281 : Trent Dyrsmid – Process matters and buys you time in Selling Wholesale on Amazon

trent

Trent is clearly “The Process” guy. His systems have propelled his business 4X and likely 2.5X that again this year. Get ready to get back on track, get ready to get laser focused and grow grow grow. Wholesale takes consistency but cant you say that abut everything you want to be successful at?

Mentioned:

Brightideas.co

Trent’s Linkedin profile contact

Sponsors

Gaye’s Million Dollar Arbitrage List

Solutions4ecommerce

Scope from Sellerlabs

GoDaddy

Grasshopper

Transcript: (note- this is a new tool I am trying out so it is not perfect- it does seem to be getting better)

Stephen:                             [00:00:00]               Wanted to it, take a second and recognize my sponsors this week. You know, Gaye Lisby’s million dollar arbitrage as edge and list group. That’s a mouthful. It is. But guess what? It’s a great opportunity. You can build a big Amazon business. You don’t need a lot of capital when you start. I mean we all started, you know, um, most of it started selling books and then you move into retail arbitrage that is the place that you can turn your money the fastest and online arbitrage. And so by having that skill set, by learning those skill sets, you can get the best bang for your buck. And so gay group will help you learn online arbitrage. It’s, it’s more than just a list service. They’re going to give you a whole bunch of actionable inventory every single day. Write Monday through Friday. However, there’s also a mentorship that goes on and that mentorship is so important because sometimes it’s great to know what to buy, but it’s more important to understand why to buy it.

Stephen:                             [00:01:02]               But yeah, that’s that, you know, learning the fish are just getting fit, you know, you really want to learn because ultimately you want to strike it on your own and this is a great way to do it. So how about seven days free trial, but a free trial, right? Very, very cool. So it’s amazing. Freedom Dot com. Forward slash is a mouthful. The word momentum. You’ve got to use a hyphen and you put in the word arbitrage. So it’s amazing. Freedom, [inaudible] forward slash momentum dash arbitrage. And you’re going to get a free trial in gaze group. You got to tell her I sent you, right? I also have the link in the episode, but it’s such a great opportunity. So she is amazing. Amazing. I’m in that group. So you’ll see me there. An amazing, amazing person who’s there to answer your questions, who’s there to help lead you and help guide you.

Stephen:                             [00:01:50]               And that’s what gay does. She does it every single day. The testimonials are real. Go take a look. You will be blown away. And again, it’s a free trial. I have the link on this episode to reach in, you know, labs, Jeff Cohen and the team. They have blown me away with this scope project. We use this all the time for our business. We do a lot of private label. We also do a lot of wholesale and wholesale bundles or multi packs, that kind of thing, which a lot of people do, but we use a scope to help us figure out what are the keywords and so it’s really simple. You basically figure out where you’re going to sell, what you’re going to sell, what category, find that light product, find the top couple sellers and find their keywords. Boom magic. There you go. You copy the best because it’s working.

Stephen:                             [00:02:39]               And guess what? That’s a proof of concept and scope allows you to do that. So it’s solar lamps.com, forward slash scope, seller labs.com, forward slash scope. Use the code word momentum, and you’re going to get a couple of days free trial and you’re going to save a little bit of money and you’re going to get some free keywords. It’s worth every penny. I’m in that group. Come and check me out. So our [inaudible] dot com, forward slash scope. Again, use the word momentum solutions for ecommerce. Karen lunker. Great, great, great group. I’ve been using them for a long time, I guess over two years and I’m in there and I pay just like everybody else. Yeah, she’s a sponsor my show, but she makes me pay and I got the same $50 discount that you can get. Oh by the way, you’re going to get that through my link and my link only.

Stephen:                             [00:03:25]               Oh, and you’re also going to get the free inventory health analysis. Great way to start. Two thousand 18. Get your inventory in line and Karen will help you do that. We use them for everything. The basically, uh, you know, long term storage fees coming up. Guess what? She’ll evaluate, she’ll make some recommendations and I’ll say, Yep, check, check, check, check these out, this return, blah, blah blah, blah blah. And magically it’s done. I love it, love it, love it. I love the fact that they take and get rid of stranded inventory for me. I see it in there. And then next time I go in and it’s gone. Love it. Love it, love it, got an ip infringement. She’s going to help you work your way through that. This is the kind of service that you get from Karen Locker, that’s solutions for the number for ecommerce solutions. Four ecommerce.com forward slash momentum, right? So you’ve got to forward slash momentum and you’re going to save $50 a month, 600 bucks a year by just clicking that link. She pays me. I don’t want to hide that. I never do. I’m always upfront about that, but it doesn’t cost you anything additional and you’re going to get that inventory health report. The only way you get that is through mind link, the solutions, the number for ecommerce.com, forward slash momentum.

Speaker 2:                           [00:04:39]               Welcome to the ecommerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of commerce selling today. Here’s your host, Steven Peterson.

Stephen:                             [00:04:51]               Yeah, welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. This is episode 200 and eighty one. Trent, Dear Smith. All right, I’m excited. I usually record these intros after, after doing the podcast interview, and man, I’m pumped, I’m jazzed because, you know, when you talk to somebody who’s just, who’s done so much, he’s very humble about it, but he’s done so much in such a short period of time. He’s really an old timer when it comes to internet and ecommerce and all the different things and they’ve each built on each other and it’s so cool that in the middle of the interview, maybe two thirds in, we get to a place where these three things that he’s mastered are all back in vogue today, you know, and that was like a man, the lights just went on for me and talking with him and he just seeing why he’s just so, uh, it’s, it’s almost like fluid for him and it’s a very cool thing and I just think that that’s, that’s a very cool place to get to Trent years. Men, man. Great. Great interview. Let’s get into the podcast. Oh, today’s guest, very seasoned podcaster, which I found out, which is very cool. I’m definitely, um, respect for that. Um, especially because he did it old school and not as easy as the software allows today, um, but a very longterm seller, um, who’s built several businesses, which I’m really interested, but he is a process guy and that’s what interests me more and I just am fascinated by a real, real skilled operator. Trent, Dear Smith, welcome Trent.

Speaker 3:                           [00:06:29]               Steven, thank you very much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Stephen:                             [00:06:32]               Pleasure to have you on. I’m very fortunate to have you on. You are a seasoned seller, podcast or marketer. This isn’t your first Rodeo, is it?

Speaker 3:                           [00:06:43]               No, no, this is definitely not. Um, I became an entrepreneur in [inaudible] when I lived in Vancouver, BC or. Oh Dude, you’re old. I’m old dude. You right. Internet dude and Internet years. You’re almost like a founder. And Anyway, I sold that business, uh, in 2008. And while it was we did deliver our services online. Uh, it was an it support company. I really didn’t consider myself an internet marketer. I didn’t even know what that term was. A nurse. Were you a nerd or the marketing side? The business all. I was a sales guy back, I didn’t even know anything about marketing, to be honest with you. I grew up in sales business to business sales and I’ve done very, very well at it. And so I thought to myself, well, I want to create a business. And I knew a guy who, who knew like servers and networks and backup systems and all the crap that I didn’t know anything about, but I thought, well, you know, if you can deliver the services, I can sell it.

