The Cost of Getting Comfortable Too Early as a Scaling CEO

TRANSCRIPT SUMMARY

00:00 - Intro & global background (France, US, Israel)
02:30 - Cultural differences in business communication
05:00 - Early business experience (environmental company & e-commerce)
08:30 - Importance of knowing your customer
10:30 - Intuition vs data in decision-making
16:30 - E-commerce success & hitting growth ceiling
23:00 - Breakout moment through acquisitions
30:00 - Scaling operations & rapid integration
36:30 - Crisis: volcano disrupts global shipping
42:00 - Merchant account shutdown & business setback
44:30 - Radical accountability & rebuilding mindset
50:00 - Lessons: no comfort zone & infinite business thinking

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

Laurent Cohen (00:00)
I did not want to be the old man saying, I went bankrupt because of a conduct of God. When you're in good place yourself, you you feel if that cannot hurt me, what gonna hurt if you don't know your customers?

Jeff Holman (00:13)
Welcome back, everybody, to the Breakout CEO Podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Holman. I'm here today with Lauren Cohen. Lauren, thank you so much for joining me on the show.

Laurent Cohen (00:22)
Thank you, Jeff. really looking forward to the discussion.

Jeff Holman (00:25)
Yeah, I'm super excited. We had a few questions already that we've asked in our icebreaker segment and helps me to get to know you in a little bit different perspective maybe than just strictly what's your bio and where have you been and where are you going type of thing. But we're going to talk about a bunch of that today. So I'm excited to jump into the conversation. And just so our guests know, this has nothing to with business. But as we were doing, we were talking before the show just

some sirens went off. You're currently located in Israel and ⁓ we may have an interruption to the show if that happens, that happens. You've got missile warnings that happen occasionally. You're working in an environment that is maybe not familiar to some of our audience. Is that fair to say?

Laurent Cohen (01:13)
That's pretty fair. Although believe it or not, you have sirens and alerts every other hours. But if you walk down the street, life is pretty normal. There's a point that I would like to add because I think that that could lead to a very interesting discussion, As people are listening to me now, they might...

Understand by the sound of my voice that I have an accent, which is a French accent. was born and raised in France. I moved to America in 2002 and now I'm working in Israel where we have an office. And, ⁓ living those, ⁓ in those three different countries, three different, ⁓ environments, ⁓ has made me the man I am today. And, there's this thing, ⁓ you know,

You don't talk about countries with general thing, but if I had to summarize those three places in a funny way, because I would say that when you live in America, I noticed that when someone and I'm talking business wise, but mostly someone tells you no, usually it means yes. And when someone tells you yes, usually it means no. reason is.

When you start engaging, let's say it's a customer or provider of service, if they're interested with your product, they're going to tell you no, because it's a way to engage in negotiation. Where they're not interested, they're going to say, yes, it's beautiful. We are doing something great. Let's, let's, let's call again. And you never hear from them. Okay. So that's America. Then when you're in Israel, you know, and there's this sense of urgency for the reason you easily understand a yes is a yes and a no is a no, you know, no time to waste.

No, we're not beating around the bush. Now, when you're in France, where is there this sense of craftsmanship? Yes and no are both maybe. ⁓ It's always a sense of hesitation. So, it's a funny way to express this, but I think it's pretty accurate. And it's very helpful as far as dealing with international businesses.

Jeff Holman (03:37)
You know, I'm glad you brought that up because I think, I mean, one of the reasons that we're doing this show is to bring people new perspectives, right? Especially those people who are growing a business, maybe haven't been down the path before, and they get to hear from people like you who've been down this path before, maybe multiple times before. And so they get perspectives. And so the same way that you're, that you're drawing on perspectives from your experience living in different countries, and that in itself might be valuable perspectives for some people who've never been there, you know, but.

But I love that you're, I love that you're not only, not only have you had those experiences, but you've found a way to articulate them and say, ⁓ here's how they're the same or here's how they're, here's how they're different. This is, that's exactly why we're having the show. So you're a great guest already, Lauren.

Laurent Cohen (04:22)
Thank you, Jeff. But you know, for anyone listening that is looking forward to expanding its business abroad, wherever you're based from, the cultural factor is essential. You do not build a business abroad if you do not understand the country and the people you're dealing with. And I have many examples of things I've done good and things I've done.

wrong in that field. But I have to say that do not expect other societies, other culture to understand your product, your advertising, your marketing, only by the way you are selling it. it doesn't matter how much money you're spending, you know, unless you're Coke, obviously, but Coke started hundreds of years ago and it was not probably easy. So,

Jeff Holman (05:19)
Yeah.

Laurent Cohen (05:20)
You, it has a lot of barriers that need to be jumped. And those are also some things we can discuss that.

Jeff Holman (05:30)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, I'm curious from all your time that you've spent in these different locations, what kind of business experience did you gain along the way?

Give us some background as to the things you've done in the US or France or now in Israel that lead up to today.

Laurent Cohen (05:51)
Okay. So first, initially my first company back in France was an environmental company. ⁓ And the very interesting thing with that company was that I was dealing with businesses from all sorts of sizes, from SMBs to public companies, ⁓ to country level companies.

I could have days where I was literally talking in the morning with a single solopreneur and ending the day with a C plus management team. This is the kind of experience that you have at a young age that really teaches you a lot by adjustments. You have literally to...

I had a leery to change my clothes basically during one day just to adjust to the people I was talking to. so, um, it's, it teaches you a lot about, uh, not only cells, but, uh, about the relationship, you know, you need to have lunch with people, need to, uh, move around town to go see different places. And, uh, it teaches me a lot. Then when I came to America,

I started an e-commerce company and it was 2002, which was right after the internet bubble. Pretty interesting. know, Google was barely starting at that time. I went from, again, talking with so many different people to being in front of a computer all day. And the relationship I had

Jeff Holman (07:23)
Yes.

