Episode 160
Welcome everyone to the FiringTheMan Podcast. On today’s episode we have the pleasure of speaking with Reggie Young – a 7-Figure eCommerce entrepreneur and Exit Planning Advisor. Reggie was born and raised in Hawaii and served 13-years in the military as an officer. In 2020, he decided to FIRE THE MAN and travel while working on his business full-time. Within 1-year he was able to sell his first Amazon business and reach 7 figures. His mission is to help others start, scale, and sell their online businesses.
How can the guests contact? website, email, social?
Website: https://reggieyoung.com/
Podcast: Reggie Young Podcast – Business – Mindset – Travel
Amazon PPC Calculator: https://reggieyoung.com/amazon-ppc-calculator/
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00;00;00;01 – 00;00;21;29
Speaker 1
Welcome everyone to the Firing Demand podcast. On today’s episode, we have the pleasure of speaking with Reggie Young, a seven figure e-commerce entrepreneur in exit planning Advisor. Reggie was born and raised in Hawaii and served 13 years in the military as an officer. In 2020, he decided to fire the man and travel while working on his business full time.
00;00;22;01 – 00;00;33;24
Speaker 1
Within one year, he was able to sell his first Amazon business and reach seven figures. His mission is to help others start scale and sell their online businesses. Welcome to the show, Reggie.
00;00;33;25 – 00;00;36;04
Speaker 2
Hey, thanks a lot for having me. Really excited to be on.
00;00;36;07 – 00;00;44;07
Speaker 1
Absolutely. So first things first. Can you talk about your path to becoming an e-commerce entrepreneur?
00;00;44;09 – 00;01;03;15
Speaker 2
Sure. So I joined the military when I was 18. I enlisted in the Air Force and I was a medic. My bosses decided, Hey, you’d be a great officer. So they sent me to the Air Force Academy, which is a military university. They’re I’ve always wanted to get a good degree and kind of make my parents proud. And at the time, I really want to build the next version of the Iron Man suit.
00;01;03;18 – 00;01;22;21
Speaker 2
And I thought, Hey, if it was ever going to happen to be probably at the military university for the Air Force for the government, and I’ll be an engineer. So I decided to try and pursue that. And I found out very quickly that the pace was just too quick for me and trying to survive a military university. I eventually decided to instead take the number one major at the at that school, which was business management.
00;01;22;28 – 00;01;41;26
Speaker 2
And there I discovered my passion for online business. So at the time, I really, really at the time want to be a private and private equity investment banker because I figured I love all aspects of business. So why not just go after the most amount of money? And after graduating the academy, I was actually selected to be a nuclear missiles officer.
00;01;42;03 – 00;02;04;04
Speaker 2
I was not able to pursue the jobs that I wanted to that most aligned with being an investment banker outside in the real world. And when that happened for me, I had felt like I’d sacrificed so much of my career in my career, like my success and happiness, to end up in a job that did not feel like the highest version or the highest purpose of what I felt like I should have been doing at the time.
00;02;04;07 – 00;02;24;03
Speaker 2
And that’s when I kind of got into entrepreneurship, really, and just wanted to bolster my resume. And so I source my first product from China, not having taken a course, trying to rely on my degree, spent thousands of dollars, but my mom was like my only real customer and I ended up failing. The best thing that happened from that is I discovered my obsession for entrepreneurship.
00;02;24;03 – 00;02;44;26
Speaker 2
So I was I came from like, business to be like my passion to my entrepreneurship, to becoming my obsession. And that’s kind of how I got started at that first failure and eventually moved into high tech at Dropshipping. I did $64,000 in revenue on my first store was hit with some chargebacks and some types of fraudulent orders and eventually decided, Hey, you know, I have like 4 to 5 years left on my contract.
00;02;44;26 – 00;03;08;01
Speaker 2
I know that I want to fire the man even though I can’t because you can’t fire me in the military to military owns you. So I decided, like, hey, like, even though I saw I saw the opportunity with the four hour work week. I saw the opportunity, but I couldn’t quit my job. So I decided, let me just go all in all the ships for the next four years and dedicate every single moment of my free time to making this a reality.
00;03;08;01 – 00;03;20;21
Speaker 2
So that’s when I moved into Amazon. Private labeling had some success, some failure. Eventually, one year after leaving the military, I was able to sell my first business and since then I’ve been trying to scale out and work on fun projects that I enjoy.
00;03;20;23 – 00;03;34;07
Speaker 3
That’s awesome. And so I really like a couple of things I want to touch on. Touch on Reggie. One thing you said is burn all the ships and so I don’t know if you can see behind me or not. Oh, it’s one of my favorite quotes if you’re on YouTube. Burn the boats. That’s one of my favorite quotes.
00;03;34;07 – 00;03;52;08
Speaker 3
I’m really glad you said that. It’s a you know, it takes a lot of companies to like, just go, you know, just say, I’m going to do this and there’s no looking back. And so that’s awesome. So thanks for sharing your story and thanks for your service. And let’s let’s dive into so there’s a lot of people listening that want to fire the man.
00;03;52;14 – 00;04;14;23
Speaker 3
And I think it’s really important to hear different perspectives and different experiences on when people do that. And so you would want it to do it for a long time and you were in a pickle. You couldn’t for a while, and then you did. And so let’s can you dive into it like when you decided, Hey, I want to fire the man and then, you know, did you have a plan or did you just go right for it or any planning?
00;04;14;23 – 00;04;16;29
Speaker 3
And what can you. Can you speak a little bit to that?
00;04;17;03 – 00;04;33;22
Speaker 2
Yeah. So originally when I first decided I’ll generally have 4 to 5 years left on my contract, when I decided I was going to be an online business person with the financial freedom to do what I want, work on the projects I wanted to those four years, I thought to myself, okay, well, I got four years to make an income.
00;04;33;24 – 00;04;52;11
Speaker 2
So I kind of was like, Oh, let me set a budget of like $100 a month and let me try something super easy and like kind of scale into it. And I decided and I realized, looking back, I should have gone harder. And it really comes down to like more of like instead of trying to make some kind of math equation on like four years.
00;04;52;11 – 00;05;14;00
Speaker 2
So maybe making this much money or, or do this is like make the decision and don’t look back. And it doesn’t have to be like, is it print on demand? Is it affiliate marketing, Is it Amazon FBA, that agency level work? What is it is like? To me, it’s like I was in so much pain not having felt like I was on purpose with what I want to do, that that pain personally drove me to make a decision.
00;05;14;00 – 00;05;42;08
Speaker 2
And once I made that decision, it’s almost like everything kind of fell to the wayside. It didn’t matter if I was losing money, it didn’t matter if I was working more on my business in my than in my 9 to 5. So for me, I think looking back is just making that decision has to. For me it was like the core principle that that I stood on because if you if I stood on any other principle, I found it very shaky and I was kind of like falling here and there and be like, I’m not it’s not really working out or like, I don’t know if this is for me.
