Episode 20
This Firing The Man podcast is a book review of “The Take Action Effect” by Scott Voelker. David and Ken discuss the lessons learned from this book and how we have implemented some of these lessons into our own business. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Scott Voelker – he is the host of “Rock Your Brand Podcast” (formerly: The Amazing Seller Podcast) and stands out from other influencers in his space due to his commitment to push forward, even when times get tough. This book highlights many of Scott’s successes but also his failures.
Buy now on Amazon: “The Take Action Effect” by Scott Voelker – ORDER HERE
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David 0:00
A true measure of individual is their ability to recognize that I’m not in a great situation in I’m going to take action and get myself out of this situation.
Ken 0:10
At the end of the day, you’re not going to lose your skills that you had from your day job, right? So they’re always going to be in your toolbox, right? If you need them, they’re always that fear. Fear holds you back in a lot of ways.
Intro 0:21
Welcome, everyone, to the www.firingtheman.com podcast, a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. If you sit in a cubicle every day and know you were capable of more than join us, this show will help you build a business and grow your passive income stream in just a few short hours per day. And now your host serial entrepreneurs David Schomer, and Ken Wilson.
Ken 0:42
David, welcome. Alright, On today’s episode, David and I are going to be discussing Scott Voelkers new book, The take action effect, and the lessons that we learned from the book and how we’re applying them in our e commerce business and in our lives.
David 0:59
Thank you, thank you. I’m super excited about this, as our listeners probably know, you and I read quite a few books, and this one really stood out, out probably out of the last 20 books. This one has been my favorite. And it’s written by a guy named Scott Voelker, who, you know, personally, and I’ve been listening to this podcast for several years. And, you know, there have been some times where I will like a podcast, in that individual will write a book, and it doesn’t necessarily translate. However, this was not the case with this book. This one, it got me inspired. It was really like the style of writing was like, very raw and honest. You know, Scott talks about mistakes that he made, he talks about his path, which is full of, of twists and turns. And I just loved this book, and we’re going to go into, you know, several lessons learned. But I think in order to understand this book fully, we need to understand the author.
So Ken you have you last year you attended brand accelerator live? Tell me about Scott.
Ken 2:06
Yeah. So, I found Scott Voelker’s podcast, you know, over two years ago, the amazing seller, so for anybody that’s not heard of that you’re under a rock come out of the rock and go look at Yeah, I think he’s got over 1000 episodes or something, you know, of podcasting experience. But, so I’ve been following Scott for a couple of years now. And I, I heard last year he was doing his own event. And I thought, Man, you know, this sounds like a good, you know, kind of a good crew good. And I really respect Scott and his, his non flashy persona, you know, like, he doesn’t, you know, roll around in lambos and, and, and he’s not flashy. So, you know, I went to brand accelerator live and it was a really good event, and got to meet Scott and his team. And you can really tell a lot about somebody by looking at who they surround themselves with. Right?
Like I said, you know, Scott’s not flashy. And he’s really consistent. I think what really stood out to me was, like you mentioned the book was the book was written, I think to add value to your life, right? And it’s broken down into very distinct chapters on how to take action. Right, though the whole thing is take action. But for me, it’s like relatable. You know, Scott is relatable, right? Like just a guy you would meet out on the job site, or, you know, just a normal guy who has massive amounts of success. And the reason he has that success is because he consistently takes action. So that’s Scott in a nutshell.
David 3:41
Absolutely. It’s interesting when you listen to a podcast for you know, several years, you have a person in your ear, you know, for potentially hundreds of hours in you feel like you’ve gotten to know them. And I have not met Scott in person. I do plan on going to the next brand accelerator. Live. But there are a couple things that really stand out to me one, the guy, when I think of the definition of self made man, it’s him. The title of this book, The take action effect, really personifies his whole attitude on life, you know, there are roadblocks and he just bust right through them. And we’ll talk about several of those throughout the episode. But, you know, not knowing how to do something doesn’t seem to ever stop him. He goes out, he finds the resources needed. And he, he masters the subject at hand. And he’s done that over and over again. And, you know, he talks in this book about momentum, you know, once you accomplish one goal, knocking down Goal number two, and goal number three are easier, because you know, you can do it. And he started off in construction, made a pivot to photography, and then has been involved in all sorts of e commerce for probably the last decade has a course a live event. And, you know, he has no formal training in any of those. But he is found the information that he needs. And it seems to be successful.