Laurent Cohen (07:44)
was still existing with my customers when it was, you know, with an interface that was a website emails, you know, we even hardly had any phone call. So the adjustments were also very important, you know, moving from a brick and mortar company to a digital company, ⁓ was a change a lot. And, now, ⁓ we's, the new project that we're building, which is an AI, ⁓ company now.

It's not that I'm interacting with people. I'm interacting with agents. So it's again, something that changes a lot of perspective. But the good thing is that at the end of the day, AI is not the one who are buying a solution. They're still humans. So if you think that today you are building an AI company and you are solely focused on agent and AI, you have it wrong.

Jeff Holman (08:18)
Yeah, yes.

Laurent Cohen (08:43)
You need to focus on our customers. You need to remember that you have at some point human in front of you. This is why, again, I'm circling back to what I said initially. Read the emails, read the message, get in touch with the end customers. Keep the pulse on what you're doing because when you start a company, you're a dreamer. You think you have the best product, then you start diving into building the product. But let me tell you that much.

As long as you don't have and you don't know your customers, you don't have a business. You can build forever the solution, the product. If you don't know your customers, there's nothing there.

Jeff Holman (09:25)
Yeah, it'll interesting that you mentioned that. I I haven't heard it put that way before, but it makes perfect sense. know, the buyers, all the buyers today are human. You need to know your human audience, ⁓ even though there is AI embedded throughout the whole process. makes me wonder if there'll be a time when AI is the buyer at some point, but we'll leave that for another day. I want to focus kind of just a little bit on the context that you're providing.

and just draw it out for people that are listening. They're probably hearing the same thing. You've maybe mastered or are mastering the art of understanding your audience, whether that's culturally, you know, where you go and who you're talking to, the language that you're using, the audience that you're, the customer audience or target market that you're selling into, different types of things. Like, do you think that this is one of your strengths is to

is to be able to assess from the audience perspective or the audience might be the wrong word because when you're culturally with somebody, you wouldn't refer to them as an audience necessarily. But you know what saying, the people you're talking to, do you feel like you're mastering how to see things from their perspective and how to in a way maybe even translate what you're saying so that it is more effective talking to that audience?

Laurent Cohen (10:47)
I do. And, ⁓ it's not only about the cultural aspect. It's also about intuition. And, ⁓ it's, it's a big discussion here because, ⁓ again, you know, when you're young and you have your assumptions, you also have intuition or you don't know some people have intuition, some don't. And, ⁓ the more you go in life, the more, ⁓

things happen to you, you you start doubting your intuition. And I think that losing that aspect as a business owner, you know, and that's probably one of the things we're going to discuss when we break out, know, trusting your intuition at some point is something that happens when you start to scaling up. The bigger your company gets, the more people you hire.

Jeff Holman (11:20)
Mm-hmm.

Laurent Cohen (11:45)
The more interaction you have within your company, the more you ask yourself, maybe I should listen more to the people around me. Because when you start a company, when you, you're probably one, two, three person initially, you know, it's you, your, you, yourself and your intuition. And it works or it doesn't. doesn't. Well, if you're here, it works. But then when you start hiring, you know, you, you may think that you need to put your intuition aside and let people talk a little bit.

and listen to them. And this is probably the main issue I had when I scaled, putting my intuition aside. So now I'm back and I trust my intuition. And it's exactly what leads me to think that intuition makes me also understand who my customers are and how I can deliver the best solution for them.

Jeff Holman (12:39)
That makes a lot of sense. And I ask people in the icebreaker segments that we're doing, a lot of times I'll ask, I didn't ask you this earlier, but I'll ask you now, because intuition is, I don't know if you would call that the same thing as gut, but I like to ask people, do you like to make decisions on your data that you were collecting or on your gut instinct? Or do you have one that you favor over the other or how do you use instinct or your intuition in this case? ⁓

either versus the data or with the data.

Laurent Cohen (13:13)
Intuition first guts, gut distinct first data. Data's are information. Data's nourish my intuition, you know, whether you know it or you don't at the moment you receive that information. And of the fact that I told you earlier that I'm constantly looking at data's, you you don't just look at the data in the morning and say, Oh, this, this happened. I'm going to pivot my company. No, you just, you just get banged. No, comes to you, you know,

And if you go there enough, it's big and it becomes an habit, you know, ⁓ it should not make you, ⁓ change your mindset or make you pivot. should make you adjust what you're doing. So the adjustment into one thing, but the intuition is the other one. So the intuition it's, it's what drives you. The data is what makes you go slightly left and right.

Jeff Holman (14:00)
Yeah.

Laurent Cohen (14:11)
to make sure you're taking the right path. ⁓ But also intuition doesn't mean you need to be stubborn. No, it's two different things.

Jeff Holman (14:21)
Yeah, I mean, there's some mix, right? Data. But I think a lot of people, and I come at this from an engineering perspective too, from my early years, you know, doing electrical engineering before law school. And I think about it and I've always struggled because I'm a big picture person. I'm like, I want to see the whole picture. So I'm kind of the type of person who says, give me all the data. But then my gut instinct says, but can I trust the data that I've got? And now I've got to use my intuition.

You know, I might have good data or I might have bad data, but I've got to use my intuition to make a judgment call about the quality of that data before I use the data to make a decision. And I feel like, I feel like that sometimes can be a, you know, kind of a layered, a layered process, right? Intuition data, intuition data, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. And all of a sudden now you come out with hopefully the best answer.

Laurent Cohen (15:11)
Yes. And also when it comes to data and especially numbers, you can make numbers tell you anything you want them to tell you. It's always the perspective from where you're staying. So you have to keep a distance with your metrics. They're here. They give you information on past events, not on future events. People get confused when they watch, they look at metrics. They think there are data that are going to tell you what's going to happen. No.

