about your model, I love… And that’s, on top of the extremely different lending model, that personal touch and that… Because it’s not an absolute thing. If you decide it’s an acceptable risk, and somebody’s numbers aren’t quite where they would normally be, you could still decide to help them out, you could still decide to invest in their business. So I love that you’ve got that personal touch. That’s tremendous you guys are listening-

Don Henig:
And we love that too.

Liz Downing:
How much do you learn by talking to these people? These are entrepreneurs, this is the wild west still, it’s 2020 and Amazon is still the wild west.

Don Henig:
Oh yeah, big time.

Liz Downing:
It’s just a remarkable industry.

Don Henig:
Just staying with that, how much do we learn? We learn so much by talking to them, and I talk to almost all of them, because I really enjoy that part of it. But we don’t just learn about their business, we also learn about their story. How did they get there? What got them to the point of starting the business? We ask them every time, what are their goals? Very often, this guy I was talking to just, I don’t know, two days ago. And I said to him, “I don’t think you really are qualified for us. I don’t think that our money is right for you.” And he said, “Why?” And I said, “Because it sounds to me like you’re not looking to grow.” He goes, “What? What I told you came off that way?”
And I said, “Well, you were talking about, you lost this, and you lost that, and now you’re just getting back on your feet. It sounds like you’re more trying to maintain.” And he goes, “No, my goal…” And he started telling us about his dreams and his goals and where he was going before something happened within Amazon that screwed him up a couple months ago. And he goes, “I want to get back on that train and grow this thing bigger than ever, I’m pissed now.” I’m like, “Oh, I misunderstood.” But knowing this about people and understanding their stories, that’s the fun part, it’s great. I love that.

Liz Downing:
Oh, that’s my favorite too.

Don Henig:
Now I’m rooting for him.

Liz Downing:
Right. Shameless plug for another project I’m working on here at Teikametrics, But what we’re doing, we’re also doing brand stories where we’re not talking about what we did for a brand or how we reduce their costs or whatever. We’re talking about, how did it happen? What lightning bolt struck you or your relative, or this other person, but how did it all happen? How was the brand born? How was the idea born? How were the products born? And tell me about your journey into ecommerce, and so that’s coming soon, shameless plug…

Don Henig:
That’s great, I love that.

Liz Downing:
I’m an enormous nerd about all of this, just as you know, because you’ve known me for a while now.

Don Henig:
That’s great.

Liz Downing:
Let’s talk a little bit… Because this video is being made in November of 2020, it’s the week before, the week before Thanksgiving. We’re right in the thick of Q4. It was a weird Prime Day, right at the beginning of Q4. Cyber week is coming soon, we’ve got Black Friday, we’ve got Cyber Monday. I’m actually doing a webinar soon with another one of my industry friends, the week of Thanksgiving about, “Is Q4 really awful? Here are some things you can do to turn it around.” But Don, what are you seeing with the people that you’re talking to that are the biggest challenges that Amazon sellers are facing right now? 2020, mid-pandemic, what are the top three pain points?

Don Henig:
It’s interesting. As I’m talking to people, right now, I’m not hearing a lot of pain. I’m hearing the biggest pain actually is the slow turn time, getting inventory from China. That’s by far the biggest pain. But besides that, talking to people earlier in the year, when COVID was just hitting, a lot of people were like, “Oh, I’m getting killed.” Or, “I don’t know what the future is.” And things like that, there was a lot of fear. I’m not hearing any fear now. I’m seeing that sellers are… “I know what this is, I know I’m going to get thrown a curve ball. I’m okay with that, I’ll figure it out. I’m not afraid of this market at all.” And what they’re talking to me about now, is growing in Q1 and Q2, which is interesting. As opposed to just growing in Q4, they’re looking at next year. They’re all saying the same thing, “I really want to kick next year. I did good this year, but I want to blow it out next year.” So I’m not hearing any more fear. I hear pain with China, I think there are going to be some good solutions, which you and I have discussed.

Liz Downing:
Coming soon.

Don Henig:
Exactly. Exciting.

Liz Downing:
It’s not fair for us to know secrets, but we know secrets. No, that’s great. I’m seeing inventory challenges, definitely. I’m seeing people having trouble with sell through on slow moving ASINs. We’ve got lots of advice, when that comes. But I’m also seeing people running out of stock because of this China issue.