Speaker 3:                           [00:07:44]               And we spent the next eight years a growing a multimillion dollar business that was ranked as a profit 100 company in Canada. And in Oa, he and I didn’t really like each other much anymore. And uh, so we decided to part ways and uh, with the company was sold for just over a million bucks and that was more money than I own most of it. And that was more money than I’d seen ever. And I took that opportunity to move from Seattle where I was living at the time down to San Diego to enjoy a mini retirement. And it was in the midst of that mini retirement completely by accident that I met my first Internet marketer. I was a girl by the name of Haley. We met surfing and that’s another whole long story. But the long and the short of it is, is she kind of told me what she did and I was like, well, that’s fascinating. You mean to tell me you, you make money passively while you’re not working? And she said, yeah. And she was making quite a bit. And I became very, very fascinated. And so I set out to do exactly the same.

Stephen:                             [00:08:44]               You’re a face to face sales guy with business to business. That’s, that’s door to door, that’s, you know, sitting down, comfortable having a few drinks. How do you just turn that to internet where it’s all the screen.

Speaker 3:                           [00:08:57]               Because as a business owner, I’m in the prior business, while we still had to go face to face, I had started to kind of grow tired of them. Have a business model where I either had to be the only sales guy or I had to hire a really expensive salespeople because affordable salespeople are affordable because they suck. And so I thought, you know, I don’t want to be the bottleneck of the growth of my company anymore and so I needed a way that I could generate revenue without being the only guy who could close a deal. And so when I discovered thanks to this girl Hailey, that you know, well, you know, if you become an Amazon of fixed, she was an affiliate marketer and I didn’t even know what that was, but when I got it figured out pretty quickly and when I discovered that she was working an hour a day making 200 grand a year and I was like, wow, I’m going to get into some of that.

Speaker 3:                           [00:09:55]               Like it’s surf a lot more with that. Yeah. And I like riding dirt bikes and you know, going out and having fun and so forth. So it wasn’t a, it didn’t take a whole lot of convincing to make me think that that’s what I should do. Now in hindsight, that first business model was laughable. Maybe we’ll get into the reasons why that was a really crappy business model, but it was, I got my phd in Internet marketing over a period of about 18 months and that set me on an entirely new course in life and I’ve obviously been fortunate enough to experience all sorts of good things as a result of that, that change in my career trajectory trajectory.

Stephen:                             [00:10:33]               When you think about career choices, um, and then the training involved in them, um, this is been a pretty good ride for you. I would agree that you got the best education and, and so you had to eat dirt. Gary vee would say it a little more colorful than that, but you had to eat a bunch of junk for a while, especially when it dissolves. Right? And it turns without your control. But, but thinking about that, I mean, again, because I’m basically saying is, you know, this is probably the fastest way to learn the best opportunity that there was. I guess that’s the way you could have went to college and went through it and all the rest of that gesture. It wouldn’t help you in one bit. Um, you can go from marketing. I, my masters is in marketing. Wouldn’t help you one bit that what you went through when I look at the really successful people that are marketing products, which is really what you have to do today, right? Is it, we’re past the point of just putting everything up on Amazon and everything sells. That’s gone, right? Those days are gone because guess what, everybody else does the same thing you do so that you have to have special sauce. You have to get past Amazon, right? As we all know. And you have to have that ability. You got that at a really opportune time. Um, to me, I just wonder what else could you have done that would give you this opportunity?

Speaker 3:                           [00:11:48]               Yeah, I don’t, I don’t really think anything. I mean, when I looked back, I started building micro niche sites which were basically sites designed to take advantage of a loophole in the Google Algorithm which no longer exists and assembled caneously started blogging because it occurred to me that that would also be something that was a good way to learn stuff. And I, I started podcasting almost immediately because you know, anyone who runs a podcast like you and I know is that it’s the best way to get a free education is to use a podcast to allow yourself to interview other smart people in high. In hindsight, I don’t, I don’t know that there would’ve been a better way to, of those things are current though. Think about that, right? There’s some company that wants to interview me for something for a. they’re asking about podcasting for products, you know, what or how do you get to consumers?

Speaker 3:                           [00:12:37]               And of course podcasting is a way, um, but micro niche sites, we’re back to that landing page site right now to get your product founder, the other resident, right? Were there with all those things that you’re talking about, it’s come full circle. And to me it’s very cool and very few people that had the fortunate. I’m fortunate, I don’t know what the right word is to get to that place. And I would say you’re a good example of it. When I look at the really successful marketers, they have all had a very similar path. I’ve had a whole bunch of people on that have been killed by google that had a huge income built up this thing, learn this skill set trade, and then had to turn on a dime. Let’s talk about that. Because where were you at that? Well, let’s go through the paint.

Speaker 3:                           [00:13:20]               You know, the other pain that I want to talk about is you and your partner split up because, you know, it was roses and Unicorns to start. How long in seven years did it take to get to that place where you guys knew that it probably wouldn’t have, wouldn’t continue. So that business was funded entirely by me. Um, he was an employee with a paycheck from day one and I gave him stock in the company. And I said to him in the beginning, I said, you know, one day this thing is going to start making some money and I want you to not forget that you got paid from day one and you never had to put a diamond risk. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. No problem. I’ll never forget that. Well, memories are short. And by year five we were starting to make money.

Speaker 3:                           [00:14:04]               And so I took that opportunity to start to increase my income, to compensate myself for all the risks that I’ve taken in those five years. And he didn’t get a raise in his paycheck at that point in time. And he was not capable of understanding why I should be paid any more than him. He says, well, we work the same amount of hours, and he had come from an he proofread previously. He was paid by the hour in his previous job. So his mindset was, well, if you work hard and you work the same amount of hours, therefore we should get the same pay. And what he failed to understand is that not not all job roles are created equal. Not all people’s skills are valued equally in the marketplace. He was a fantastic account manager, but I was the rainmaker. I am the guy that created the business model.

Speaker 3:                           [00:14:56]               I’m the guy that financed it. I’m the guy that landed all the big clients without me. There was going to be no company and he couldn’t understand that. And so of course I’m to use a metaphor, um, he just, well not a metaphor, he just became very bitter at that five year mark when my income started to go up and his didn’t. And uh, that I don’t think that I possessed the relationship skills in hindsight. I know I didn’t possess the relationship skills that were necessary to smooth that over. And so I just steamrolled him. Do you think that would have been the way to fix it or is there now you’re the process guy, is there a way that you would approach it differently? You know, uh, an agreement or something like that? Yeah, we had a shareholder’s agreement, but we didn’t have an operating agreement.

