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Nasir and Matt talk about how a businesses based on a fad can succeed and answer, "I don't have money to pay for certain services. Can I trade my products for other company's services?" Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: This is Legally Sound Smart Business. My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And my name is Matt Staub. NASIR: And this is the business podcast where we cover business in the news and give our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you submit, the listener, to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. You know, I think I said “business” in that last thirty seconds about 50,000 times. MATT: It’d be some sort of record, probably. NASIR: I’m pretty sure. Call Guiness. MATT: All right. Well, let’s see, we have a story here. NASIR: We do? Let’s listen! What do we have? MATT: I don’t know, you’re going to have to help me out with this one because I don’t eat sweets. I don’t eat desserts. NASIR: That’s true. MATT: It’s a cupcake-based story. There’s this company, Crumbs is what it’s called, but it speaks more to fads. And so, this company, Crumbs Bakeshop, they actually went public back in 2011 because I guess they, you know, it was during the cupcake craze apparently and their stock I think started in the mid-teens and now it’s below 50 cents. NASIR: Oh. MATT: And I say “cupcake craze” because that’s kind of what it was. I’m sure you’ve seen this in a bunch of cities. There’s cupcake shops that pop up and have become pretty popular or at least they were popular and who knows whether they’re popular now. Juicing is really popular right now. There’s a lot of juice places popping up. We have talked about this before – like, the food trucks, that was a big craze. That was a fad. But this is what I’m getting to. If your business is a fad, what do you do when it’s not a fad anymore? NASIR: You have to recognize whether it is a fad or not. If it is, then I’d exit as quick as possible. MATT: Yeah. NASIR: I wonder if these founders of Crumbs – is it Crumbs or Crumb? I haven’t even heard of them, by the way. I’ve been to a number of cupcake places in my time. It’s not necessarily my cup of tea but I have been there once in a while with family and so forth. MATT: Doesn’t your Twitter handle say Cupcake Connoisseur on it? NASIR: Well, that’s true. I do test taste for a number of cupcake companies but, like I said, I got tired of it. I just wonder if Crumbs, after their IPO which just boggles my mind that it actually found a firm that was willing to back such an IPO but anyway, I wonder if these founders actually were able to just exit out of it. Did they lose money? I bet you they got a piece of it and had a successful business and I think it’s time for them to get out because fads are okay. If you’re in business and your product becomes really popular and you think it may go out later, that’s not a big deal. But, if your product is easily to be copied and done by anyone else, then that’s a problem in itself. I mean, a lot of these cupcake guys, I mean, how many did we know – and, unfortunately, I knew a lot – that were all of a sudden selling cupcakes out of the house and selling them to their neighbors and so forth? And then, they wanted to open up a shop and, you know, I’m sure that all the cupcakes are good but, frankly, the difference between the greatest cupcake and a good cupcake is just not there. MATT: Like I said, this is a tough topic for me because I don’t even eat cupcakes so I don’t know if there’s a big difference. NASIR: It’s the same thing with those yogurt shops. You mentioned those yogurt shops, right? MATT: Well, don’t say that in front of my wife because she will strongly disagree with you. NASIR: Ah. MATT: There is a big difference between them. NASIR: No, there’s not. In fact, I’ve had friends that have actually invested and gotten into the industry. I made my opinions very clear about it but, first of all, yogurt shops were a huge thing.