They tell you what has happened and what is happening and what's not going to happen. What's going to happen is the decision you're going to take upon those data with your intuition, with your team and whatever you're building.

Jeff Holman (15:54)
Yeah. And then all the external factors are going to change that along the way. lots of those, huh? Let's, let's dig into a breakout moment that you've had in your, in your journey, ⁓ building different companies. And, and I'd like to get the audience a little bit of context. Tell us kind of what, tell us about the company where you maybe had your biggest breakout moment and, ⁓ you know, who was there, who was on your team? What was the.

kind of range of revenue that you were in at the time. then of course, what was the issue you were dealing with that prompted you to maybe step back and earn or gain a new perspective on the problem?

Laurent Cohen (16:38)
got a very interesting story about that.

Jeff Holman (16:40)
Good,

good. I'm excited.

Laurent Cohen (16:43)
Get ready. When I started my first digital company in e-commerce back in 2002, ⁓ it was immediate success. We were selling health and beauty products and we were selling basically American products abroad. Remember what we said earlier? The fact that I know I had the sense of ⁓ the different cultures where we were.

The website we had Spanish version, French version, German version, English version, Portuguese version.

Jeff Holman (17:15)
What product was it? Just health and beauty, but anything specific?

Laurent Cohen (17:19)
⁓ 70 % supplements and 30 % aesthetic. No, Serves stuff like that. Basically, you know, I understood very quickly that there was a market for American products that were not distributed abroad. Got it. so we, it went very fast. Then, ⁓ Google came in the picture, which means SEO, SEM. ⁓ so I got very much educated on the subject.

and had very good success in that field, those fields. And everything went very well, right? So nevertheless, around 2007, 2008, business was blooming, but there was this glass ceiling. Could not break. I mean, I was doing great, right? But you know, it was right around $3.54 million a year.

Jeff Holman (18:16)
And you've been building this for like five or six years now or four or five years, like that. years. Four years. So you had some success growing it to that point, but you just kept hitting the...

Laurent Cohen (18:21)
Four years, four years.

I had extraordinary merchants. My merchants were amazing. was around 35, 38%. So crazy. Yeah, it was fantastic. So I could not complain, but you you know, you can do better, but you don't understand why, you don't understand the limitation. And you start sharing that with other people, other business owners. And eventually you hear that this specific level is kind of known.

Jeff Holman (18:37)
Fantastic.

Laurent Cohen (18:59)
No, people know that whether, whatever you're selling, you know, four years, no step when you think you need to hire, you need, do I need to do? You know, you're kind of lost and you're talking with people. And then what I did is I'm a big believer of serendipity. Yeah. You, you, you have things coming your way that you don't expect, you know, that are looking negative, you know, and.

Jeff Holman (19:20)
Okay.

Laurent Cohen (19:29)
You kind of absorb them, right? The only difference is that when you're young, you know, have these emotions come in place that you kind of take when you get older.

Jeff Holman (19:43)
I'm curious, before this ended up as a moment, what did your team look like? You're doing around $4 million a year, supplements and other beauty products. Did you have a team with you? What did that look like?

Laurent Cohen (19:58)
Yeah,

we were 12. I'd say we had six, seven people, seven persons wearing warehouse shipping, know, everything like that. And four were focused on the website, the data, implementing products, orders, know, stuff like that.

Jeff Holman (20:22)
And did you have somebody on your team that was helping you that was like kind of a partner to you or were they, or were you kind of managing this business more on your own with, their help, of course.

Laurent Cohen (20:32)
No on my own and I felt it feel good

Jeff Holman (20:34)
Okay. Okay.

To

be honest. felt good, but then you almost sometimes are more susceptible to falling into the same traps that other companies have fallen into at the same moment in their business, Because you don't necessarily have other people to go to. So you were talking to other people to try to figure out, what do I do? Like, I'm hitting this roadblock. How do I get around this?

Laurent Cohen (21:00)
Exactly. Exactly. Because, know, I see myself as a creative business owner. have ideas. can create product. It's constant flow of ideas. But when you become to, when you start to scale, you have KPIs, you you need to have visibility, you need to, all the financial aspect to it also, you know.

Yeah. And then you have operational complexity, you know, you have all kinds of things. And when you're a creative person, you know, this is something that you don't take comfortably, you know, as you go from, you know, being able to express yourself as a business owner to having to limit your expression because now, you know, things are getting serious, know, so this is an adjustment that is very hard to make.

Jeff Holman (21:58)
Did it come naturally to you to do this or were you, because I think I've seen a lot of creators who have businesses and I often think to myself, these guys need a really high margin business because they want to spend their time creating and as long as there's money, they can do that, but they need a buffer because creatives tend to not notice some of the signals that are happening around them, right? Cause they're creating something new instead of looking at the business and how it's operating.

in the moment and so they don't necessarily ⁓ recognize the warning signs when they're there,

Laurent Cohen (22:34)
This is exactly it. You know, you're, you're, I could, express it. You're, you're in kind of a reactive growth, you know, instead of durable growth, you know, you're, you're, you're always reacting to what's coming to you because you don't like it. That's something, is that the thing you want to do during your day? Having, having to face all those complexities and problems. So when you, uh,

Jeff Holman (22:53)
Yeah, yeah

Laurent Cohen (23:03)
So circling back to what we were starting to discuss, know, my big breakout came from people around me in my community starting to understand what were my skills as a business owner. And a lot of people came to me with their problems, you know, when I talked to you about serendipity, you know, for advice, you know, I became some kind of consultant, you know, I had every week people come into my office and ask me, you

How do do SEO? How do do SCM? Where do you manufacture your product? And I was very happy to share those information. That was not a problem for me. Then came the time where a guy heard about me and he had built a small fragrance business, internet business, that was doing what I did basically selling abroad.