Don Henig:
You’re absolutely right.

Liz Downing:
Well, because nobody knew when Prime Day was going to be, so nobody knew to stock for Prime Day. Prime Day actually wasn’t, from what I’m hearing, all that great for a lot of third party sellers. Some of them, it was fantastic, it just always runs the gamut. It was hard to anticipate, especially when COVID first started and Amazon throttled the amount of inventory you could send into FBA, restricted certain items from FBA, because they were preparing for, “We need PPE. We need hand sanitizer. We need that kind of stuff.”
And that was necessary, and Amazon responded to what was happening in the world, and that’s what would we would expect them to do. But it messed up the inventory counts and the supply chain for a lot of Amazon sellers, a lot of third party sellers. So I am seeing that. Seeing dips in the inventory performance index as a result of that, which always messes up Q1 for everybody. So that’s already locked in stone, but you don’t want to mess up Q2 as well. You still got to pay attention to inventory, all that kind of stuff. I am hearing people that need more financing. They just need a little bit more capital.

Don Henig:
Oh, everybody.

Liz Downing:
Yeah, just a little bit more money. And the holidays, and it’s just… And I’m not hearing a whole lot of grumble, grumble, I’m hearing a lot of, “Okay, I really need to be strategic right now.” I hear a lot of, “I need to get through now because next year has got to really count.” I hear a lot of, “I’m going to grow. I’m going to expand my product offerings. I’m going to develop a private label. I’m already a brand. I’m going to introduce new products. I’m going to amp up my advertising. I’m going to completely redo my image, redo my A-plus content. Make sure my storefront is just as gorgeous as it can be.”
I hear a lot of hope, and that makes me so happy. So happy.

Don Henig:
I agree.

Liz Downing:
All right, we’ve gotten into the fun part of the interview here. I will say that if you want to talk to Don about amping up your business and supercharging your business with a little bit more capital, we’ll put a link in the bio here. We’re going to be writing this up, but we’ll give you a chance to check out the AccrueMe website, which is gorgeous. Make sure you follow them on social media. Obviously, make sure you follow us on social media, if you’re not already. If you’re not, shame on you. But Don, what is your morning routine? What does a day start like for Don Henig?

Don Henig:
Oh. Wow. I find that a morning routine is very important and it’s very important to me, since I started one about 10 or 15 years ago. And what I do, is I get up at 5:30 in the morning, I was never that 5:30 guy, but I’m a 5:30 guy now, sorry. So I get up at 5:30, I have a cup of coffee, and I sit at my desk with a gratitude journal. I put pictures out on my desk of my parents who’ve passed, my grandparents, my aunts, uncles, my in-laws, all people that have given me love and support throughout my life, that mean an awful lot to me. And I, every single morning, I say, “Thank you.” And I mean it from the bottom of my heart. And it causes me to think of different times in my life and different memories that I would never have thought of.
And then I write in this simple journal, three things that I’m grateful for, three things that will make today great. And then just a statement, “I am.” And then I complete that statement and that’s the basics of my morning. And then I do one of two things, either I go to the gym and I do high intensity interval training, or I do a little intense ab workout and some stretching and about a 40 minute, 45 minute infrared sauna session for detoxing. And that’s the way I start my day, and now by 8:30, 8:15, 8:30, I am ready to go, body, mind, and soul, everything. It’s a great way to start the day.

Liz Downing:
And now that we all feel a little like we need to be better people. That’s awesome. I especially love the gratitude journal thing, I think that’s something that as we go into the holidays, as we get into colder weather, that’s awesome. We might want to put a link to that too, so you guys can pick up on some of the Don tips on better living and more mindful living, because that’s part of it.

Don Henig:
It’s good stuff.

Liz Downing:
Couple more weirdo questions, although, I’m trying to blink back tears over that last one. What’s the strangest job you’ve ever had? And then I’ll tell you mine just because that’s fun.

