400 : Chris Green – Change your side hustle to a side business

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What’s an idea guy to do? He helps others. If you don’t know who Chris Green is, then get ready to meet one of the most giving guys I have ever met. Helps tons of people with no expected return. Tons of great ideas, very approachable and ready to help you grow your business.

 

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Chris’ previous episodes: 100, 200, 300

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Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Chris:                                     [00:00:00]               My ideal, I kind of audience are military moms. That’s a very common one. Military bombs. Uh, and they have very specific needs. And I’ve talked to enough of them that I understand what those needs are. You know, typically they want to contribute to the family, but because of constant moving and relocation, it’s can be very difficult for them to find a job that they could, they can do because of the schedule. But when they hear about self publishing and hear about merchant by Amazon, they hear about FBA, they hear about, wait a minute, I don’t have to do a wholesale. I can actually just contact wholesalers and create buying lists that I can then sell to actual wholesalers. And I can do that from anywhere at any, like that’s the key. It’s when you understand what’s out there and you, and you’ve got to have a little confidence to plug yourself in. And then I typically take people to from 1.0 to a 2.0 you could certainly do any of these as a military mom. Two Point Oh uh, is to say, look, I’m going to help all the other military moms.

Cool voice guy:                  [00:00:57]               Welcome to the ecommerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of ecommerce selling. Today. Here’s your host, Steven Peterson.

Stephen:                             [00:01:10]               Hey, wanted to take a second and talk about Gaye Lisby and, Garry’s, Amazon seller tribe and their daily lists that are put out, um, and incredible stories that you can read if you go out and check out a amazing freedom.com forward slash momentum hyphen arbitrage. I know that’s a lot to put in there. Amazing freedom.com forward slash momentum dash Arbitron and you’re going to get 14 day free trial, no money risk, no, no challenges. You don’t want it when you’re done, you get out. But imagine getting list. I’m as grateful as like to call it mailbox money. I love that term. Mailbox money. It’s where you can work from your house, buy things online, have them deliver it to you, and then sell them on various marketplaces. But imagine you can have somebody else do that for you. So you want to buy time, you want to control what they’re buying.

Stephen:                             [00:02:07]               Well you take these lists and you can join multiple lists if you’re interested. And then you can segregate them for the merchandise you want and send them to them. They can make purchases for you on your behalf, have it delivered to you or delivered to them for prep. Boom, sent into these marketplaces and you could sell. How about that? Wouldn’t that be awesome? I spoke at their conference and there were so many million dollar sellers just using online arbitrage. It’s still available. And again, 14 days, the only way you’re going to get 14 day free trial. So if you come through my link, it is an affiliate link. They do pay me. So I don’t want to mislead you in any way. Um, I would appreciate it, but I’d like to see you try the 14 days. I’ve had so many people that have joined have so much success.

Stephen:                             [00:02:50]               It’s very exciting to me and you know, quite humbling to me, um, that they trust me to recommend this group and I 100% recommend this group. I’ve seen the results. These are great people that will also teach you to fish. This isn’t just a, hey, here’s the list. You’re on your own. No, this is, hey, here’s why that wasn’t a good deal. Or here, hey, there’s another opportunity and you get to join their groups. And it’s just a phenomenal group of people. Um, just great, great, uh, leaders in that group. And these lists are phenomenal. So again, it’s amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum, hyphen arbitrage, amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum hyphen arbitrage. Use that get two weeks free. Try it. You don’t like it, drop out, but give it a shot. If you want to add that to your business. Welcome back to the ECOMMERCE, but a podcast, this is episode 400 is that crazy?

Stephen:                             [00:03:43]               400 millions of downloads. I’ve been so fortunate. I’m so lucky and I get to spend my 400th episode with Chris Green. He’s my every hundred eight has it until he doesn’t want it. These aren’t, um, and in this episode, it’s crazy that we literally talked through how to create a business. We literally create a business. About my water bottle, my stinkin water bottle that’s sitting on my desk. I talk about it, probably many episodes. He creates a business and his mind, the way he thinks, the way he breaks it down it, it’s fascinating. I mean, it’s just so cool how he sees things that most of us Steve do not see. And I’m a noticer, but he’s a noticer cubed. I mean, it’s just phenomenal. Great, great episode. I’m just, just such a great guy. Let’s get into the podcast. All right. Welcome back to ecommerce momentum.

Stephen:                             [00:04:35]               It is episode 400. So who am I going to have on? Of course, every hundred. It’s Chris Green. Welcome back Chris. Great. It’s good to be here. Congratulations on 400 by the way, that that’s, that’s crazy. Like you must be busy. I did. You expect you would get the 400 now. But here’s two things that happened. Uh, one, this one happened yesterday and a, some visitors came by their warehouse and spent some time, uh, with us, my son and I, and we just sat there chatting with them, very inspiring couple. And he said afterwards, he said, hey, you know, you know, I’d love your podcast, whatever, but this particular you helped someone that related to, and I’m like, how did I help him? I, you know, he goes, no, I pointed him to one of your episodes. I’m really good one that I really loved. And he said, this helped this gentleman go, like push past whatever the challenges he was because whatever he was facing, this other person must’ve faced. And you know, I usually get to that point in the conversation and they said that that was very similar and it pushed him past that. How awesome is that listening to this other person, not me talking about that and push past this point of pretty serious discussion. Um, that’s gets me to episode a thousand. So I literally think about episode a thousand right now. I’m like, okay, what am I going to do for episode a thousand? It’s gonna have to be a big deal, you know, and I’m only a 400 so I love it.

Chris:                                     [00:05:58]               I do love it still. It’s a crazy accomplishment to get to 400. And I like the fact like what you’re explaining is that wait a minute, you can do something that you actually enjoy. And because of the Internet and technology and, and all this interconnected things that we have, you’re able to help other people remotely without your knowledge. Right. And sometimes that gets back to you, sometimes it doesn’t. Right,

Stephen:                             [00:06:18]               right. Nobody needs to tell me that, but it’s just so hard moving hearts,

Chris:                                     [00:06:23]               but great when it does come back. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That’s, that’s the point. It doesn’t always come back. Sometimes it’s years, sometimes you’ll never know. Um, but you know, it’s, if you don’t put out any type of content to help people, then, then those things won’t happen. And you know, you found something that, yeah, it’s fun and you’re good at it and it’s helping people. So yeah. You’re, you’re on the hook for a thousand episodes.

Stephen:                             [00:06:46]               There’s no doubt. Um, maybe 10,000. Um, you know, we were talking before in our precall we are probably chatting for way too long. Um, but we were talking about this very issue is about finding what you love and staying interested in that kind of thing. We were talking about different careers and stuff like that. What w you know, you’ve, you’ve evolved through this whole world. All right. I mean I think back to, you know, retail arbitrage, right? Um, and all the different books you’ve written, uh, merge, uh, since then, all these different things. How do you stay interested? I mean [inaudible] cause some people were like, wow man, Chris, if you would have given scam power, you’re all now I would argue you did give it your all at the time that that was your thing. Right? I’m not saying you’re not involved in it, but I’m just saying that was your thing way back. Retail arbitrage was your thing. Uh, so, and tools was your thing. You seem to segment, maybe it’s segment your life and you kind of let it run its course so then you move onto the next thing. I mean, is that, is that fair? When I say it that way,

Chris:                                     [00:07:45]               I don’t know if it’s compartmentalize exactly that way, but I might use, is it buttoned down by design? No, absolutely not by design, although then subconsciously, maybe by design, you know, uh, because I think you, you have to get, you have to put some years on, right. And I don’t know what the, you know, if it’s 30, 40, 50, whatever the number of years where you have enough time to look back on where you can actually kind of, you know, analyze yourself and kind of realize what you’re good at, right? Whether it’s yourself figuring out what you’re good at and what you enjoy, or it’s other people who are kind of constantly reminding you if they’re like, hey, you’re like really good at this, and you’re like, really? I never thought about that. Like, that takes time. When you’re like a teenager, you’re probably not going to figure that out.

