← Travis Makes Money
Travis Makes Money
INTERVIEW | Make Money by Building Customer-Centric Brands That Matter with Marc Horowitz
00:22:28
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- [00:00]
A
You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by GoHighLevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet, just go to gohighlevel.com travis. What's going on everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Travis Makes Money podcast where it's mission to help you make more money. On this episode of the show, I have a new friend, Mark Horowitz. Mark is an entrepreneur focused on building modern customer centric brands. As the founder of ilmio, he combines creativity, technology, quality, craftsmanship and a relentless focus focus on customer experience to create meaningful fine jewelry that transforms the images and prints of loved ones into wearable keepsakes. Before launching ilmio, Mark enjoyed a long successful career as an energy derivatives trader and later helped build satellite image marketplace Sky Fi as an early executive. So he's been all over the place in his career and now focused on this, this new venture with jewelry coming from trading derivatives so wildly, a wide range of ways that he's made money throughout his career. I'm excited to have him on. Mark, what's up man? Welcome to the show. So let's go back in time, man. Clearly you figured out how to make money in your life. Let's talk about the first time you made money. Tell me, tell me like the first dollar you ever made that you were like, I can't believe somebody just paid me money for this.
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B
Yeah. So really more, more kind of a traditional way. I, I did some, you know, odd jobs around family, friends and stuff like that. But I was probably 15 or 16 and I got a job in a restaurant like, like so many people do and you know, making tips and getting, you know, cash that was my own. So, so walking out with, I don't know, it's probably like 60, $70, most of it in, in ones at the end of a shift was, but it was very liberating, very exciting. You know, you go out with your friends just to a movie, but it was, I vividly remember kind of those days. It was, it was exciting time. Yeah.
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A
When you, when you feel like a baller because you're walking home with like 60 bucks.
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C
Yeah.
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A
You're like, oh yeah.
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B
Especially when it's like that. It's pre thick. You know, it's, it's, it was, it was funny. So a fair amount of money back then?
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A
Yeah. Oh yeah, definitely. What, what was the, what was the career path for you then from, from like high school, college was derivative trading eventually, like where you first got in or tell me, like, bridge that gap for me.
- [02:16]
B
Yeah, it was. I. I had a cousin who was. It was in finance and was in trading. And for some reason, everything he said he was doing kind of clicked with me and sounded interesting. And so even though I didn't fully understand it, it seemed like kind of a path I wanted to be on. So I ended up going to the same university he went to. I didn't go to same companies, but kind of took the same concentrations and the same mindset. I think one of the cool things about trading is it's. It's. You choose your brain, but it's competitive. So I think a lot of former athletes kind of go in that. That way as well, because you. You like to play games or you like competition, things like that. And trading's a great. A great avenue for that. And so, you know, that was kind of my focus all through school, was financial markets, you know, things like that. And so the fact that I ended up in energy was. Was pretty much just random chance. I. I grew up in Louisiana, went to school in Philadelphia. Wasn't really used to summers, and I'm sorry, the winters. Winters in Philadelphia. And so during the interview process, late in school, cold. During cold winter season, I was like, I'm not going to New York or Philly. Like so many people in my class. I. I want to go back closer to home. So I ended up in Houston, which is kind of how energy happened.
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A
Okay, got it. And so when you're having a career as a trader, are you working for, like, a hedge fund? Are you working for, like, what.
- [03:30]
B
What exactly? A little bit of. A little bit of everything. I work for kind of an energy company that was focused on financial trading, then for kind of a hybrid company that was kind of in between energy company and a hedge fund. And then kind of in the end of my career, I was. I was with a hedge fund. So I've seen a little. Little bit of everything in that. In that space.
- [03:46]
A
What did you take away from that experience from being a trader? Like, I imagine there's got to be a lot of, like, emotional highs and lows, and it's sort of like, difficult to manage, like, I assume, anyway, it's got to be, like, almost 100. Just managing your own mental capacity to keep getting up and making drinks.
- [04:02]
B
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think. I don't. I don't know what the balance is between just the pure intellectual exercise and the. And the emotional side, but it's. It's certainly, you know, quite heavy on on the emotional side, the learning, I think I probably learned more about how to do the intellectual side that I did about the emotional side of, you know, they probably still could room for improvement there. But yeah, I think the biggest takeaway is you get into things, you know, what you, you get out of things, what you put into them, you know. And so I think the harder you work, the luckier you get. I think, you know, the more creative approach you take to problems, the more interesting solutions you come up with and the more, the more risks you take, the better you end up doing, you know, things like that.
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A
And so from there did you go to SkyFi right after the derivative trading or.