Speaker 3:                           [00:15:48]               And an operating agreement is the agreement that defines your roles as employees. The shareholder agreement is the agreement that defines your partnership as shareholders. They’re very different agreements and we just simply didn’t have the other one, so there was no basis for how to agree on compensation and in hindsight that was a pretty big oversight and so now there’s no. That’s an absolute for you if you’re going that way. These are in place period. Yeah, if you go in that way. Yeah. I mean now I’m fortunate enough that my wife is my business partner, so let’s say go to the same bank account. So she’s in charge. We got it all. Anybody’s married, we all understand she’s. She’s the brains. We think that’s interesting though. I just think it’s interesting to me that you know, looking at that, I mean it’s very adult of you to admit that you know what, you weren’t prepared to do that, but now you are.

Speaker 3:                           [00:16:39]               And those expectations. I think that’s one of the big challenges is being clear in that communication. I just think that that’s a big challenge, but that’s very cool that you recognize that and have figured it out and it’s not happening to train again. Is it because I’m actually now in, I’m co founder of a software company as well, which none of my tribe really knows about because it hasn’t been announced because the product’s not ready for sale yet, but, um, one of my very good friends who was actually my roommate during the micro niche site days of my life, uh, he and I started a company together and I said in advance, we’re going to have a shareholder’s agreement. We’re going to have an operating agreement. We’re going to have processes for resolving a conflict, Blah Ben, it’s all going to be in writing. And he said, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 3:                           [00:17:20]               And I trust this guy. I would literally give him the pin to my bank card, the keys to my house, et Cetera. I trust him that much, but even then we’re still going to have it all in writing. Absolutely everything because that’s how you do it. And I think that that’s the big missed by many, many people. And then when it ends ugly, you know, then their surprise and yeah, there’s no surprise. It’s my end, ugly, but it’s going to end based on the paperwork. Right, right. And so that’s fair, but it’s still gonna be ugly, but it’s fair. Opposed to, you

Stephen:                             [00:17:49]               know, uh, emotions and stuff getting involved.

Speaker 3:                           [00:17:52]               Alright, one more. It’ll be, let me get one point. For anyone that’s listening, who’s thinking, well, I’m just starting up. I don’t have all the money to hire lawyers for all that stuff. You don’t need lawyers for all that stuff. You can get boiler plate shareholders agreements and an operating agreement. You just sit down and you say, how do we want this thing to sound? What do we want it? And you literally write it in plain English. It’s better than nothing.

Stephen:                             [00:18:09]               And that, um, if I remember the last time I did it corporation, they had a binder that came with it and all that stuff right in there. Most of the templates were right there. Go right through and just write it right in, put it, leave it right in the binder, but the little endorsement on it and boom, you’re set. But not that I’m a lawyer, I’m, well, it’s very cool to get past that. But it’s cool that you’ve learned something and now you’ve been applying it. And again, this is Trent who’s been doing this right along. Now let’s talk about the affiliate marketing. Let’s just get through the bumper real quick. Built big, real big and someone else who’s has to be fair. You were playing in their playground, changed the rules fair. Oh, absolutely. And you lost big money.

Speaker 3:                           [00:18:55]               Yeah, I lost my income. So the business of important, uh, the business skills reasonably quickly, uh, and it was truly passive. I think if I remember correctly, I was making somewhere between, at the peak around three to $4,000 a month in Amazon affiliate income and I’d have to lift a finger. And so I spent all of my time, you know, podcasting and blogging and I did come out with a training course because I thought, hey, this is a, this is a pretty sweet deal. And Mulatta my audience was asking me would you, would you sell? Because I was, you know, giving away content like I do today. And eventually when you give enough away, people start saying, do you have a course somewhere that I can buy? And so I thought, well, okay, I’ll, I’ll try this course thing. And I came up with a course and a bunch of people bought it and it was making a, almost $30,000 a month.

Speaker 3:                           [00:19:41]               And then when the penguin and panda update came out and I saw all of my Amazon affiliate income essentially literally disappear in the space of a week. I took the course down and shut everything off cause I in conscience I wasn’t going to sell a course that didn’t work anymore. And so that was a, that sucked because no, I mean that was a lot, a lot of money that was coming in. I was enjoying the freedom that, that gave me. Obviously I still had capital reserves because I had sold the business. I wasn’t, I wasn’t broke by any stretch, but you don’t want to, you don’t want to deplete your savings. It’s nice to be paying your way as you go. Um, and that was very, very humbling. And I realized that I had, I’d made a significant error in that I had not fully understood, I’m just out of sheer ignorance in and experience the, the risk of putting all of your eggs in one traffic basket. Um, and so when Google changed the algorithm and my sites got d ranked d listed, unlisted, whatever the hell the right is, and that was the end of that.

Stephen:                             [00:20:48]               So you need to, you need to be aware of the risks that you are, that your revenue stream is exposed to and do your best to mitigate those risks through good decision making. When most people start a business, they failed to build risk into the model, right? They just assume, hey, you know, I’m gonna when I sell frozen stuff from a target that I bought and I could sell it, you know, I can buy it for 10 bucks and I could sell it for 100 bucks. That’s going to last forever. Right? Those models are, man, this is great. You know, this is, this is the future. And then, you know, the rules change going forward. So we’ll take it from there. But this happens in every model, I don’t care if you’re selling on any channel, I don’t care what channel it is, something’s going to change outside of your control.

Stephen:                             [00:21:30]               And so to leave yourself exposed to that is, is pretty, um, you know, I mean, I’m not saying you’re foolish, but I get it. You know, it now, there is no chance that trans putting all his eggs in one basket, right? There’s zero chance. No, not at all. I mean, we’ve now got a highly successful Amazon business, um, and we sell on Walmart, jet an Ebay. But, uh, it’s, it’s chicken feed compared to what comes in from Amazon. And because I’m such a systems guy, of course I’ve was focused from day one on how fast can I fire myself from this company and make it grow without me, which I have now achieved. I have not had an active role in that business for over six months. And it was only started in August of 2016. It does a couple million dollars a year and I am immediately diversifying by.

Stephen:                             [00:22:16]               Okay, so now I’m going to create my own brand. I’m going to create a whole new nother ecommerce business that may be on Amazon at some point, but it’s not going to be on Amazon to begin with. I’m going to control a whole bunch of things that I don’t control in the current Amazon business, and then there’s a software company company which is going to compliment the two businesses and then there’s the blog, so there’s the idea is to have four different streams of income. I’m never over and above any other real estate investments and that kind of thing that we might have, but this would’ve never happened had you not built the systems to get you out of your wholesale, but we should say this. So you’re a wholesale seller. Okay. A cell on a couple of million dollars. Couple of things that I appreciate.