Chris:                                     [00:08:27]               And as some people do, I’m not trying to make absolutes or anything. Uh, but you know, looking back, I can kind of find some common threads through all of the things that I’ve done and how I’ve applied that common thread to different scenarios. Whether I was working as a power tool sales rep and trying to do new things in that company or when you know, FBA comes out or when retail arbitrage as kind of like teaching, you know, retail arbitrage existed before I wrote books and, and started scan power and all these things. But when everything kind of happened, we’re like, Ooh, this is exciting and this is new and this is something everybody can do. And I do realize that I like to tell people about things, right? And there’s probably a little thread of, of people want to be liked. And for me it’s just, I just get excited about things and I want other people to be excited about things.

Chris:                                     [00:09:10]               So, you know, retail arbitrage became big, you know, for very specific reasons. I, iPhones and Android came out, four g networks came out, FBA came out and the app store came out, which means we could make an app where you could scan any barcode, get the data fast enough. And because of FBA you could buy half of the store and send it all to Amazon and not actually have to ship things out and made selling on Amazon, selling any products scalable and practical is probably a better word for it. So I was excited about that. But then you know, everybody, we did it and I’m like, well I want to do something else. Because I say looking back, I’ve done so many different things, but the common thread has always been like, where’s the opportunity here? Is there an arbitrage opportunity in terms of value?

Chris:                                     [00:09:56]               Should this value be put over here? Can we make some money, you know, in between. And I’m so glad that I was born when I was born because if I had to live in an age where like, hey, you can be a farmer or you can not be a farmer like in the factory, right. Putting it forward, barber back. Yeah, that’s it. That, you know, my brain will be going up a hundred miles an hour. Like, Oh, I wish we could do something else. But there was, you couldn’t do anything else. There was no practical practical thing that you could do. But now with the Internet, and I mean the print on demand stuff, not just merchant, when you start talking about books and other products that you can sell ahead of time, which is something I hope we get get into a little bit here. Uh, it means you can do so many things.

Chris:                                     [00:10:38]               You can test markets, you can basically front load your efforts with time. So you can say, Hey, I think there’s an opportunity here. I’m going to spend some time creating some designs or some files or some images that can be turned into products. If there’s that opportunity there. And if there’s not, then you’re not in it for money. You might be in it for some time, but everybody’s got time. And if you enjoy spending your time, say, Hey, I’m not going to watch TV tonight. I’m gonna spend three hours trying to create something that can be turned into a print on demand product and then it takes off. Now the money comes in and all you had to do was front load it with some time instead of what it used to be a buying inventory, waiting on shipments from China. Uh, you know, the liability and insurance issues and fulfillment and customer service.

Chris:                                     [00:11:21]               Not that those are necessarily hard or bad, but, but print on demand is, it’s just so much easier, which makes the opportunity so much more real for so many more people, which means it’s something I definitely want to be talking about. Let’s talk about print on demand for a minute now then I’m going to come back cause I got two questions that when you were talking about it that made me think about things. Um, what, what are some examples of print on demand? Because I think people think shirts, maybe mugs, maybe a hat. I mean give me some examples that just things that people don’t think about. Well, I think if you, if you really think about it and you’re taking a topic, maybe something that’s trending or in the news, um, there are more opportunities than people think outside of tee shirts. A lot of people are thinking, when I say print on demand, merge by Amazon, which is heavy in apparel, but you’ve also got kindle direct publishing, which now incorporates the physical books, which used to be on a different platform.

Chris:                                     [00:12:18]               So you started, and this is where you have to kind of think and get creative. Say, okay, I can make a book now there’s something trending. What kind of book can I make right now? We can get real specific on this one. Now, depending on when someone listens to this, it might be a little outdated, but this area 51 thing. Yeah, yeah. Is the perfect storm. This is not a 24 hour trend because the date is in the future, right? So they’re going to be talking about this until the date of this actual event, which is like September or something, right? It’s like September, some September 20th, September, September 20th when they’re probably beginning of August or thereabouts. Right. So you got a month and change. Right. And some people had more than a month and there’ll be other events where it’s like a week or like who knows what’s going to keep happening as the internet, you know, kind of if all blow up that idea.

Chris:                                     [00:13:08]               So stay with it. Area 51 very specific. Walk us through where your mind goes. The opportunities are what people are already putting up a tee shirts on, merge by Amazon. Okay. There’s all kinds of like little nuances to the, I’ll just call it a meme though. It’s not exactly a me, but uh, you know, and if I had to set like, if you want something to go viral like this has, I think it has to be meme worthy, right? Because this area 51 thing is so perfect for the beams because of aliens, because of rating cause of government because of secrecy, because of what are we going to do with the aliens after we get them out. Uh, all these, there are so many means. Like there’s a group of right now it’s like 750,000 people with thousands and thousands of posts every day with different mediums.

Chris:                                     [00:13:54]               So people are putting in, memes are becoming like kind of this currency. Like if it’s, if it can’t be meaned I don’t think it can go viral. And I’m not just saying this, but in general a, that’s something to think about as you kind of see an opportunity and say, hey is there something I could make around this kind of trend that’s happening? Well is that trend, can it be meme? Can it be turned into a lot of memes? Are people going to keep posting memes about it? And if so that I would say, hey, it’s got a better chance of going viral, which means I want to spend more time potentially finding what kind of books can I put out about it? What kind of tee shirts will people that are, that are interested in this want to buy? So let’s, let’s take the harder one books cause t shirts is easy, right?

Chris:                                     [00:14:35]               Like you’ll be all the names. It can be any of that. Yeah, that’s, that’s an easy one. So if you don’t know, just go to any, go to Amazon and put in, you know, air storm area 51 shirt and you’ll see all the shirts that are put up and say, oh, okay, I get what kind of shirts people are buying, but what books, what kind of book can I write? I write a book about what happened. Can I write a book? Well, people think books and they think stories and chapters and words and all these things. I’m like, how about area 51 coloring book, right? Uh, how about find the best memes and turn those into coloring book pages or find the images and make a, make your own meme coloring book. Or does have to be a color of just to make your own meme book where you get the memes and you write your years in.

Chris:                                     [00:15:17]               Uh, I think there’s a, you know, when I say you can print on demand anything, I think we can take that even a little bit farther because of sites like Kickstarter, right? So if you have a product, and this is, this is honestly where I am spending time today, if you have a product that you think would sell well to a community or group of people that are interested in some kind of trending events just like this, then all of a sudden you can put it on Kickstarter. You have to, you have to have a prototype, right? Kickstarter wants a prototype, which of course you can make, you know, it doesn’t have to be the perfect prototype, but you could mock something up. Uh, and I’ll put it on Kickstarter and see if it takes off and say, Oh hey, it took off. I’ve got a, I got funded, I’ve got all this money in here now and now you can go back and actually produce the product, right?

Chris:                                     [00:16:08]               So it’s not a, hey, let’s buy 2000 of from China. We’ll put on Kickstarter and maybe sell it. No, no, no. You need one. And you need a prototype and you can use the internet and you could hire people to make mock ups and computer generated stuff. Whatever you want to do. And now you’re print undemanding basically, or you’re preselling with the, the out of, hey, we didn’t get enough orders. Everybody gets their money back and it’s no big deal. Uh, literally anything through Kickstarter. And I’m like, I’m doing this right now for the area 51 thing, but I’m thinking ahead. I’m like, well, what’s going to be next? What else can I do? And this is where, you know, people know me as the Amazon Guy, arbitrage FBA guy, you know, now it’s spending time with Kickstarter and you know, it’s kind of crazy but I’m following the opportunities and I am definitely more interested in passionate when it’s something fresh and new and there’s kind of a time limit on it.