- [04:51]
B
So I had a pretty big, pretty big gap in between. I basically retired from derivatives taking. I was I guess 42 when I thought that was, I thought that was it, like, all right, 42, I'm done. And you know, it was pretty naive. You know, it's, it's way too young to be doing nothing. I played a lot of golf, didn't get any better, you know, stuff like that. So that was, that was pretty frustrating. You know, it's kind of looking for things to do. I opened a restaurant in the meantime, which was, was kind of interesting, but wasn't really a career. And so after, you know, sitting around for years and years kind of looking for an interesting challenge and something different, that was not trading. You know, I think trading is amazing for short, short term views and even medium term views. But you know, I kind of, as I got older in life, wanted to actually build something and do something that little longer time horizons. And so a friend of mine had a lot of different businesses and he said, hey, why don't you come look and see what we're doing? And, and one of those projects ended up being sky five. So kind of was, it was exciting there as well. Got to jump into, to learn a completely new industry, you know, the space industry, you know, wildly different than anything I'd ever experienced before, but fascinating. Interesting. There's, there is a connection though. The reason we kind of built that business, we thought it would help people in trading and, and so, so yeah, that was a lot of fun. The core thesis of that business was hey, here's something that's really, really hard for you to go, you know, four years ago, if you want to go buy a satellite energy to look at, let's say an oil field or something like that, you basically couldn't, couldn't do it. You know, a big company could do it, but, but a person in Visual trader, you know, couldn't, couldn't do that. And we said this shouldn't be that way. Let's, let's make it easy. And so that's what we set out to do and build a marketplace and, and partner with lots of people with both data and analytics and things like that to where you could just an app on your phone, you could task a satellite to answer any question you might have anywhere in the world. So, so yeah, that's, that's kind of what I did there was actually kind of interesting because that was sort of what would birth the current project. El Mio is, you know, getting custom jewelry made is kind of hard. You have to go back and forth and you have to pay deposits and you have to, you know, come up with your own idea or whatever.
- [06:57]
C
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- [08:22]
A
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- [09:29]
D
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- [09:43]
B
Chime.com disclosures and we I had wanted to take on what I learned from SkyFi and said hey, if you just upload a picture of somebody or something or your pet or your child or something like that, we're going to turn that into jewelry just for you without you really having to do any any work whatsoever other than make sure that you you like the design and if not we'll, we'll tweak it to you anyway.
- [10:03]
A
Yeah yeah, I'm definitely want to ask a few more questions about that. But before we do, tell me, tell me a little about your personal finance philosophy. Obviously being putting yourself in a position to be able to retire at 42, even though you found that you obviously did not want to be done, working at that point is still is still quite an accomplishment by itself. Did you have sort of like a personal philosophy when it came to like this is what I do with my money when it comes in this percentage in this And I put some money over here and like, how, how do you think about that and how do you suggest people think about that?
- [10:34]
B
Yeah, so in funny, in retrospect, I was a lot less structured than, than I probably should have been. You know, I, I, I was always kind of of you, you know, work hard, you know, save and, and make sure that you've got enough to, yes, enjoy your life, but, but make sure you're, you're going to be okay and, and, and have that, you know, that freedom and stuff like that. I think I've, I've actually evolved a lot since then and learned a lot and would certainly do things in, in a more, more structured environment. A friend of mine wrote this book which I highly recommend to you and all your readers. If you haven't seen it, called Die with Zero. And when he, when he was pitching it, I thought, hey, this is just a rich guy manifesto. And then we kind of dug into it. It's really not, it's, it's just a great advice for, for living your life. It's like, hey, don't worry about the money. Yes, you need money. Of course you need to buy things, you need to pay your rent, but, but really the money only exists so you can do things that you can enjoy and build memories and stuff like that. And so, you know, I think the goal, there's, no matter how much money you have, if you're thoughtful with how you spend it, how you save it, you can, you can map out a way to do that. And, and that's kind of the, I wish I was a little more structured in, in how I spent and how I saved and, and made sure I was allocating things for the maximization of a fund, really. But I had a good time. I can't complain. Yeah.
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A
Yeah. As, as a trader, do you find yourself like, playing in those markets now at all, or do you just kind of like, hey, I buy the S P or I buy this ETF and I just like, let my money grow on its own.
- [11:56]
B
Yeah, definitely. I think as a, as a trader, I probably, I trade a lot less as a, as a quote unquote investor because, you know, I think when you're a professional trader, you, you know where your edge is and you know why you're making money for the most part. And as soon as you get out of, of the business where you have this infrastructure and experience behind you, you feel like you're giving away edge. And no trader really likes to, likes to do that so much. So. Yeah, certainly much more, more Passive. I see in an approach when, when you don't have all the tools. I think, you know, I think that's one of the, the, the explosion of, of the day trader thing like that in the past 15 years. And I guess the people trading at Covid, I think obviously people are making money so it must be, must be, must be working for some of them. But you know, I think friend of mine, another different friend made Aquario is if you don't know what your edge is, you're gambling. It could be a financial market, but it's, it's, it's still a bit, still a bit gambling.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Yeah.