Stephen:                             [00:22:59]               First off is that, not that I don’t take this wrong, Fred, a drop shipper, shippers, you’re not a drop shipper. You are a real wholesale sellers. You buy things and you sell them. You don’t physically touch your products. Are we doing you personally? Me personally now, right? But I’m just saying. Right, but you, you got that right, but, but that’s done. Um, but you actually use this term 20 percent hurt that I listened to your podcast and I heard you say it’s a 20 percent gross profit margin and I paused and I’m like, Ooh, that’s not going to play. Well, most people don’t get attracted to that. That’s not very sexy trap. Yeah. If you’re operating in a grocery store, 20 percent is a very sexy model. They would at 20 percent,

Speaker 3:                           [00:23:47]               but I’ve had other people say that, but I will tell you that, you know, when you decide, and I, I just recorded literally yesterday, um, it’s going to be daily nugget number 44 and I don’t, I don’t know exactly what day that goes live, but I, the whole video was about the wholesale business versus the private label business on Amazon and gross margins was definitely one of my talking points. And the thing that people I think often fail to grasp is one of the things that I love about wholesale is very, very low risk. And so the cash flow can happen very, very quickly. You can grow very quickly and you can produce a high level of revenue with very few employees and the employees that you need. Um, many of them can be virtual assistance, which as we all know, the labor cost is substantially lower.

Speaker 3:                           [00:24:37]               So is 20 percent enough of a gross margin to sustain that business? Yes, it is. I’m now you’ll. Some people say, well, yeah, but in private label I can make eighty percent. Yeah, you can, but you have, um, a lot more risk that you have to deal with because if you make a bad product decision in private label, it’s not going to sell. You’re gonna, you’re gonna eat it on that unsold inventory or maybe it’ll take you forever to sell, you know, one every two months on Ebay or whatever. Not only that, you’ve got to launch the product. Wow, that’s accomplished by either doing a huge promotional giveaway or you’re going to spend a boatload of money on facebook advertising and Amazon advertising to try and get sales rank before you could help to achieve any level of ongoing organic sales. You’ve got pictures to shoot listings, to create patents, to get trademarks, you know, like there’s just so many more expenses. They’re going to come claw away at that eighty percent gross margin. You know, I interviewed, um, I fell on my podcast the other day. He’s another podcaster. It’s Mike jackness from ECOM crew and in his business at 5,000,000, he’s got a private label business. He did 5,000,000 last year and his net profit margin was right around the same as what mine is

Stephen:                             [00:25:56]               advertising especially today, is taking a significant piece of a lot of private label market. It really is. I mean, there’s just no way around it because, you know, there are lots of silicone spatulas for sale trend. I mean, there are a lot. And to get yours found, you know, of course you got to do the giveaways and all that jazz, but, but to get found now, you know, to be fair, there are outliers and everything and you can still find the right product. But it’s all about those keywords and getting there and then getting found. When you think about wholesale, I mean, what was it that was attractive to you? Did you ever try like a retail arm,

Speaker 3:                           [00:26:31]               Arbor, online, Arbor, any of that stuff? No, I never did any arbitrage. I actually started in private label in April of 16 and I did that for about four months. I told my wife, so we owned a marketing agency at the time that was sort of born out of the bread ideas blog and I said to her, look, I’m gonna. I’m gonna. Take some time off. I kind of fired myself from all the jobs there and let her run it and I said, I’m going to go do this little side project and see what comes of it and not much came of it. I think we might have got to $25,000 a month I think was the highest level that we did, but it wasn’t, and of course I had those great big gross margins that everybody salivate, silver but didn’t make a dime. I didn’t make any money because I.

Speaker 3:                           [00:27:11]               I chose products that we’re too competitive and so I was spending and spending and spending on promotional giveaways and advertising, trying to get, you know, some Bsr, so this sucker would sell organically and it just never happened and I was getting quite discouraged and it was right around that time. Uh, it was literally August of 16 that I interviewed Dan doors on my podcast and I think he’s an episode two. Oh six. And he explained the whole cell model to meet, which I’d never heard of. Didn’t know meters and meters. Yeah, yeah. Anyway. And I did, I, so I didn’t know what wholesale was. I didn’t know anyone doing it and I hung up the phone and I turned to my wife and I said, we’re doing that starting now. And five months later we were doing over a hundred grand a month.

Stephen:                             [00:27:55]               Those Kentucky Boys, they play stupid, but they’re not so dumb, you know, I always tell them, you know, they’re very smart little a little guys when you, when, when you think about all the models now, right? So again, you know, you’re, you’re thinking about private label, you’re thinking about wholesale and you think about the future, right, of getting off of this platform onto your own. What models seem substantially, you know, I mean you see on shark tank somebody creates a product and almost always there’s just an issue. What’s your secret sauce? What’s the rest of that? When you look at getting off of Amazon, what model is the most attractive to you for that?

Speaker 3:                           [00:28:35]               So what I’m focused on now in cars, because again, I don’t work in my Amazon business, I’m, we’re not getting, we’re not stopping that anytime soon. It’s growing wonderfully. It’s producing cashflow, it’s paying for my life and all my staff. So I’m not stopping that. But what I’m focused on is building a community that will pay me a membership fee to be able to buy products at a discount, like a consortium or a co op like, like Costco. Okay. Niche specific. So I love motor sports. A couple of days ago I registered a domain name and I created something called the National Motor Sports Owners Association and I’m in the process right now of building a community on facebook and conducting market research and running surveys and driving, paying facebook ads to surveys because I’m a participant in this market. I have had fast cars that take my cars to the race track. I’ve raced cars, drive dirt, but like I’m a motor sports nut and so really understand the space as a participant and A. I believe there is a significant opportunity to build the online costco for motorsports.

Speaker 3:                           [00:29:55]               And so the goal of a membership fee and that allows them access to what all of the products that are behind the curtain. And that’s so there’s. So the key is this, the key is to build an audience because once you have an audience, and I know this from firsthand experience over the last decade of my life, when you have an audience, there are limitless ways that you can monetize those eyeballs. So to do this, this is not just about, you know, hey, I’m going to build a private label business. That’s not just what I’m doing. Some of the products will be private label, Sure. Many of them will be brand products from other companies, but it’s not even just about selling the products, it’s about, well how can I generate continuity, how can and how is content going to play a role? So I’ve also created the kind of the parent company of this thing is a brand.