Jeff Holman (23:59)
Okay.

Laurent Cohen (24:01)
And he came to me and said, yeah, I've got some kind of successes with SEO, SEM, but I'm not a good manager. I don't know what I'm doing. So I invested in this company and integrated it with mine. Then a year after I had the same opportunity with another company that was selling toys abroad.

Jeff Holman (24:22)
Wait, you said toys? you're in health and beauty fragrances and you're like, Hey, maybe I'll do toys too.

Laurent Cohen (24:24)
Toys,

You know what? This was exactly the same for me. Basically, this was having a website with SEO and SCM, which was new, selling to Europe, which was something I knew. And in my warehouse, which I had, logistic was ready. Whatever you put in the package, whether it's a supplement, a perfume or a toy, for me, it's the same job. It was exactly the same.

Jeff Holman (24:56)
So you're buying these companies up there when you say invested where you actually just acquiring the company and and and

Laurent Cohen (25:02)
⁓ I was taking a majority part in it. But usually in both instances, the initial owner came to work for me.

Jeff Holman (25:13)
Got it. Makes sense.

Laurent Cohen (25:15)
So those, ⁓ option that came to me were literally my breakout moment. ⁓ so basically, and remember at that time there was no podcast, you know, there was not the option of discussing, ⁓ with videos, people and having people reach out to you, know, it was really low. It was really local for me. And, ⁓ the fact that I,

had been able to make a name for myself in those skills, know, and your reputation gave me opportunities. ⁓ now talking about breakout moments, Jeff, I think as a business owner, working on your reputation is very important. This is probably what provided me with the best opportunities, know, having a reputation.

I didn't do it on purpose. didn't build that reputation because I expected that in return. It was just a fact, the fact that I liked sharing, that I liked people, share ideas, and soon enough those sharing moments become opportunities.

Jeff Holman (26:30)
Yeah. You know, that's interesting. ⁓ I mean, two thoughts on this, your story reminds me somewhat of the, of the story, the breakout moment that John Richards shared. was maybe episode three or something. He's, he's here in Utah and was running a business. was like a, it was like a yellow pages type business, but somehow because he was in that field, somebody else just came to him and said, Hey, have you done this? Have you considered doing this online or something like that? Right.

And so he didn't, he wasn't even seeking the opportunity, but it came to him because of what he was involved in and who he was and who he knew. And all of a sudden he had an opportunity to build a, you know, maybe the, the world's first online yellow pages type of business and did well with it. So you, you, you have the same experience in a sense. Were you out there doing, I mean, you say that people are coming to you with questions. Were you doing like formalized coaching or.

or paid services or was this just ⁓ a fact that you're in the network with people who are doing similar things and they said, you know what, I got this problem. I know who to go to. I'm going to go to Lauren. He'll, he'll, he'll have a few minutes. He'll have some thoughts, maybe some answers and, and it was just all informal. Is that how it was?

Laurent Cohen (27:47)
Totally informal, totally out of generosity, never expected anything in return. You know, it's a way of life. You know, you can decide to be scared of everyone, you know, thinking, they're going to steal my idea, they're going to steal my business. They're coming for something to take out of. You know, if you're confident enough to know that what you're doing is who you are, know, sharing and helping other people.

Jeff Holman (27:52)
Yeah.

Laurent Cohen (28:17)
⁓ is a, is a good mantra. I, it has never hurt me. Never.

Jeff Holman (28:20)
Yeah.

It

sounds like it might have helped you, right? You were stuck in the.

Laurent Cohen (28:28)
It has helped me, the decision to be ⁓ something that would lead to that was never in my head. would never have expected that. was, it was, you know, when I was telling you that I was hitting the glass ceiling, those opportunities of expanding through ⁓ different other venues didn't come to my head. I was trying to stay in my field, you know, to see how I can expand my ads, my products, whatever, but that never

would have dreamt of having someone coming to knock on my door and say, well, I've got this company that sells fragrances and I'm lost and help. It just came to us, door open, but it was, it was also the hundreds person that came.

Jeff Holman (29:12)
You see, yeah. Was it exciting to you when they came and asked you if you wanted to be involved in their business or was it kind of like, ⁓ I'm busy. I like, I'm trying to work on my own problem. Like how did you approach that? And I get that you said before it was you had a team of 12 and you kind of were running the business. So you had the, the luxury, I guess, of making those decisions without necessarily needing approvals from other people. But what, what was that like when they came to you and they said, I think I need some help. Can you be involved with me?

Just a quick note about our guests. I host the Breakout CEO podcast to share behind the scenes insights from scaling businesses. As an attorney, I see the real challenges leaders face long before success becomes public. But client stories have to stay confidential. So we invite guest CEOs to share their own moments of struggle and success. I'm so grateful to our guests and my team at Intellectual Strategies for making this show possible.

Let's get back to the show.

Laurent Cohen (30:14)
Okay, very interesting. things. First, those people, those two persons, and actually I had many other stories like that, they never come to you saying, need your help. They come to discuss now. And then you understand soon enough, and again, if you have intuition, you understand very quickly that they need help and that they're looking for help. We're not in a negotiation phase yet. No, you just know something. They need something.

You know, and usually when they come to you, the business is not exactly where it should be there. You see that they kind of stressed, you know, you know, there's all this again, human relationship that you are understanding, you know, then the second thing, and then I'm coming back to the metrics, know, I know my work. I know what they're doing from the moment they pass the door. I need to ask three questions. Show me your website. Okay. Okay.

let's open Google. Okay. How many projects have been stopped? You have those five, six questions. again, for anybody listening as a business owner, if you know well enough, your work, any other company that's similar, you it could take only five minutes to understand where they are at and their opportunities. And in both cases, it literally took me three minutes to understand that it was something. because even at that time I had this

habits of looking at my metrics every single morning so that when I see anybody else metrics, you know, it talks to me. I know what I'm seeing. You know, I know those numbers. I know exactly what they're doing. You know, like I could.

