Main Street Mavericks Spotlight On Merchant Maverick

During the Main Street Mavericks road trip around Oregon, Merchant Maverick’s CEO, Amad Ebrahimi, was our last interview.

He met up with us in Bend to interview other small business owners before we turned the same questions back to him — what are you most proud of? What are your biggest challenges? We delved into the loss of our organic Google traffic and the impact that had on our company (mass layoffs earlier this year) — a struggle many small businesses face — and what we have planned for the future.

Here is the personal story of our own company, Merchant Maverick.

Spotlight On Merchant Maverick

Tell us about yourself and your small business.

My name is Amad. I’m the founder and CEO at Merchant Maverick. Merchant Maverick is an online publication that helps small business owners find the best products and services. We write content that helps them inform other decisions, such as — do I need inventory management for my restaurant — or something like that?

But really, the core product that we offer is we help. Small businesses find the best products — accounting, software, payment, processing, lending, point of sale systems. There’s a lot of research that goes into figuring out what you want to use for your business. So, we engage in that research to make it easier for you to pick those products.

Tell us your favorite thing about your business.

It’s really hard for me to pick one favorite thing, but building and developing a team is one of the most fulfilling and meaningful things that I could possibly do within my business. We all know I can’t do everything on my own, and it’s so fulfilling to have people who are smart and good at what they do and who can work with you, support you, and help you build something.

So there are many fulfilling things — helping small businesses, helping our customers. But I think, ultimately, the core is helping. For me, when I try to get down to the core of everything, it’s helping people grow, helping people get better, helping people achieve their goals. That’s something that’s core to me. And that’s valuable to me.

Tell us about your proudest moment owning your business.

I’ve had so many proud moments in the 15 years that I’ve been running Merchant Maverick, but there are some moments where they’re defining — they’re milestones. And the milestones are usually the sweetest, or they make you feel the proudest early on.

I mean, it’s 2012. I’m three years into owning or starting Merchant Maverick, and I’m ready to quit at this point. I’m like, this isn’t going to work, in my opinion, just based on the money that I was making. I couldn’t sustain myself.

And somebody in the New York Times wrote an article about Merchant Maverick, and I still remember the title to this day. It was “Processing Credit Cards and Anger.” It was basically a journalist from the New York Times who was talking about how hard it is for small business owners to purchase credit card processing as a service because of how scammy it was, and this journalist mentioned Merchant Maverick as one of the best resources for business owners to be able to cut through that transparency.

It was a defining moment for me up to that point; I had never been in the New York Times; I had never been mentioned in that way. It was the fuel that stoked the fire in me and the motivation to keep going.

What’s one challenge you are facing? How can the community help?

The biggest challenge that we’re facing right now is … this isn’t a secret … we have lost a significant amount of our Google organic traffic, and we’re not the only ones. There are plenty of publishers out there that got hit by an algorithm update that felt very punitive. We lost 98% of our traffic, and for a business that relies so much on Google organic traffic, that’s huge.

Our biggest challenge right now is figuring out how to connect with small business owners who actively want what it is that we offer. And what we offer is information. If they can’t find us on Google, how are they going to find us?

The community can help by really understanding what it is that we do. If the small business community could lend me their ear for a second, my only request would be: Just remember us, remember what it is that we do — because we can help you as long as you know who we are; you revisit us over and over again to find the products and services that you need for your business.

Tell us about your first small business.

My very first small business was Auction X-pert, and Auction X-pert was a sole proprietorship.

I did have a resale license, which you need in order to resell products. But my primary source of income was eBay. In 2002, I read articles that there were people who were earning an income on eBay. They were building businesses, and I wanted in — just having that sort of entrepreneurial spirit already, I needed some sort of avenue with which to express that, and eBay was the right time, right place.

Auction X-pert became my thing. From 2002, probably until 2006, I really was all about eBay. And I went through the gamut of trying to sell different products. I mean, it started with my dad, who worked at this company that went under, and the company left him with a bunch of inventory, and they said, listen, this is yours. You can keep it, you can do whatever you want, you can throw it away. And so he came to me and said, you want to do this whole eBay thing. Why don’t you sell this stuff? And it turned out to be maybe a hundred thousand dollars worth of stuff in this warehouse. And it kicked off the whole entrepreneurship thing for me.

I learned a lot. I learned about eCommerce. I learned about shipping. I learned about customer service. I learned about SEO. I learned about photography. Taking pictures of the products. I learned about accepting payments. That’s when I learned about PayPal. That, that was my foundation. It was like my college. eBay was like my college.

What advice would you give your younger self?

Believe in yourself. You know, I had a hard time believing in myself for a very long time. I had breakthroughs. I had moments when I really believed that I could do whatever I wanted, but there were self-limiting beliefs. Like, I’m not qualified for this.

I felt like I had imposter syndrome a bunch of times.

I’d also tell him to think bigger, as big as you possibly can. Just live life without feeling like there are any limits. And I really believe that whatever limits I place on myself are the ones that are going to keep me confined in the square box that I’m stuck in. Yeah, think bigger and believe in yourself.

What was your goal with Merchant Maverick? When did you decide to branch out beyond writing about credit card processing?

It’s interesting. It’s an intersection of a few things, and that intersection has a lot to do with my personality.

The intersection is that I love business in general, so I like building businesses. I like helping people. And I like making money. So, the three of those together really mapped out this trajectory that I’ve been on in the past few years.

