287 : Teresa Rose – Trust the process and expect results in your eCommerce business but create a backup plan

Teresa rose image

How many times have you heard it? Create a “b” plan. You are playing in someone else’s sandbox so have a backup plan. You better have an umbrella for the rainy day. All true in my world and likely in yours too. So what can you do about it? Teresa Rose shows you ways you can add other channels to sell and methods to drive traffic. Can you also add some services that you know inside and out as revenue streams for you “b” plan?

 

Mentioned:

Pin Traffic Power

Onlinejobs.ph

Teresa’s Facebook 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 take a second and recognize my sponsors this week, you know, [inaudible] 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 gaze 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 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. About a free trial, right? Very, very cool. So it’s amazing. Freedom Dot com. Forward slash is the mouthful. The word momentum. You’ve got to use a hyphen and you put in the word arbitrage. So it’s amazing. Freedom Dot [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 has amazing, amazing. I’m in that group so you’ll see me there and 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 your seller 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 key words 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 lake 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 seller labs.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 labs.com, forward slash scope. Again, use the word momentum solutions for e-commerce. Karen Lunker, great, great, great group. I’ve been using them for a long time and I guess it’s 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 2018, get your inventory in line and Karen will help you do that. We use them for everything basically, uh, you know, long-term storage fees coming up. Guess what, show evaluate. She’ll make some recommendations and I’ll say, yeah, 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 e-commerce solutions for e-commerce dot com forward slash momentum, right? So you’ve got a 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 e-commerce dot com, forward slash momentum.

Speaker 2:                           [00:04:39]               Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast. Will focus on the people, the products, and the process of e-commerce. Today. Here’s your host, Steven Peterson.

Stephen:                             [00:04:53]               Welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. This is episode 200 and eighty seven. Theresa Rose, man. Oh Man. I am pumped. Pump pumped. Her enthusiasm. Got Me enthusiastic. Have you ever had a teacher? And I’m letting it out that she was a teacher. Um, and we get to that in a little while, it like opened up for me, but you remember those teachers that just, you got pumped from, they just taught you so much because they just saw it. They had it, they believed it. You would follow them off the cliff like a lemming. She’s one and man, I’d follow her anywhere. What an inspiration and her connection, her going full circle in her life. I think there’s so many of us that are not willing to look back because they’re trying to get away from something or they don’t only think of the negative parts of their life that got them to where they are yet those challenges.

Stephen:                             [00:05:49]               You could go back and fix with the new skill sets you’ve learned and then you have a business. I’m also, I really, really appreciate creating a backup plan. Multiple streams and um, the discussion gets really interesting. I just think it’s so powerful. Um, and it’s such a great point in time in this world, uh, with all these changes going on in a positive way. These changes can be very positive for you. Depends on how you look at. Let’s get into the podcast. All right. We’ll come back to the e-commerce movement podcast. Very excited about today’s guest. I’m a multifaceted, which I always appreciate somebody who’s doing a whole bunch of things. I’m a because she’s a woman. She can. US guys are one directional. They can multitask. It’s a skillset I wish I had, but it’s also makes it cool. I think it makes it fun. You don’t get stale or stagnant. I’m Theresa Rose. Welcome, Theresa.

Speaker 3:                           [00:06:41]               Hey, it’s great to be here.

Stephen:                             [00:06:43]               I think that’s a true statement, don’t you? I think it’s true. You can multi-task where drive the same way to work every day

Speaker 3:                           [00:06:53]               about. I don’t know. I shouldn’t say that I’m, I mean, I can multitask, but am I good at it? I’m not. I’m not gonna say that I’m good at it because I’m not sure that I believe in the whole thing and multi-tasking and being able to do it well. Um, so, you know, I will take on different projects and do experiments and testing, but then I learned really fast that um, if I don’t have a plan of action to keep executing in that direction and stay focused on something, then something’s going to fall apart and get neglected.

Stephen:                             [00:07:23]               Is that an experience issue that you’ve learned over time that used to not be that way? Or were you always that way?

Speaker 3:                           [00:07:32]               Well, this is what happens when you start experimenting and you figure out more ways of making income and you see, wow, this is working. OK, well now you’ve got one more thing to work on because you saw some really successful results. So the issue is, is your time, how are you going to leverage your time because you’re now having to split it across more than one stream that you are developing and trying to get that to grow, but you need to really get a system in place of how am I going to keep working on that and not let it fall through the cracks and that, that I think is a struggle for every, every single person. I don’t, I don’t care what gender you are or how, what your age is, that is a difficulty that we all have and that’s just let’s get one stream going, focus on it, try and get that one down well to where you are putting it in management mode or you’re hiring some help too to keep managing it for you while you go on and you build another one. So multiple streams of income is definitely what everyone needs to do, but I think the issue is how do you tackle it and be able to do it well without letting something fall through the cracks.

Stephen:                             [00:08:46]               I like what you said about management, my management mode. Say That fast few times. So let’s walk through that. Let’s unpack that a little bit. So you know, startup as exciting or planning, you know, thinking it through. You never put risk in the modest me, steve talking, never put risk into model’s going to be upside only it’s going to be awesome and then it happens and things are working and this what you thought it was going to be generally isn’t what it’s going to be, but you hit a stride rite. You get to that place. How do you get that management mode is, is it documentation for you? Is it process streamlining? Is it, you know, all the above. I mean, what, what do you do?

Speaker 3:                           [00:09:26]               Well, what I’ve learned to do is just, you know, paper pencil. I think we have to. We have to keep things simple and go back to the basics and just get a piece of paper and start writing down all of your income streams and take, take account of it every single month so that you can see what’s happening or not happening and you can keep up on, OK, where is all my streams of income coming from? Cause sometimes you get carried away and you want to start chasing the next shiny object. You might see success at it, but then if you don’t have a plan of action to execute it, then that dollar amount might go down, lower or um, may not happen or maybe it’s going higher and he didn’t realize it. So you really don’t know what’s going on in your business. You may not be able to sit and wait for your bookkeeper to update the books every single month or quarter or every six months, whatever it is that you have worked out with your bookkeeper.

Speaker 3:                           [00:10:20]               So instead you need to have a general idea every single month of what’s happening with those streams of income. Now I’m not talking about tracking expenses, but just just tracking your income streams. Just doing that and seeing what is it that I’m doing that is bringing in money? What parts of it is bringing in more money than others? Is there something that I can do with that to keep that rolling? And then when you see another stream happen after your testing results, now you can put a plan of action of how do I now start to hit that and get that rolling? So when you put something in management mode, what I mean is that, um, you, you’ve done the hard work to get it going, to get the ball rolling, but in order to keep that ball rolling to build momentum, you are either going to have to set aside time, weekly, monthly, whatever it is, get it on your calendar or you need to hire a va, need to hire someone else that can take over that, that part for you and be able to keep it in management mode for you. And then you can continue to check on it to see if it’s still growing or not. If it’s not growing, then you need, there’s a change that needs to happen. So you’ve got a, you’ve got to keep track of stuff somehow to know where you need to make adjustments. And I think the key there is we all are going to have to make adjustments in the business is not something where you just set it and forget it. You’re going to have to make an adjustment somewhere.

