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Lessons - How We Rebuilt From Zero | Ilya Fedorovich - Vlog Squad Member · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, explore how entrepreneurs shift from survival driven hustle to scalable,
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  purpose-led growth. Discover why service businesses struggle to scale and product ventures
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  unlock faster expansion. Understand how motivation and brand influence guide
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  smarter market entry and uncover the core frameworks behind building high-quality consumer products.
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  So you made 600 in the first year plus minus how do you scale this out? And as you grew it out,
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  what lessons did you learn about building out a services-based business? Why did you not grow
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  this out to a $50 million, $100 million organization? What was the life cycle of the plumbing business?
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  Yeah, so I stayed my dad and I partnered and we stayed together for, I think, those six years,
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  five or six years. And from the first year to the second year, I think we made like 1.8 or two,
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  and then the third year is like 3 million. And we never really went past that. And the reason is
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  it's very, very difficult to scale a trades business. And the reason is
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  you rely on tradesmen. Unfortunately, as of right now, there's a huge, huge, huge lack of tradesmen.
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  So the number one thing to scale ability in the trades business, again, is tradesmen. When you're on
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  tradesmen, you can't scale because you don't have enough people to provide the service.
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  So that was the reason that we weren't able to scale further. Now if I stayed, obviously I would have
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  figured out a way to do so. I would have raised money and I would have said, okay, we're going to
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  post on every single ad or every single job platform. We're going to go to career fairs. We're going
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  to put fucking hiring now $10,000 bonus. We would have figured it out. That's not the problem.
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  The problem is I was given the opportunity to be able to scale my other businesses that I'm
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  currently in much quicker. So I saw that and I said, okay, this business is scale to where it could
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  be as of right now. It's making good money. I can keep doing that. But the opportunity that I have
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  in hand is going to be able to get a return on my time money return on my time much quicker.
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  So when you started this pulling business, your motivations were literally
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  each and survive and pay rent. But a couple of years later, motivations changed. So when you
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  started to scale these other businesses, what were those businesses, what were your motivations,
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  and maybe those motivations have carried through today. But what motivated you when you started
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  to go into other avenues? So well, my two other avenues right now are Zilla, which is my fitness
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  brand and Dover's Pizza, which we haven't launched yet, but we're launching hopefully this fall.
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  The scalability on those two are different with the product A because a product you don't require
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  tradesmen, right? Skill tradesmen, like I said, tradesmen is like a it's far and few between. So
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  all you have to have here is money product and marketing and people in the warehouse which
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  are much easier to hire than tradesmen. With the pizza business, it's a very scalable concept.
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  For many reasons, number one, we don't have many things on our item. Number two,
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  my friend who's backing it is very well known and has a lot of influence. So I'm able to
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  use that to my benefit, right? But I'm sorry, I don't know if I answered your question or
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  no, it's just like no, no, no, no, you're cool, like I get. So so you have, okay, so you have
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  the pizza business that you're going to launch, you have Zilla, I know you have like a podcast as well,
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  but I meant like what motivates you? Like what gets you excited? So yeah, scalability for sure,
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  but there's like a million in one products that you probably could have taken to market. So
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  when you when you launch Zilla or when you launch, when you launch the pizza business, like what's
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  the conversation about like why are we taking this particular product to market? So when you're sitting
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  down like with for the pizza in particular, you're talking to David, like why pizza? Like why is
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  that something that you actually want to get behind? Because again, you already have the influence,
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  you can have the money, but there's a reason why you choose those products, you choose those
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  services you take to market. Like what, what is a thing that sort of drives you? Because you know
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  this better than anyone. If you don't have that motivation that's going to carry you through
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  your one, your two, your five, your 10, it's going to be very difficult. Like you have to maintain
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  that. So there's something that you had in your head or you were talking about at that table when
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  you first started that sort of pointed you in one direction or the other. And I guess that's what I'm
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  trying to sort of pull out from you. Yeah, I think this is a two part answer. And the first part
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  to the answer with Zila and Dolorix, with Dolorix, we chose pizza specifically and it motivated us
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  because pizza is a very friendly and overall known as being a product that makes people happy,
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  right? And I connect that to David, right? So his videos and his vlogs and whatever he does in
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  his life make people happy. So I think I connect that with him. And then I also connect the fact
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  that we both love pizza. And it's just the very, it's such a generic thing to do that it's like
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  almost perfect. You know what I mean? Like it's not too specific. It's like, okay, pizza anybody can
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  fucking do pizza, but we're going to do it the best. You know, we're going to do the best. And we're
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  also going to connect again, a person that has a huge following so people know about this pizza
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  and this pizza can make them happy. And it sounds cheesy, but that's really what it is. Like whenever
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  someone steps into our restaurant, into our pizza rhea, I want people to walk out happier than they
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  walked in. And I know that we'll achieve that by the product that we've made and by the experience
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  that will provide. There's a dope ass motivation, man. That's good. That's very good. There's not,
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  like, it doesn't have to be like complex and confusing. It's just like what gets people excited,
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  like that's that's perfect. So yeah, on the on the zealot. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry to say on the
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  fitness side. Yes. Yes. So on the fitness side, as weird as it sounds, I love pizza and I love
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  fitness, right? So I was like, fuck it. I'm going to do both. You know, I don't see why not. I love
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  I love taking good supplements. I love taking things that I know are don't contain lead. For example,
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  don't have toxins and then don't have shit. You know, most products do have. And so I decided to
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  do that because I am the number one thing, the number one passionate fitness person out there,
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  like 100%. And so yeah, I was like, I'm going to make my own product. Again, I'm going to make
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  the best I possibly can. And I'm also going to challenge myself because my product is plant based,
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  my proteins plant based. Yeah. Most plant based proteins are not that good. I'm sure you know,
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  and they're not that good because of the grittiness or the texture, the flavor, our combination of
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  all of them. And so I found a luckily of a very, very good manufacturer that can provide me a
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  very good product. And I went with it. I was like, this is the best protein I've tasted on the
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  market, including plant and way. And I truly firmly do believe that. And my motivator for that was
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  getting clean, healthy and tasty protein out to the public, which in turn makes people healthy.