It's like I had spent six months in their office, you know, just watching a couple of, ⁓ of pages.

Jeff Holman (32:05)
As a creator, how were you able to develop the skill of knowing what metrics to look at and interpret? Because I think a lot of people, whether they're creatives or not, I think actually understanding their metrics is a lot harder for them than what it sounds like it should be.

Laurent Cohen (32:24)
First of all, for me, being creative doesn't go against being rigorous and understanding numbers. I mean, you can be very creative and understand numbers. I do. That makes sense. I would not be able to work if I didn't have numbers in front of me. It just doesn't work. I can't. I can't.

So as creative as it can be, you know, I need those numbers. I need to see numbers, whatever they are, where, whatever they located. No, need those numbers. So in the contrary, I would say to any entrepreneur out there that if they have no idea of those numbers within the company, something is wrong. And we can go deep into what those numbers are. But

Jeff Holman (33:15)
Yeah.

Laurent Cohen (33:21)
Uh, I would every single morning, uh, look at every single order, every single, I had my daily margins, my weekly margin, my monthly margins. had everything, you know? And actually with the friendly thing is I didn't use a software for that. I use solely Excel files. My Excel files. And I still do that to that day, whatever the, the co the company size I'm used to. Uh, you know, if you're, you're

If you worked 30 years in doing using Excel, you well, keep using Excel, you know, of course you have wonderful tools available nowadays, but sometimes it's reinsuring, you know, because your eyes, your habits are built upon certain tools. So keeping those tools, you know, is very reinsuring. So I was, I'm still doing that.

Jeff Holman (34:14)
Yeah. Well, I'm curious. So you, so you bought these companies or you invested in these companies, you brought them in into your company or you're, you're holding, you know, whatever structure you had, what, what was the impact that it had on your business? Sounds like your team might've grown a little bit because you absorbed some other people sounds, I imagine revenues went up. Did margins go up? Did they go down? Was there a learning curve? What was the, what, what did it take to get these businesses ⁓ integrated?

and stabilized with your existing company.

Laurent Cohen (34:49)
The beauty of it was that the integration was immediate and very smooth. I didn't have to scale much more in terms of employees and structure. Literally, I just had to take the office, the warehouse next door to expand my warehouse. That's it. I had to adjust a few employees here and there for logistics, but that's it.

Jeff Holman (34:59)
Okay.

Okay.

You had the systems, you had employees with some additional capacity. And so you were able to just say, we got more product and we got a bigger space and keep doing what you're doing.

Laurent Cohen (35:23)
And a few more websites. That's it. ⁓ That's it. I had a few things. took some migration, you know, going from certain website platforms to others, you know, very simple things for me to do. So the literally once we signed the agreement, we were up and running the next day. Literally just had to move the next day. Just have to move the warehouse, you know, put a desk for the other business owner, you know, in the desk.

Jeff Holman (35:43)
The next

Laurent Cohen (35:52)
then next to me and we're up and running. Now I, as a business owner, I want to go deep into everything the guy is doing. I want to understand what, why did he drop? Why did he have to knock at my door? Because when you see a company that's supposed to be doing perfectly fine and the guy is messing with it, you know, you have to understand why he's messing with it because you don't want to carry the load to the next step. Okay. So that was the main focus for me. The other thing were very easy.

Jeff Holman (36:17)
Yeah.

Laurent Cohen (36:22)
As far as a, and also you have to make sure the, the person understand that you are the leader, you know, you need to know no more fooling around. This is how it's going to work. You're to do what I do and you're going to be successful. So this is what happened. And now when I talked to you earlier about serendipity, uh, detours did happen between 2008 and 2009. Right.

when we have the financial crisis. So I was blooming, breaking my glass ceiling while the world was traveling around me. Mostly because I was selling abroad. But the fact of the matter is that I was doing great when everybody was down. And this was the most problematic thing for me, but I had to learn and learn that afterwards. You know, it.

Jeff Holman (36:53)
Yes.

Yes.

Laurent Cohen (37:19)
Sorry. It gave me a sense of invincibility. know, everything goes well for you. You know, you have opportunities, your company grow. And then, you know, there's a reality. No, I was living in Florida, you you open, you get out of the office and you see people, no business shutting down house to sell, you know, was terrible time, terrible. But when you're in good place yourself, you know, you feel okay. If that cannot hurt me, what can I hurt? Right.

Well, something came out and that's what, that's what interesting. So right now I've got the health and beauty company. I've got the toy company. I got a fragrance company. Now 2009 is a beautiful year. I'm ready for, I'm ready for 2010. 2010 is even better. This is crazy. So now I'm looking at KPI. Now I'm looking at the future. Now sky's the limit for

Jeff Holman (38:19)
much had your business grown? You were doing 4 million in like 2007 or 2008.

Laurent Cohen (38:25)
In two years I doubled.

Jeff Holman (38:27)
Okay, fantastic. That's lot of growth.

Laurent Cohen (38:32)
Yeah, I was very happy. And especially that my margin were around 22 % on average. Very good. Yes. Very good. So now comes the end of 2010 and you know, selling toys and fragrances gave me back in 2009, the year before, the understanding of what the Christmas time is in commerce and e-commerce. That's an amazing thing.

Jeff Holman (38:40)
Yeah.

Laurent Cohen (39:02)
is huge. we're, the season starts in October and we are ready. The warehouse is packed with inventory. know, the team is ready to work. Now I have team scheduled to work seven days a week, you know, even at night when it draws up to Christmas, we're ready. We're ready. around early December, we're shipping 1500

packages per day, which is nice. You know, it's pretty good. We do, we we're doing very well. Doing very well. Then I wake up on December 10th. I remember I feel invisible. Jeff, remember that.