Stephen:                             [00:11:49]               Um, let’s talk about different things because you have, um, you have multiple streams, right? So you’re an Fba seller, you are merchant seller, you on more than one, um, um, marketplace, uh, you coach a, then you have some other courses and then you also have the pinterest thing, which I’m interested in, but you know, when you look at each one, uh, you know, I guess [inaudible] would be probably easier to set it and forget it kind of thing, right. To, to manage from afar arms-length, right? Unless you’re a designer that has to create everything, you can outsource that function where if you are, you could still create an outsource the function to upload and stuff like that. What, what approach have you taken with that? And then I’m going to go to Fba, which I’m more interested in because of the changes recently. So let’s, let’s just walk through what, what’s an example of what you’ve been able to do with merge?

Speaker 3:                           [00:12:35]               OK, well, with merch by Amazon, that’s a little bit trickier because you still probably, I don’t know, I really hesitate to allow someone else to login to my account. There has been some issues that have happened over the last two months with some very big sellers having their account suspended temporarily. They’re trying to get clarity as to what the problem was. One possible problem was they allowed someone else to log into their account, a virtual assistant, and so there’s a different ip address as being detected and that has caused a little bit of issues. It’s still unclear as to if that was the reason for the suspension or was it something else, but you’re not taking a chance. That’s a risk, right? Yeah. What we’ve noticed in the last couple of months there is that merch by Amazon, Amazon is getting a little bit pickier now, a little bit pickier about who is logging in and out of your account.

Speaker 3:                           [00:13:32]               So I would, I would be careful there with that. Um, so I, I do not allow anyone to login to my account as far as march by Amazon. I truly do have to do those uploads at this point and continue that myself, which means what I do is I go and I mostly purchased the designs and that’s the part that they outsource is the designs and um, the initial keywords, that is what I outsource because it makes it go a lot faster and uploaded into my account. So that part I really do have to, um, tackle it and do so much every day. A lot of people want to get their full uploads, but there does get to be a point when you get into the higher tiers where it’s very, very hard at. It will take several hours a day to do your maximum uploads. I think what would be better is if you would set aside a certain block of time every day, and it doesn’t matter if you max out your full uploads or not. You get something done.

Stephen:                             [00:14:30]               You Max out your time, you said 30 minutes. You make it a real 30 minutes to get done and then move on.

Speaker 3:                           [00:14:37]               Just stay really focused at the timer. Stay focused during that time. Do not do not look at facebook or any social media. Do not look at your phone, don’t accept calls, don’t check your email. All those things I’m doing, I’m sitting here saying, all right,

Stephen:                             [00:14:52]               check done, check or I’m guilty, man, you’re making me a shrink a little bit in my chair

Speaker 3:                           [00:14:58]               and if you just do that and managing yourself in time and you set your timer and say 30 minutes or one hour, whatever it is that you can handle, I’m going to just do this and focus. You’ll probably get a lot more done and do it very, very well.

Stephen:                             [00:15:13]               I think that’s the point. You’re going to do it better. You’re going to do it right, you’re going to do it because otherwise you’re rushing and then when they don’t sell and then they fall off, you’re like, oh, and especially if you’re buying them, that’s expensive, right? That costs money.

Speaker 3:                           [00:15:30]               So it’s kind of a, you know, one part of it is we do have to maintain, you know, manage ourselves. I don’t care if you hire help or not, you still need to manage yourself because there’s still some things that you do have to do, um, and you can’t necessarily outsource that to someone else at least in the moment. So if you learn how to manage yourself well, you’ll get a lot more done in less time. And then what you do is you take that and you see how it’s working for you. You take that concept and you train your va to do the same thing.

Stephen:                             [00:16:02]               And how did you, how did you go about training them? Because I’ve heard of a lot of different methods. Have a private facebook group where they keep videos or they do a video screen where they screen share, that kind of thing. Did you have a different approach?

Speaker 3:                           [00:16:13]               Sure. He could do all of those things. I create videos and if they are struggling having a hard time, then I’ll do a zoom conference call and we’ll do a live training and I can actually have them do the work and I talk them through it, have them practice in front of me.

Stephen:                             [00:16:29]               And that’s using the zoom, you say zoom allows that. That’s a really good idea.

Speaker 3:                           [00:16:34]               Yeah, because we can have that face to face interaction, which is really important, you know, because you need to build that relationship

Stephen:                             [00:16:40]               with a person. Is that a different relationship? That’s a good point. Because most people, you know, think of the Va that I’ve had, I don’t think I. I might have seen a picture of them, maybe a still picture, but I’ve never been on a video conference call with them to change the game for you.

Speaker 3:                           [00:16:55]               Yeah, because I don’t think of them as someone off in the distance as though they’re not a real person. You need to build relationship with them. The stronger you build a relationship with them, the better and easier it is to work together. You’re a team, you’re a team. You cannot think of yourself as someone who is. I don’t know. I guess you need to humble yourself. Let’s just say that. Have some humility and, and understand that you are a human being. They’re a human being. You’re, you are the same. You are the same and you are united together because you want to create some goals, some goals, some things that everybody wants to achieve as a team and think of it that way. So the communication is really, really important if you’re doing a zoom conference call. What I do before I hire, as I do that with an first, so when I select who it is that I want to start interviewing, I do have them do a zoom conference call with me where we can talk face to face as they’re interview. It helps me to get to know them and they can get to know me and we find a little bit more about each other’s backgrounds. We can find some common things that we can relate on. Um, and it really helps you to develop and build that relationship there. So the stronger relationship that you have, the easier it is to work together. And whoever is working for you, they have more motivation to keep working for you. More incentive. They feel like they belong.

Stephen:                             [00:18:30]               Everyone gets that, you know. Let me ask you a question about that because I think it’s a good point. I think, you know, you know, I’m guilty of it. I think we’re, I don’t want to gloss over because I think this is, you get a lot more from somebody who’s much more invested with you, right? Because that’s what you’re saying is that if you spend this additional time upfront and then you continue to develop it over time, you’re going to get, they’re going to care more. Maybe that’s the right way to say it and therefore you should get better. So that to me sounds like a pro tip is to invest in those relationships you already have, kind of like your vendors, right? Comments, go back and invest in those relationships. You already have that relationship. Right? And so I think this is something that you know, probably gets away as you scale and as you get bigger and you add more people and I think that’s an important point. So go back and spend the time with them even if you haven’t yet, stop today. Go Out, create a video or a set up, a video chat. Even skype call woodwork too. Just something to deepen that relationship. I think that’s a really good tip. I think it’s really strong

Speaker 3:                           [00:19:30]               and it’s easy for that relationship to um, I guess feel like there’s a barrier there because you’re hiding behind your computer and they’re hiding behind their computer and in the real world you would be working and seeing each other face to face every so often you would want to do that. You would want to check in and see how they’re doing, show that you care about them as a person and they’re going to care about you as a person and care about the business and what the goals are. Um, but a sense of belonging is, is a basic need for, for each person. So for them they feel like they belong to something and I feel like I belong to something and we are working together and it makes everyone feel excited.