00;05;42;08 – 00;05;57;17
Speaker 2
It’s like, no, like, what do I really want? I don’t want to be an Amazon seller. I want to be someone who has a freedom to go where he wants, be around the people he loves. And how do I get there and is like, this is how I get there. Okay, that’s a decision I’m going to make and I’m going to get there.
00;05;57;17 – 00;06;16;09
Speaker 3
That’s awesome. I really like how, you know, you would give you giving yourself like a four year runway of like, Hey, I’m going to start small on my toes and then add to it and build on and learn. I think that that is crucial. I never recommend anybody just quit their job and saying, Hey, I’m going to go father man and go figure it out.
00;06;16;09 – 00;06;20;13
Speaker 3
And so I really like how you gave yourself that that roadmap. I think that’s that’s really, really smart.
00;06;20;15 – 00;06;39;19
Speaker 2
Yeah. You definitely you don’t want to happen like, I guess like the younger Gen Z would see it as like anything. And, and I’ve seen kind of traveling now for a little over two years. I’ve seen and I’ve been to the some of the biggest digital nomad hotspots and I’ve seen people and also heard stories because for four years I was trying to immerse myself in communities like this.
00;06;39;21 – 00;06;56;16
Speaker 2
I’ve seen a lot of people try and ape in without having some kind of revenue. And the reality is that you have so much burning behind you in terms of the cash you’re burning without having income, it you then you start operating from a place of scarcity and operating from a place of scarcity that puts you in a state that is really hard to build a business.
00;06;56;16 – 00;07;15;19
Speaker 2
And so, you know, I think even if you’re not successful and you don’t have the income to quit your 9 to 5, there are things you can be doing on the side to kind of build out a network, an audience small, a skill set that will allow you to scale faster and give you the confidence, at least that worked out for me to eventually reach that level of success.
00;07;15;19 – 00;07;30;19
Speaker 2
And what that look like for me was as I was trying to become a successful Amazon seller, I was at the time consulting on fiber. I was consulting on Upwork. I actually found small businesses in my local area. I went to them and I was like, Hey, like, you know, I would love to help you build a website for you.
00;07;30;19 – 00;07;39;03
Speaker 2
Like, you know, there’s things that you learn along the way while you’re failing that you can use to, to build your, like I said, build your skill set and possibly build an audience and revenue.
00;07;39;06 – 00;07;53;22
Speaker 3
Yeah, absolutely. Those are all excellent points. Before we move on, I would really like to hear maybe your top three places. So you’ve been traveling quite a bit to digital Nomad. What are like your top three places that you’ve been to?
00;07;53;25 – 00;08;16;29
Speaker 2
I would say my top three places. I would definitely say I love Chiang Mai, Thailand, just for the like the startup, like not startup, but like the the broke nomad mindset of like when you’re there, people aren’t really trying to party. They’re there to work in. They’re, they’re I think with a sense of like, I’m here to learn and I’m here to network and I’m here just to get get things that I’m not here to like drink or party or or hookup.
00;08;17;00 – 00;08;36;10
Speaker 2
I’m just here. And so I really like that. And for me, that’s kind of been always been the place that if everything falls apart, I’m flying there and I’m going to make it work with no money type of thing or or try and leverage my past experience. I really love Thailand. I spent a lot of time in Mexico just because of time zones, like working with certain clients.
00;08;36;10 – 00;08;55;03
Speaker 2
And just during Kobe the last year or two, Mexico has been the country that’s kind of always been open. And specifically in Mexico. I love Mexico City. Just a great balance of different cultures. And the vibe in Mexico City is really, really nice. And the third place I’m still kind of figuring that one out, and so I’ll leave that one to be determined.
00;08;55;09 – 00;08;58;12
Speaker 3
Sure. Awesome. No, I appreciate that. Over to you, David.
00;08;58;14 – 00;09;04;06
Speaker 1
So, Reggie, do you have a home base or are you are you kind of bouncing from place to place?
00;09;04;13 – 00;09;24;06
Speaker 2
I’m homeless as hell. Yeah. I’m homeless as hell. And I try and keep everything liquid. Yeah. I have been living out of backpack since I was eight years old. My parents were divorced when I was eight and I switched houses every week and then I joined the military at 18 and was always moving around, went to military university, always moving around nuclear missiles, officer underground, Underground for half the month.
00;09;24;06 – 00;09;37;00
Speaker 2
I’ve always been out a bag, so I’m kind of used to it. And for me, like I can find my foundation anywhere as long as I have a few principles set up throughout my day. And I comes to like having a solid routine right now where I am and in my life. I don’t want to put down deep roots.
00;09;37;00 – 00;09;42;17
Speaker 2
I want to keep things liquid, to keep opportunities a little bit more flexible for how I do it.
00;09;42;20 – 00;09;49;04
Speaker 1
Very cool. I want to go down this tangent. So you mentioned routine. Can we talk about your your routine?
00;09;49;06 – 00;10;07;29
Speaker 2
Yeah, sure. I routines definitely like I’ve changed over over the years and I think start driving all the way back down to mindset when I was trying to build a successful business, when I was trying to fire the man, I realized maybe after a solid nine months of losing a lot of money, that it probably wasn’t the business model and it probably wasn’t the tactic or the course or whatever it was.
00;10;07;29 – 00;10;24;01
Speaker 2
It was probably my mindset of routine. So I had to dive into like journaling. Over the last seven years, I’ve been trying to find a journaling process, took a lot of courses, literally everything, the routine, everything. And I’ve actually come up with a journal that I’ve been working on and so proud of. It saved my life and I know can help a lot of other people.
00;10;24;03 – 00;10;39;10
Speaker 2
And in the journal I actually have a routine section and one of the recommendations I say for having routine is like, at least take care of like fundamentals that work for a lot of people. And that normally is like for me, it’s like when I wake up in the morning, I do some kind of process and that for me is a nice hot shower.
00;10;39;10 – 00;11;06;11
Speaker 2
Some people like a cold shower for like body and do all this kind of stuff, right? And I only find some place of like self reflection. And then from there I knock out the most important thing in the day. And that sounds super basic, but that is what I think is a pretty fundamental routine that I’ve seen as a as a theme or common theme across a lot of other people who built routines is to have some kind of like a nice slow morning where you kind of like, relax into yourself, relax into your intuition, in your feeling, go plan, focus on the most important thing, and then take action.
00;11;06;11 – 00;11;24;00
Speaker 2
So I could go into like, the kind of, like tips and tricks that I do for myself. As crazy as now. I’m like, I’ve got water and I pour water in and I set an intention and but the reality is like, you build everything you want. What makes you feel good and what’s kind of making what fills up your cup and what gives you energy, what drives you towards focus?
00;11;24;03 – 00;11;44;05
Speaker 2
That that’s a great routine to follow. And you know, inside of this productivity thing, I also just recorded a course that I’m working on uploading right now. And in there I literally with the full stack from breaking a vision down all the way down to a goal, down to a daily page with flexible time boxing, I call it all the way to a routine and self-reflection.