Jeff Holman (39:46)
Yeah. How old

were you at the time, by the way? Approximately.

Laurent Cohen (39:50)
Oh no, not approximately. was 39. No, yeah, 39.

Jeff Holman (39:53)
OK. OK.

Laurent Cohen (39:58)
Yeah, everything was perfect. Except that I opened the television and I don't know if you remember that Iceland volcano that erupted. I don't know if you remember that.

Jeff Holman (40:13)
I do cause it caused, it caused like an ash cloud across like Northern Europe, right?

Laurent Cohen (40:19)
Exactly. No plane could fly. Every plane were landed. Okay. So what does it mean?

Jeff Holman (40:26)
You are shipping overseas.

Laurent Cohen (40:28)
tens of thousands of packages that were stuck in Jamaica and New York.

Jeff Holman (40:32)
really?

Laurent Cohen (40:33)
And now keep in mind, those are Christmas gifts mostly. and the second thing is that you do not know when the ash cloud is going to disappear. People say, well, my future tomorrow might take two days, three days. So, know, it's, it's okay. It happens, you know, kind of stressed, but it happens. But then it lasts a week and then two weeks and three weeks. We're getting close to Christmas. received thousands of them per day.

Jeff Holman (40:38)
Yes.

Yeah.

Laurent Cohen (41:02)
Remember at that time we didn't have AI. So we try to control that. I spent my day replying to thousands of emails, of course, with a team of three persons. We're trying to maintain the relationship with customers. This is not a scam. Your packages are just stuck there because of the Ash cloud. But people don't care. It's Christmas. They want their gift.

Jeff Holman (41:28)
Yeah.

Laurent Cohen (41:30)
We go with past Christmas and the ash clouds, I believe, ⁓ start disappearing around the 23rd or 22nd number. So we have a lot of late packages. Okay. ⁓ we contain what, which, what was at that time, the main risk for our company, which was the chargeback about, okay. When your e-commerce company chargeback is the number one thing. Do not want to lose your merchant services except

Jeff Holman (41:58)
Yes.

Laurent Cohen (42:00)
That on January 10, Monday, I remember all my life, I come in the morning and I see this email from Bank of America that says that my merchant services are canceled. I called the guy on the email, you know, was in Etampa, I don't even know him. And he says, no, that's it. And I tried to explain him that we contain our pro issue to 1.4 % which was

great compared to this act of God that happened, know, force of nature.

Jeff Holman (42:35)
They didn't

care. They said, a problem.

Laurent Cohen (42:38)
That's not my problem. That's You're 1.4%. You're done.

Okay. Now it's a boxing match, right? I have broke that glass ceiling. have made my breakout. I went through 2008 crisis, you know, and now I don't have a merchant service and you don't get another merchant service. You you just, what happens? What do you do next? You you, remember all my life, I came back to my wife at the end of the day without the word, you know, and at the moment I opened the door, she saw my face. Like I was on a boxing ringer.

Jeff Holman (43:14)
Yeah.

Laurent Cohen (43:15)
I was done. I was done. And it took us a couple of weeks to find one of those shark, gray zone merchant service that's charging 12 % fees, you know, just to get you back on track, just to do business, you know.

Long story short, because it's a long story. This kept me back three years. I went from breaking the glass ceiling to getting back three years. And my merchants were vanished because I had to pay fees and stuff. It was a nightmare. was a nightmare. That moment, Jeff, and this is really why I wanted to share that story with you. Is that.

Jeff Holman (43:47)
Yeah.

Yes.

Laurent Cohen (44:04)
You have one choice as a business owner. Do you blame the act of God or do you find within yourself to understand what you did wrong? I found what I did wrong because I did not want to be the old man saying I went bankrupt because of a kind of act of God. No.

Jeff Holman (44:30)
Because of a volcano and...

Laurent Cohen (44:32)
I refused to do that. What did I do wrong? And I say, yes, I got too comfortable. I was selling abroad. Eventually things could have happened, right? When you ship thousands of packages, 8,000 miles, know? Why am I not selling in America? Why didn't I build product to sell in America? Why didn't I jump on the social media train that was started already for three years?

while I was solely looking at the SEO and SEM. I did things wrong, but that issue, I had to go through that because I was feeling too invisible. was feeling too sure of myself that I had to go through that. know, if you're a believer, know, some people say, you know, at some point in life and business, especially, you need to have a lesson, right? Well, that was my lesson.

Jeff Holman (45:24)
And you've, and you really took it away from that, that, I mean, I, I'm listening to this and I respect it, but I, but I also am like, well, but there's still like, there was a volcano, right? There were, or there was, you know, for other people later on, you know, the, boat got stuck in the canal that like, you know, so, I mean, these things do happen, but what you're saying is, is almost like it's a, it's a, this hyper accountability, right? Where what

What else could I have done? Like sure, the volcano happened. I didn't control that, but what else could I have done to be prepared? So do you feel like that you operate today differently because you're, you're, you're looking at things, I guess, not through a, not through a lens of invincibility so much now, but maybe more practicality or, or risk mitigation or what, what would you call that?

Laurent Cohen (46:16)
Two things, first, because there's an end to that story and there's a great end. From that moment, from that decision I took, and I took it very early on to make sure I was accountable for the issue, I built my best company ever. That was far bigger than the previous one. It was a beard product company called Beardalizer that was selling in America and then beyond all over the world.

I was using social media like nobody else. was working with ambassadors that were basically a team of thousands of people selling for me. know, there were influencers before the word influencer existed. ⁓ And just because for the sole reason that I decided that I was accountable. All the rest is practicality. What you're going to sell, how you're going to sell. This is work. Okay.

Jeff Holman (47:03)
Yeah.

Laurent Cohen (47:16)
The decision that you are accountable for everything, I think is what drove me into stepping back on the ring, you know, and fighting again.