Stephen:                             [00:20:09]               Does it help with retention too? I mean it. When you look back at the vas that you’ve had over the years, you know, uh, the deeper, the relationship, the longer term the relationship. I mean, if it seem intuitive that that would be make sense?

Speaker 3:                           [00:20:21]               Yeah, I think so. The first one that I hired, she was working for me 20 hours a week and we just started there just to test and see how it will go. And I taught her some new skills, some things that she had never really done very much before. And at first, you know, it took her a little extra time to do the work and, and I gave her, you know, two weeks is about how much practice she really needed doing this part time. After that she started getting faster and faster at it. I just noticed that over time. And so what happened was a couple of weeks ago, she, after being with me for almost three months now, she said, well, you know, I told her after a certain period of time we could probably go to full time if she wanted more hours. It’s up to her.

Speaker 3:                           [00:21:08]               If she wants more hours she can take for up to 40 hours. And I will leave that as, um, something that she can choose to do because she’s already a, you know, proven how effective she is and how hard working she is and the results that she’s, that she is producing is amazing. So I said, if you want to go up to 40 hours, let’s, let’s do it. You just tell me, you just tell me what you want to do or just put it down on your hours and we’re going to do it. So she is, she’s up to 40 hours now. And just a couple of days ago she was already finished with a bunch of work. I mean, she keeps getting it done faster and faster. And uh, she messaged me and she said, um, I’m almost done with these already. Uh, can you add more to the spreadsheet? And then she said, am I going too fast for you?

Speaker 3:                           [00:21:59]               Which I thought what I thought was funny and she had a little smiley face. Nice. And I said that she was pretty, you know, I told her that she’s doing great and I’ll get some more stuff in there. No problem or her ready to go, um, and we’ll, we’ll get it, we’ll get it rolling here and start, you know, adding on. So what’s she’s doing is she’s making sure that I keep adding more work onto her plate actually before she finishes because she wants her hours and she realizes that she’s going faster and faster and faster. And I said it’s no problem. I just need to keep adding more to the spreadsheet. It’ll get done, it’ll, it’ll happen and it only takes me a few minutes to do that. So I just basically stop everything and do that and she knows to alert me well and advanced.

Speaker 3:                           [00:22:50]               Um, so that when she’s ready to sit down again and do work, she’s got something ready to go. That way we’re not wasting time with. She’s ready to work, but there’s nothing to work on the spreadsheet. So she’s really good at telling me in advance, hey, I’m almost done. I’ve got six left, so can you do that? She’ll tell me at the end of her work hours. So when she starts again, there’s more lined up ready to go for her. So it’s not a waste of her time either and she’s able to claim something, so she’s been pretty honest so far and her work, she keeps getting better and better at it. So of course she’s going to start naturally going faster. So now I’ve got a new problem is I need to plan even more in advance and put it on my calendar every single week that I need to look at the spreadsheet, see where it’s at and I need to add to it every so often. Even if just a few minutes per day, something to make sure that the ball just keeps rolling and when we don’t have me as the problem.

Stephen:                             [00:23:50]               Sure. You always were probably every step. This brings up a good point because I think a lot of people were intimidated by this, right? Is to give up control, to outsource anything isn’t real. This is going to be able to give me like, dusty of course, but isn’t it really documenting your process, knowing all the touch points you have and then really being honest and saying, you know, Steve, I know you like to do this, but really there’s no additional value. Somebody else could do it, therefore that can go on the task, right? Because what you’re describing is that you’ve got somebody who’s accelerating and you want to keep her busy because if you don’t, she’s going to find somebody else who will write. She’s obviously got skills and so by having that identification, I think we’re back to that whole thing is mapping all this stuff out and then having it ready, saying, OK, these are the other six things that, and your example your va could do. Um, knowing that before you start, because otherwise I think it’s haphazard. Does it take away the fear? I mean, is that one of the things that you coach people on, is that, does it take away the fear of outsourcing functions to cause? Cause you know what they are

Speaker 3:                           [00:24:59]               front. Yeah, I don’t. I had a lot of fear before doing this. I didn’t know the communication would be well enough for us to really truly work as a team and get, get enough done. So that was the reason why I did the interview face to face over a zoom is to get past that barrier.

Stephen:                             [00:25:19]               Did you use the service to find the person or did you just go up on upworks or something?

Speaker 3:                           [00:25:23]               No, I did use, um, I use online jobs, Ph and I’ve had really good results there. I get a lot of applicants, so it does take time. Every time that I posted a job, there’s a ton of people that apply for it and it takes a while to kind of go through and pick the ones you want to interview. Many times what I’ve been doing is hiring [inaudible] at a time so that if one isn’t working out so well or I’ve had situations where we can have to go by and they haven’t done anything yet, then I know I need to get, you know, someone else lined up fast because that person, for whatever reason, I don’t understand why they didn’t want to get started right away. Um, but there’s a certain point where I say, I really do need to have some work done here.

Speaker 3:                           [00:26:08]               I can’t wait any longer. We’ve got to, we’ve got to keep things moving forward. So I go ahead and I hire someone else and then I give that person some, uh, enough time to find out what’s going on. And then I’ll say, OK, we’ve got to end. We have to stop because I’m not sure. Yeah, I’m not sure what. We’re not really, um, benefiting from us, either one of us. So that can be an issue. Um, sometimes you’re going to run into different things. I’ve got one va that lost her Internet access and so she has stopped work and the last, uh, couple of weeks or so, and she apologized, told me what, and then said, would I still be allowed to continue working for you once I get my Internet back? And I said, you bet you bet does jump right back in. And she’s [inaudible] yeah, she’s, she’s had a problem with getting your bills paid and she has a three month old child that she’s trying to care for. There’s a lot going on and the child’s been very sick, a lot of medical bills that are piling up and that was a reason why she was trying to do some take on some, um, some extra work that she could do from home. Um, so she’s real life issues.

Stephen:                             [00:27:18]               Well, yeah. And, and that relationship, because you now have a connection with her deeper than just a, you know, a transactional relationship, you’re more empathetic. And so where’s this come from? You know, just thinking about that as I’m sitting here listening to you. I mean, were you a teacher in any world? Where did you go to school for? What, what, what, what were you going to be?

Speaker 3:                           [00:27:40]               Yeah, I’m a teacher.

Stephen:                             [00:27:41]               Are you really? Look at that. I have no knowledge, but it just, I can hear that.

Speaker 3:                           [00:27:46]               Yep. I’ve been a teacher for a lot of years, about 16 years. So I’ve been teaching, I’ve taken, I’ve taught in public schools, uh, taught and some private settings, but mostly it’s been private teaching.