00;11;44;08 – 00;12;02;24
Speaker 2
And you know, it really is, in my opinion, like there isn’t one thing that will to a success, a routine. I break my routines to this day. I don’t know anyone that follows the team day in, day out, like a robot. And we break routines and I think it’s okay, broke routines. But that that’s generally my process, my evening routine.
00;12;02;25 – 00;12;26;03
Speaker 2
In case you’re wondering, is is literally almost the same thing. It’s like, Hey, let me drop back into my self. Let me reflect on my day, then to reflect on my goals. The people I’ve come across, my emotions, my feelings. Um, and then from there I’ll try and do some kind of like grounding exercise or just kind of like relax and take it nice and slow in the evening and like, it’s for me, I even have like a checklist where it’s like lock door because I travel a lot.
00;12;26;09 – 00;12;43;00
Speaker 2
So I want to make sure my door’s locked like one, make sure my phone’s charges, like basic things like that, and that that can help set me up for success the next day, like making sure that when I wake up in the morning, the place is in a mess, you know, And that kind of thing just clears my head subconsciously for for setting my day up.
00;12;43;02 – 00;12;44;18
Speaker 2
So I think nothing too crazy.
00;12;44;18 – 00;13;02;26
Speaker 1
Very nice. I find that a lot of successful people have a routine, and I also find that I would say the majority of people don’t have a routine at all. They’re flying by the seat of their pants. They’re reactive, not proactive. And and it seems like that’s where a lot of anxiety comes from is just not having a plan.
00;13;02;28 – 00;13;24;15
Speaker 1
I like like hearing about other people’s routine. I also have kind of a morning routine and so it’s always nice to hear from other people. So anyway, thanks for letting us go down that tangent. So so you are currently running your own e-commerce businesses and I’m curious what are you focused on in 2023?
00;13;24;15 – 00;13;43;02
Speaker 2
My main focus, to be honest, is continuing to operate, so make sure that I can always be an Amazon operator first so I’m still launching new products. Right now, I’m optimizing a current supplement that I think is going to be really, really well my top competitors a million a month in revenue. So I really have my, my, my work cut out for me.
00;13;43;05 – 00;14;06;16
Speaker 2
And so I did that with a product launch of 15 grand. And I’m profitable right now, but I’m getting ready to scale that up. So that would be in terms of my operator focus, that would be my number one focus in terms of what I’m doing. Other than that is I really want to build a personal brand. Over the last nine months, I’ve been building out a course library to try and put everything that I know and have learned from selling online all the way down to that mindset.
00;14;06;16 – 00;14;38;26
Speaker 2
Right? With journaling, I spent way too much time building out the back end of this funnel, probably over nine months, making courses, making it a journal with it, with a course in all these different things. So 2023 will be where I flip it and I start trying to build the opposite end of the funnel, which is build that audience and draw them down into the funnel with the goal of, at the end of the day, helping the other entrepreneur that in the worst parts of their life when they weren’t journaling, I didn’t have that system and they felt like they needed that $10,000 course or that $2,000 mastermind to reach that level of success.
00;14;38;26 – 00;14;57;20
Speaker 2
I wanted them to be able to, hey, hey, Reggie has a thing for like close to nothing, but relative to its value, I want you to give that to them. And then if if that works out, what I’m going to do is take a portion of that revenue to charity, of course, to create an income for my business, but also as a bonus for the Vas that I know that that work for me.
00;14;57;20 – 00;15;00;19
Speaker 2
So that’s kind of been that’s like my two part focus for 2023.
00;15;00;21 – 00;15;19;29
Speaker 3
Yeah, I like how, you know, you’re down in the trenches, you’re doing the day to day, you know, grinding as an operator and then you’re, you’re sharing with others, you know what it took you years to learn, which is allows other people to kind of skip the line, you know so you, you mentioned you’re in the supplements base.
00;15;19;29 – 00;15;38;26
Speaker 3
That’s a that is a pretty pre competitive space from what I hear I’m not in supplements Facebook from what I hear all of our friends in the network that’s cutthroat. So you had mentioned you’re refining one of the supplements So as you do, let’s get into like a little bit of like product research. How do you enhance your product?
00;15;38;26 – 00;15;45;01
Speaker 3
How do you stand out? How do you how do you make your product better than your competitor? That’s 200 million a month. How are you doing that? Yeah.
00;15;45;04 – 00;16;08;07
Speaker 2
One of the things I teach in my course and I just had someone from another mastermind asked me this question There are so many different ways to stand out and select a product, but the way I fundamentally think about it and I think it’s I really think this is true. People hate hearing basic answers, but I realized people who who who aren’t six successful and continually ask these random like types of questions are normally the ones who haven’t internalized it right?
00;16;08;11 – 00;16;33;29
Speaker 2
When you’re not successful on Amazon and it’s is your differentiation strong enough so the stronger you’re stronger, your competition, the stronger differentiation needs to be. So when I look at products, all I look for is differentiation. I don’t care what the market looks like, how many reviews it has, none of that. The business I ended up selling, the average reviews that I got into was 3000 for top top seller had 3000 reviews and if I just went by like product filtration criteria, I would have somebody would have immediately just looked over that.
00;16;34;01 – 00;16;54;08
Speaker 2
Additionally, when I was consulting for one of the top aggregators and I step into their space and operated their number one brand, I thought to myself, Oh crap, how do how do I operate in this niche, this multimillion dollar brand in a beauty category like rang true to me. Again, you have to find that level of differentiation. Every single marketplace, every single niche will evolve.
00;16;54;11 – 00;17;12;25
Speaker 2
What water, what the water bottle search engine result look like, looks like now is not what it looked like five years ago, and it’s not what it’s going to look like five years from now. So I really try and identify how can I enter a niche, what’s strong enough differentiation to take up page one, position one? And if I can’t do that, I move on.
00;17;13;02 – 00;17;33;16
Speaker 2
So if I want to find if I want to as a maybe as a new seller or someone with a lower budget, I want to enter niches that I can find differentiation that, you know, I don’t have to maybe do a new mold, I don’t have to go and build some crazy thing. That differentiation should be strong enough to pierce through the market, be on page one, position one for long enough to make money, and then hopefully exit in the long term.
00;17;33;16 – 00;17;50;19
Speaker 2
So really that that that focus on on differentiation and there’s all different ways to find differentiation and it’s the one way that I love to do it. It kind of comes from my dropshipping background. When I tried to drop dropship, someone had told me, Hey, just go to your local store and look at products. Well, I took that to the next level.
00;17;50;19 – 00;18;18;01
Speaker 2
I went to all the major stores Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Bed, Bath and Beyond, all of that and went through every single aisle, every single product. And I looked at every single one of them and I asked myself, what is this product doing better? Or how are they differentiating than the other product? And when you do that, it takes five or 6 hours, but a couple of weekend trips, you know, but when you do that and you take notes, by the time you’re done, that muscle is going to be like super next level.