Speaker 3:                           [00:30:54]               I never announced this name before, so your show gets it first. It’s called it’s man time said like it’s man time because there’s going to be a community, there’s going to be a podcast, there’s going to be a blog is going to be content for it’s Manheim on the stuff that dudes like me or intune and I’m going after motorsports first. Yes, absolutely. And maybe I’ll never get out of that market. But between, you know, having an it’s man time, podcasts and it’s man time, youtube channel and a blog. And this net, this community of national motorsports owners association, think about how many ways I can monetize that audience. When my audience gets to a certain size, I can rent out my list. I can run affiliate offers, I can sell my own products, I can get sponsors on my podcasts, I can get sponsors on my youtube channel.

Speaker 3:                           [00:31:43]               I could come up with my own magazine. I could get sponsors. Like it’s limitless events. Yeah. And to manifest. I mean I’ve already thought of this stuff out. I’ve got a 20 page business plan on it. I think this is. I think that for new entrepreneurs because they just don’t know any better if they don’t go in with a vision and it’s taken me a decade and a half to get to this point, but they don’t go in with the vision of what is it? What are you really trying to build that’s going to last, it’s going to outlive and outgrow you. Now maybe, maybe some people don’t care. They’re just like, you know, I just want to make a couple of bucks to them. Good. Okay. That’s okay. Then you can do something different than what I’m doing, but having sold a business for, you know, over a million the inbox now I’m like, okay, that was good, but it wasn’t like I sold it and never had to do anything again.

Speaker 3:                           [00:32:33]               It’s not enough money. So if I really want to put myself and my family in a position where we really truly achieve financial independence for the rest of our lives, the exit needs to be well over $10,000,000. Well then what do I need to build? And it’s also really important to me to enjoy the journey. Yeah. Well and plus to love what I mean, to embrace what you’re passionate about. To me, if you’re passionate about sports and it’s motor sport specific, what a better calling because that’s the wrong word for it. But what a better way to, to win. Yeah. I mean you’re, you’re reaching for the ring, but you’re doing it on something you love. Yeah. Cool. So when it. So when I’m excited or I’m looking at products, I mean I just have a genuine interest in the stuff that I’m selling and the stuff that I’m talking about and you know, speaking, speaking, speaking selfishly for a moment, fast forward a couple of years, let’s say that I’ve got 100,000 members and I know guys that have well more than that in just three years and I can now go to a brand, let’s say that I go to, you know, to for it.

Speaker 3:                           [00:33:47]               And I say, you know what, I got a, I got 100,000 members paying members in my community, um, and I got a youtube channel and we get this many views and so forth and so on. And I know you’re coming out with your [inaudible] Mustang. How’s about you give me one of those things for a month so I can drive it around and I’ll do a review and I’ll put it on my site and maybe you’ll take me to a racetrack and let me bomb around in it for a day and talk to your engineers. Do you think that would be fun for me? Obviously it would be, and if I have an audience of that size, do you think that I can sell that and get them to do that for me? I think there’s a pretty good chance I could.

Stephen:                             [00:34:19]               I sit here and I think, right. I’m always looking back for the connections to get to how you got to where you are, where you came from, and I’m back to those things that you learned from all the different things that you’ve been and eventually you may Haley, but before then, you know, just even the micro niche like, oh, that stuff coming together, getting you to this place, selling on Amazon, selling wholesale on Amazon, right? All those different things. Now you have the confidence to take on this, this, you know, one bite at a time to build this 20 page business plan because you can see all those different modules and quite frankly, you’ve been successful in all of them. So I mean, to me there’s no doubt in my mind you’ll have incredible success as I sit here and I think again, it’s processed right when you, when you are the process guy. I mean, that was the way somebody described you. To me, that’s a badge you wear very proudly, isn’t it?

Speaker 3:                           [00:35:10]               Oh, absolutely. It is. Yes. I would love nothing more than to have people think of the bright ideas blog. If you want to learn about business processes, you go see Trent and you watch his stuff. That would be cool. I would be really proud of that.

Stephen:                             [00:35:25]               And your processes while we’re going to talk specifically about specifically about wholesale in a second, but they really do cross boundaries. And again, we just listened to us for the last few minutes talking about this business model you’re building. Um, and how well thought out it is and every stage in every plant. I mean, to me, I think that that’s the key because you can take these concepts and you can apply it. If you were going to go into name of business, I don’t really care what it is. Um, if you take the same approach in the same, uh, the same strategy, you would probably have success in it.

Speaker 3:                           [00:35:59]               Fair? I think so because I think that success happens. Um, I mean there’s, the old expression is when preparation meets opportunity and I’m going to add when it’s supported by processes

Stephen:                             [00:36:13]               and purposefully, I mean, it’s purpose. You’re purposeful when you’re doing it. To me, I think that’s really important. Um, I didn’t hear anything that you said that you’ve done that you weren’t passionate about, um, that there was an intentionality in what you’ve done. So, you know, again, how painful is it though to build the processes? You know, that’s one of the things that I hear from a lot of people. Look, Trent, I’m busy and I’ve got kids. I work a full time job. I’ve got kids. I don’t have time for this dude. I mean, I, it all sounds great. You know, you mentioned all these different systems and all these things, you know, uh, I don’t have the time.

Speaker 3:                           [00:36:49]               I’ll start off my answer by saying, how do you eat an elephant, one bite at a time and then fill in some details. Process creation is really not as difficult as you might think it is. You start with the end or the beginning. I just do the. I’ll just do the thing I’m going to do and then I screenshot it and write instructions as I’m doing it and so does it, so instead of let’s say I have this thing that I want to do and it’s normally going to take me five minutes to do it or maybe it’ll take me 10 minutes to do this thing, whatever this thing is. Also if I. If I symbol tediously creative process for the thing as I’m doing it, instead of getting it done in 10 minutes, maybe it takes me a half hour, but at the end of it I have now a process that I can hire a virtual assistant to do that thing for two bucks an hour and I don’t ever have to do it again.

Stephen:                             [00:37:36]               And you’ve done that in multiple businesses, not just in the wholesale business. Correct.

Speaker 3:                           [00:37:40]               I read the e myth back in [inaudible] and the business that I sold for over a million bucks. I aside from sales, I had no day to day operational responsibilities at all because I got my co founder to read e myth and I said I want a written documented process for everything that we do and that’s what, that’s what happened.

Stephen:                             [00:38:03]               One of the reasons the business sold for so much because you had that,

Speaker 3:                           [00:38:06]               uh, I think that was one of the reasons, but the biggest reason was the business had continuity, it had recurring revenue and buyers are willing to pay a significant premium for recurring revenue. And that’s why in the business this is Mayo business with the national motorsports owners association. That’s why continuity is going to be a big part of that business. Because think about it, if I could build an ECOMMERCE company selling products we’re doing, you know, one time sales and let’s say it’s doing 25,000,000 bucks a year in top line revenue and let’s say it’s making a 10 percent margin versus I have the exact same amount of revenue in the exact same amount of margin, but 65 percent of the revenue is recurring subscriptions. The second business is worth probably twice what the first businesses worth.