Ken 5:11
Yeah, that’s when you when you sit back and unpack that and think about it, it’s a, it’s pretty amazing. One of the story is that it’s in the book, it’s Scott was a contractor working for his dad’s company. And he just decided, hey, you know, one day I want to, I want to do something different, right? I want to have more, spend more time with my family. And, you know, one thing that sticks out in my mind is, you know, he went from a contractor to building these VCR projector machines in his basement, like, didn’t know how to do that, but he’s like, well, I’m going to figure out how you know, I believe the story is he found one and and saw that it sold on eBay or whatever, for a lot of money and was like, Hey, I think I can do that. So goes gets one tears it apart, figures it out, builds it and then start selling those nice And like you’d mentioned, you know, consistently pivoting, when that dried up or when that change or another opportunity presented itself. He said, Okay, I’m gonna try that right. And over time, you know, like you mentioned the momentum is built and built and consistent steady pivoting and taking action. But yeah, it’s kind of an amazing story.
David 6:22
Absolutely. You know, the last thing I want to comment about Scott as an individual, before we dive into the book, it has nothing to do with e commerce has to do with him as a person, as it relates to being a family man. You know, he’s always talking about his kids. He has built his business for purposes of lifestyle so he can spend more time with his loved ones. You know, that’s my goal. That’s your goal. And, you know, in particular, Episode 786 of the amazing cellar podcast, I’ve listened to I use stitcher as an app to download all my podcasts and keeps track of how many hours you’ve listened to. And I downloaded that app on my phone a couple years ago. The other day I looked at listen to 4200 hours of podcasts. And I’ve never listened to a single podcast twice. You know, you watch old movies twice. I’ve never listened to a single podcast twice with the exception of Episode 786 from the amazing seller podcast. And the title of this was the life and death game, important wake up call. And this was a incredibly deep episode and I don’t want to spoil it for anybody who’s listening. And so I’m not gonna give anything away but Scott had a friend was diagnosed with a terminal illness. And he kind of took a step back and and in a very emotional way, started talking about you know, what is your Why Why are you doing this? You know, we’re all going to die we need to cherish this time, and I listened to that it made me emotional when I Listen to it. And just the other day I was getting really frustrated with my business. You know, it’s kind of the, the entrepreneurs roller coaster. And I listened to it again. And it kind of brought me back to Earth made me realize that all these problems are not important in the grand scheme of things. I have my health, I have my family, there are so many blessings that I have. And in hearing that, from a guy like Scott, it just made a huge impact on me in I think everybody should listen to that episode. It’s heavy. But, you know, there are some much neat lessons in there. And I think you were actually the one that told me about that first. Yeah, I do remember that episode. And it was, you know, it kind of humbles you. On the last episode, we talked about gratitude and it can always be worse, right? Like, being thankful for what we have and sometimes you need a reality check to slow you down. Really, really Be happy with what you have. But yeah, that’s a very bad it’s a very powerful episode. Yeah, I think sometimes as entrepreneurs we get, you know, we’re always chasing the next best thing. Or when I first started, I wanted to get $100 in sales a day, and it was 1000. And then you know, so on and so forth. And, and you’re always chasing the next best thing, and an episode like that and just listening to a lot of his episodes. It kind of makes you realize that, hey, you’ve already arrived. If you have your health, you have your family. You’ve already arrived. You know, Aubrey Marcus says, Welcome to paradise population, everyone. And I really like that saying, you know, most of us are incredibly blessed and need to count those blessings and quit chasing the proverbial tail during this entrepreneurial journey.