Jeff Holman (47:26)
So it gave you the energy or the, you know, the motivation to go back and do that. you, what did you do differently though? Like, so you, so you said, okay, I'm accountable and I, and I'm, know, but what did you actually do differently with Beardalizer that you hadn't done before selling in the U S or how would you, what were the top things you did to do it differently?

Laurent Cohen (47:49)
I changed the whole structure of what everything I did, I did differently. Okay. If that makes sense, every single thing, you know, I really, okay. No, there's a, the, think it's the Royal family in England. They have a saying, say never explain, never complain. No. Okay. This is exactly what I decided right after the shock.

Jeff Holman (48:12)
Okay.

Laurent Cohen (48:18)
that I had in 2010, you know, what happened to you? Never explained. Are you unhappy in life? No, never complain. Okay. I put that aside. put, I had it in my head. You know, I was, I was accountable, but never explained to the company. Now let's go to work. Okay. What did I, what, which, which were every single step that I do before that got me in that comfort zone. And what do I need to change? What, who are the people I'm working with? You know, who did wrong?

You know, because when you have people around you and nobody else sees that you are too comfortable, know, something is wrong too. You know, you need as a, as a leader, when you have a business to have a team that's confronting you to, know, putting things in perspective, telling you, but sometime, you know, they don't do that job. And I think it's necessary. I think you, you, you must have these, ⁓ this argument, you know, this, this.

I think that's what you mentioned earlier, Jeff, when you said, uh, did you have someone else, know, that's probably that was what I was liking off, you know? And, uh, uh, I built everything differently. Uh, the, the way I was again, I was a lot focused on the digital aspect, not the human aspect. So now that I had social media, I was connecting with a lot more people, you know, uh, business wise.

people that came in and out of the office. ⁓ So I was reaching out to people a lot, you know, I was getting out of the office, I was traveling to meet other people. I was doing so many things that I didn't do for 10 years because I was in a comfort zone where it was me, my computer, my office, and it worked well, you know.

Jeff Holman (50:05)
Yeah, I can relate and not to dive into my story, but there was a time when after I first started my law practice, I remember a friend asking me about my business and I was kind of telling him how wonderful it was. I was like, it's pretty easy. know, I have work coming in and I work so many hours a week and I, you know, provide for my family and I really haven't, don't have to do any marketing. And man, a couple of years later, and since then I've thought back on that so many times and I'm like,

Like I knew, cause I told this friend, said, I don't have to do any marketing. I, so I knew that I wasn't doing marketing and yet I was fine with it. And looking back, I'm like, you know, of course things shift and whatever. And, and one day I'm like, why haven't I been doing marketing all this time? Like I've, I got so comfortable that I thought, well, I don't even have to have marketing in my business, which I think back on that 20 years later, I'm like, that's, that's just absolutely crazy. Who, who would.

who would approach it that way. But I didn't have, you know, I didn't have the mentors, I didn't have the advisors, and I at the moment didn't have a reason to question it other than it was not a great way to do it. So I totally understand what you're saying, I think, from that perspective.

Laurent Cohen (51:22)
You know, this comes back to the discussion about AI in general, know, are we going to be replaced by AI? ⁓ There's so many aspects in the work field where we need the human relationship, you know, and if you think that you solely rely on machines and agents and robots and data, you'll be catch up. Something will catch you.

Jeff Holman (51:46)
Yeah.

Laurent Cohen (51:51)
catch up to you.

Jeff Holman (51:53)
Yeah, that's interesting because you've mentioned a few times the importance of intuition and as spectacular as AI is and what it can do and what it will be able to do next week and the week after that is just going to keep getting better and better. The intuition side of it, there's, I don't know, maybe there's a way to replicate intuition in machine language. don't know, but I think for a long time, intuition is something that is going to be.

a real factor in successful businesses who are even if they're leveraging the AI.

Laurent Cohen (52:26)
Intuition is something very personal. I don't think two people have the same intuition. So since AI is only reproducing what is has seen, what is that learned, doesn't learn, there's absolutely no way and no, the context of intuition is not only the intuition that you have inside of you, it's the context that's around it. No, that's all the information that you get that nourish that intuition. Yeah.

No, AI is nowhere close to that. And I love AI, by the way.

Jeff Holman (53:04)
yeah, I do too, but it's got its limitations. Well, this is a fascinating story. I'm glad you shared it. there a lesson that you've taken from this part of your journey ⁓ that you're now implementing with your business today with Git Obliq?

Laurent Cohen (53:20)
Yes. Never get in the comfort zone first and in second play the infinite game. In order to be scalable, I do not live by quarter anymore. I do not live by monthly. I I live, I try to go way beyond that in the vision here. It's a, I project my company way beyond and.

Jeff Holman (53:28)
What do you mean by that?

Laurent Cohen (53:49)
Especially now that we have AI, we're breaking all the limits on anything that I can do. So I could always have relied on the fact that, I'm not good in that because I don't know how to do it. I need to hire people to do it. I don't know them. Will I find the good people? Okay. Now it's done. Nothing like that anymore. Now you have AI. You can do anything. So do it. So there's absolutely no limitation that I put myself.

as a business owner on the vision I have on my company. Because at the end of the day, whether you do four, eight, 12 million dollars, you it's still a small business. You you're, you're in this emergency every day, whereas, you know, those, those large, large company are far more structured and they don't, they're not on an emergency mode. No, right. A business is on an emergency mode. So, you know, I try to

focus on discipline, you know, but to be brutal with every decision I take. Meaning that it should not be ever enough. Okay. I think that's the final word. should, every single decision should not be enough. And as much energy I had when I was young, you you always reach a threshold where again, discomfort zone, know, course I would like more, but that's pretty good.

Jeff Holman (55:15)
Yeah.