What I mean by that is that I was starting a business with my cousin, and we ran into the issue of finding a good credit card processor. However, I also bumped into people here and there who were making money doing review sites. So that’s the money side. And then the side of me that wanted to help people was like, well, I’m having an issue finding a good credit card processor. I bet other people are finding this issue too.

And then, meshing these things together became the initial idea. How can I help people that also has good economics and can help me make money? That ultimately helps me do what I love to do, which is build a business. So, let’s mold the three of those together.

Once I did that, I realized that this is a bigger thing. It wasn’t just confined to credit card processing. I realized that helping businesses find products and services cut through some of the scammy stuff to like really find this transparency, I think that that was a bigger idea than the initial idea.

I started this business in 2009, and by 2010, within one year, I remember thinking to myself, this is bigger than you thought it was going to be.

At what point did you realize Merchant Maverick had become a success?

Oof. Success can be defined in a lot of different terms.

Success, to me, is defined in two terms. My first form of success was when I got feedback from website visitors who were small business owners who would say, this is the best resource that I’ve come across, and I love this information. Thank you so much. That was the first success. The second success was when I felt like I was financially growing and sustainable — and not just sustainable, like more than I needed.

That’s when it felt like, okay, this is something big.

Do you want to talk about the layoffs Merchant Maverick endured this year?

Business is not personal, but it can also feel like a family. And when you have people who have worked for you for almost a decade, you end up becoming attached and bonded to those people over that time. And you can try to separate the personal from the business, but for me, it’s damn near impossible. So, [the layoffs] impacted me heavily.

I had to let go of people who had worked at Merchant Maverick for 10 years or close to 10 years. And these are people that I would consider friends, lifelong friends, people that I bonded with, people that I’ve had very personal conversations with. So, it wasn’t like just something on paper for me. It was something real. It was very real for me. And there were very real emotions that were part of that process. I almost felt out of body during that time. It didn’t feel real. It felt like this would never happen. And when it actually did, it was hard.

I think that the relationships I developed with the people that we ended up laying off [were the reason why] everyone in that crew was on my side. Like they knew that I was making this decision because I had to. I wasn’t making this decision because I wanted to. It wasn’t like, let’s trim down. It had nothing to do with that. It was because I had to make sure that the business would survive over the long term. In a nutshell, it was tough.

I feel like I blocked some of it out just so I wouldn’t excessively deal with or think about the emotions too much. Cause, you know, these are people that I like loved, and I had to let them go. It’s not fun.

Do you have advice for other business owners facing layoffs?

You really have to connect to your own gut. Your own soul, like whatever it is that’s inside of you that’s, that’s, that’s gonna help you make that decision.

Cause if you rely on logic a lot, and there are people who do this, I’m just not one of them — I don’t have it in me to rely exclusively on logic and no emotion; more power to you if you can do, but that’s not me. So my advice is you really have to connect to your gut and make the decision from a place of genuine integrity.

Once you make a decision from that place, you can sleep at night.

Even though it’s painful, it still allows you to be in a place where you can sleep. And you also walk away knowing that whatever the decision is, it’s ultimately going to work out for the best for you and for whoever it is that unfortunately had to be laid off or let go.

What did you think when Shelbi & Kendall pitched Main Street Mavericks to you?

I got goosebumps. I really did. So when you asked me about the question about success, I said there’s financial, and then there’s when you hear the feedback from people that appreciate what you do.

Main Street Mavericks is a new level of connecting to who we’re trying to help. And that always excited me more than [making money].

So, it was a goosebump moment, yeah. And I was trying to hold the back, to contain myself and be like, break it down for me. But in reality, I was like, let’s go.

What’s been your favorite part of the Main Street Mavericks experience?

It always comes back to the same two things. It’s number one, hanging out with my team. So, seeing the two of you just be so motivated about this is so fulfilling, and I would do this all day long.

The second thing is that it’s very similar to team building and collaboration with others.

It’s helping small business owners, hearing their stories. I was sitting there listening to their stories while they were in the interview, and you really feel what they’re going through, and you want to help. You want to be part of that journey. You want to be part of that process.

So the two main things have been collaborating with the two of you. Really seeing how all in you are in this project, and then seeing how you bring their stories to life and how excited they get. And how meaningful it is for them to talk about their stories. It’s like, let’s do this every day.

What are we celebrating about Merchant Maverick five years from now?

I think what we’re celebrating is being a destination. And what I mean by that is you bookmark us.

This isn’t a one-time transactional situation. We are a repeat destination for you. We haven’t answered one question. We’ve answered multiple questions. So, the word destination embodies a lot. It could be that we are a community.

That helps you. We are a platform that helps you match with lenders, credit card processors, or banks, but I really want us to be a destination. So, five years from now, it’s like Merchant Maverick is a place that I’ve bookmarked. I really wish they understood how much of a repeatable resource we can be.

My mission is to help them understand that we are bookmarkable. I get it. You get a point of sale system. You don’t need another product or service for six months, but then you end up running into a situation where you might need a loan or a lender. We’re here for that. We have that. We have the information that you need for that.

So I think that conveying to others that we are a resource that you can come back to. You don’t have to just answer a question once and then, like, move on again and go back to a Google search.

You can just come back to Merchant Maverick, and hopefully, we will answer a new question for you.