Chris:                                     [00:17:03]               Like there’s like, hey, it’s time to strike while the irons hot. Uh, you like the immediacy of it. I think there’s a bigger upside when there’s, well there’s definitely a bigger upside when you can be first to market. And does it help you stay motivated? I mean is that what it is? Cause you know, you, you have a timeline, is that what you know or you better under a deadline? Is that kind of the thing that gets you excited about it? I think everybody is better under a deadline. If there’s no deadline, it’s very easy to, oh, we’ll get to it tomorrow, we’ll get to it tomorrow. Uh, you know, so having this deadline, not just on the event, you know, and I think this, this will kind of turn into a, in my opinion being before the event, uh, it could turn into a yearly thing.

Chris:                                     [00:17:43]               It could turn into like a, a burning man type event in Nevada. I hope that someone sees that. I can’t, so that, that’s another thing. I can’t do that. Right. So I can sit here and be like, dude, somebody needs to turn this into the Novato burning man. That’s not for me to do. That’s for someone who under, who knows how to put on big events and all that stuff. Uh, so I don’t try to do things that I’m not good at. Right. And I, and I know this from, you know, I could try to be that guy, but you know, I know enough that that’s not me. Um, but there’s lots of opportunities around it. And when there is a deadline, every, I say everybody, I can’t think of one person or one example where if you don’t have a deadline, you’re going to work harder, right?

Chris:                                     [00:18:25]               Everybody’s going to work harder with a deadline cause you have to get something done. But for me, I guess the deadline, it’s not so much of a deadline as much as it’s you gotta be first, right? There’s such a huge benefit to being first on so many things. Uh, it’s not a requirement. You can certainly be second, third or 10th if they have a better product. Uh, but the being first is the easy one. You can have a crappy product and be first and get an uh, an inappropriate, what’s, I forget what, I don’t know what word I’m looking for. Uh, a disproportionate amount of attention just for being first. Now if you’re actually good and have a good product, that’s, that’s even better. So you can be good. And first it can be really tough to beat. And of course, I’m trying to be good, right? Like, like pretty much everything that we’ve come out with, like, like scam power and the books like that. They’re good. Which a little segue. You have to be good if you want to have some success, right? Every I, all the marketing tricks, all this stuff, none of them work. If either you’re not good, your book’s not good, your product’s not good. You have to, you have to be good. So everything that I say assumes that people are making a good product. I remember

Stephen:                             [00:19:33]               a couple of interviews ago, you said to me, you can get away with it. One Steve, you could lie once or you could cheat once. That’s it. And then, yeah, you said that and it’s, and it’s the context. No, no, no, no. I think the context was we were talking about relationships or something like that, you know, and, and, but it’s basically the same thing what you’re saying about product. You can get away with it for a little while when there’s no competition, when there’s nothing good. You know, cause like you said your first, but it ain’t gonna happen. It’s not sustainable because people will immediately, you know, figure out this as crap. We want the real thing and then the good comes and boom, you’re crushed. Right?

Chris:                                     [00:20:08]               Yeah. I would put behind it like as long as your intent is good, you can have a crappy product. Right. As long as you’re actually like, your intent is to make a good product. Just happens to be that, you know, you wanted to write a good book but you weren’t very good at writing books. So you put out a bad book, you know, you’re not putting out something bad. You’re not like lying, you know, with, with bad intent or anything like that.

Stephen:                             [00:20:29]               [inaudible] says that, you know, he said his first book, He, you know, he wrote it like in a day or two and he said, people are reading it and they’re like, hey, on page 33 you misspelled the word or use wrong grammar. And he goes, hmm, where’s your book?

Chris:                                     [00:20:41]               You know, where’s your break? Different folks, you know, I, I like the stuff he puts out. Yeah. He don’t, he knows what he’s talking about. But for me it was always like, that’s free editing. Oh, okay. So he actually, he was offended by it and just was like, I’m not fixing it. That’s it. I, I, you know, where’s your book? Totally fix it. You know what? Let me think. You probably printed a book, right? So like when I, I’m talking print. Print. Yeah. He had a real book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I’ve just dated. Yeah. And I was like, thanks. It’s like free editing. And that stuck with me. He stuck with all these misspelled books. Let me ask you this though. I want to get

Stephen:                             [00:21:13]               specific with this. What are you good at? If you had to say, you know, because I’m sure you’ve taken these tests in that, but if you had to say, because you’re an idea guy, I mean, that’s one thing that everybody would say that you’re a really strong idea guy. I mean, you’ve got a million of them, no shortage, but what would you say you’re really good at? And B, you know, don’t be humble here. Be, be honest.

Chris:                                     [00:21:36]               Oh, I know what I’m good at. I’m good at seeing off this. I’m good at seeing opportunities and not just for myself, but for other people as well. And it seeing a recognizable,

Stephen:                             [00:21:51]               because I think there’s a difference. I don’t know. That’s a different, I think recognizing you’re listening to others and you hear things coming out and then you’re like, oh, there’s an opportunity. We’re seeing opportunities you kind of looking forward and you’re out there looking, Huh, you know, there’s going to be land over that next horizon in it. Cause I can, you know, I don’t know. Maybe it’s kind of seeing, not really seeing the future, maybe seeing the trends as opposed to recognizing them. I think there is a difference. Well, I’d say I’m good at both of them then. Okay.

Speaker 4:                           [00:22:21]               Um,

Chris:                                     [00:22:23]               here’s, here’s an example from literally today, right? This happened today. Um, some, someone who I apparently have met, um, well I’ve met so many people at somebody events just like you have. Oh, that’s sometimes they kind of run together. Uh, but I’ve got, you know, the 5,000 Facebook friends and all this stuff. So I see. So, uh, notification on my newsfeed or just scrolling through the newsfeed. And it was somebody looking for a broken ryobi tools because they were trying to make like a custom 18 volt battery adapter for their kids power wheels. And if you know my history, I have a ton of broken Ryobi tools cause they used to sell on Ebay and Amazon and I got the returns and I never really processed them. They’d just sit in boxes. So I messaged him, I was like yeah I, I got what you need.

Chris:                                     [00:23:09]               I got a whole bunch. So he kind of explained exactly what he needed. He just needs it so he can attach the battery and all this stuff. So I kind of showed them, I had some flashlights, I had some circular saws, I had some drills and some impact drivers. So we’re chatting back and forth. He’s like, oh that’s really cool. This would really help. And I was like Guinea batteries cause I got these batteries. But I don’t know if they work cause they’ve been down here for a long time and I’ve got chargers if you need those adapters and you know, clearly I’m not going to sell these things. They’re just sitting in my garage. And one reason I don’t sell them is cause I’ve had them for so long that I don’t trust them to sell but to give away or to give to someone who’s going to chop them and use them for pieces.

Chris:                                     [00:23:44]               Perfect. Right? Uh, something. You know what, I’m just going to send them to this guy, you know, absolutely free but then I’m thinking, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. You’re making custom on power wheels. You’re upgrading your power. Cause I’ve got kids, I have power wheels. Those batteries and chargers are nonsense, right? Like give me a fast charging 18 volt, that’d be put two 80 volt batteries in there and put my dull waltz in there. Something. Let me like make this little thing scream and put some good tires. I like, let’s have some fun with this. There are people out there that do that. And I said, wait a minute, if you don’t know how to do this, why don’t you also make like a youtube video kind of showing parents how to upgrade their, their kids power wheels and how to use different power tools and how you did it and and like, you know, which wires you need and all these things.