Stephen:                             [00:38:59]               Now you got me excited. You know, we didn’t even get to the one reason, not the one recent try and spend on my radar for awhile, but what really attracted me was that you had lost one of your big wholesale accounts and the way, the mature way you manage through that and the way you’re managing through that is very, very cool to me. But now in the conversation where I’d like to talk about is the foundation that your wholesale business has built. Now let me qualify this. Trent does, so a system, it’s not a course, it’s a system. Um, it’s not open right now. Um, I don’t affiliate with it and I don’t benefit in any way other than if somebody does ended up buying it and has success, I get to celebrate the success with them. That’s enough for me. And I think it’s very awesome.

Stephen:                             [00:39:45]               But this foundation that you built, this wholesale model, it’s allowing you to do all these other things. I mean, I think that’s the thing that I want people to take away from this is that if you’re willing, I mean if you want to sale, you want to be a sailor and sail the world, you can do it with a true. Somebody asked me, I’m, I’m speaking that I’m interviewing a couple of weeks and somebody asked me, hey, of all the people you’ve had on a bunch of them, it said something about that they have passive income. I really, any of them really, truly passive. Now you would say yes, right. For you now, today for our motto is passive

Speaker 3:                           [00:40:23]               for me personally because I have a team in place and I have no, I have zero day to day responsibility.

Stephen:                             [00:40:33]               Okay. One of the few that I’ve had on that really would say that because otherwise they still have to oversee a bunch of stuff. You’re truly in a passive mode, but that passive, it allows you to basically do anything you want.

Speaker 3:                           [00:40:47]               It does. And earlier you said that, you know, as a result of my experiences, I have the confidence to do this, blah, blah blah, blah, blah. Yes, I have confidence, but you know what I also have, I have cashflow and confidence is great, but if there’s no cash flow to go with it, um, it’s not going to necessarily be enough. So I’m in a position that I’ve worked very hard to get to where, okay, I’m launching a new business. I’m not under any time constraints because I’ve got this recurring steady cashflow for my Amazon business. I have thanks to my, my, the sale of a do these I, this wholesale training. It’s not a training system. It’s this business systems package that it’s quite lucrative for me. And so that gives me chunks of cash that I can then invest to start my software company, invest to start my it’s man time business and to be able to say, you know what, I’m going to, I’m going to take 50 grand and I’m going to put that as my risk capital and I’m going to move forward with his business and I can do it full time and I don’t need to worry about a paycheck from it. And if I smoked through the whole 50 grand and I make absolutely zero progress, it will bankrupt me. I’ll think, well, that’s fucked. That wasn’t any fun. And I know that that won’t happen. There’s zero percent chance that that is going to happen. Um, but it’s sure nice to be able to start something that has a bigger vision and a longer timeline without the constraints and stress that are normally there for someone who hasn’t figured out a way to make all their income passive or

Stephen:                             [00:42:22]               could just go down to the SBA. Right. And fill it up, you know, one or two page document and they just give you money. Right. That’s also another way to do this. And there’s no stress in any of that, right?

Speaker 3:                           [00:42:32]               Yeah. I don’t know if they handed out that easily. I don’t think they did have an SBA loan is a line of credit and we had to put up the equity in our house to get it. So I’m, I’m, he wasn’t free money.

Stephen:                             [00:42:44]               I just, again, I sit back and think about the foundation that you’ve built. Um, and I, that’s what I hope people hear that you can build a foundation, um, and you know, trying to tell you though, it’s a process, a period when you look at, now you, you’ve scaled it pretty large system, but somebody who’s looking for a smaller foundation so they can start building out, you know, they, maybe they don’t want to have the several million dollar model. Um, how long does it take to get those processes in place because you sell a system. So your system is pretty cookie cutter, here’s what you do, Steve, here’s the form, here’s how you do this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If you follow this, generally you should have some level of success. Whatever that would mean, right? Success is relative, um, based on effort. Um, how long does that take

Speaker 3:                           [00:43:31]               us? And it wasn’t just me, it took my team and I a full year to develop the systems to the point where, where I gave a, give a talk at a Dan and Erik’s event. I had nothing for sale. I had and I was mobbed afterwards because my talk was about systems. And so Dan and Eric said you need to take a copy of those systems and turn them into a product. Well, we were able to do that in like three weeks because we’d put a year into early parenting, testing, refining and tweaking the systems and they were literally the exact systems that my team of staff and Va’s used to run that business that is now passed it for me. And then we just sold a copy of them.

Stephen:                             [00:44:15]               I think there’s a wonderful lesson for people who were really interested in building out whatever their dream is. There is a way to fund it. And the beauty of wholesale is, you know, that you don’t have to spend a lot of money to get an account that’s a myth. Um, but when you do it can be very lucrative. And then that opens up other great discounts and cost savings and things and it changes your world. Um, how many vendors are you up to?

Speaker 3:                           [00:44:42]               I don’t know the exact number off the top of my head. That’s good. But it’s a good answer. I know the 80 20 rule. So if I let me log, you know what, I will log into my Amazon. Oh, then you’re working. No, we can’t. Let’s slow this image of a passive income. Dentists don’t say we have probably 100 live skews, but that’s not the number that you want to focus on. The 80 20 rule totally applies. Eighty percent of our revenue comes from a handful of relationships and so I would say half dozen, half dozen key accounts. The products that we buy from those companies, we have direct relationships with those manufacturers. We have contracts with every one of those manufacturers who we heard the c word, we are the. Besides themselves, we’re the only other seller on the listing, so there’s no race to the bottom. There’s none of that crap that people deal with.

Speaker 3:                           [00:45:34]               So very, very stable revenue and that accounts for eighty percent of our revenue. Did that happen overnight? No. In the beginning we didn’t have contracts and we weren’t the only seller, but that’s okay because it generated cashflow for us. Now, did those accounts without the contracts last very long? Not Typically. What we found in reviewing our own data is if the, if the manufacturer didn’t have map and aggressively enforce it, if they hadn’t already made a decision to limit or reduce the number of sellers and if they didn’t do brand registry, we weren’t able to even place a first reorder. All the margin was gone by the time we got through or sometimes even before we got through our first order. So that was a big. And the marketplace changes because we’re going back, you know, a year and a half or whatever it is now. Things change on Amazon all the time. So now we won’t carry the product unless there’s a contract. There’s only two sellers, there’s math, there’s brand registry and blah blah. You know, like we just won’t do it. Yeah.