Stephen:                             [00:28:02]               Teaching. What does that mean?

Speaker 3:                           [00:28:04]               Yeah. My music teacher. So I’ve done privately probably more so than the rest of it where I’m working one on one with people and my goal is to help them achieve success in the short amount of time possible so that they can see results quickly and be more motivated, more encouraged. So that’s been what I’ve done there for a lot of yours is you’re basically a coach. So then later on when I started this and then, uh, became a coach and it’s the same thing, really

Stephen:                             [00:28:39]               are so attracted to each other because Gary, well, let’s be, let’s full disclosure that Gary was your coach. You coach with Gary under Gary and his team. Right. But I can see that, I mean, you guys would relate to each other, you probably finished each other’s sentences, you probably all those things. Right. And it just. I can see that building. When you, when you started a for Amazon or selling on Amazon and those kind of things, was it natural for you because of all the training you had because of the approach, the methodical, you know, is that, did it just flow right in for you?

Speaker 3:                           [00:29:14]               I’m not necessarily, I mean I went through the same feelings as everyone else. All of a sudden you have excitement and then suddenly overwhelmed because there’s so much to learn. There’s a big learning curve there, but what I do is I love to learn. First of all,

Stephen:                             [00:29:32]               I think if you’re thinking of like your students, like you’re teaching somebody who’s going to learn guitar, it’s overwhelming, right? When you start or whatever instrument or whatever. It’s the same concept, so you can relate.

Speaker 3:                           [00:29:42]               It’s overwhelming and I know that I, I’ve gone through that so many times with a learning curve, but I don’t try to avoid learning curves. I embrace them and what I do is I just immersed myself in it to the point where I, I allow it to digest in my head, so I typically go through courses pretty fast and I’ve learned basically how to learn. I don’t know if that makes any sense to anybody. Hold on a sec. I’ve learned how to learn and then I have taught others how to learn too.

Stephen:                             [00:30:09]               When you said you just wait, so you blow through the course so you get the full scope of it so you know how bad it’s going to get, how, how deep it gets. Then you go back and learn. I mean do you go back or could you just adapt that quickly by even accelerated?

Speaker 3:                           [00:30:24]               Yeah, not necessarily. I never go through a whole course from beginning to end before I take action. Never. It would take me weeks before I would take any, any action, which is not something that, that I, you know, that wasn’t even an option. I’m in the situation that I was in an any more income that wasn’t even an option, so I had to take action immediately and what I would do is I would learn enough to my next step of what I need to do and I would stop there and that would immediately put it into action quickly and build upon that and then say, OK, what’s my next thing? Alright, put into action. Do it, just do it. Go and then do the next thing. Do it. Go. Don’t, don’t wait until it makes sense to you in your head. You have to, you have to trust the process. You’re not always going to see the end. You can see the end and see, wow, OK, so I know it’s been successful for people. That’s all I need to know right now. If I, if I know anything more than I’m all, all I’m going to do is get paralyzed. So you, you only need to focus on your next step.

Stephen:                             [00:31:28]               So if others can do it, therefore you can do it right. There’s similar to you can do it other than being seven foot tall basketball players, right. That’s the difference in this scenario, you know, uh, we’ve seen the gamut that can sell on Amazon or Ebay or whatever. And so therefore I fit in that gamut. I can do it. I just have to break it down into small steps. When you break it down into small steps, how far out are you looking? Is it a couple days? Is it a week? I mean, how far do you plan?

Speaker 3:                           [00:31:58]               It depends on how fast you can get through the next step. So you know, if you’re looking at your next step, just do that and then it won’t take you very long to, to know what your next step is. I’m so you don’t necessarily need a know your next step until you’re there

Stephen:                             [00:32:12]               and it gets faster. Right? That’s kind of a snowball effect because when, what I have found, and tell me if this is you, is eventually I go back, I’m like, oh, that’s why we did it that way. Now I get it, you know, and sometimes it takes me two months. I’m like, Oh,

Speaker 3:                           [00:32:27]               you don’t need to. Yeah, you don’t need to know everything. You don’t need to understand everything in your head before you take action. You just need to learn to trust and people put these courses together for a reason. You’re going to understand the integrity of people before you take the course, you know, learn about that person a little bit and their integrity. If they have good integrity, you know that you can trust and you can just trust the process. You don’t need to know everything before you take a step and get started and that’s hard for people because they want full control all the time. I’m a control freak. Just elite. Just believe. Just believe that it’s laid out in front of you and it will happen. You just need to take a step, one step at a time. That’s it,

Stephen:                             [00:33:16]               Trish. The process and expect results.

Speaker 3:                           [00:33:18]               Yes, I believe that it will. It will happen. It will.

Stephen:                             [00:33:23]               So. So you. You’ve done well with merge and you’ve taken it to a couple of different platform, which is absolutely the smart move, right? You’ve already invested in getting this design created and the titles and then you can put it on other platforms. Red Bubble tea, public, uh, all the different ones around when, when it comes to Fba, now I’m thinking about Fba because there’s been so many drastic changes. They’re accelerating. I’ve been a long time seller and the changes are getting faster and you know, it’s a technology issue. Uh, clearly, um, expansion is just rapidly happening. Um, how do you, how do you go about that process of giving up control of some of that when so much of it is changing because I don’t care what it is. I mean, even if it’s just outsourcing your prepping, there are changes within that that affect you or can effect you or the steel tax thing. Now, if you import anything from China that has steel in it, this could impact you or these long-term storage fees are absolutely going to impact your fees going up in general or other sellers and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s, it’s, there’s a lot, right? There’s a lot of pieces. How do you handle that

Speaker 3:                           [00:34:32]               when you don’t focus on what’s out of your control? You focused on what is in your control. You focus on what you can do. I don’t focus on. I heard about the long-term storage fees. I, but that’s happened several times in the past many years, so that’s nothing new, but every time people make a mountain out of a molehill, basically the world’s ending. They, every time they take one little thing and they blow it up to be a bigger deal. OK, now what you’re doing is really hurting yourself. You are paralyzing yourself. You’re making yourself stop in your tracks. I don’t, I don’t. I’m not gonna do that. I’m not going to participate. What I do instead is I focus. I would say, Yep, OK, that happened. Sure. It happens everywhere. Not Just Amazon. Every marketplace, everything that you do, there’s going to be fee increases.

Speaker 3:                           [00:35:23]               This is, this is just how it is and in business, and what you do instead is you just adapt. You make a change. You adapt. That’s it. That’s it. Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill. Just adapt and say, all right, no problem. If that means that I need to focus on finding products to sell with a have a higher average selling price that take up less space inside of the warehouses that are lightweight to reduce down your fees and I can sell it within 30 days to keep down the storage fees. That’s what you do. You adapt.

Stephen:                             [00:36:03]               So in that scenario you basically say, I’m not not selling. That’s not an option. I’m just going to change to adapt because this is a better model to put my effort and energy anywhere. I already know this side. There’s my energy and effort goes as opposed to sitting here sucking my thumb in the corner wearing it.