00;18;18;01 – 00;18;36;06
Speaker 2
You’re going to be able to look at it at a niche and be like, Oh, I got to do is turn this to silicone. And and next thing you know, like I can provide differentiation that I can magnetize, I can collapse it down. This product is exactly the same as the other product, but the branding is is different and it actually matches a target market here that the statements that they use on their packaging to get into Walmart, they’re on there for a reason.
00;18;36;06 – 00;18;50;18
Speaker 2
So let me look into those reasons why, and that’s kind of putting those two things together I really think starts to reframe how someone looks at product selection and can really provide fundamental principle knowledge for it to allow them to achieve success.
00;18;50;21 – 00;19;16;03
Speaker 1
I really like that you gave a couple examples of like collapsible, foldable, stretchy silicone. When I think of an Amazon listing, there’s a couple just a couple spots that you can really highlight your product, right? You got your images, you got your title in Bullets, which I’ve paid attention to my own online shopping, and I’m really not spending a lot of time reading bullets.
00;19;16;05 – 00;19;33;00
Speaker 1
But we we certainly as a company spend a lot of time keyword optimizing them. And so say somebody finds that point of differentiation. How do they advertise that? How do they put that out there in terms of like images or tips or tricks here?
00;19;33;04 – 00;19;48;15
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think the first one is to make sure you find the right point of differentiation. You know, so if you’re selling in an all male niche, it doesn’t make sense to make one of your points of differentiation to be pink. That comes down first. There’s there’s a product market research, there’s product research and there’s market research, right?
00;19;48;15 – 00;20;13;04
Speaker 2
So we we want to make sure that we’re doing both at the same time. If we’re doing our market research correctly, we should be able to identify what people care about in the market. So how did this game, how it described their their pain points, like their experiences and then mapping our differentiation to that. So an example, hard to carry and use or having to carry a new so a point of differentiation going back to foldable could be light and foldable.
00;20;13;09 – 00;20;31;09
Speaker 2
So if I looked at a niche and I saw a bunch of reviews or experiences that kind of talked about that, my point of differentiation wouldn’t be to make it pink. It would be to make to try and drive that differentiation, to solve that problem. And once I solved that problem, now the two are aligned. I also want to know what parity is important.
00;20;31;09 – 00;20;49;21
Speaker 2
If you look at any niche on a product level, you’ll be pretty quickly. If you really do your research, you’ll be able to dive. I normally choose five points of differentiation and then I try and order them by what’s most important. Once I create that point of differentiation. I know now on the product level for water bottles, it might be capacity and I don’t know if it is or not.
00;20;49;22 – 00;21;15;27
Speaker 2
It could be water bottle capacity. I want to make sure I drive that as probably my first bullet as maybe like a small sentence or half sentence in the title on make sure that my first or second image clearly demonstrates that more than it being collapsible, it’s capacity being the number one thing. So I think prioritizing your differentiation and making sure that’s mapped to the market, let the market drive your points of differentiation, not the other way around.
00;21;16;00 – 00;21;32;06
Speaker 2
And then from there becomes easier, you really just becomes like, okay, I only have, like you said, five bullet points for me. I try to make those five, those five points of differentiation. I normally have 4 to 5 images, you know, a minute video or so to talk about what I need to. And I just really just map it on there.
00;21;32;13 – 00;21;52;13
Speaker 2
And then I try and like like bullet point five may just take up a small portion of the photo or the video, but it’s bullet point one, that high point of differentiation. I just put that basically everywhere. And I let that I let that one differentiation, those five points of differentiation turn to my copywriting and those copywriting turns into a story which turns to my images, which turns to my video.
00;21;52;15 – 00;21;56;24
Speaker 2
And it really it starts at market research and it bleeds all the way down into your video.
00;21;56;24 – 00;22;02;08
Speaker 3
I like that. That’s to me, that sounds like a system or a process and that’s something that’s repeatable and easy to follow.
00;22;02;08 – 00;22;06;02
Speaker 2
So yeah, and even to teach Vas too, which is really nice.
00;22;06;04 – 00;22;39;29
Speaker 3
That’s awesome. So let’s get into efficiency and optimization a bit. I know we’re coming off a pretty interesting year where, you know, freight was incredibly expensive and then it kind of tapered off. It looks like the forecast for we may be heading into a recession in the US. And so what are some ways that you could do to optimize your business in terms of anything FBA fees, anything on the panel, how to cut expenses, increase profitability, any tips and tricks there?
00;22;40;06 – 00;23;01;21
Speaker 2
Not really. I just been trying to launch more and I mean, obviously, like, you know, one of the biggest problems that I’ve realized most sellers come across or aren’t aware of, at least, you know, having been in the game and being with other entrepreneurs trying to find success. So many times we hold on to a dog product or we hold on to closing off that opportunity of launching that next product.
00;23;01;21 – 00;23;21;28
Speaker 2
So the way I see it is you really only one product launch away from changing your life forever. If that one product isn’t working, there’s no point in like beating PPC dry or over optimize your listing. If you could maybe liquidate that or draw it back a little bit or double down on your product research. It’s another month trying to find that point of differentiation and launching that next product.
00;23;22;00 – 00;23;38;22
Speaker 2
That’s kind of how I’m trying to, I guess you could say focus and optimize. Other than that, I’m really watching my PPC spend because PPC, you know, the Amazon opportunity people say are just kind of dead. And I don’t think it’s dead because products, the product lifecycle will never end. You know, people will always continue to make products and with that will come opportunity.
00;23;38;27 – 00;24;01;01
Speaker 2
So it’s never going to be dead. But what is definitely going on in my experience is a really, really tight PPC competitive market. So I’m really watching my PPC and I’m launching slightly differently depending on the competitors that I’m going after. Before a lot of people would would do PPC kind of this like wide cast there. We spent a month cashing out PPC keywords you wouldn’t spend a month optimizing.
00;24;01;08 – 00;24;29;00
Speaker 2
They were going to spend a month doing scaling and growing or cutting costs and stuff like that. Now I’m kind of going after semantic PPC investing, so I’m looking for buckets of keyword landscapes in my niche and then creating keyword campaigns relative to the risk and my the phase of of my launch strategy. So if I’m in the example, always giving my courses is that Mr. and Mrs. Mug’s niche, it’s primarily a wedding niche.
00;24;29;00 – 00;24;43;28
Speaker 2
Okay, I would probably make a keyword campaign specifically for weddings instead of just being like, you know, automatic campaign $100 a day. I’m not going to go and do those anymore. Kind of like keep it really nice and focused and watch my ad spend, watch my conversions. I’m not going to wait a week to optimize. I’m going to look every single.
00;24;43;28 – 00;25;10;20
Speaker 1
Day like, let’s dive into PPC a little bit more. It’s something that I love talking about and one of the reasons I really like talking about it is, gosh, it never seems like you master it. It never seems like you’ve, you’ve, I’ve never felt like I’ve arrived across always seems to high conversion rate isn’t where you want it to be you know you’ve got cost per click that’s changing, changing with the seasons especially we’re seeing that in Q4.