Chris:                                     [00:24:26]               So I met as we were chatting, I said, hey, could you make a youtube video about this? She’s like, Oh yes, absolutely. I was like, all right, now it’s now just got a lot more interesting, right? Because now you can take a skill, right? Or some knowledge of saying, look, I know how to take a power wheels toy and you know, kind of change it a little bit with 18 volt or to Walt or commonly used power tool batteries and make this car better and faster and charge faster so my kids can play with them more. We’re just going to be interesting to a lot of parents, which means you can get attention and if you can get attention then you can sell them something. So I’m probably never going to go all the way down the road and say, look, let’s make a book on Amazon and a guide about upgrade your things.

Chris:                                     [00:25:08]               Or you can sell a little kits or you can sell like, but you certainly could. Right and that option’s going to stay there and I don’t know how good this guy is as far as making videos or upgrading these toys or whatever. But you start to see, wait a minute, there’s an opportunity there to get attention to provide value to other people and potentially make it into a little side business where you have a community of people who want to upgrade their kids power wheels and you can offer help and you can offer videos and you can offer like a little club and you can trade parts, you can have a little membership. There’s all kinds of things you can do around the most random things. But even then, I wasn’t thinking that when I saw the post I was just like, Hey, I know I got broken road B tools. I’ll hook you up and you know it. It’s, it feels good for me because I’m helping somebody. I’m getting junk out into my garage. It doesn’t need to come back to me. Although 99 times out of a hundred, it typically does. Um, it’s just one of those random things. But I, I find opportunity in everything

Stephen:                             [00:26:06]               Jane Miller told me once, he said, Steve, when three people ask me basically the same question, he often says there’s a business there because three is 3000, 30,000. Right? He’s, he’s that. There’s a whole bunch of people looking for the same thing. So he wants to answer that. And he, he always sees that as a business idea. It sounds very similar to what you’re describing. You know, the more you start talking about it, it sounds cool. It do you feel, do you feel like a kid in when you’re having that, cause I can hear the enthusiasm in your voice as you were describing. Do you feel like a kid sometimes when you’re getting into that, like that level of you could do this and you could do this. Oh of course.

Chris:                                     [00:26:44]               I mean that’s, that’s like the curse of like it doesn’t stop, it doesn’t turn off. Like I can’t go on vacation and not think about it. I can’t walk through an airport and not be like, oh, you don’t want to be really cool is if we did this and we did this right. And not just for me, but like if I like it, I know other people, not everybody, but some enough other people would, would also like it or be interested. But what Dan Miller said is exactly true and it’s one of the things that I talk about when I, I kind of coached some people, um, and kind of helped them identify what they’re good at and then kind of explain if it was me, how I would turn their story in their towns into a business. And I typically say it like this, look, are you able to answer people’s questions about a topic?

Chris:                                     [00:27:23]               So if they say, look, I’m good at this. I was like, well, can you answer people’s questions about that? I was like, well, yeah. I was like, well then you have a business. Because if people have questions and you have the answers, some of those people are going to be willing to pay you for those answers and you could find those people with the Internet. But of course you, you have to set it up. You have to have the platforms. You have to understand, okay, am I going to self publish a book to get attention? Am I going to join Facebook groups around this topic in order to answer questions and show other people that I’m knowledgeable and helpful? Am I going to do all the, you know, start a podcast? Am I going to make youtube videos? Like if you’re good at something, you do have to package yourself up so that people can buy you or buy your info or buy your product because you could be the most knowledgeable person out there. And I’m sure there are, there’s someone out there who’s more better at spotting opportunities than me. But if they’re not on Facebook, not on Youtube, not on any of these sites, you know, no one’s going to know about them. So it’s not about being the best, it’s just about kind of putting yourself out there. When you give that advice to people, how many of them take it?

Chris:                                     [00:28:24]               Most of them understand it. Uh, no but I’m all right. Maybe I should say better. How many of them take action on it? That I, I don’t know. A lot, have a lot. A lot more than I, I’ve thought I’ve, I recently read it in my office and I got all the books together from people who either have, I literally helped them write their book all the way down to editing or I really encourage them to, and like they put my name in the book and it’s dozens. Like if I had to guess, if I had seen the pile, wow. I would have been, I would have not had have guessed how many books it was. But then when you start putting all the books together, like holy smoke. That’s right. I had helped her with that. I helped them with that. I helped him, I helped her like holy smokes.

Chris:                                     [00:29:06]               Like this is kinda crazy. And, and I really, I should almost pile them all up and make a video about it as encouragement to the people who kind of think that it’s too big of a task to take on. Like, oh, I could never write a book. Oh, I can never do what you do. I can never admin a group. Oh, I can never start a youtube channel. Like, the truth is, yes, literally everybody can. It’s not that difficult. But, you know, it’s typical stuff. We probably talked about it before. Like, you know, people are afraid of other people’s opinions. They’re afraid of failure, they’re afraid. Like, and that’s, that’s just unfortunate that that still permeates so many people. Uh, because who cares if people don’t like it?

Stephen:                             [00:29:44]               Well, let’s talk about this a second steps to apply what you’re good at. So in your example, you know, you know what you’re good at. How do you apply that to move forward? Um, so you help somebody, you know, like you say, Hey, they have knowledge. They have, uh, answers to questions that are being asked. They have all the answers, right? They’re the, they’re the jeopardy person, right. That knows like every answer for Alex drove x question. How do you move forward with that? Where does, where does somebody start?

Chris:                                     [00:30:10]               Well, I generally have people kind of join existing communities. Uh, your Facebook groups is still probably the best place to find people who are also interested in something and you can join as an expert. It depends if you’re going straight like to say, look, you know, I know what I want to do. I want to build my own group or I want to start all this. And there’s different strategies for that as far as contacting the admins and doing different things. But a lot of it’s just joining communities and just listening and being like, okay, what’s going on here? Or are there a lot of your very common questions? I mean, a graphic designer who joined, emerged by Amazon community and just listened or basically just read all the posts would be like, holy smokes, I know what you guys need. Like boom, that’s it.

Chris:                                     [00:30:52]               Business, give it to them. Right. And that’s so easy too. So graphic designers say, look, I know what you guys need, whether it’s like a bunch of templates or graphic or a course or, or some explanation of what makes a good design. And you can bundle that up if you can create a consumable product, right? Whether it’s a free video or a paid course and then you contact the Admin, right? Because we’re not trying to go in and spam or anything, but we say, hey, Admin, I made this, you know, do want to do an affiliate relationship. You know, like, I’m, I have what your group needs, let’s find a win win for everybody. And it just kind of go from there. And it’s not always about monetizing, but you can certainly start for free. You can make free videos. No admin is going to turn down free videos, uh, you know, so it’s a bit of a process, but everybody, I find so many people have interesting stories and not just interesting but like valuable stories, right?

Chris:                                     [00:31:44]               Like they’ve been through something and I’ve told so many people, oh my gosh, I wish I had your story because your story is incredibly marketable. And I just by that I just mean people are going to listen to your story. They’re going to identify with your story, they’re gonna connect with your story and they’re going to follow you because it’s authentic. Uh, but every story is unique, right? Like I can’t tell their story. Only they can or they can get attention. And a lot of times I think people think they need to make a stories or have content for everybody instead of like, no. Like my ideal I kind of audience are military moms. That’s a very common one. Military bombs. Uh, and they have very specific needs. And I’ve talked to enough of them that I understand what those needs are. You know, typically they want to contribute to the family, but because of constant moving and relocation, it can be very difficult for them to find, uh, like a job that they could, they can do because of the schedule.

