Hey, entrepreneurs. It's your podcast, Mogo, feel better here. I am excited for this episode as as as I know you are. Before we jump into this episode, I'm gonna ask you, if you are also a podcaster and you're looking to grow your podcast or monetize your podcast, make sure you stay till the end of the episode. I have a special deal for you or a special offer, if you will. But ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, let's jump into the episode.

Welcome to Invest in Yourself, the Digital Entrepreneur Podcast. Join the podcast mogul Phil Better as he interviews successful entrepreneurs that make their living in the digital world. Now, let's join your host, Phil Better, and his special guest today on Invest in Yourself the Digital Entrepreneur.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a very special episode of Investing Yourself, the Digital Entrepreneur podcast. I'm, of course, your host with the most feel better. And today is a very special sponsored Black Friday, episode by, sponsored by AppSumo, and we're gonna be highlighting an amazing tool. Let me tell you about the guest who is the CEO of the tool we're gonna be talking about, Vbout, where he, our guest leads a dedicated team that has empowered thousands of marketers to enhance their technology strategies using v belts.com's marketing software. With a suite of 12, count them, 12 AI power powered marketing tools, they have provided marketers and digital agencies the resources to improve engagement with their leads and customers, which we all want as both podcasters and entrepreneurs. Our guest has been an, entrepreneur for over 2 decades, and he really enjoys productive and product innovation, public speaking, and all things health fitness, especially the football. Please welcome our guest, Richard Fahl. Richard, thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having me, sir.

So let's get into it. I'm super interested. How did you come up with VBOW? Like, what you you you like, I read you. Been an entrepreneur for 2 to over 2 decades now. So you're you're you're well in the swing of how to create amazing products and businesses, but how did VeePelt come about? Yes. It's, it came out of a need.

And I think that these are most best products are, are born. So short story is I started as an entrepreneur. I've built my own, well, I started a restaurant with a partner back in 2004 when Myspace was, it was a thing. And I was really fascinated by the startups and technology. And, and I started building my own products as I was running the restaurants. So I built an online Etsy like marketplace. I didn't work out, spent all my, savings at the time. I built another product, which is an online, homework hub for students.

You can help them with their physics, math, and computer science, which is my major. I made money off it, but it wasn't really sustainable. The unit economics sucked. And then everybody thought that I built websites for a living because I was promoting the shit out of these products. That's what I did. I launched the digital agency that builds websites and products for people. So that was my initial launch in 2,007. They, you know, kind of progressing from my previous, excels.

And as I was running marketing campaigns and building websites, I was using tools like HubSpot and Marketo and Active Campaign, Hootsuite, Constant Contact, Mailchimp. I'm like, this is the Frankenstack of the world. This is so many products. It's really, it's too much, right? For a small marketer, small visual agency, we're about 5, 6 people. I either had to pay like $2,000 for consolidated license on HubSpot, which is an overkill, or I could have 10 products working together. Right? And that on its own has its own nightmare to fragmented data. So like, you know how it feels. Right? In trying

to figure out a CRM that works for you that isn't has 13,000 things that you don't need, that you're not paying for, but you can't use without yeah. Or you're going off, like you said, fragmented Frankensteining it together. Ugh.