00;25;10;22 – 00;25;34;19
Speaker 1
And so, you know, average order value, there’s so many different metrics. And so when you’re looking at your and you can’t really focus on them all because you’re drive yourself nuts. And so when you’re looking at your PPC, you’re trying to understand like the health of your campaigns, what are some metrics that you’re looking at in really focusing in on?
00;25;34;22 – 00;25;58;27
Speaker 2
Yeah, Yeah. I guess to kind of answer your question, I’d love to give a little bit of back story. So I started seriously started eCommerce Dropshipping and that came from a Google ads background and Google ads. This is a hell of a lot more mature than the Amazon PPC side. So I came in with that knowledge, having succeeded, succeeded on Google ads, tried to come into Amazon and gone to a space where nobody was running PPC at the time, not nobody, but very few people.
00;25;58;27 – 00;26;19;12
Speaker 2
The narrative at the time was PPC doesn’t work. Does it work? You know, like now it’s like PPC, PPC, PPC. So I’ve seen the Amazon PPC market evolve over time, right? And it seems like every month they launch, they have a new way of optimizing a new conversion, new to brand whatever it is, like some kind of new conversion point.
00;26;19;14 – 00;26;38;17
Speaker 2
So when it comes down to focus, I think it really comes back down to principles. And the one thing I always say is principles over tactics. Once you understand the principles, you can operate in any environment. So it’s a little bit hard to talk real principles on a podcast. But the one thing I could say is understand where you are in your market and you’re in your launch phase.
00;26;38;22 – 00;26;56;08
Speaker 2
If you’re launching, you’re trying to take market share, right? So if you’re trying to take market share, it’s probably going to come at a cost, not at a profit for most products unless you have such amazing differentiation that you come out a launch and you’re profitable, that is possible. But if you’re in a launch phase, your picks plan to be more of an advertising spend more than a profit spend.
00;26;56;08 – 00;27;21;07
Speaker 2
So you’re probably looking at different metrics. If you’re looking at scaling or profitability, then you’re looking at different metrics. But I would say overall, no matter what the two metrics are, I love looking at is total costs. So that’s a percent of your advertising spend across your you’re you’re entire revenue. So like, how much am I spending on PPC and how much revenue am I making, which includes organic sales, because that can kind of for me, that’s a meter that I look at.
00;27;21;07 – 00;27;39;01
Speaker 2
If my A cost is really, really high, then that means I’m spending a lot of advertising dollars be get to get a small amount of organic traffic and I’d be willing to do that if my, if and this is the second thing I look at. The two most important metrics that I look at is total cost and daily profit over time.
00;27;39;03 – 00;28;02;07
Speaker 2
Because if I’m profitable over time, then that means that my brand and my product is growing. I don’t care if I have 3% margins if I’m making $5 million. Right. But so like that your profit matters. So as we look at a cost, we look at the way costs and we drive our total costs down. But by doing that, we decrease our market share because we lower our organic sales and we’re lowering our daily profit.
00;28;02;09 – 00;28;22;09
Speaker 2
For me, it’s like keeping an eye on daily profit to make sure over time I’m profitable and keeping an eye on my tacos because then I know where I am and where I’m at with that risk tolerance of either spending more on advertising and if that if I’m okay with spending that that money to increase my revenue and my market share relative to my again, my profit.
00;28;22;09 – 00;28;25;14
Speaker 2
So I hope that kind of made sense in terms of my the way I think about it.
00;28;25;14 – 00;28;29;29
Speaker 1
Absolutely. What would you say you’re targeting for tacos this year?
00;28;29;29 – 00;28;30;29
Speaker 2
Profitable.
00;28;31;02 – 00;28;50;16
Speaker 1
Yeah. Price range. Yeah. Same. Yeah. Like sometimes I look at my pal and it’s like, gosh, we spend a lot on PBC and I feel like I just bought scratch off tickets. Like I think sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. But like, exactly the reason I ask, we’re targeting between ten and 15%. We’ve been back a little bit this year.
00;28;50;18 – 00;29;22;26
Speaker 1
We’ve seen a little bit of a bump in organic. We were seeing some like tacos in the twenties and again, it depends on the product and right purchase price or whatever, But we are seeing some cannibalization where our PBC percentage of sales was very high on PBC. And as we cut ad spend, we saw our organic go up and just like it’s one of those things like just when you think you’ve got it figured out, you have a crazy week or a listing gets shut down and it messes up all your data and, and so.
00;29;22;26 – 00;29;24;02
Speaker 1
Right, yeah, just curious.
00;29;24;08 – 00;29;55;07
Speaker 2
Yeah, I totally been there, you know I’ve spent a lot on, on PBC myself personally. I’ve been on the front end and the back end of PBC agencies and literally like when I was working for some of these big aggregators, seeing behind the lens and nobody knows with my opinion, nobody knows what they’re doing and every single you could have you think you have PBC figured out, you’re like, Oh yeah, I did it, you know, So my business that this man, I work for this agency, I manage this client, I’ve done this revenue, and then you enter another market and you’re like hitting in face with high cost you like, I thought I knew I
00;29;55;07 – 00;30;15;25
Speaker 2
was doing it. It’s the way I see it. There’s no way to try to explain to people is PBC is a chess game a keyword keyword is a chess game, right? Because you and then but you have thousands of keywords, so you’re you’re playing these chess games and all these like you’re paying you’re playing a thousand chess games at once and the market is always evolving.
00;30;15;25 – 00;30;32;07
Speaker 2
You always have people coming into the market leaving the market. You have black hat tactics happening, white hat tactics. People don’t know what they’re doing, so they’re just burning through PPC. You have aggregators now in the space driving up BBC costs, right? So like it really is changing. So what I really like to do is just focus on the fundamentals.
00;30;32;10 – 00;30;47;24
Speaker 2
What I don’t know what I’m doing and that has always kind of saved me. It’s, it’s, it’s always saved my ass a day, you know, like, okay, I’m spending too much money that’s not relative to my risk, my reward. Okay? You know, you can always launch another product. You can always liquidate inventory and get started on the next thing.
00;30;47;24 – 00;31;19;20
Speaker 2
But yeah, I think I think I really love the transparency that that you have to say like just when you think you have it figured out. Yeah we don’t and I think that’s true with everything in life so and I really like that that you that you’re bringing that transparency to people and because I think gives them a reality of like hey don’t don’t expect to come in and be at 10% at cost and expect to be profitable maybe in the first month or two, because a lot of that narrative has been pushed for so long that when people get in, they get demotivated so quickly and it it just leads to like depression or
00;31;19;20 – 00;31;26;13
Speaker 2
just like really frustrating and like a demoralizing way of running a business and setting up trying to set people up for success.
00;31;26;16 – 00;31;47;14
Speaker 1
Last thing on PPC, then I kick it over to Ken. Want to give you a shout out? So I go to Reggie Yang Ecom slash Amazon PPC calculator. So you have this tool on your web site that I was really nerding out on earlier today as I was getting ready for this. It’s got a lot of a lot of these topics that we’re talking about.