Chris:                                     [00:32:41]               But when they hear about self-publishing, they hear about merchant by Amazon. They hear about FBA, they hear about, wait a minute, I don’t have to do a wholesale. I can actually just contact wholesalers and create buying lists that I can then sell to actual wholesalers. And I can do that from anywhere at any, like that’s the key. It’s when you understand what’s out there and you, and you’ve got to have a little confidence to plug yourself in. And then I typically take people to from 1.0 to a 2.0 you could certainly do any of these as a military mom 2.0 uh, is to say, look, I’m going to help all the other military moms because the other military moms will listen to me and they’re not gonna listen to Stephen Peterson not gonna listen to Chris Green. Cause they’re not military moms. They’re not either women, right? Like they have a very specific audience that you can help and they’ll identify with you, you understand their struggles and you have something that you’d know they want a need.

Chris:                                     [00:33:31]               And that’s the difference between being a salesman and maybe being a pontificator or an evangelist for something. It’s like you have something they need. Like you’re not going in to trying to sell them. You say, Oh, you really should get all merged because like it all, I want to validate myself that I want to be an emerge or because I’ve got, of course I want to sell. He’s like, no, you need to be on merge because you’re crazy. If you don’t, it’s the best opportunity for someone who’s in your military mom position. And then I say it takes the whole salesman part out of it where you don’t sound like an MLM. You don’t sound like a pyramid scheme. You don’t. Because I get that. A lot of people hear that and be like, oh, you’re just trying to get me to sign up. I was like, no, it’s because you’re crazy if you don’t. But everybody has their kind of blockers up against advertising and marketing, especially MLM type stuff. Um, that’s sometimes it’s hard to get through to people. I, I’ve seen that over and over again as well. One of the calls,

Stephen:                             [00:34:21]               the things that I saw you speak a couple of weeks ago and you were talking about a new way to think about these print on demand products and it doesn’t have to be yours. And I’m like, when I, when you first said it a couple times, it took about three times for you to repeat it to get into my head. And I’m like, what’s he talking about? Like I, I’ve messaged my son, I said, oh, we got to write a book for a particular private label product. I literally, I swear to God, I wrote him this note at the beginning of your talking. I’m like, Hey, we got to get, we got to write a book because this is going to be great. And then I finally dawned on me later on, you’re like, ah, you don’t have to write a book. If I heard it, I don’t know how many times he said it, but I finally heard it like, you can use somebody else’s book. And it was like, Huh, oh, I get it now. I mean it was like, it was like the cloud again. That opportunity. You know, and I don’t know that you found that opportunity, but you recognize maybe you’re right, that that is another skill set. You recognize that opportunity and said, huh, people can take this and apply this to their brand to build a search, I guess. Is that, is that what they build is search?

Chris:                                     [00:35:31]               You could call it search, but you’re kind of piggybacking on a maybe the of the brand ability or the, the clout of the area 51 discussion again, right? You’re taking, you see a trend and you’re, you’re piggybacking on that trend. What’s our, there’s a lot of attention. So I think it’s a little different from that. Like everybody has some common thread. You’re right though. It’s, it’s that you see there’s that attention. Maybe that’s what it is that you recognize. Hm. Well, I think it’s just, you’re putting all these pieces together that are all out there and I think a lot of people don’t, they don’t think about, oh, I can do that. I didn’t realize I could do that. Like you could go buy 100 copies of a Gary Vaynerchuk book and give them away and now all of a sudden you’ve got keyword Gary Vaynerchuk and you and people are paying attention versus if I go on, I mean I might be able get away with a little bit more, I mean I’m certainly not the biggest author, but if someone’s super fresh and new and they’re like, hey guys, I’m giving away a hundred copies of my book.

Chris:                                     [00:36:26]               And people are like, who are you? Why would I buy your book? Right? But if you’re giving away a hundred copies of Tony Robin’s book or, or someone who’s got a recognizable name and all of a sudden you include copy of your book in there as well. Like, oh, now people that are interested in this topic or an entrepreneurship or whatever it might be, and you can, I don’t wanna say sneak in because sneak Kinda has that as a negative connotation, but I guess it’s sneaking in and an ad in your book as well. So how would you do that? So stay there on that because like I’m going to give away a Tony Robbins book and in addition you’re going to get my book is my book. Then a discounted offer to spur you’ve, hey, for an additional dollar you can get my book and then therefore we see sales of my book.

Chris:                                     [00:37:09]               It’s basically, you know, instead of having to run ads, I mean is that, is that kind of a concept or no? Well the, there’s some details, right? So you can’t bundle books on Amazon. It’s a weird rule. Okay. Oh, but you can certainly bundle books off of Amazon. Right? And for me, if you’ve got someone who like if they’re doing a giveaway or are you just selling, I mean, you could, you can buy, uh, you know, books and then sell them back if you want. Yeah, I wouldn’t add an extra dollar. I’d be thankful that I found someone who’s interested in say, podcasting, right? So you find you get the best podcasting book and then you include your small, it doesn’t have to be the biggest book, but your smaller podcasting books is gonna cost you a $2 and 50 cents to include it. But you’re doing that because you have some reason to do it.

Chris:                                     [00:37:52]               Maybe you’ve got a back end membership or a podcasting course or something. So all these things you can do, you also have to have a goal in mind because if you don’t have an actual plan for like, why are you doing that? You certainly can do it. But why are you doing it? Um, but if you want to build an audience of people who are similar, who are following, you know, Gary Visa, good example cause of entrepreneurship, uh, you can give away his books and you can include other stuff as well. I mean, you could, you could make a three or four pack of books and say, hey guys, as a super bonus, I’m gonna include a copy of my book, you know, from zero to 1000 episodes, a podcast or story kind of thing. And now you’ve got people that have your book in their hands.

Chris:                                     [00:38:29]               Right? It’s a good way to kind of see the market. Uh, it’s just, it’s kind of different ways that people I don’t think think earn is solely possible. But I mean, it’s not even possible. They just aren’t thinking that way. I don’t want to say, not thinking in a bad way, but like, you know, I do this all the time. I had to explain what a virtual bundle was to a, to somebody, uh, and they were like, how does that work? What are you talking about? Like a virtual bundle. Like Amazon can literally sell a podcasting microphone and a set of headphones as a bundle on Amazon, even though they’re not packaged together. Right? If they’re in the same warehouse, they know they can ship at the same time, Amazon will sell it as a, as a, what I would call a virtual bundle. US as sellers can’t do that, at least not through FBA. Right? Uh, we certainly could, um, create a merchant fulfilled bundle that includes a podcast or microphone that we have at FBA as well as a, as Gary V’s book, right? Or, or Stephen Peterson’s book and as a merchant fulfilled bundle. And then as we get that order, we then drop ship. We actually order, uh Huh.