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A
I think I read something there was like, it was like 97 point something percent of day traders will, will lose money if they do it for longer than a year or something like that. I think that kind of people get that, you know, first hit of dopamine when it's like they're three months in. It's like, oh, I just made as much money as I did in my job. Let me quit and do this. And then a year later they're like, you know, under. On the account. So yeah, it can be one of those like alluring fields. But like you said, if you don't know 100 what that edge is, then you may as well just be playing blackjack at the casino or, or you know what I mean, betting on sports or something because it's, it's just a, it's a difficult game to win. Which is why the best investors on the planet still recommend the vast majority of people just like buy the funds, buy the, buy the index funds, buy the ETFs, set your money there, forget about it and then don't pull it out when things go bad. Just leave it in. Yeah, I was, I was curious.
- [13:39]
C
Yeah.
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A
If that, if that was sort of what, what you've maintained being a successful trader for as long as you were. So let's talk, let's talk a little bit about Elmio. So, so where, where did this, where did this idea initially come from? Is this your first, is this the first like startup that you've done that's like 100% fully you?
- [13:55]
B
Okay, well, yeah, I mean I do have. My wife's my partner and so. But, but yeah, yeah.
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A
No outside capital.
- [14:03]
C
No.
- [14:03]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty, pretty crazy. My wife, her cousin had this idea to make some jewelry for her. We were going away on a trip and she was leaving our young girls for, for the first time and she said, I Know what I'll do? I'll. I'm gonna get their lips and turn it into gold necklaces, and I'm gonna give it to. She's going to go to her cousin, who's my wife, and I think she's going to love it. And so I didn't know any of this was going on. We'd go on this trip, and my wife was really stressed about being away from the kids, so her cousin gives her this gift, and she's just instantly blown away. She loves how beautiful and stylish it is, but it also just made her feel like the girls were with her even though they weren't. It was just some little mental trick to kind of ease the mom guilt or just the separation anxiety, whatever you want to call it. And I was just kind of. I didn't even know this was happening. And standing back like, wow, this is personal. I thought they were cool. And that's. That's kind of a big thing anyway. But I was blown away by how much it meant to my wife, like, how. How meaningful it was to have this little piece of the girls with her all the time. And then her cousin was kind of talking about what a pain in the butt was to get these. These made. You know, the first guy, she said, this is a stupid idea. It'll never work. And then, you know, anyway, just an unpleasant experience. And I was like, well, this, you know, this shouldn't be that hard. We can. We can make it so where anybody can. Anybody who wants to can, can. Can do this. And so I said, let's. Let's. Let's figure it out. So it turns out it is a little harder than. Than I thought it would be, but in a way that's good.
- [15:32]
A
There's a reason it didn't exist.
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B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nothing worth doing is easy, you know, so. So we've kind of gone through the process, and, you know, it's nice. My wife kind of ran with that vision and has ideas on other products we've done and has this. This sense of style and this sense of branding that I think really, really resonates for us. And then I focus on, you know, the day to the day and getting stuff made and getting stuff shipped out and stuff like that. The boring stuff.
- [15:57]
A
Yeah, yeah, the boring stuff that moves the needle. Where. Where. Where do you think? What do you think you sell the most of Curious on. On the. On the platform?
- [16:04]
B
We're actually. We're pretty evenly split with our. Our lips and our paws. So humans versus pets, in terms of keeping close. Although our footprint product is a little new and so I think that ultimately might be the biggest kind of the gift for the new moms. Basically we take a lot of people, at least in Texas, I'm sure most states when you leave the hospital, you get a signature verse, souvenir birth certificate with your footprints on baby's footprint on it. All you have to do is snap a picture of that, send it to us, and we make an exact replica of the feet into a charm or necklace or something like that. So I think ultimately that will probably be the biggest. But it hasn't been around quite as long, so it hasn't shown up in the numbers yet.
- [16:41]
A
Have there been any surprising obstacles that you've come across doing this?
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B
Yeah, I guess the most surprising is it, it's hard to explain, I guess because there aren't any, a lot of products like ours, people don't really understand what we do even, even after they buy. The number of people who bought a charm or necklace from us and haven't sent us a picture of their, of their child or their pet sort of blows me away because it's, it's everything. Like, it's, it's the. So they liked what we do enough to actually want to purchase and send in the money, but didn't understand it enough to realize that, hey, no, this is exactly for you. This is truly custom. This is your, this is your loved one that is created. So that's, it's kind of, it's been surprising and it's been a challenge to try and make sure we're telling our story properly.
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A
Yeah, that seems like the obvious thing that you don't think that you have to explain to people, but obviously what you do.