00;31;47;17 – 00;32;09;11
Speaker 1
I think that’s a great learning tool to understand how how cost per click and tacos make us all interface together. And so great learning tool also like I was plugging in some stuff from our own campaigns and it was great. So awesome tool you have there. And to our listeners if you’re driving, don’t keep driving most of the show notes.
00;32;09;14 – 00;32;36;20
Speaker 2
Yet the one thing if you want to mention it since we’re going to PPC here, I do have a bunch of courses on every aspect of of what I’ve learned and I will give it a free nugget. Reggie Encompass slash PC resources and they are like a link to some of like the templates that they use. The only things out, some of the software that I recommend, because I know a good question that you asked right now I really like, you know, everyone knows about helium ten.
00;32;36;20 – 00;33;03;19
Speaker 2
Obviously a lot of helium ten are in six sweet tools and then acquiring a bunch of tools over time. But I’ve been using PPC entourage since before Helium ten was a thing and Carbon six acquired them. And they have a great team of people. They’re really great team and I really like their two as well. They’re the most advanced PPC two, at least in terms of experience I think is out there, but the reality is a lot of these tools are becoming very, very similar in terms of their function.
00;33;03;22 – 00;33;17;07
Speaker 2
At the end of the day, a tool is just it’s just a tool already put, you put a hammer and in the hands of a construction maker or like a construction person who like built homes, they’re going to build you a great home. But if you put in front of like a chef, they’re point going to make the best home for you.
00;33;17;09 – 00;33;20;05
Speaker 2
So a tool can only get you a small portion of the way.
00;33;20;11 – 00;33;52;24
Speaker 3
And I definitely agree. We’re I think we’re seeing we’re in an age now where I think carbon six is an example of this. We’re seeing a lot of outside investment come in. And, you know, we saw we saw over the last 2 to 3 years, we saw a lot of aggregators swooping up for businesses. And and now I think we saw we’re seeing a lot of private equity come in and realize that, hey, these these FBA businesses are sometimes complicated, hard to run and but these SaaS tools are there’s a much better road map for those.
00;33;52;24 – 00;34;13;27
Speaker 3
And so I think we’re going to see some of that over the next 12 to 18 months. More consolidation of tools, which I think is great because we’ll as operators will probably get better access to more tools and things like that. So I like that analogy. I also like you had mentioned, keywords were like playing a thousand chess games at one time, and I think that’s very true.
00;34;13;27 – 00;34;34;28
Speaker 3
And if you if anybody listening has ever watched the Queen’s Gambit, that’s what that’s what that analogy made me remember, is she’s playing a thousand chess games in her head at one time. And so that was pretty cool. I know there’s a question. David’s got a mindset, so I’ll save that one for David and I’ll I’ll ask one last question here on cash flow.
00;34;35;05 – 00;35;04;15
Speaker 3
It is one of the toughest things that that’s an operator and the FBA space as we’re growing businesses, you know, as you as you launch your first product and then you scale to six figures and then you go from 6 to 7 and then 7 to 8, the cash flow problem never goes away. It just gets larger. And so what do you suggest for, you know, anybody that you coach or anything, how to manage cash flows or any any tips and tricks on what to do, what not to do, where to get cash from, things like that.
00;35;04;17 – 00;35;22;09
Speaker 2
Yeah. I mean, you know, there’s of course you can grab funding, which I never really been a fan of unless you’re profitable. But even then, like most people who are profitable don’t want to get funding. That’s something I’ve failed at in the passes. When I was super profitable, I didn’t go out and get like lines of credit, and I wish I had done that at the time because it’s the easiest way to get money when you’re making money.
00;35;22;09 – 00;35;44;27
Speaker 2
So that’s that’s one tip that I wish I knew earlier. But in terms of cash flow, like, you know, the standard one is the easiest one I think is to obviously like get a lower product cost, but you don’t want to do that at the cost of your quality supply or terms of need for me have been the biggest in terms of inventory, the biggest way of trying to make cash flow easier.
00;35;44;27 – 00;36;00;16
Speaker 2
So that can be as easy as like you want. You start with can I lower the product price? Right? You can, of course you increase your milk, you load the product price supplier says, No, we can’t do that. Okay. Can we store it in your in your warehouse for one month. Okay. Like would you like put it to the front of the line.
00;36;00;19 – 00;36;19;21
Speaker 2
Will you give me sort of doing 30% down and 70% on delivery. Can you do 10% down 30% when it gets on the ship and then the rest when it gets delivered. So like that kind of helps with cash flow as well. But none of that matters if you have a bad product and none of that management by product, you have the if you have a good product, for some reason, everything works.
00;36;19;21 – 00;36;39;20
Speaker 2
PPC works, lousy, optimization works, cash flow works. But the product that I ended up selling was a three. I was a $3,000 investment and I turned out to over $800,000 in profit. And the not, I think, one of the number one reasons I was able to do that is because I chose a product with extremely horrible ROI. We have a profit margin for our wise return on investment.
00;36;39;20 – 00;37;01;01
Speaker 2
So that’s how quickly the turnover your product basically. So if you have if you’re doing if you’re choosing a product that is constantly being bought, that that means that when you put in your dollar is going to get purchased much more quickly and then your return on investment, the higher it is, the better. I would never recommend getting into a product category that has less than 150% ROI.
00;37;01;03 – 00;37;32;21
Speaker 2
Thankfully, the fact that I had the ROI was 2700 x return on investment, so it was 27,000% ROI In terms of the initial investment I had on the per unit, ROI was about 250 to 60% ROI. After Pbks, I really just had really dive down on product research because when I had no money and I was like, I got one more product launch to go, or I got to save up six months cause I can’t launch a product, I ask myself, okay, what’s the 8020?
00;37;32;21 – 00;37;52;05
Speaker 2
What’s the one thing I can do that can make everything like useless? And it was like, no, get really good product research, right? And that’s and I was like, so that’s when I was trying to internalize differentiation and understanding my market and doing the things I talked about before. You do that right, everything else just kind of falls into place and it’s just beautiful.
00;37;52;06 – 00;38;14;07
Speaker 3
So just to recap, because I like all those suggestions, one is negotiate better terms of supply or try to go for cost first and then better terms, which really, really helps with cash flow. And then the second one was essentially your inventory turn making sure that your inventory is turning over quickly so you can make those dollars work for themselves.
00;38;14;07 – 00;38;17;14
Speaker 3
So excellent. I really like those. Over to you.
00;38;17;14 – 00;38;31;22
Speaker 1
David Yeah, I just wanted to touch on one so you admit you would talk about ROI, so 150% so that just for our listeners that would be, say, a product you source for $10 and sell at 30. Is that how you’re.
00;38;31;24 – 00;38;33;14
Speaker 2
I’m so bad at street math so.