Speaker 3:                           [00:36:24]               Exactly, exactly. Yeah. It’s not an all or nothing thing of it’s either gotta be my way or no way because then it’s the highway, right? There is no chance that that could have Jeff Bezos does it. Call Theresa, tell me, come on, tell me what you’re thinking. And that’s what I hear a lot from these other sellers, and I just want to say, well, you know, guess what, it’s not all about you.

Stephen:                             [00:36:45]               I think your point is valid to, on every platform. I don’t care what platform you sell on there are going to be changes because they’re making changes for their long-term concerns. Right? We see what’s going on with toys r us today. Uh, this week has been announced. You know, when we know the UK has got problems, but now the US, it looks like they’re going to completely liquidate. And just imagine you and I are both old enough. We probably have known toys are us most of our whole life. And imagine if they don’t exist, what fills that gap? Hopefully us. But I mean, I’m just saying is that that change they have to adapt or die. In this case they didn’t. And for whatever, you know, I’m sure there’s a myriad of things. Well, your business is the same that, that, that Amazon is the same, that they have to adapt or die because their world is, we think of them and it’s just Teresa and Amazon, right?

Stephen:                             [00:37:32]               We don’t think of the 8,000 other parts, uh, just in your town that are affecting them. Right? And, and so I think that that’s a really, I think it’s a good point that you’ve got to take a deep breath and sit back and say, OK, time to adjust. And you know what, maybe that’s, you know, back to my introduction of you is you’ve got your hand in so many different things. Is that what makes it fun? Still? Let me, because this could get, it could get challenging having your hand in all these different things. Is that keep you interested?

Speaker 3:                           [00:38:01]               Oh yeah. I, I’m a person where I need my mind challenged. That’s my entertainment.

Stephen:                             [00:38:08]               I’m glad it’s not me. But you like the, the, the, the juggling, spinning a plates. It sounds like to me, because you got a whole bunch of things going on and you run over here and doing this one and then when this one.

Speaker 3:                           [00:38:22]               Yeah, I think it’s fun and fascinating and interesting. It’s important for you to have more than one stream of income. Um, one, if, if something happens in one stream of income reduces down, you’ve got something else. Got a backup plan. So if one of them shuts down tomorrow, can you still survive? OK.

Stephen:                             [00:38:43]               You’ve had, you’ve had, you must have had clients that have called you saying, Theresa, my account was closed or post something that they lost their number one wholesale account and this is more prevalent today than ever. They are going with one or two Amazon sellers and they don’t want the rest because of challenges and you can’t blame them because it’s hard to communicate and it’s hard to do. All those things are hard to determine production needs and all that jazz. That stuff is going to happen outside of your control. Yup. No matter what. And so having a b plan or in your case I see a d that’s important.

Speaker 3:                           [00:39:22]               It is, and within one of those streams of income, you need to have a, b, a c, a d, e n, n e plan within that to they’re called strategies. The most important part and your business is to sit down and think strategy,

Stephen:                             [00:39:37]               revenue stream is that, is that what you do? So you take each revenue stream and say, OK, we’ll break that down and we’ll say, OK, merge, we’re gonna. Here’s the pieces of everything that we’re doing. We could outsource this, this I’m going to keep control of however we have other channels. We can put that on and then we can do this and we can do variations and blah, blah, blah. OK, boom. Do you spend, I mean is this an annual plan for you? Is it a monthly plan to develop the initial blip? Because I think most people haven’t done this right to be fair, so let’s give him real advice. How do they bite that apple? Because it’s. It’s pretty big,

Speaker 3:                           [00:40:08]               right? What you’re describing on a regular basis, you need to think of strategy because that’s how you adapt and you’re going to need to change your strategy. On a regular basis, on each revenue strings, on every single revenue stream because something will change.

Stephen:                             [00:40:23]               Well even even with outsourcing certain things because things will change, right? If there’s something that happens to your vas in the Philippines, what’s your [inaudible] plan? Right? I mean they do have typhoons and things like that and so what happens, right? What are you going to do?

Speaker 3:                           [00:40:39]               Exactly? You need to have all kinds of strategies in place. You’re going to need to change your strategy. You can, if you think you’ve got two strategies that you want to test, test them both a and b split testing of these strategies. We’ll see what happens and we’re going to streamline it. Now this is where it’s really important for you to have good communication with whoever is working with you on your team because you can streamline together. You may not. You don’t understand what they’re doing for why suddenly things are moving faster and you might want to ask like, wow, that’s amazing what you’re doing. What’s what’s going on? Have you streamlined this? You could maybe even ask them to show you or do a video of it, like they come up with strategies too.

Stephen:                             [00:41:19]               And how deep does the relationship get when you’re taking advice from them? All of a sudden they’re really, really invested in your success.

Speaker 3:                           [00:41:27]               Well, I think it’s important and this is what I’m, what I’m doing currently is if I see, um, increase in sales, if I see a bigger production and work that they’re doing coming out, then I will give bonuses. I think it’s important. Incentives are really important from what to keep your motivation up when you’re working hard.

Stephen:                             [00:41:47]               So how does that conversation go? Hey Steve, you did a great job because of all the extra work you’ve done. I’ve sold x number of shirts, I’ve got a new wholesale account, and so therefore I wanted to pop you an extra 20, $30 or whatever just to say thank you. Keep it up. This is how you can make more money and this is how I can make more money.

Speaker 3:                           [00:42:07]               Well, here’s the thing is I didn’t tell. I don’t tell them that I’m going to give them bonuses when I hire. I don’t say anything about bonuses. I don’t think it’s needed.

Stephen:                             [00:42:19]               So there’s no expectations when it comes. It’s really

Speaker 3:                           [00:42:22]               surprise. Surprise, yes. Yes. You cannot say I’m, I’m going to have all these bonuses because in the back of their mind, all they’re thinking about is, well, what am I going to get this bonus? What am I going to get this point? And if they don’t get it now all of a sudden I’m there. They’re thinking poorly about you

Stephen:                             [00:42:40]               is what’s bonus a bowl? Does that change depending on your needs? I mean, is it, you know, is it can vary. It’s not necessarily.

Speaker 3:                           [00:42:49]               It can be whatever you see that is moving the business forward. Any kind of growth in any way. So what I did was I never told a couple of the [inaudible] that I was even gonna give bonuses. Here’s what I did. I pay them weekly. I gave them a few extra dollars when I pay them, and then I wrote a comment and said, amazing work. There’s growth in the business, here’s a bonus. And they looked at it and they were shocked, like, Whoa, what happened? And all of a sudden now all of a sudden there’s a bigger production of output of work coming, coming out.

Speaker 4:                           [00:43:22]               Yeah,

Speaker 3:                           [00:43:23]               they’re more motivated.