Ken 9:51
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Another I mean, there’s so many podcast episodes on the amazing cellar. It’s kind of crazy to think about, but another one that I’ll just give a quick shout out. So I think was 800. And Scott gives a glimpse of his of his life story, you know, kind of dives into a few pivots that he’s made and some of the history of selling a business is history in it. That’s a really good episode. So I would suggest, you know, go check out that episode. So I’m sitting in, in our podcast studio, and I’ve got my, my signed copy of the take action effect. So jealous. I know. That’s pretty awesome. So for our listeners, Scott Volker released the book at brand accelerator live and gave out copies to everybody in attendance. And then you know, if you stood in a three hour line, you could get assigned. So one of the, the early chapters, you know, and it’s something that Scott talks about, really heavy and needs to be heavy, is you have to find your why, without your why. You’re probably not going to succeed and your y has to there’s a if you follow Scott Nimbus courses and he is teaching, you know, to find your why it takes a little bit of digging, you know, your WHY CAN’T BE, I want to make a million bucks. Okay? Why do you want to make a million bucks? Well, I don’t want to work. Why don’t you want to work? Well, I want to spend my time with, you know, driving my motorcycle. Why do you want to drive your motors, you know, so it just goes deep and deep and deep and deep until you get to your actual why. And then when you find that, that will drive you that will motivate you. So, you know, coming out I it’s an i whatever chapter it’s in one of the early chapters, but you have to find that and you have to have that solidified before you can move on. Absolutely. David, you know, as you read the book early on, what was one of your takeaways?
David 11:52
Scott starts out talking about working in his family’s construction business. And there were several things that that were not going his way. And he had an opportunity to either stay in that job, or make a pivot and take action and do something different. And I see so many people that are unhappy with their situation, that don’t do anything to improve their situation. It’s easy to complain, anybody can complain. But I think a true measure of an individual is their ability to recognize that I’m not in a great situation. And I’m going to take action and get myself out of this situation. And that’s exactly what he did. And so I think that, you know, that was one of his first pivots. And I think that takes, you know, the title of our podcast is fire the man, he fired the man, that was that was one of his first pivots. And I think that, you know, you can learn a lot from just hearing other stories of people firing the man. And so that was, you know, the title of the book take action effect. I mean, that was early on, you could see that Scott was the kind of guy that was going to take action. What about you? What, what was one of your bigger takeaways,
Ken 13:08
something that, you know, Scott says that really resonates with me Is he always said like, you know, he had this dilemma of he had this job, you know, at his dad’s construction company, and it was kind of, you know, it’s a stable job and steady money. And as he thought about, okay, going full time with this photography business, or whatever pivot it was, he was like, Well, if it doesn’t work out, I still have this other skill set. Right. So it’s like a safety net. You know, so that was I had never really thought about that. You know, so anybody out there that you’re working in a full time job and you have a you have a side hustlers, you know, and you think well, you’re scared of going full time and that side hustle or a side business. You know, at the end of the day, you’re not going to lose your skills that you had for your day job, right? So they’re always going to be in your, in your toolbox, right if you need them there. So I had never really thought about that, you know, it’s like always that fear, fear holds you back and a lot of ways, right? And when I thought about that, I’m like, Well, if I go full time with my side hustle or my business, I’ll always have the skills that I have developed through my life and my career to fall back on. And that that’s huge.
David 14:24
Absolutely. And he takes those skills with him in port. And so you know, one example of that he had worked in construction was most likely a very handy guy, and one of his first successes in e commerce was selling props for photography. What a great idea. You know, if you listen back to one of our earlier episodes about how to pick a product to sell online, we talked about what specialized interest you have, what specialized skills do you have? Well, Scott probably had all the tools he needed, and he had to know how to build these elaborate props for photography. And that was one of the first things that he did. And so, you know, I think that that’s an important message because everybody has something like that. Everybody is good at something. Everybody has a special interest that most other people don’t have. And so, you know, his was construction. And he brought that skill with him and gave him a leg up on people that maybe decided to build photography props, but had no background in building things.