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  When you when you launch these products, we can we can pick Xila for to start. You already have
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  an audience. And I actually think it's really interesting. You probably have a lot of, because you've
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  lived it and you've seen the power of personal brand and social and using that as this huge kick
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  off point for a product. But we can go into that in a second. I just want to understand like the
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  entrepreneurial taking a product off the ground from scratch. That's an at the true product. So
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  and not just like a service or a trade. So when you launch Xila, what are the different things
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  that you have to think about? Are you going like e-commerce? Are you going direct to consumer?
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  Are you going on Amazon? How do you source out the actual manufacturer to make sure they're
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  actually delivering a quality product? Like walk somebody through the process of what you did when
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  you started off Zila. Like you can go into like the really the nitty gritty like the granular because
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  there's a lot of people that are trying to launch different things as side hustles. Like now it's
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  not so difficult to find a manufacturer or to drop ship a product. But I mean to do it successfully
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  is not easy. And I mean you already have to find the quality product. You have to find some sort
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  of marketing engine which you have. But then you have to build the website. You have to maybe figure
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  out distribution into retail. So all these different things are all hurdles. But I mean you're figuring
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  it out. And where is Zila at right now? And how did you figure it out like from the ground up?
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  Yeah so originally I had requested samples from about 10 different
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  plants, 10 for manufacturing plants. I'd taste that all of them. And to be honest I didn't like
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  any of them. So then I got connected with a gentleman named Sean, Sean's my partner currently.
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  And he is a protein specialist. Let's just call him that. I was very lucky to be connected with him.
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  He is the one that handles the recipe formulation, the manufacturing, the packaging, everything. He
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  has connections for all of that. And he was again introduced to me by another friend of mine.
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  And so after I decided that I didn't like any of these other proteins,
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  I went with him. And he currently does his own protein supplement line. But it's a very,
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  very different market that he has versus what I have. So there's no conflict of interest.
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  And for people that are wondering again, like why would he do that? The people that he serves
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  are very different from the people that I serve. So I went with him. We figured okay,
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  we probably shouldn't be focusing on spending marketing dollars at first. Being that I do have
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  a following. My friends have a following and we can utilize that. So that's what we decided to do
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  off the bat. And I think in the next two to three months, we'll be utilizing paid media
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  and moving into Amazon. And the only reason we're doing that is because now we understand
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  what power we have and how much power we have, what the ratio of the power versus power
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  and influence versus how much money we can make. So yeah. Okay, so, okay, so when you,
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  that makes a lot of sense. And you went directly to consumer first. You're going to go into Amazon.
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  Are you going to try and do retail distribution as well? Are you just basically focusing on
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  like all direct to consumer right now? I would love to do retail. The problem with retail is that
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  you obviously sell wholesale to retail. And you know, I'm selling the product that
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  30% 40% less. So it doesn't really make sense right now. If I had the opportunity to hand
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  for a big box retailer to come in and give me a really good offer on my terms, I would do so.
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  But I just don't have that leverage right now to make a good deal. So when I do have the leverage
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  definitely, I think if I were to, I was going to say, how do you not have the leverage yet?
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  Because like, I feel like if you shop and I'm just just spitballing now, like take the market
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  business ideas, but like if you had like, if you shop this around to retailers and you said,
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  hey, listen, I'm going to put this product in your store and then look at we're going to do this
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  huge marketing push and you're going to be seen by like three million, four million, five million
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  people because you have that immediate exposure. Do you think that would like put negotiating
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  terms in your favor? It would, the problem is I don't have three to four, five million people
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  seeing this. You know, David, again, my partner in Doberich pizza, he helps me, you know,
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  push Zila, I push it myself. I have friends push it, but at the end of the day, the influence is
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  solely based on me and my, my audience is not three, four, five million people. Could it,
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  could it get their own point, you know, based on our, our socials or TikTok and our Instagram?
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  Yeah, but we just don't have, we're really new. We don't have that power quite yet. A person
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  that was able to do that very successfully was Logan Paul in prime. Now, obviously, yeah, he's
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  much bigger than I am. So he can pull that off and I can't. I just, I don't feel confident in
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  doing it. Now, it's not to say that I can't get in retailers. I just don't think that they would
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  take me as seriously right now as they would in a year or two where I come in and I really show
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  some big numbers. And I say, look, we're fucking big. You know what I mean? Like the editing for
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  these are our terms. Yeah. And if I were to do something right now, it would really just be a flex
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  because it's cool to be, you know, in a Walmart or fucking 711 or whatever the case is. I think it's
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  cool to do that, but on the, it doesn't help your bottom line. You know, on the money side, it
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  doesn't really help. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that
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  subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation,
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  check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.