Stephen:                             [00:46:41]               But that, that sophistication, even the vendors, the manufacturers and distributors know that I’ve seen more and more. I go to a lot of trade shows and I hear that more and more and that’s exciting because those two lucky sellers that get that account can really help build that brand and really have success because it’s, it’s taken a whole bunch of worry off of them. Now they can focus on that as opposed to worrying about losing their account. However you’re wanting to learn that that does still happen, right? Um, you can lose a big account and so you still have to build that risk model in, but the world doesn’t end and I’m not gonna let you tell the story because I’m going to make them go listen to your podcast where you talk about it because it’s really interesting to hear somebody who loses 60 percent of their revenue and 40 to 40. Oh, you kept 64 and a, you’re still going and you’re working your way through it. And I think that’s a good lesson. Um, because even though you build the best systems, things go wrong. Is that contract in your business systems?

Speaker 3:                           [00:47:40]               Uh, no. That is a contract template that was provided to us by Dan and Eric through. There are two f course and so I don’t, I never resulted. It wasn’t my intellectual property to begin with.

Stephen:                             [00:47:51]               Okay. So there’s a clue. You’ve got to go listen to the interview and I don’t benefit from them either. Um, but if that’s something, but again, you know, I always say you got to buy time, so if you’re going to do all that work for me, Trent, I’ve got to pay you for it and I have a problem paying for that service. Um, and, but the execution, have you had the same experience where a lot of courses were very few people take and execute on it or if you, because your systems are pretty, uh, pretty well documented, it’s really just do this, it takes a little bit of that fear away for people.

Speaker 3:                           [00:48:21]               Yeah. So we actually just did a survey to our customer base. We had 200 customers that bought this thing and without pulling the exact survey results in front of me, uh, the numbers were very favorable on the amount of people that had implemented some portion of the systems because it’s like a, it’s like a book of recipes. You don’t have to cook all the recipes. If you want potatoes, go get the recipe for potatoes, follow it and great, you’ll have potatoes. So we had a lot of recipes, Aka systems around product sourcing. Those were overwhelmingly the most popular systems in the entire package of systems and overwhelmingly the people who implemented those systems saw significant results in their business and that was one of the reasons why I don’t like selling training courses because it’s, I find it emotionally quite difficult for me when I know that I just made a whole bunch of money selling something that’s totally legit, but sadly most people will actually never implement and they’re not going to get a return on their investment. It just feels a icky, icky,

Stephen:                             [00:49:27]               achy that. I like that word. I’m, I’m with you on the achiness. What I do like about this too though is what you’re describing is if I have a fundamental role in my business and your system can help plug that hole because that’s the piece I’m missing, that’s very attractive to me because you know, when you’re a one person operation, which a lot of sellers are, they just don’t have the capacity to do everything and do it right. We all know we should, but they don’t look in back. I want you to go back a second because I think I know what you’re going to say, but I want you to go back doing it over again. Would you do with different the wholesale business? What’d you do at different knowing what you know today?

Speaker 3:                           [00:50:06]               No. Well, the only, the only one change I would make, um, and, and maybe I wouldn’t have been able to make this, but I was pursued co exclusive deals right from the get go. But until you have wins under your belt and some seller rating and some sales and some stuff you can point at to say, look, this is how I know what I know to do. Getting Co exclusives might be quite challenging once you get a few. Getting the next ones are easier and easier and easier. So probably I would try to, to go that route, but what I have success, I don’t know. But other than that, no, I wouldn’t change a damn thing. I think wholesale is a phenomenal vehicle to get started in the ecommerce business because it’s very low risk, doesn’t require a whole bunch of cash, require some obviously because you gotta be able to buy the inventory.

Speaker 3:                           [00:50:57]               Um, but the low risk short time to cash flow aspect of it is very, very appealing. And because Amazon, you know, you don’t have to be a facebook traffic expert, you don’t have to be building marketing funnels. There’s all this stuff you don’t have to do. You just ship your product into Amazon. It sells and they ship it so you can focus your time on finding more accounts and you can literally have your items in a week. There’s no. Usually there’s no development time and that’s literally turned that very quickly. You said the co term and I just don’t want to lose this because it had a thought and then when you get to my age, you got to keep these thoughts. Um, I agree with you. They shouldn’t have one seller. They need to have more than one seller. God forbid something happens to you, right?

Speaker 3:                           [00:51:36]               Yes. Do you have a lot of the same? I mean, are you going at it and saying, Hey, this is steve and Steve and trend. We do a whole bunch of things together. We’re separate businesses, but. Okay. So these just happened to be, um, we don’t care who you have quote as long as it’s just least one other person. Okay. Correct. Correct. And I honestly, ideally I liked the manufacturer themselves to be the other person. Oh, and look, the ones that we’ve been winning lately, that’s been the case, they were a sole seller. We came along and said, did you know about all the risks that you’re taking? And we educate them and uh, the risk of them getting closed down and all the same things that we all have. Right? And those are all real. They’re legit, we all know it, and we make sure that they fully understand the financial impact of account suspension, what’s that really going to cost you?

Speaker 3:                           [00:52:26]               And it’s a way bigger number than they think it is. And when they start to see our analysis, they start going, wow, people buy insurance to mitigate risk. You pay a premium to get insurance to mitigate risk, the decrease in profit margin by sharing the buy box with us and it’s not, it doesn’t cut their profit in half, but the decrease in profit margin is the insurance premium that they’re paying to mitigate the risk of account suspension. Plus there’s all this extra stuff that we do for them that they don’t have to pay a marketing agency to do. Is this part of the webs system, the wholesale e commerce business systems? Well, again, [inaudible] is not a training course, right? As instead of business systems. So, but there’s a letter that goes to that person that says, Hey, here’s what we can do for. And here’s why. That kind of stuff. Yeah. There’s. So there’s not a letter. Um, there’s, it’s, it’s actually a blog post that we use, um, and, and that’s my blog posts are not included because blog posts need to be original content.

Stephen:                             [00:53:35]               Okay. Alright, so I’m going to let you do your real quick pitch wholesale ecommerce business systems. It is a system, it is not a course. Everybody heard that, okay, here, that again, this is not going to be Dan and Eric walking you through and they do, I mean Dan and Eric Cores to amazing. Um, and they walk you through the steps to get to that place. What trends cells is a system that seems to fit in lock step with a lot of what they do. Is that fair? Absolutely. There’s the cake in minds, the icing. And so, you know, especially if you’ve already bought Dan and Eric’s courts and against d doesn’t benefit from Dennett Eric or Trent. Um, this could be the thing that could take you to that next level. All right, so somebody is interested in finding out more. So by the way, a trend has a great podcast and really strong, um, and he’s had for a long time about the same number of episodes I have, but then he also is because he’s not busy enough because he’s got all this free time and advice telling them you gotta find some hobby. He’s got a daily nugget thing which I really enjoy. It’s a small youtube. I mean they’re, they’re short. What are they? 10, 15 minute.