Ken 15:32
Yeah. That brings us to another point of pivoting. As you read the you know, the book as you go through there, you’ll you’ll notice that, you know, Scott’s made multiple pivots throughout his career, whether it was, you know, from contracting to photography, to building VCR projection machines in his basement to reselling ridges on eBay, to you know, teaching consistently pivoting. being agile and being able to pivot and like you said, Take, take the skills that you have, and move to something else, you know, I’m pretty certain that as a contractor, or as a photographer, I’m pretty certain that Scott wasn’t a master at email marketing. But guess what he has today? You know, so it’s something that you, you know, that he’s learned over, over, consistently taking action.
David 16:26
Absolutely. You know, in he, when he talks about pivoting, he presents it in a positive light, which is absolutely how I think it should be presented. You know, for some reason, in today’s society, when people change their mind, or they have an opinion, and then they change it, they’re often looked down upon, you know, you see that in politics all the time, where, you know, he voted for such and such 10 years ago, and now he’s, he’s voting the other way. And that’s it. I really think you know, as you get new information, it’s a good idea to assess what you’re doing and how you’re spending your time. You know, one example he gives The book is early in their photography business. They were doing weddings. And he said that the customer is very emotional, right? It’s this one day, you may only have one chance to get the perfect shot. And it eats up your weekends. And so he made a small pivot into children’s photography and baby photography, where you had unlimited chances to get the perfect shot. And that is, it would have really been a shame if he would have got into wedding photography, and didn’t like it, but then stuck with it because he felt like he just had to. And I think that in e commerce, you and I are making pivots all the time. And it’s it makes you be a little humble, to admit like, hey, what I was doing was not the best thing to do you know that that was not the most effective strategy. I’m going to pivot and try something else. And you’re stubborn, and you’re unwilling to do that. It’s gonna be tough.
Ken 17:57
Yeah, it’s gonna be tough in life and in business. I definitely agree. I’ve learned more from my failures than my successes. And if you’re not willing to pivot and make change, the roads probably going to be very bumpy. One other thing that is chapter in the book and Scott talks a lot about it a lot. Future Proof your business and yourself, right. And I think that speaks a lot to pivoting and being agile. If you see the market changing, you need to change with it. You know, you need to listen to the market to the audience, see what people are doing, you know, follow them and pivot to them. David, what was another thing that stood out to you in the book?
David 18:40
There were several things that Scott did, and described in this book, that he had no previous experience with photography being one right he had worked in construction, and then he was going into photography, and several other things, Photoshop, all kinds of things, starting a podcast and at the beginning of those he did not know How to do that. But he was incredibly resourceful. He found people that were already doing what he, he wanted to do. He took advice from others, and he took action. And that’s something, you know, we’re talking about just things to be thankful for. One thing I’m incredibly thankful for. And this can sound dumb. I’m incredibly thankful for the internet. I mean, you take it for granted, right? It’s always there. But literally, anything that you want to do, change the oil in your car, lose weight, whatever, whatever. There are resources on the internet that have answers. And that’s something that you go back 40 years, if you wanted to start a podcast, and there was no one in your town that had a podcast, and you could find any books on podcasts. Well, what are you going to do in so I think that’s something all the time in my business, there’s something that I don’t know how to do. But you know, I go out and find the resources and figure it out. And that’s something that I think holds a lot of people back is I don’t know how to do that. Well, most people don’t can. And I’ve been in e commerce for a number of years. And I still feel like I’m kind of flying by the seat of my pants, you know, there are on a daily basis, things that I don’t know how to do. But using the internet, using networking, go out and find the answers. And you do that by taking action. And so this book is just full of examples like that, where he didn’t know how to do something, but he just figures it out. And I think that that’s, if I could pass lessons on to, to my son, one of them would be if you want something, go out and get it, take action. Don’t sit around and talk about what you want to do. Or this would be Hey, this would be really nice, who do it and that’s something that I just I think that is a really valuable skill set to have. And the more times you do it and have success, the better you’re going to be at it at being ready. resourceful and finding people to help you solve the problems that you’re trying to solve.