Stephen:                             [00:43:25]               It builds the loyalty. Right? Now, all of a sudden they have somebody honestly cares. And he’s saying, Hey, I will reward you when you do this. This is the expectation if you do this, plus I can help reward you write good behavior as opposed to negative reinforcement. Right? This is a positive,

Speaker 3:                           [00:43:42]               positive reinforcement. So this is the basic psychology and this is a part of what you learn in teaching.

Stephen:                             [00:43:49]               This is the teacher, Mrs Rose Rose, I could see you whacking me with a ruler back. That’s what they used to do back in the day. All right, so let’s talk about this because I’m interested, um, that because what intrigued me about you was your pinterest a thing. Because, you know, I was, I would do my research. You know, you bring up a very good point that pinterest can be used if you produce products. If you offer services, if you have a blog slash podcast slash youtube channel slash website, it’s, it’s so prevalent today to have anyone. I mean, a lot of people have a lot of those things. And so is one, one platform that I use. Um, I have somebody who helps me, um, we use it for my podcast for example, we put all our stuff out there and it’s really neat because it suggest other people that, you know, and I know people come to me, but I haven’t thought about it with products. I know that, you know, if I have a product to import from China and my highlighter, right? I’m in putting these gorgeous highlighter, so yellow and uh, so I’m inputting it. But, but to show that, to get that message out there, pinterest is a very, very strong platform that would help pretty much most products. Correct.

Speaker 3:                           [00:45:07]               Just about everything because there’s a lot of people on Pinterest, there is more and more men. They’re using pinterest. Um, even though a lot of men may not want to admit it or say it, it’s actually quite good. It doesn’t matter what your, what your gender is as quite good as far as doing your research and looking for things that you want to find and see and saving it for later. It has become a big powerhouse and it’s growing fast. It’s growing extremely fast in the last few years. Um, you have to remember that it started in 2010, so it’s, it’s fairly young yet, but it’s grown significantly faster than a lot of other social media sites as far as usage. So it is very, very powerful. I would encourage people to leverage it. And what this did for me is the creative thinking of how do I solve the problem of driving traffic over to whatever it is that I’m selling or doing. And that is a big problem that you face here.

Stephen:                             [00:46:07]               It’s a massive problem. It’s a massive problem and everybody’s panicking like, how am I going to get traffic to my site? Everybody wants to do a shopify store, right? Because they want to have a little more control. They want that be planned, right? We’re all talking about a b plan here. And so I’m still on my highlighters, on Amazon or on Ebay, and I want to bring them over to Steve’s website and he wants to sell them, but nobody comes and looks at Steve’s website. You said he’s very sad. Nobody’s buying as highlighters office website. And so you’re saying that pinterest can be one of those methods?

Speaker 3:                           [00:46:36]               Yes. Yep. It doesn’t matter where you sell. What you need to do is drive traffic to it. So if I want to increase my chances of selling my products on Amazon, it would be smart for me to drive traffic to it from outside of Amazon so that I’m not solely relying on Amazon itself. OK, that’s important. That’s a strategy. So that’s one of the multiple strategies that I’ve put into place as you know what I think I need to do this strategy. Let’s see what happens.

Stephen:                             [00:47:07]               Let’s stay with that. So it’s my highlighter. So if I have a picture of my highlighter on Pinterest, that link behind it goes to my buy box of my highlight sitting on Amazon’s warehouse. There’s no there, there’s no competition for price with that, right? Because they see mine, right?

Speaker 3:                           [00:47:25]               As long as you can link that where it shows just you in the buy box, then that’s very, very helpful. Yes. If you have a blog, you could use an Amazon associates affiliate link for Amazon. Put that in your blog to your product, right about it. Write about the problems that solves, how it can be used, the benefits of the product, who it’s for. All of those things. Write multiple articles with your affiliate link. Now you’re going to do a double dip. You’re going to receive some income for the affiliate sales, plus the actual product if they choose to purchase that product. If not, that’s OK. They went in to Amazon. If they buy something else, you’re still going to receive a commission with the affiliate sale of that. Whether or not they buy your product, you’re going to win.

Stephen:                             [00:48:08]               OK? So let’s pause there because I hope people call it that. Give very, very clever what you just said. OK, so you’re saying, Hey Steve, if you come in, I draw you in because you’re wanting to look at my highlighter and you come in through there and you click through and you click through my affiliate link to my highlighter and you choose not to buy it because you didn’t like the color, whatever. It doesn’t matter when, when they buy something else in that same session where they are going, you are going to get a percentage of that, right? So you could use this as a point of entry. So it’s not necessarily a, you, you still, when you don’t want as much. I mean it’s a small percentage, but you know, nothing ventured, nothing gained. There’s no cost to you, right?

Speaker 3:                           [00:48:56]               Just have right. Putting in, putting it out there, driving traffic to it is all. So when you drive traffic to it, um, it would be smart to use an affiliate link so that you can receive something for your time of driving traffic to it. Even if they don’t buy your product. Exactly. If they purchase something off of Amazon, which most people do today, you get to receive something.

Stephen:                             [00:49:23]               So you have another third one without having to source and other product. Now a second stream of income. Look at that. I was going to say there’s been, maybe it’s a d or an e plant, doesn’t matter. It’s a small little revenue stream that even if your Amazon account got shut down, you still have tactically clicks through strategies and this is rose. Very good. Very good. So, uh, so you offer a, a, a pin traffic power course. Um, it’s a group that you have and, and uh, and I’m gonna let you pitch it. It’s pin traffic power. I correct. Is that how they get to you?

Speaker 3:                           [00:50:01]               Yeah, there is a core. So if you go to pick up at the Lincoln. Yeah, yeah. There’s a, there’s a course that’s been traffic power is the facebook page and then you’re going to see if you go down a on the left, you’re going to see any commerce course. So I had put together a year ago, a pin traffic or I’m sorry, pitches for e-commerce course because I wanted to cover all of ecommerce with pinterest and how driving traffic and multiple ways of what I’m doing and testing and the of studying it for two years and seeing what works, what doesn’t work, and my attempt was to put it all in one place and it was, it was a monster to tackle to address in a course and what I’m going to do down the road in the future is to separate that out into different units so that there’s even more focus because people are getting the feedback is that people have been getting overwhelmed because of the massive amount of information in there. So the teacher, the teacher in me is saying, oh, OK, I need to focus this better for people so that they don’t get paralyzed and they can take action.

Stephen:                             [00:51:07]               That’s your whole process. Yeah. Right. Well that’s cool because I’ve not really seen a lot of good pinterest stuff out there. So this is a depth course. Say up front. I don’t benefit other than I success others. That’s what we want to make sure that they understand that I’m not doing this for the money, I’m doing it because I want to see people drive traffic. It reinforces this is if you have a surface, so if I’m a car detailing service, this is just as powerful as the same product or the same technique would work for any of those things.