Laurent Cohen (55:16)
So, and I'm not talking about money now, by the way. I'm talking about the hustle, know, the growth, know, you know, always managing achievement and also speed, know, clarity, you know, every single thing that are important, you know, the framework that you're building, you know. So let me give you an example very concrete.

I'm doing get oblique, you you start, you say, okay, you're a voice AI company. And then you could stay a voice AI company, a SaaS company, like many others. And then you say, no, I'm not that anymore. I'm a voice infrastructure layer. We are, are gathering data from many thousands of human interaction through voice. we voice is a tool where infrastructure layer. And from that you move, you, you, move on again, you know, and you start saying,

I'm an infrastructure layer, but I'm also a data set that I can bring back to the million of agents we're to trade them even more. you know, we are, so right now we move from infrastructure asset to graph where ⁓ all those data are interconnected to provide a search engine used by voice only. You see those things where

Jeff Holman (56:37)
later.

Laurent Cohen (56:46)
not even on our mind six months ago.

Jeff Holman (56:48)
Right, right, technology advancing and.

Laurent Cohen (56:53)
And also the hustle, know, the thing. We think now that we have something more, we do it. Not we're going to see in six months. We do it now.

Jeff Holman (57:03)
Yeah. Which being small gives you that advantage versus somebody who's big and can't turn the ship quite as quickly. So there's the pros and cons of the size, the limitations and opportunities, I guess. ⁓ And I love, I go back to something you said earlier, and maybe we'll end on this because you mentioned your building for the infant of business, right? Not just next year or the next quarter or whatever. Another one of my...

friends and I guess on the show, Greg Scow mentioned this concept. I guess there's ⁓ a kind of cultural concept in Japanese businesses and maybe other locations too, where they say we're not, you know, we're not just building a business. We're building a business for 300 years from now. Like, like, like we're building it differently so that it lasts and indoors. isn't a quick, you know, fix and flip type of thing. It's, it's let's build. How do we build it right? So it will last effectively.

you know, relative to our lives. So it will last forever. And, ⁓ that's a, it's amazing to think that with all of the movement and advancement that's happening, that in some ways seems to complicate business. You know, I was just sitting down with my, with my small legal team this morning and the topic of AI came up again, of course. And we're talking about, okay, this, this client brought in this tool and they're using this and you know, what does that do? How do we leverage that? What does

Does that impact the services we provide or how we provide? Of course, one attorney said, you know, I'm having this existential crisis around what our role will be in a year from now or two years from now. And those are all great questions to have, right? But so there's this chaos that these quick advancements introduce, but I love that you're taking the perspective of how much more powerful is it and how much

longer term can we look now that we have these powerful resources? There's, it's almost counterintuitive to me because I think a lot of people would say, no, it's more chaotic than it is enabling the long-term vision. And I love that you're saying, no, this is, this is one of the tools we're going to use to build the infinite business.

Laurent Cohen (59:21)
Yes, Jeff. And also, you know, we, entering the era of the problem solvers. No, it's, it's not about the skills that you have anymore. It's about how many issues per day can you solve? Yeah. Because you wake up in the morning, you have 10 problems. You may solve two and, but you go back to bed, you have 20 problems. No. And I problems to the issues, know, or ideas of, you know,

Jeff Holman (59:46)
Yeah.

Laurent Cohen (59:51)
You name it. And again, that's what's interesting. Life is beautiful when you think about it. You know, not having those solutions when I was younger, know, had me to work on my skills. But now being older and having the experience, consider myself the epitome of what a problem solver is. You've been through life, you injured eyes and lows, you you had experience. Now you're a great problem solver.

I think also AI is kind of leveraging the game for older people. I say older, I'm not talking about old people, but we were discarded of the workplace five years ago.

When you're past 50, you know, they say, okay, you're moving toward, let's look at the kid with the hoodie, you know? And then now things have changed because as far as problem solving, only people with experience can do that, you know? And not only solving the problem, but having the emotional character to enduring and having a larger vision.

Jeff Holman (1:00:40)
Yes.

Yeah. Well, Lauren, I hope, I hope you mentioned people were the, you know, part of your breakout story was people coming to you for advice. And it's clear that you have a lot of good advice and experience to draw on for that advice. I hope that people are still coming to you, asking you for advice, maybe presenting some opportunities too, ⁓ along the way. But, but, ⁓ you know, I just want to say thank you for coming on this show today, because this is a way that we're trying to sh-

you know, spread your advice and distribute it out to people who really need to hear from people who've been down the path before. So thank you for sharing this type of story and so many insights with us today.

Laurent Cohen (1:01:43)
Thank you, Jeff. And it was a very great discussion. mean, it went far beyond the regular question answer podcast that you can have usually. So I thank you so much. you know, today we have so many channels to discuss. if anybody wants to come to me and ask questions or did a little push, you know, just go on social media and I'd be more than happy to help.

Jeff Holman (1:02:10)
Is LinkedIn the best place or what would be a good way to connect with you?

Laurent Cohen (1:02:14)
Yeah, LinkedIn or you go to get up and dot com and to the footers like tons of social media. It'll get me. You can reach me.

Jeff Holman (1:02:19)
Okay.

Well, I'm excited to see what you build with Obelik and I do hope people reach out to you and connect with you and take advantage of a lot of the insights that you've shared with us today and the others that we, I'm sure you have and we didn't get to. So Lauren, thank you so much for being on the show.

And to our listeners, thank you for joining us again on another episode of The Breakout CEO. Be sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And if you enjoy the show, a rating or a review goes a long way. Our mission is to promote the stories of breakout CEOs in scaling SaaS, e-commerce, and tech companies to equip peer CEOs with valuable perspectives and confidence.

Thanks again for joining us on this episode of The Breakout CEO. I'm Jeff Holman and I'll see you next time.

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