00;38;33;15 – 00;38;35;17
Speaker 1
Don’t worry about don’t worry about it Yeah.
00;38;35;17 – 00;38;36;03
Speaker 3
Same.
00;38;36;05 – 00;38;54;14
Speaker 2
Old spreadsheet you know art wise the way I think I new minus old divided by old. That’s the way I internalized it. And that could be percent. But I really just Googled a thing or I have a calculator. And this is why, like for me, like, I love numbers, but I’m really bad at that, like math and science, but I love spreadsheets.
00;38;54;14 – 00;39;15;17
Speaker 2
So what I did is I built out this insane spreadsheet where I just put product opportunities and it balances like, is it gift table, What’s the ROI, what’s the contribution margin, what’s the estimated daily ad spend, What’s the unit sold, what’s this it is and it spits out a final score. So it’s I honestly can’t calculate ROI right now.
00;39;15;17 – 00;39;34;08
Speaker 2
I’ve had a long day, so I apologize for that. But I just use a spreadsheet and I like plug in numbers and I hit enter and it racks and stacks all my opportunities and that’s actually how I was able to find my winning product is instead of like looking at five products and trying to make it work, I came up with a system where I literally, like looked at a few products.
00;39;34;08 – 00;39;56;02
Speaker 2
I had like a hundred products on a on a Google. I saw 150 products on a Google sheet, and I just had like a bunch of like calculations going down. I hired a virtual assistant to go through and scrape things like BSR, scraping average revenue, scrape reviews, do all types of things, and then they were able to put that in the sheet Iraq and stack the opportunities by a score out of 100.
00;39;56;09 – 00;40;20;00
Speaker 2
Then I looked at the top ten and I was able to take out of 150 products the best ten products. And out of those ten products I drove in, I spent hours and hours and hours looking at how could I make this product that has 3000 reviews, How can I make this a winner? And when I was able to find that this is it, launched the product, APC launched No Black Hat Talk tactics, page one, position one.
00;40;20;06 – 00;40;41;17
Speaker 2
It all worked out because I had chosen the product from the best of the best, filtered it down, had at great hour y you know, did a great PPC launch and it just had the market fit to the differentiation and it just it all shot straight to the top. And if you break those, any one of those fundamental like principles, I guess you can say you immediately take a massive step back and that’s it.
00;40;41;17 – 00;41;01;06
Speaker 2
You’re fighting this uphill battle and that’s where everything seems hard. And and I’ve been on product launches since then that were I didn’t do those things. And I feel the uphill battle and I’ve been on product launches now like the supplement I’m doing now. I literally did everything right. And I’m still an uphill battle because my competition is so fierce and my differentiation is not strong enough.
00;41;01;06 – 00;41;18;29
Speaker 2
So I’m like, Well, you know how this can do this things? So for me, I realized I filled my last product launch one, I do have a smaller budget, I have a 15 K launch budget for a competitor. It’s doing $1,000,000 a month in revenue as a little bit to not a lack of humility in terms of my skill set.
00;41;19;02 – 00;41;33;28
Speaker 2
So what I realize now is like, okay, I have a close enough market fit, but not completely. So I’m doing a massive rebrand right now and I’m hoping that will work. If not, then I’m just going to have to be okay with a smaller profit. But it won’t be like this, this big thing that I’ll be able to sell.
00;41;33;28 – 00;41;48;26
Speaker 2
I just got to move on to the next product, which I might have to do, and I’m okay with it because I’m I’m used to it, and I’m only used to it because I created the emotional strength to be like, okay, it’s not working. Let it go. Let me hit the next opportunity. Because very few people hit a home run.
00;41;48;26 – 00;41;49;24
Speaker 2
First time out that.
00;41;49;24 – 00;42;15;16
Speaker 1
I am glad that you’re saying that because I can tell you my personal experience, if I launch ten products, two of them are probably good, three of them are okay in five or duds. And that’s like in we’ve been doing this for a while. And so it’s yes, sometimes yet things don’t pan out in like you were saying with the ACOs where people go in and they get discouraged.
00;42;15;18 – 00;42;32;14
Speaker 1
You know, that’s one thing when people are like, I launched one product, it didn’t work out. And so I stopped selling on Amazon. It’s like, Oh, you’re just getting started. Like in that that happens. Here’s a 100% guarantee. If you do this long enough, you’re going to launch a bad product that just doesn’t. Yeah, it just doesn’t work.
00;42;32;14 – 00;42;55;19
Speaker 1
And you’re going to have 10,000 of them in your basement and in. So that’s I appreciate you saying that. So but which leads me to my next question. Let’s, let’s chat mindset something I’ve had podcasts, I’ve listened to you on some I’ve heard you talk about quite a bit. My first question is, is this something that you believe you’re born with or you develop?
00;42;55;21 – 00;43;19;28
Speaker 2
It’s something that you develop and that you choose to adopt? I inherited I believe that because I was the laziest kid you’ve ever met, absolute, laziest kid you ever met. And and I just took for me, it was just like pain and frustration and I realized now just not doing, not realizing one, identifying what I love and trying to identify for me, I’m so thankful.
00;43;19;28 – 00;43;41;07
Speaker 2
I found, like, my obsession, my passion, which is business, right? Some people may be Amazon sellers here because they want the financial freedom to raise a family to, you know, whatever that is. Right. But that once you I think and I think only when that happens do you make the decision to be like, hey, this is so much pain that I need to do better.
00;43;41;09 – 00;44;00;20
Speaker 2
I need to do better? And when you make that decision to do better, it’s just my passion about learning and momentum. Learning and momentum. So like I was to the point where I could even get out of bed at some points either when I had all the drive to go and like, Oh, okay, like I want to be burning all the ships, you know, But I just got done with a failed relationship.
00;44;00;20 – 00;44;23;10
Speaker 2
I just got done with a failed launch works kicking my ass. I’m broke as hell, you know? Where’s the motivation then? Where’s the routine then? Where is this and that then? Right. So even got to the point where I made a Spotify playlist shout out to my Spotify playlist. Reggie Oncol for Slash motivation. And it got to the point where if I hit play and shuffle, I swear after 10 minutes I was up on a bed and I was like, working, you know?
00;44;23;13 – 00;44;40;03
Speaker 2
So like, find systems, find hacks, find and and put them in your life and put them in your life in a way. You kind of have to come across it. And for me, that can be too easy is like setting alarm twice a day. One at 10 a.m. when at 14 at six, am I working on the highest thing or the most important thing right now?
00;44;40;05 – 00;44;57;08
Speaker 2
You know, am I happy and how do I just let’s just something like that you could do right now and set it for like infinity like doesn’t repeat daily and I guarantee you that reminder is going to, going to put that little push in your life that that may just create that momentum that you need to keep moving forward.
00;44;57;10 – 00;45;17;17
Speaker 1
Okay. Okay. Very nice. Now, for somebody say there is a lazy kid listening and he wants to improve his mindset as you’ve been working on developing your mindset, have there been any books or podcasts that have really stood out and help you advance?