Speaker 3:                           [00:51:42]               Absolutely love it, love it, love it. Doesn’t matter if you have an online business or if you have a brick and mortar business or if you offer a service. A pinterest is a very, very powerful way to get your things out there and the reason why is because when you pin something, once other people keep pinning it, that’s your goal. Other people will keep saving it and pinning it and then the other people you know, it just snowballs. The next people keep hitting it and saving it. One pen can hang around for years. I think a one pinterest pin that I’ve found a few months ago was dated from back in [inaudible] and it still appeared in my newsfeed from back in [inaudible]. I was amazed by that. They really do hang out for years.

Stephen:                             [00:52:27]               Let me ask you something. When you had success as a teacher, you get in to start selling on Amazon, things started to click when you got over that Hump, when you said, I can do this. What was it? D, is there any one thing or one point in time that you remember that you got through that, OK, now I can do this, and then it gives you the confidence to start adding these other things.

Speaker 3:                           [00:53:01]               I guess for me, a tackling challenges has been something that I’ve grown up with that of just not being afraid to tackle things and go for it and do it. Um, so I, I mean, it’s, to me it’s nothing new and even, even college can be, you know, tackling challenges and overcoming those and you just keep going your whole life with that.

Stephen:                             [00:53:29]               Sports is a good analogy, right? So sports, a lot of people that are in teams and they, you know, they overcome and they defeat his music the same way. I, you know, I’ve never played an instrument that, uh, is that it seems like as I, like the clouds just opened up for me and I’m like, oh, that would be the same way. So if you have a musical background, you could be successful in this business because you’ve accomplished something, right? You’ve took on something that’s probably really challenging. It’s the music. When I look at music, uh, you know, um, I don’t know how to call it the music sheet. It’s completely Greek to me. I look at it, I’m like, I have no idea what any of those things, but if somebody can figure that out, they could tackle this. Absolutely.

Speaker 3:                           [00:54:11]               Which is my, my specialty area in that direction is, is that the number one problem with people talking about music and what they’re wanting to learn. The number one problem is reading. So that was something that got me started. This whole thing was how do I reach more people? And I figured out how to build a website and start a blog.

Stephen:                             [00:54:30]               I can bring that full circle, but I think this is a good point because you’re now on the other side of that. You’ve got a, you’ve got a merchant business, you’ve gotten an Amazon business, you got an Fba coach or an Fba business, but you’ve got a coaching business. You got this pinterest courses and stuff, but now with all these skill sets that you’ve learned, you’re still going back to the pain points that you saw in your previous life and you’re addressing them because you have all these skills, these newly learned skills. You went to college and you didn’t get all these skills, you know, are adapting them. I think that’s a very powerful story that are people are looking. They’re always looking for what’s next, what’s next? Go back because now you’ve got this and you can apply it. I think that that’s a very, very cool. It’s like it was like a almost like an epiphany to me when I heard you say that. I’m like, it’s so smart because you now have the skills that you didn’t have that didn’t get to build on. I love it.

Speaker 3:                           [00:55:26]               You just keep leveraging, you just keep leveraging. And so that’s what I’m doing is I, um, I, I don’t, um, music has been something that is a passion of mine, but the problem is I only have so many hours in a day and I can only teach so many people and it’s more efficient for me to figure out how can I reach more people and the way to do that is online and I can either teach one person at a time to teach one person during one hour or I could potentially teach thousands of people during that same hour of time.

Stephen:                             [00:56:04]               I just heard a professor say this, he said, when I have a classroom, I’ve got 30 to 60 students in the classroom. He said if I put a lecturer up on Youtube, I’ll get a hundred and 50,000 people that are watching animal. And he’s like, and guess what? Those hundred and 50,000 are there to learn because otherwise they’re not going to give up that time. And I’m like, as opposed to just filling out your degree requirements. Right? And I was like, yeah, that’s a, that’s a big fundamental change in the teaching profession, isn’t it? I mean, it really is. And he said, he’s like, look, you know, what’s missing the university? That’s really all that’s missing a. we’ve got a student, we got a teacher and they’re hearing it. And so there was nobody collecting a fee because it’s free. And he’s like, that’s very rewarding for him as a teacher

Speaker 3:                           [00:56:52]               and for most teachers get into teaching for the, for making a million dollars, I’m making a lot of money. They do it because they want to help people, they want to make a difference. And so that’s what got me started with his whole thing was creatively thinking, what can I do to help more peak people make a bigger impact and be able to reach more people? And it was online. That was really the only way because I only have so much time, um, you know, I, I can only teach one person at a time or two and what, what can I do? And that creative thinking is what got me into all of this, of how I can make a difference. And so a lot of what I do in the business is my music niche. I’ve taken that and leveraged it and I’m still leveraging it out even further yet with the music stuff. So I’ve never let go of it. All I’ve done was leveraged all of it. I’m taking it now to another level. That’s all that I’m doing. Do you still get the,

Stephen:                             [00:57:57]               the thrill that you know, cause when, when you see a kid with a light bulb going on, I mean that’s gotta be probably the win, right? That’s right. Do you still get that same feeling doing what you’re doing without the physical contact?

Speaker 3:                           [00:58:11]               Absolutely. Because even I’m on my blog, I have a way with doing more of this and learning all of the many, many faceted ways of e-commerce and now I’m going back into the blogging stuff again and I’m taking both worlds and fusing them together to be very, very powerful. And what I’m trying to accomplish, what I’m doing is I’m noticing people are commenting on my blog and I haven’t been writing over there regularly. They come in and they comment and say, thank you so much. This has helped me so much. It helped me to write this piece of music. It helped me to do this thing that I was trying to do. And they, they. I know every single week I see these comments come in, all kinds of stuff. So it’s telling me that it’s helping somebody, that it’s making an impact.

Stephen:                             [00:59:02]               It’s the applause, right? It’s not what you’re looking for, but it’s the OK, yes. I’m clearly on the right path. I’m connecting because I think that’s the hardest part is to connect. And so you get to see it and you know it’s real and you sit up a little taller in your chair and you’re like, this is pretty awesome. Right. What would your teaching friends say about this? I mean think about the, especially the public school because now you know, I mean I’ve got friends that are teachers and they’re miserable and it’s just, it breaks my heart because I know him personally and these are like the best people in the world and it just breaks my heart to see I’m unhappy and I’m like, boy, I don’t want unhappy people teaching your future kids. I just. And it’s not like. And it’s almost always every single time if they would just let me teach, I could do it, but I can’t because I got to do all this other stuff. There’s all this point. I don’t know what this other stuff is. I don’t know what it means. It doesn’t sound good. I don’t think I want to know. So. So what I mean, when have you had this conversation? Because people look at you like, what are you doing? Why? Why don’t you walk away? What happened? Did you fail?

Speaker 3:                           [01:00:08]               So at first in getting into this, I really had to keep it to myself because if I were to talk about it very much, people just think I’m crazy and I think that’s, you know, that’s common. You hear that all the time. People think you’re crazy. And then at first I felt like I had to explain myself. No, I don’t really care. I don’t really care about it.

Stephen:                             [01:00:26]               What caused that? What, what, what was the switch that you didn’t care if the success?