Ken 21:04
Yeah, absolutely. And one thing that jumps out at me exactly falls in line with what you just said was, you know, early on, you know, Scott needed to figure out Photoshop. So he went and bought like this massive Photoshop book and taught himself Photoshop. I don’t use Photoshop that’s just hard, right? Like I use Canva or something, you know, or something else. But if you if you go into Skype, Scott’s YouTube channel, that Photoshop book is on his bookshelf. It’s like this massive Photoshop book. So yeah, he didn’t know how to do it and he was like, I need to learn how to do that and figure it out. And he and he did you know that’s taking action
David 21:43
in the key piece of that is he bought the book, but then he read it in I know that sounds kind of silly, but like, there’s a lot of people who will buy a course or or they’ll buy a book, but they don’t do anything with it. It’s just it following through on things. I think that’s huge. That’s huge. That’ll make you successful in business. It’ll make you successful in relationships in a marriage. And being a parent is just following through all the way till the end. And so that’s a, you know, I would not be excited to sit down and read 900 pages about Photoshop. But you know, Scott did, and look where he is now. And so it’s a really good example.
Ken 22:25
Yeah, absolutely. As we wrap up the show, was there anything else you wanted to add? David?
David 22:31
This is an odd comment, but I would encourage people to read this book in the morning before they start working. I it truly inspired me and that that word is thrown around too much in my opinion, this inspired me, but it did. It did hearing all of his pivots and take action moments really inspired me as I was working throughout the day. And so you know, I’ve talked about, you know, having a good playlist to get you pumped up for the day, I would add this to that. list, you know, this, this book really, it got me fired up, got me really excited. And there’s a lot of books that attempted to do that to inspire people. But the thing that’s cool about this, and, you know, probably because I’ve listened to all of Scott’s podcasts is, you know, he’s not just preaching. He does this stuff, you know, this was his story. And, and so I think that’s really cool. I think there’s a lot of self help books out there that everybody knows what we should do, right? You should eat more vegetables, you should exercise, but not everyone does it. And there are a lot of books that are just written about, hey, here are the things that you should do. But, you know, this book comes at it from a totally different perspective. These are things that you should do and Scott’s done. And he shares those lessons with us. And I think that’s huge. It just, it was I’ve read a lot of similar type books, but no one’s done it this well, especially in the e commerce space. And I would say this applies more broadly to business. General and in life. This was just an incredible book, probably my top 10 of all time. And I don’t throw that around lightly because I’ve read quite a few books and you know, I would put this in the same category as Rich Dad Poor Dad. principles by Ray Dalio. I mean, this was this was a high level awesome book. And to anybody who hasn’t read it, take action. Go out on Amazon buy right now order from take action effect calm.
Ken 24:31
Yeah, absolutely. We’ll have a we’ll have a link in the show notes to the book. But I want to echo David’s, you know, remarks on the take action effect. And I highly recommend, you know, go out and get that book. I listened to the audio version and I read the, the book, it’s tremendous value, you know, lots of actionable steps. And very relatable, you know, Scott’s very, kind of, he’s a Down to Earth guy very relatable. They And that book, you know, the take action effect should have a pretty positive impact on your life. A couple shout outs to Scott, if you don’t know he’s got the brand creators Academy. It’s his latest project in the story. He teaches you to build a brand, the proper way. Slow and steady. I’m in that tribe and it’s amazing. And brand creators playbook live you can Google that and get to, you know, get to a funnel and get in there.
David 25:29
Alright Ken to close out this episode. Two words. The first two words that come to your mind when you think that this book, just say them and I’ll say them, 123 “take action”.
Thank you everyone for tuning in to today’s www.firingtheman.com podcast. If you like this episode, head on over to www.firingtheman.com And check out our resource library for exclusive firing the man discounts on popular e commerce subscription services, that is www.firingtheman.com/resource. You can also find a comprehensive library Have over 50 books that Ken and I have read in the last few years that have made a meaningful impact on our business or that head on over to www.firingtheman.com/library. Lastly, check us out on social media at firing the man, you know, on YouTube at firing demand for exclusive content. This is David shomer and Ken Wilson. We’re out
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