00;45;17;25 – 00;45;46;19
Speaker 2
I mean, we all love the four hour workweek. I mean, the four hour workweek now, like I think it was made in 2007 is a long time ago. So a lot of like the e-comm tips and tricks are going to be starting to seem super basic to someone first reading it. But the beginning portion of that book, he really hits on a lot of principles that I think help break the programing of an employee and, you know, things like, hey, like you don’t have to respond to every email, like random things like that.
00;45;46;25 – 00;46;03;29
Speaker 2
Not everything is that your boss tells you is important, you know, what’s the 8020 rule like what you know, because employees, right. Everything is important. But like as an entrepreneur, everything is actually not important because you’re the one man shop when you’re starting out, you know, you’ve got to prioritize things. So in terms of books like, that’s kind of been that I haven’t read that many books.
00;46;03;29 – 00;46;21;14
Speaker 2
The books that I have read that have been impactful have been deep work by Cal Newport, which is basically like, Hey, create a great deep flow and to send it out course and here’s some foundation works and how you can do that. And then you know, at that Tim Ferriss book The Four Hour Workweek, he does have like literally like one or two chapters in there.
- Cal Newport (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 01/01/2019 (Publication Date) - Piatkus/Portfolio Penguin (Publisher)
00;46;21;15 – 00;46;37;10
Speaker 2
They’re just like absolute gold outside of that. It’s just it’s just ask yourself, Hey, are you okay with what you’re living right now? Are you okay with how you live or not? Ask yourself that deeply. Are you okay with how you’re living now and are You can’t live in that way for the rest of your life? Sure. Okay, fine.
00;46;37;10 – 00;47;04;18
Speaker 2
You don’t need to grow it. You don’t need like, push yourself. You don’t need to be uncomfortable. But the more you can be uncomfortable, the more you can decide that this is not enough for you, that you want more in life, and that the pain isn’t enough. Pick yourself up and just get to work. And if you can’t do that, Reggie uncommon for slash motivation and hit play and I don’t about them but for me I can’t listen that thing for more than 30 minutes and want to get to work It’s just me personally so hopefully the health ministry.
00;47;04;20 – 00;47;12;00
Speaker 1
Absolutely absolutely Well very nice. Well I can. Anything else you want to touch on before we get into fire?
00;47;12;00 – 00;47;19;17
Speaker 3
Round end for for everybody, Every guest we have on the show, we have a fire on where we we run you through the ringer. Are you ready?
00;47;19;19 – 00;47;21;08
Speaker 2
Yeah. Hit me.
00;47;21;10 – 00;47;22;23
Speaker 3
All right. What is your favorite book?
00;47;22;23 – 00;47;46;29
Speaker 2
My favorite book is called Mastery. I don’t know. It’s just like this guy who he, like, has this long beard skipping me, and it’s really called marshmallows. Maybe I’ll try to send you the link, but that that book may be like, rethink a bunch of things. It’s nothing to do with business at all. It’s called Mastery. I think it’s it’s based on in terms of religion, it’s most closely related to Sufism.
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Greene, Robert (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
00;47;47;01 – 00;47;58;01
Speaker 2
I’m not a Sufi, is that all? But I just I found it a book very interesting, and it kind of started this process of where I am in terms of mindset years ago, even though I don’t fully align with it.
00;47;58;03 – 00;48;00;12
Speaker 3
Awesome. That’s a new one. What are your.
00;48;00;12 – 00;48;25;21
Speaker 2
Hobbies? My hobbies it sounds super lame and probably fake, but entrepreneurship, I’m always building something off to the side. I realize a long time ago, once I graduated university and once I had my first failed business, that video games, which used to be my obsession and passion. When you turn them off, you’re left with nothing. You’re left with nothing.
00;48;25;24 – 00;48;45;07
Speaker 2
What video games piss me off just as much? I don’t know. My boss lost that one thing, you know, but it never paid me and it pissed me off just as much. And when I want to build a business and that becomes my hobby, it’s like you actually give yourself the opportunity to change your life. Some always like, you know, like I built this journal like that.
00;48;45;07 – 00;49;00;25
Speaker 2
That was like the hobby I was doing instead of watching Netflix. Don’t me rise to watch 10 minutes or 30 minutes maybe when I’m eating dinner just to kind of like try and fully unplug. But I’m not watching. 8 hours is my hobby. I’m not doing these other things as this entrepreneurship, unfortunately. But thankfully for me as my hobby.
00;49;00;25 – 00;49;05;14
Speaker 3
What is the what is the one thing that you do not miss about working for the man?
00;49;05;14 – 00;49;21;23
Speaker 2
One thing I do not miss working for him that I would say maybe more than one thing, but working when I want what I want and what I want wherever I want. You don’t get that working for the men, working when you want on what you want, wherever you want. I don’t know. A job that allows that.
00;49;22;00 – 00;49;28;19
Speaker 3
That’s a good answer. Last one. What do you think sets apart successful e-commerce entrepreneurs who those who give up fail or never get started?
00;49;28;22 – 00;49;59;11
Speaker 2
Or the fact that you said who gave up failing to get started? I normally would say people who fail, who quit, right? When you quit, that’s when you actually fail. But and it’s the reason why. And it’s so sorry for plugging this thing in. I make $0.20 when somebody buys this. So this is not about money. It’s journaling because drilling has some type of self-reflection process and it has some type of like slow down, get to like your body’s like follow your intuition, do a little bit of like 8020 rule, Eisenhower matrix, whatever, and then listlessly stop your goals.
00;49;59;11 – 00;50;12;04
Speaker 2
Let’s take action on them and let’s reflect a little bit and see the people that do that give themselves the opportunity to pivot and move direction and create momentum in their life. Then I think I think it’s journaling. So that would be my answer.
00;50;12;07 – 00;50;23;05
Speaker 1
Absolutely. Want to thank you for being a guest on the Firing Man podcast. If our listeners want to get in touch with you or see some of the resources that we’ve talked about today, what would be the best way?
00;50;23;05 – 00;50;47;15
Speaker 2
Yeah, the easiest way to go to CNN.com for slash firing the man. And from there you’re basically redirected to my vault and my vault in there. It was my promise. Once I sold my business that I would put everything I knew behind. Of course, library with I nearly have a ton of courses, resources, not just Amazon, to help people legitimately start scale and sell their online business.
00;50;47;15 – 00;51;08;17
Speaker 2
And if for some reason you’re not really ready to spend $18 for an amazing amount of value, you could take the free pop up and get my free course and free downloadable course content PDF, which has so much value in it, and it literally will help you with any stage of your app. Most people really love the Amazon launch checklists and the coupons that are in there.
00;51;08;20 – 00;51;16;05
Speaker 1
Very nice. Very nice. Well, we are going to post links to all of that in the show notes, but thanks again for being a guest and looking forward to staying In Touch.
00;51;16;11 – 00;51;19;06
Speaker 2
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Everyone, take care and best of luck.