Speaker 3:                           [01:00:32]               Um, well, yeah, you’re, you’re seeing that it’s working and success. We have to define success. Success relative success doesn’t always mean money. Alright? A lot of people in this business think that success is money. It’s not all just money. There is more things that really equals success. And for me, one of them that’s important to me is helping somebody else.

Stephen:                             [01:00:56]               The fact that you, you’re doing it at scale, that’s the wind, right? And so that gives you the confidence to finally say, you know what? Hey Steve, this is what I do. I love it. Because guess what? I know you taught, you know, and I’m sure you don’t rub interface. You taught 30 kids this semester. That’s awesome. I had 500 moon rose. You’re giving me the tingles. I think this is a very exciting. I know what’s cool to me is you’ve made the connection all the way back because I see a lot of and I guarantee you see the same thing. You see so many people like what’s next? OK, I’ve created this business now I created a job in some ways and I wanna know what’s next and a whole bunch of people are looking at, well, I’m going to get into real estate. I’m going to get into this, or I’m selling mattress. That’s a lot of people are selling mattresses and I’m not putting them down. I get it right, but we all know those people. Right? And so it’s like you’re going back to what do you love? Because you weren’t running away from it. You were just looking for something else and now you can go get the full pleasure of what you want. How do you teach that right there? How do we. How do we bottle that and teach that

Speaker 3:                           [01:02:02]               because you know you may be passionate about something. That’s what you’re. Maybe you went to college for, that you’re passionate about. You love it. You don’t have to let go of it just because it’s not making enough money for you to live on or that it’s high stress and it’s affecting your health, which is very common with teachers. You don’t to totally let go of it. You just need to creatively think of what you could do differently to make that adjustment and put some strategies into place. And um, there are, I do have a lot of coaching students that our teachers and their, their teaching currently and I give them some ideas and some things that I’m doing that they can develop streams of income for that they get excited about because wow, I would be able to reach more people. It would solve the issue of some of the stress in my life.

Speaker 3:                           [01:02:48]               My health would, would get better. It would solve some of the problems of financial issues where you’re working so much and you, you feel like the pay is not coming in according to how much of your heart and soul that you are putting into it and there are limits that are put on you and I’m a. I’m a person who was a no limit person. I don’t like people putting limits on me because I know that there is so much potential to do even more and to do even better and I don’t want that to be hampered, so what I do is I just move in a different direction where there is no limits and for me this is what it was so that I am not being limited any longer from realizing what my personal full potential is and it’s really important for me to live to my full potential.

Speaker 3:                           [01:03:33]               It’s going to be very freeing for you. Yeah, that’s a gift. You know, we’re giving these gifts and we need to do them to our full potential and that’s important to me. That’s important to me. I want to be able to go to my full potential and not have someone trying to put me in a box all the time when I come up with some strategies or strategies and ideas and I test them, I see that they work. I don’t want someone to say, Oh, you can’t do that because of some strange rule that hasn’t been thought through. I want to be able to run with that and see what happens and where it goes and every time that I do at works and it’s amazing the results that you see. So be so. Be careful about limits. Don’t put limits on yourself either.

Stephen:                             [01:04:16]               So if someone. I mean if someone’s interest, if this connects with someone you offer coaching, you’re a coach and an Amazon coach specifically. Um, but it sounds, I. plus you do pinterest him. So it sounds like though, that it expands out from. Yeah, I think that I, I think that’s a very cool. Again, because you have so much more [inaudible]. Rose is not that she’s all that and so therefore she has more to. Oh, that’s cool. I think you’re one of the few that I’ve seen that there’s more to it. I’m not just an Amazon code.

Speaker 3:                           [01:04:51]               Right, right. No, and I, I do express that right away with each person that I start coaching with, but I want them to see the full picture of potential. But sometimes I have to be careful about how much I share because it overwhelms them.

Stephen:                             [01:05:06]               Yeah. Well that’s the lesson. Pinterest, right? You learn that lesson,

Speaker 3:                           [01:05:10]               that and then some will say, but I want to know all of it, you know, cause I want to see what all possibilities are here. I say, but we need to pick one to focus on

Stephen:                             [01:05:20]               and then we’re back to the beginning of the conversation taking one and then breaking it down into smaller pieces and just moving through it. Not Stopping to understand it all through. Oh, Mrs Rose, you’re a good teacher. I get it. I get it. OK. So if someone wants to follow up and has a question for you, what’s the best way to get in touch with you?

Speaker 3:                           [01:05:39]               Contact me through facebook if you want, you can join John. There’s a group that we have a for free if you’re wanting to do more specific to pinterest and how to leverage your business overall, whether it’s an online business, brick and mortar business, whatever it is, if you need help and you want to drive traffic to whatever it is that you have that you’re offering, you can join. Our facebook group is called [inaudible] traffic power that’s open to the public. And uh, get some, some tips and hints there. I do go live on a weekly basis, answer questions, give strategies, give tips, give all kinds of hints. So I, I’m a type of person where sometimes I say too much and um, you might want to be taking notes because I have a hard time keeping quiet with, with things that I discover and learn and I get very excited about what’s working and I tend to, um, just let people know, probably

Stephen:                             [01:06:35]               I think back to the teachers I learned the most from was the enthusiastic ones, just had it and wanted to give it to you. Those are the people I learned the most from. So I think that’s very cool. And I’m, I’m pumped, I’m OK. So I will, uh, I will put all these links in this episode. I am a terrific story and what a terrific future because there’s no boundaries, no limits a trust the process, and expect results and create a backup, a backup plan. I love that. Thank you so much. I wish you nothing but success.

Speaker 3:                           [01:07:13]               Yeah. Thanks for having me here. This is great fun. A lot of fun.

Stephen:                             [01:07:18]               Sorry, I sounded like a giddy school girl because I was excited. I’m sure I did and I’m sure everybody’s chuckling, but it’s true. She definitely heard through Ziomism got me enthusiastic and that’s what you want. That’s what you want in a leader. That’s what a good teacher can do for you, is they can inspire you to get better, to get more, to give more, to be your full potential. Even as she said earlier, I’m very inspired. I hope you are too. I think that this is such a powerful message. You’ve got to go back and look and narrow your focus because you come from somewhere and that that business that you were in, you could go and fix some of the things that were wrong or think about all the things that were wrong with it. Hey, now you have skill sets to go back and address some of those things, so as in Theresa’s case, put up a blog, but if some posts do some video, do a podcast, whatever it is, go back and start addressing that and you might have a business. You have a b plan, c Plan d plan. Just a great, great advice. E-Commerce, momentum, [inaudible] e-commerce, momentum [inaudible]. Take care.

Stephen:                             [01:08:15]               Thanks

Speaker 2:                           [01:08:16]               for listening to the commerce momentum podcast. All the links mentioned today can be found at [inaudible] commerce. Momentum [inaudible]. Under this episode number, please remember to subscribe and like us on itunes.

 

 

Stephen-Peterson

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