Chris:                                     [00:39:41]               Well, technically, okay. So technically by the rules, since it’s not an open podcast, you would have to buy an FBA, the books as well, whether you’re books or someone else’s books, then create a multichannel fulfillment order, uh, pulling both of those and sending them to the customer. The only downside of that is now it’s a merchant fulfilled option instead of an FBA option. But you could virtue basically virtually bundle. And it’s kind of these little creative ways to do things. And, and I would go a step further and I would, I mean this is kind of gray hat, but I would just drop ship the book from Amazon as well as, you know, multichannel, fulfill my, uh, whatever your product. It was a, and then you can create all kinds of virtual bundles. You could literally create a a hundred virtual bundles for the top 100 entrepreneurship books

Stephen:                             [00:40:30]               with the goal being what, what, what do you do with that information? Cause I think people are going to sit there and say, oh okay that sounds good. But what do I do with that information? Is it set a cost of acquiring a customer? Is that because that list, those people are, so let’s just say on October entrepreneurs, we know that these people are into entrepreneurship and therefore eventually like you say, I’m going to sell them a course or I’m going to sell them something on the back end. Is that the plan? Well I gotta be a little careful about this because there might be some like very detailed Amazon rules that I might be comfortable with. Well let’s, let’s go a different, let’s go a different direction. Let’s just say this. Okay. So I sell water bottles. I got these beautiful water bottles and they’re gorgeous, right? And so I’m selling them. So for me, I want to get athletes to buy it because man, if they would see this, they would know how strong this water bottle is. But you know, the only thing I can do is run ads right now on Amazon to get them to match. Right. I can be really careful with the keywords and blah, blah, blah. What you’re talking about. No, go ahead and tell me what I would do. What, what, what approach you could take by using this giveaway option? Well, we would best get

Chris:                                     [00:41:34]               into Amazon giveaway after this. Oh, okay. All right. So [inaudible] option, but I mean, what you can do is [inaudible] I think a lot of people are, are thinking sell on Amazon is like their first main or even only sales channel versus Shopify, Facebook, their own website. Anything like this where you can, I would go a step further and said, look, you could bundle literally anything that’s sold on Amazon as a quote unquote virtual bundle, right? That you can sell your water bottle with a running guide, find the top running book on Amazon. So you put it on

Stephen:                             [00:42:06]               landing page of your own and just say, hey, you get this and boom, I’m shipping the water bottle in my warehouse and the book is coming from Amazon. They wouldn’t know that they come separately. Right?

Chris:                                     [00:42:16]               They wouldn’t care. Right. Why would they care? Both products. Okay. And you could tell they could write them a message. You can automate it and say, look, you know, uh, we use multiple, you know, fulfillment channels. They’re going to come from, you might get two different packages. You can do it through FBA, can do it. Their multichannel fulfillment. You can do it through your own warehouse. But the point is that you have access and Amazon with books. It’s just a good example because you, I, I’ve purchased, uh, bulk books from, uh, when, uh, Gary V’s launches. You can, and I feel I found the company then they sell books like the companies who, you know, want to give what every employee kind of thing, like bulk books. Uh, Amazon is typically cheaper than the literal wholesale book places, right? Cause Amazon wants low prices, especially on books.

Chris:                                     [00:42:58]               They shouldn’t be a male. You know, not, not all of them of course, but, uh, very inexpensive. You cannot buy the books cheaper than on Amazon. So you basically have this source of products then now you can bundle on your, went on your website, right? Like you can get creative, say, look, buy a six pack of my sports bottle and pick any two of these books right around running or fitness or kito or like, I don’t think you could make it up as you go, whether it’s a specific one you want or to give the customer options and just build that into your cost. So you run a special here, the next 100 orders, uh, who buy two, buy two bottles or more, get a, get, you know, one of these three books or keep it simple. Get this book for free. It sells on Amazon for 22 bucks. Uh, and the order received, they’re getting a value, right? Cause I, they want the bully arching,

Stephen:                             [00:43:47]               but I mean they perceive that because you’re, you’re basically giving them everything they’re, they’re asking for. Right. You made it easy for them and yet behind the scenes, all you’re doing is it’s just points over does a purchase, multichannel fulfills, boom,

Chris:                                     [00:44:02]               hey, it’s just extra options, you know? And I think people don’t always think about

Stephen:                             [00:44:06]               no chance. Anybody’s thinking about that, about, I shouldn’t say anybody. The outliers are, I’m sitting here thinking, Oh man, that’s so clever.

Chris:                                     [00:44:12]               So you’re also sweating. I have so many products to sell. Yeah, and you’re adding scarcity. You’re saying the next 100 orders on layer, the next 10 and you might lose money on those 10 right, but, but that’s the cost of acquiring a customer, which again, especially go back to retail arbitrage, a lot of retail arbitrage sellers, myself included, we weren’t thinking about repeat customers and email addresses and customer bases and target marketing. And we’re like, I just sold this Disney thing and made 12 bucks. Sweet. Now what? Right. Versus now people say, Oh, wait a minute, I’ve got a private label product. I know who my customer is. How can I get them in the door? What else can I sell? Like the average, what’s my, you know, the average cart value and like all that other stuff that gets in when you get into like kind of selling 2.0 if you can get a customer in for a $4 cost, right?

Chris:                                     [00:45:00]               And now they have your water bottles and you can follow it. You have their phone number, you follow up with them. You say you just want chicken on the water bottles. You know, I, I’ve, and I would, I mean we could write a script for water bucks. I would call up and be like, is it not the best water bottle you’ve ever had? Right. Like really kind of prompt them to be like, this guy’s crazy. This guy’s calling up. And he’s like, I can tell this guy’s excited about water bottles and who knows where those conversations go and say, look, Hey, I’d love to, you know, send a water bottle to a friend of yours. Just give me a name and address and I’m gonna send them a free water bottle. Now this just works depending on your cost and your product that your plan, this isn’t, you know, I’m not giving advice for every single type of product, but I mean, think of the goodwill you would get from a phone call where you just said, hey, somebody you work with, what’s your boss?

Chris:                                     [00:45:42]               What’s your, is a they I’ll send to you. I’ll send them one at the company. I’ll put from your name as a gift. That guy’s going to tell everybody about your, about your water bottles. Right. And this is where I get excited. Okay. It’s creative. It’s doing things that haven’t been done before. It’s doing things that other people aren’t doing. And there’s probably a little vanity in that or it’s like, Ooh, we’re the first, right. Like, oh, no one else is doing it. It kind of makes you feel special. Um, you know, I just, I just like doing that kind of stuff, you know, and it works. I think about all the companies in the corporate world that off, uh, they took all their customer service overseas and they did anything they could do to reduce costs because that was what they had no choice.

Chris:                                     [00:46:20]               What you’re describing is to bring it, make it personal, almost to scale up personal service. I mean, which is, it’s unscalable but it can be done, but it isn’t. It isn’t. Well, it’s hard. So most people won’t do it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Imagine if how, think about this. I want to, I will stay on the, on the water bottle thing, right? You get someone who buys them, you find them on Facebook or linkedin. So you know what company they work for. So you do, you do it intentionally. You don’t do it for everybody. You’d be like, holy smokes, this guy works at a, uh, a pretty big company in his hometown. Uh, so let me call this guy and say, look, I’d love to give one to your boss. You know, maybe the vice president of company, whatever it might be, I’ll put a nice handwritten note and make it from you, blah, blah, blah.

Chris:                                     [00:47:04]               Now you have contact information literally for the head of the company. Now you give them a gift, right? And then you can follow up with them and say, Hey, you know what? I hope you liked it. Um, you know, if you want, you know, we’ve got a corporate discount. If you, you know, we could actually engrave, uh, every one of them if you want to give them maybe to your leadership team or maybe to everybody at a company picnic or something and now you get an order for 600 water bottles. Right? Like how hard was that nick? What? Oh, but gave a what? You lost $4 on a book that you gave away at the beginning. You know, and it’s not like you have to order all these books and ship them out. Like you have basically the Amazon catalog at your disposal and,

Stephen:                             [00:47:40]               and it’s an automated process, right? So that, that scalable, the first part of it. Yeah, the first part that’s scalable to you. See, now this is, this is the problem. Now I’m literally going to be shot for the rest of the day cause I’m going to be sitting there thinking about, hey, what if we did this? What if we did this tomorrow I’m going to a trade show and now my whole thought process, the whole ride is going to be consumed by this and then I’m going to get to this trade show and be thinking differently. Um, I guess that’s why I love what I do.