Don Henig:
All right, great. I’m more anxious to hear yours, then say about mine. I’ve had so many crazy jobs. I was the top salesperson for the Long Island Press when I was 11 years old, on all of Long Island. I owned a ice cream shop at 18, made a fortune with that. But then strange jobs, I sold vacuums door to door. I sold Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedias, these big thick encyclopedias, door to door in the winter to businesses. It was brutal, brutal. But I’m going to say the last one, I’d say is, in the middle of the night after restaurants would close, I made deals with different restaurants when I hurt my knee at one point and couldn’t do many other things. I would go out in the middle of night and clean their bathrooms and their toilets and their floors, so that they’d come in, in the morning, and the restaurant was good to go. And I made money overnight.

Liz Downing:
Wow. That’s amazing, you’ve done so many things. And I think that, that’s, a common thread in the industry is, we’ve all worn a lot of hats, and then we landed here and we’re like, “Yeah, this is what I’m going to say.” For me, it’s probably a toss up. I was a karaoke host and wedding DJ for five years. So when anyone’s approached me about a business development type job, they’ve been like, “Oh, you’ll be fine because you can’t get nervous about public speaking when you’ve sung karaoke in a room full of drunk lawyers.” But before that, I was actually a little kid’s birthday party entertainer. So I would dress up as characters or I would put on the big head. And when you wear the big head, all you had to do was dance around and that kind of stuff, and let people hug you.
But when you dressed up as a character, and at that time I was in my early twenties, and so I made a great Cinderella or with a red wig, Ariel, and all the princesses were popular at that time. But you did face painting, and you did balloon sculpture. So I do know a little bit of balloon sculpture that has carried into my later years. And we would do activities and stuff like that. I got fired because I would always stay extra and not charge the family. So I’d be there, and all the kids would be having so much fun and I would hate to… They would be so sad that I was leaving, so I’d stay an extra hour and not charge the family for an extra hour, and they were like, “You can’t keep doing that.” And I was like, “I’m going to keep doing that until you fire me.”

Don Henig:
That’s great.

Liz Downing:
It was strange and delightful and I’m glad I did that because it was a lot of fun. Enough about me.

Don Henig:
I love it. So along the same lines, I didn’t even remember this, but I actually have a different name. My magician name is Whodoni. So I did balloon things and… I have a guillotine, I have thousands of dollars of magic tricks, I used to do a lot of shows, just for fun.

Liz Downing:
Wow. Well, when the world opens back up-

Don Henig:
Whodoni.

Liz Downing:
Whodoni, when the world opens back up, we’re going to have to do a special edition where you do some tricks for us, but you’re going to have to come to the office and we’ll just film all that stuff. It’s not that far for you, office is in Boston, you’re in New York, it’s just a hop, skip. All right, we’re coming up on time. I want to ask you one more question, it’s a little more business-related but you’ve started so many businesses. Do you have theories or tips that have spanned the thread of your professional and personal experience that you think that other entrepreneurs would find valuable?

Don Henig:
Yeah, there’s so many, but I’m going to give you two that I think of right off the top. And the first one is… Yeah exactly, the first one is start stupid. Start stupid. You will never know everything, you will never have all the answers. If you wait until you have all the answers, you will be filled with fear, you will never get it done, you’ll never start. Because if you know all the headaches that an Amazon seller has, before you jumped into it, you would never do it. But if you jump into it and you figure it out as you go, in any business, and you just keep taking that next step, and you keep learning, and you keep maneuvering, and you get there, you’ll get there. But just start. Just start stupid.
And the other thing I always think about is something that is the corridor effect. So think about a long hallway. When you’re starting a business, you can’t see down that long hallway, you can’t see where the windows are, where the doors are, or where the obstacles are, that you’re going to trip over. But I guarantee you, you’re going to have obstacles you’re going to trip over. And I also guarantee you that there will be doors and windows open, that you can’t see when you’re starting. So however you start your business, expect it to change, expect it to morph into something else as you go, just be nimble to change with that business and you’ll kick ass. That’s the way I look at it.

Liz Downing:
I love it. Don, thank you so much, this has been such a treat. Everybody, Don Henig with AccrueMe. There’ll be links, there’ll be resources, he is willing to talk to you. I suggest that you do, even if it’s just a meet and greet, he’s a heck of a nice guy. I’m Liz Downing with Teikametrics, I’m the ecommerce marketing manager here. This has been an addition of Fireside Chat and we’ll see you guys next time.