Speaker 3:                           [00:54:37]               Oh No, I usually leave somewhere between five and eight minutes long and I

Stephen:                             [00:54:40]               five and eight minutes. I mean, it was quick. It was like boom. But it was very informative and they’re very subject driven. Um, and they’re all on your websites. Bright ideas.co, bright ideas.co, which clearly you’ve had for a long time.

Speaker 3:                           [00:54:54]               I have, yeah, I started that. So if we go back in the interview too, when I got crushed by Google, um, my, my blog back then had a different name that blogged no longer exists. It was called online income lab. And I thought that was in hindsight, a bit of a cheesy name. I didn’t know exactly where I was going next, but I knew that I wanted to keep the podcast going and why do I listen to podcasts because I’m looking for bright ideas to implement in my business today and that’s how the brand was born.

Stephen:                             [00:55:22]               You know? By the way, when you mentioned that Google and panda thing, you definitely said it a better way this time. I could tell you got it out. It felt better. You know it’s gone. That pain is gone. Every time you do that, did you just get past it to this very cool. A great podcast. Really suggest to listen to it because it’s just depth, a depth of knowledge and depth of experience and you do outline the light. You give a lot of details and so again, bright ideas Dot Co. I’ll have links to it all. Somebody has a follow up questIon. That’s the best place to get information. Correct. There’s a contact button.

Speaker 3:                           [00:55:52]               Yeah, there’s a contact button. There’s a couple of different facebook groups that are free to join. Um, you can ask questions in there. I mean, one of the groups is closing in on a thousand members now and it, it kind of moderates itself. Um, so that is, I think, helpful to a lot of people as well. Um, and yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m definitely accessible. Don’t think me up on twitter, I don’t pay attention to twitter for, for anything that’s not one of the platforms that scenario

Stephen:                             [00:56:17]               dear to my heart. I mean either one of the things that someone’s going to ask because we need. Steve, you mentioned the, how do I get it? Well, you can’t because it’s not open right now. Um, but it does open. And trevor said to me, if you sign up it bright ideas that co, if you subscribe, I will market you to death. You will be one of those guys. I said that. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I did. But I love it because it’s true. And uh, you’re in another market. I mean, what are you going to do? I get it. You’re not going to miss the courses. What I think what you said. Um, but, but it’s fair. And so again, you could subscribe or bright ideas. Ico. So when it does open, it’s a very limited window, one of those kinds of things, but you want to get in and take action. PleaSe don’t sign up unless you’re going to take action. Please, please, please take action now because it’s just awesome. I love to see people have success. It’s amazing.

Speaker 3:                           [00:57:04]               Yeah. Let me, let me quantify that a little bit. So just so people know that we’re recording, it’s February 21st. The the systems are available for one week at a time, two times a year. The next launch will be in the, I think the second week of april. So if you’re a subscriber, you can’t help but find out about it. let’s talk about who it’s not for who it is, not for someone who’s looking to. I had a guy who, he wrote me an email the other day, he says, I don’t have any money and I need to build my business fast. And I wrote him back and I said, you should unsubscribe. You won’t learn anything from me that’s going to help you. It is youtube. It is not for people who are looking for the easy button. It is not for people who don’t have, they have no money.

Speaker 3:                           [00:57:49]               That doesn’t matter. It won’t help you. How are you going to buy inventory if you don’t have any money? It is not for people who are unwilling or unable to invest some money in hiring, virtual assistance to do the stuff that all that it needs to be done that all these systems tell them to do specifically in the area of product sourcing. If you think if you are a full employed full time and you have a family or wife or whatever that you need to spend some time with to balance your life out and if you think you’re going to be able to scale your business up all by yourself, you’re dreaming. It will not happen in the wholesale space, so who it is for our people who have some money and are willing to invest it, to hire some labor to execute these systems and still have enough time themselves to be able to have the conversations that will invariably result with those brands. That’s who this is for.

Stephen:                             [00:58:51]               Conversation coming from you means a lot. I mean, when you’re, when you’re that person having that conversation that really seals the deal because when you say, oh yeah, my team handled that, but this is me, this is my business, that conversation, because, you know, when you lose 40 percent of your revenue, you’ve got to rebuild it. That 60 percent that you have exclusive, that recurring system that you have built again, didn’t just happen. That took because of relationships and those relationships get started with a real person and then you can over time. I think that’s very powerful. Um, and I think it’s very fair. Again, you’re the one guy saying, hey, it’s 20 percent, steve. Let’s be fair. Let’s be real. Let’s be honest. However, you know, it can be done, right? A 20 percent locked in over time is a great number. So very powerful dude, I really appreciate it, man. This is really, really strong. Um, are you out on the speaking tour this year at all?

Speaker 3:                           [00:59:44]               So far the only speech that I’ve been invited to give because then I don’t market myself for speech is very much a. I’m speaking at the twlf conference in atlanta the first week of april. Um, and other than that, I don’t have any other spi. I’m hoping actually that’ll be next year. I’m hoping to talk at prosper next year on systems. So if anyone’s listening and they are interested in having me speak at their conference, depending upon where it is and when it is, I might have an interest. But other than that, no, no, not gonna be anywhere.

Stephen:                             [01:00:16]               All right. Bright ideas dot koh. Please go listen, because very powerful. You can tell he knows what he’s talking about. Man, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. I wish you nothing but success.

Speaker 3:                           [01:00:27]               Thanks very much, stephen. It has been a, a pleasure to be a guest on your show.

Stephen:                             [01:00:33]               Again, great interview. Great guy. I’m real proof of concept. I know we went off on that group that he’s starting and, but when you get that vision and you can hear it, he has a vision. He’s cast a vision. He’s going all for it because he’s built all these different modules. Each one of these modules that he’s going to put into this business. He’s built, he’s already been successful at, so he’s now going to apply that. That’s a big lesson for us all to learn and his foundation, you know, um, I do a pre interview in a post, you know, we talked for a little bit afterwards, you know, just a humble guy, you know, he’s really done really well with it, but again, he can replicate it because of his processes. Don’t downplay that and it’s one of the number one thing. So everybody’s always saying, well, steve, what, what’s the number one thing that you hear?

Stephen:                             [01:01:16]               What’s the secret? It’s process. It’s almost every single person that’s had incredible success has documentation for everything. Do this step. Then this step, then this step and this step, yeah, it’s painful to do once, but boy, when you have it and then you go back and refine it a little bit and refined it a little bit, you build on it. And man, I’ll tell you a trend is the process guy. Great, great interview, great guy. Reached out to them a bright ideas.co. I’m a subscriber, man. I, I like listening to this stuff and he’s definitely somebody who I’m going to follow ecommerce momentum, [inaudible] ecommerce momentum. Take care.

Speaker 2:                           [01:01:51]               Thanks for listening to the ecommerce momentum podcast. All the links mentioned today can be found at [inaudible] dot com. Under this episode number, please remember to subscribe and like us on itunes.

 

Stephen-Peterson

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