Chris:                                     [00:48:10]               You got an opportunity cause you’re, I’ve never talked about this to anybody else, right? Like we, we literally made this up on the spot. Uh, and that’s what I like. It’s unscalable what I do when I talked to people one on one, we generally always find some great opportunity that matches what they’re good at, what they want to do, takes them from where they are to where they want to go. I give them the confidence. So they’re like, you really think I can do that? And I’m like, absolutely, I think you can do it. And I’m like, well of course green thinks I can do it. I can do it. I’m like, no, you can do it because you can do it. Like I have literally nothing to do with it. But I do understand the psychology of like you need someone that you look up to to kind of encourage you and all that.

Chris:                                     [00:48:47]               So if I can be that to some people, you know, great for other people it’s, it’s someone else, but everybody has something. I’m, I’m confident that everybody has something. And you know, I’ll give you like a preview. I want to do like a kind of a mastermind group next year, starting next year. But I am confident that I could take anybody and take what they’re good at and turn it into a six figure business. It’s literally anything that’s a big statement. I mean, I would prequalify, right? So I’m not just saying, look, if you come into my mastermind, I can make you a ton of money. Like, like we got to have like a little ego exploratory call first. It’d be like, oh dude, you really should. Yeah, I can totally work with you and we can make at least a six figure business. And how long does that take?

Stephen:                             [00:49:29]               I mean, uh, you know, and I know it depends on the person and their ability to execute and all the rest of that stuff, but be realistic. I mean, you’re saying that if Steve has a really good idea and it’s a developable, developable, ah, I can’t even say it’s an idea that can be brought along. There’s some legs to it and I’m enthusiastic about it. Um, there’s a real opportunity for a six figure business there.

Chris:                                     [00:49:52]               How long? It’s hard to say that that’d be something that’d be, I would not want to make a guarantee on a year. Okay. So 12 months, 12 months is enough to, somebody asks me faster,

Stephen:                             [00:50:04]               get some stuff. I have some guys listen into my warehouse for Ebay and they were like, uh, it was, it was basically my age and I said, Oh man, that’s the same year I was born. And the guy goes, does it seem like that long ago? And I’m like, no. I mean times flying. I mean a year, 12 months is nothing. A year

Chris:                                     [00:50:21]               goes by so fast, especially the older you get the seem to go by fast. You can certainly do it a lot faster. I mean, you could make, you know, you get to a hundred grand in sales in a month depending on what you have, what’s you’re good at the time. You have to to say, you know, if you’re going to sell something, you have to somebody to sell. So that’s typically the hard part is to say, look, you know, we need to make something consumable. You need to make a digital course out of what you’re good at. You need to make a physical book out of what you’re good at. You need to have something to sell. You need to package yourself up and consumable format, and then you have to reach your market. Whether it’s establishing yourself as an expert, which most people are, right? They are the experts that nobody knows about it.

Chris:                                     [00:50:59]               So you have to spend the time making sure that people know that, oh, this is the goto person when I want to learn about this. And a lot of it is taking what you’re good at. Taking that skill or talent or knowledge and saying, look, how can you use this to help other people make money? Or how can it cause, well, I’d say it this way. How can you use it to make money? Because if you can use it to make money, then also other people can use it to make money. So there’s kind of that 2.0 thing again where it’s like, wait a minute, okay, I can actually teach what I’m doing because now I have the knowledge of bundling up information and turning it into physical products. So it’s not just, I did it myself. It’s like I understand what I did. I didn’t just do it, but I can do it again kind of thing. I help people,

Stephen:                             [00:51:42]               well hear this and sit back and say, Huh, this might be something I’m interested. So you have the best website in the world. It’s like the easiest one to remember. Do I, Chris? green.com oh yeah, of course. I mean, it’s like I tried to get mine, the guy who has mine, he’s rich. He’s not giving it up. There’s no chance. He’s like, no, no, it doesn’t need money. He’s not giving it up. Is this where if somebody wanted to find out more information about these kinds of things, is that where they, they find your information or do they come up to you when you’re at ASD speaking or at these conferences? Speaking, I mean, what were, I mean, where are you lately?

Chris:                                     [00:52:19]               Well, yeah, I mean the website’s always going to be there. I’ll do my home base. I do talk to a lot of people in person, which for a lot of the things that I do and teach is kind of, I don’t say, I’ll say it’s kind of the best because then you can, it’s just a different level of conversation when it’s one on one and it’s face to face versus putting stuff out on Facebook. Cause I do put a lot of stuff out on, on Facebook and people can find me. I’m not hard to find, you know, there’s information on the site that, you know, people that want to contact me and have questions. I try to help as many people as I can, you know, for free. Um, and I’ve, I haven’t found a way to scale like the one on one, which is why I just need to finally do like a, a true mastermind type event. You know, a year long thing where it’s, it’s truly about say, look, what are you good at? List of develop a plan, let me help you identify, you know, how we should do this and really turn it into something for people that are, that are ready to do that. I’m going to give you this one, this one,

Stephen:                             [00:53:12]               this one. This was one that I think is a perfect example. So there’s a thing called makerspace on youtube and if you ever follow any of those, but there’s this whole world now of people that make stuff and then they sell it, right? They actually show you how they make it. And this particular example, it’s a leather, I was showing one of my staff members the other day, I said, check this out cause this is him. He’s going to travel the world and this little trailer and see the world. And I’m like, dude, you can put a trailer behind that and put your tools in there and you could do this right? So the guy makes this leather glasses case. Really cool. Just any talks you through it. He shows everything at the end. He’s like, these are, you know, it’s a beautiful piece. And then he sells the physically, right?

Stephen:                             [00:53:51]               But then he sells the blueprints for it. 25 bucks. It’s like a vending machine, right? He created the demand for it in essence, because everybody’s like, oh my God, those are gorgeous. I’d love to have one or I’d love to make one of those things. And so he creates this virtual thing he creates, I, I figured it out. In his case, he has four revenue streams tied to that video for revenue streams. He’s got advertising from Youtube. He’s got a sponsor of the youtube show. He has a sponsor. He sells the physical glasses case, and then he sells the blueprint. Oh, a fifth stream. There are affiliate links for all the tools he uses. He’s like, every tool you see me using, there’s a list of them and it’s an affiliate link for Amazon or whatever it is, and I make money if you buy it upfront about that. So he has five revenue streams for that silly little glass’ sunglass case that he’s made. Um, or he could have a little shop in downtown Carlyle where he’s making them one by one and he’s hoping that somebody’s going to open the door and want that particular glass case.

Chris:                                     [00:54:55]               That’s a perfect example. Yeah, a perfect example. Right? But it is good at something, right? Remember percent, yeah, he’s good at something. He said, okay, how can I turn what I’m good at into revenue into a business and I can use the internet with video. And you know, it’s a little advanced said, okay, we’re gonna use the Amazon affiliate links in the description. That’s where you’re gotta have a, that’s where you need a mentor. Those, those are the barriers that most people would walk away saying, this is hard. Right? What I think of the power tools thing that we talked about, the power wheels and the tools and all that. It’s like the same type of video, exact same. It’s literally the exact same thing, which is why I spent 70 bucks and ups to ship a whole bunch of Ryobi stuff, uh, to a guy that I’ve only met once and could absolutely turn into nothing. Right? But it’s a fairly cheap bet, right? It’s like, well, it might turn into something, uh, and I might not, but it definitely won’t if I don’t send them some tools and some batteries and some chargers,

Stephen:                             [00:55:54]               you know, this is, this is why I love talking with you because I mean, and this is every time I’ve see you, every time we always end up in these conversations of opportunities and you know, just how much there is. And I just think, I think you’re a visionary when it comes to, and I, I mean that, um, and you know, you don’t, it’s funny, uh, they still call you the Godfather FBA. There’s so many people that you’ve helped and you’ll never know and you never get the, you know, you might get the comments here and there, but it’s so neat to see. So people still saying, man, that guy helped me out for so long and he has no clue of who I am. And that’s why you’re rewarded Chris. That’s why. Okay, it all so often comes back. It often comes back. Almost always comes back.