- [17:34]
B
I guess it's, it's been interesting in that it shows the disconnect between in person selling and e commerce. Right. Like if I'm standing across from someone or talking to someone, you know, anywhere, they, they kind of instantly sort of get it. But when it's just a static, you know, image on a, on a screen or even I guess worse on, on your phone, a lot of the stuff's Instagram and stuff like that. It's just a very different, it's just much harder to tell, tell a story that way.
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A
Yeah, yeah. What about on the business growth side? Obviously you've been involved in a number of different businesses now at this point. How, how is, how has that been going for you in the current markets? How are you marketing the product? How are you selling the product?
- [18:11]
B
Yeah, I Mean, I think it's going, it's going fine. I think it's, everything's a learning, learning process and especially the jewelry space is quite competitive. Yeah, I think, you know, our main channel is the meta universe and Google of course as well, but as an online only brand, at least at the moment those are, you know, our channels and you know, and you're just, you're
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A
buying just like traditional advertising on those platforms.
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B
Exactly.
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A
Okay, okay. Do you have a background in that or do you, did you hire somebody to do that? Was that a learning curve?
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B
A little bit of both. Yeah. So sure. No, I don't have an explicit background that have definitely hired people. I do try and learn as much myself at the same time as well because I think, you know, yes, I want to be able to have people do things for us, but I always think you're going to be more successful if you understand as much as possible all the things around you. I guess that's kind of a thing I've learned kind of throughout throughout life.
- [19:02]
A
Yeah. At least I have like a base level of competence. Right. Like you don't, you don't have to be the expert and you don't have to become, you know, the industry leading, you know, knowledge broker of that thing. But having some level of competence will at least allow you to be able to find the right person to do the job for you.
- [19:17]
B
Yeah, I completely agree with you. There's.
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A
What about recruiting, hiring, training as any, any difficulty doing that being like an E commerce online company?
- [19:26]
B
You know, we're still at a, at a small scale where we're doing everything with a pretty small group of people. So haven't experienced some of those, those challenges at least in this position at SkyFi for sure. You know, as we were trying to scale up as a venture backed startup, you know, recruiting talent and training, all these are, these are, these are big, big problems or big challenges, let's say instead of, instead of problems.
- [19:46]
A
Yeah, no kidding. Tell me about the relationships that you've built along the way. Seeming like obviously you've had now like multiple versions of success in your career. Starting something from scratch like this. Do you feel like you were able to start with some sort of an advantage because of past relationships, people that you could call, count on, ask advice from or ask for support from, anything like that?
- [20:13]
B
Yeah, absolutely. That's a great question. And I probably hadn't thought about it that way until you just asked it. Yeah, I think every step of the way, you know, you meet and as you get older you meet More and more people with, with different experiences. And I've just been, I've been really, really fortunate to work with and around a lot of really smart people. And so, you know, keeping those relationships outside of work, you know, as, as the years pass is, is, is invaluable. And so yeah, I definitely, I've been really lucky in that I do have, you know, a phone call or an email or a text to a number of people in a wide variety of areas that, that can help. And, and what's really cool is are really willing to help, you know, and that's, that's a really, really nice thing.
- [20:52]
A
Yeah, well, it speaks to, speaks to the type of person that you are then, you know, like, that is a lot of people, I feel like a lot of people go around, they, they have 20 years of experience doing something, but all that really means is they have one year of experience 20 years in a row, if that makes sense.
- [21:06]
B
It's like I thought about it that way.
- [21:09]
A
The difference between, you know, the growth mindset, being helpful for people, being a resource for others along the way and then eventually at some point, it's the whole like, dig your well before you're thirsty concept, you know what I mean? Like, you just gotta, you gotta be a certain way because that's just who you believe you should be. And then eventually at some point you're probably gonna need something and you would much prefer to be the person who had helped a bunch of people along the way when you're in the position where you finally have an ask because willing to help, you know.
- [21:42]
B
Yeah.
- [21:43]
A
Mark, I appreciate you taking the time, man. Where can people go to get more from you and, and what you're working on?
- [21:48]
B
Yeah. So the site is the O jewelry.com I'm Mark@ Elmio. If you need to contact me direct directly, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn too. You know, any, any questions about what we're doing or, or, or in the past, you know, always looking for, to help anybody I can. Would you, you know. Yeah. Feel free to connect.
- [22:06]
A
Ilmiojewelry.com that's I L M I O L Meo jewelry.com Go check out some of the stuff that Mark and his wife are working on over there. Mark, appreciate you being willing to share a little bit of the journey with us today. Everybody else tuning in. Remember, money only solves your money problems, but it's easier to solve the rest of your problems when you got some money in the bank. So let's start there here on the Travis Makes Money podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Catch you guys next time. Peace.