Stephen:                             [00:56:37]               And when did you do it without expectation? That’s when it’s really cool. All right, so Chris green.com, Chris green.com message him. He’s always available. His phone number for God’s sake is in his books. His cell phone number is in his books. Uh, very easy to find and uh, message him and talk to him. If this is any way interested, I don’t benefit other than hearing that you knocked it out of the park because you were smart enough to take action and join and whatever it is. If you’re going to make glasses cases and you can find out how to sell them that have five ways, that would be an awesome thing for, uh, for me and you. So, um, message chris@chrisgreen.com. Um, last, last favor for you. Okay. And I always ask this question, um, pretty much the same question is, you know, how do you get past the point of stuck because you, you’re helping people push forward in business. I want to help people who are in business get pushed past the wall that they’re up against. What’s your advice for people who are in business and I’ve hit a wall. Yeah, they’re hitting a wall because they hit $15,000 in sales and they’re like, this isn’t a full time living. This is barely, you know, minimum wage. I can go be a greeter at Walmart and make more money. How do we push past that? What’s your advice? Because it’s, you’ve got to hear that

Chris:                                     [00:57:50]               well, you’ve got to like go back to kind of your passion kind of thing, right? Like, I don’t know many people who, oh, so maybe they can push past it. I’d say they can push past it. But you know, a lot of times is also thinking, how do I turn this into something bigger, right? Like what’s scalable here? Cause a lot of, you know, I’ve known so many sellers they start with, with retail arbitrage and they love it and they get excited and they have a great fourth quarter and they think about quitting their job in January. And I’m like, Whoa, Whoa, whoa. I mean you laugh cause you’ve heard it so many times, so many times, same

Stephen:                             [00:58:23]               six figures by Friday. Steve, how can I do it?

Chris:                                     [00:58:27]               Uh, but it’s, it’s thinking we could wait a minute. You know, and I’m almost thinking of kind of rebranding, everybody’s talking about their side hustle. And I think it almost needs to be a side business, right? Where you’re actually thinking about like exit strategies and outsourcing and scalability and all of these things that I certainly never thought about. Like I’m saying this as, as being, you know, I’m 41 now looking back at my, you know, in my twenties of of running around to home depots in a u haul truck. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t, I didn’t understand. I didn’t have tax strategies, you know, but like, no, like we just, we just did it cause it was fun and we made money. A lot of people are doing that and then they kind of get into like, oh shoot, I don’t even know how much money I made.

Chris:                                     [00:59:09]               Uh, I got these expenses over here and all this. So it is kind of the hard part of saying, look, this isn’t really what I signed up for, but now I’ve got a little business here and I need to pay attention to it. I need to figure it out. You know, what processes can I put in place? Uh, what can I automate by just changing the terminology from a side hustle to a side business. It’s almost like a shift yet that does, I think that’s really, it’s like a shift. Okay, now you’ve got to treat it differently. You doing, and I think if people, I don’t know if you have to start that way, you can certainly pivot that way and it’s good. I think a lot of people maybe beat themselves up a little too much. Like, oh, I started this whole thing. I don’t really know what I’m doing now.

Chris:                                     [00:59:48]               I’m not making a bunch of money. Instead of like realize, wait a minute, you still know what 99.9% of the population doesn’t know you’re doing things they don’t do. You’ve got opportunities that they don’t have. So keep moving forward. Don’t be down. You mean I, I empathize with being down emotionally and be like, oh, this isn’t where I thought I was should be right now. It’s not what I expected, but okay, get over it and, and what are you gonna do about it? You know, and say, okay, I know what I’m going to do. Oh, I see the opposite. Oh, now that makes sense. What I heard on on our old podcast and Steve is there, oh, that’s what they were taught. You know, sometimes things click at a later date. Yeah. And then you say, oh now I have Chris Green was talking about how I needed to automate and you know I look back, I thought of this the other day I was doing a a video tape of business VHS, right?

Chris:                                     [01:00:38]               That’s how long ago this was. And I did it because it was fun. And I think about that today. I do March Amazon cause it’s fun. I’m doing this Kickstarter thing because it’s fun. I don’t necessarily know what I’m doing cause I went, I used to go to office depot and I would buy the big bags of peanuts and I would buy boxes five at a time and I would pack up these orders and I thought it was great. And I think back to be like, why was I not trying to buy boxes 50 at a time from an actual box supply place? Why was an I I using more efficient ways of packaging my stuff. Why was I looking for ways to reduce my shipping costs? Why wasn’t I looking for ways to define more? I just did it because it was fine, right? If I, if I go back and treat it like an actual business, holy smokes, I would have made a heck of a lot more money.

Chris:                                     [01:01:19]               So I think a lot of people in our space do some of these side businesses and side hustles cause they’re fun. They start making some money like, oh now I need to treat this like a business. And maybe nobody’s really put out a lot of content around that to say, look, he started a side hustle. It’s going well, but now what? Now what are you supposed to do? Now you actually have customers, now you’re doing customer service. Like what does that look like? You know, like so many people started chrome extensions and memberships where now they get emails every single day about forgetting their passwords and I did log in last month and I want a refund and just not what they signed up for. Right? And they don’t know how to kind of make that transition and say, wait a minute, I don’t have to do customer service. I still know so many people who are doing their own customer service. I’m like out, sorry, it’s a Tim Ferriss thing. When he was like doing his supplements and he was like, if you could solve the problem for under a hundred dollars just do it and don’t call me. Right. Because he had to automate or in grow it. Otherwise it’s like you have to call Tim every single time someone wants to refund.

Stephen:                             [01:02:20]               Like, no you don’t. It’s just a refund put systems and processes in place to do these things and it’s, you know, it’s tough. I mean if it wasn’t tough, everybody would do it. Change your side. Hustle to a side business. I love it. That’s right. Now that’s the title for this episode because I think it, I think you’re right. It just, your perspective would be very, very different. Um, and I think that that’s really important to thank you so much. I wish you nothing but success. Can’t wait to see you again. Yeah, we’ll do it again. Congratulations on 400 piece. You know, I get asked a lot about Chris. He is the guy. What you just heard. He is that guy. Um, and I’ve told the story, we’re at an event and these guys, I meet these guys, we get talking and I’m like, oh, there’s Chris Green.

Stephen:                             [01:03:04]               I’m like, oh, talk to them. And they’re like, oh, they’re a little intimidated, you know, and I understand why. Um, and man, I introduced them, I had to separate them at some point. I’m like, oh boy, it’s a little uncomfortable how long you guys are talking. And that’s what it takes. He’s that guy. He is as real as what you just heard him talk on this episode. So please, if you see him, go talk to him or if you’re interested in his mastermind, I don’t benefit. Cool. Go talk to him. Find out more about it because you heard him help create a business from my stupid water puddle. He can help you if you’re good at something. And just the fact that you’re listening to this means that you’re interested in investing in yourself and trying to move forward. He could help you. So Chris, green.com. Um, and, uh, tell him I sent you. I just think it’s awesome and, uh, that, that man has helped so many people and I can’t wait to help him. And anytime I can. ECOMMERCE, momentum.com e-commerce momentum.com take care.

Cool voice guy:                  [01:04:00]               Thanks for listening to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. All the links mentioned today can be found at in commerce, momentum.com under this episode number, please remember to subscribe and like us on [inaudible]

Stephen:                             [01:04:13]               tunes.

 

Stephen-Peterson

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