302 : Charles Leslie – Start with consistency and add in intensity for a successful ecommerce business and a successful life
Charles definitely has a positive vibe about him. To hear him say it: He has been weak, broke, overweight and a quitter. Not anymore. See as Dave Ramsey says: “You have to get sick and tired of being sick and tired” to really change. Well Charles has that down pat. Great story of getting things done. (Even when you don’t want to!) Great advice, great small goals and tracking methods. Btw.. He does coaching for health, nutrition and weight loss. Check out his website if you are looking for help.
Mentioned:
Sponsors
Gaye’s Million Dollar Arbitrage List
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] I’m excited to talk about my sponsors today, Gaye Lisby’s million dollar arbitrage group. Amazing, amazing group. This is a teacher. This is a Gaye, was a teacher. She is a teacher. Still. You need to learn. This is the type of environment you want to be in because she’s going to help you understand why, and I think that’s the hardest part of this business is understanding why. Why is the red one popular one? The green one isn’t? Well, there’s usually a reason and what gay does is probably parsed that better than anybody and she’ll explain the reasons for those things. I think that’s really powerful. Yeah. She puts out a list. You’re going to get a get use of that list if you get in the group. Now here’s the deal. The group isn’t always open, right? So you get on the waiting list and you can join the waiting list through my link.
Stephen: [00:00:46] Doesn’t cost anything to get on a waiting list and if you like her service, which I find that most people do that. That’s why there’s not so many openings and you’ll be with her for a long time and so it’s amazing. Freedom [inaudible], she’s part of Andy’s Slamon’s group. Amazing freedom.com. Forward slash momentum, and you’re going to get in the waiting list. That’s all I can get you on right now. You can use my name and see if that gets anywhere, but what I like about it, what I like about what they teach in that group or the things that are going on, you know the current things. I’ve seen a lot of stuff going on about stores going out of business. While here’s where an opportunity is, here’s why you want to do this. Hey, be cautious about this, you know, toys r us coming out, you’ve got to think about this and that’s the learning that you need to do and gay is better than anybody else I’ve seen.
Stephen: [00:01:31] So amazing. Freedom Dot com. Forward slash momentum will get you to the waiting list. Then hopefully it can get you in the group and then you’re going to see me in there and we can chat anytime you’re ready. Karen lockers. Group solutions. The number for e-commerce solutions for e-commerce dot com forward slash momentum. It’s going to save you 50 bucks. Karen’s our account manager. We recommend her to everyone because she’s done so well for us. I mean that’s quite frankly the reason we’ve been paying her for the last few years, but she’s become an important part of our team. Her and her team are so involved in our account. I just see the emails coming back and forth, hey, we did this for you. I just saw two listings today. I’m like, wait a second. Why did they show up? I didn’t put any listings up. They got a.
Stephen: [00:02:13] They got set off to the side by Amazon and they reactivate them for me. You know what I mean? That’s the stuff that just happens when you have a strong team and I can’t recommend Karen enough if you use my code momentum. Karen pays me. I don’t want to hide that. Of course we all know that, but you’re going to say $50 and it’s a great opportunity to really, really build out your team with somebody you can trust. That’s why I recommend them. So solutions for ecommerce solutions, the number for e-commerce dot com, forward slash momentum. It’s going to save you $50. Oh, and by the way, she’s going to do an inventory health report. Why is that important? Well, guess what fees are going up. Is your inventory health number declining like ours is? Well, here’s why and what they can do. What I like is I get a spreadsheet from them and it says, Hey, here’s a bunch of inventory.
Stephen: [00:03:05] Here’s what we recommend. And I’m like, Yep, re refund. I mean delete a return to us, blah blah blah, whatever it is, and it’s are destroyed and it just happens. That’s what I like. The other thing that I have Karen helped me with a lot is creating new listings. You know, we do. A lot of the researchers solves, we upload our images and then boom, magically the listing goes live and I don’t have to worry about it. Those are the services that run offers. Can’t recommend her enough solutions for e-commerce dot com, forward slash momentum. Save 50 bucks. Use My code. You save $50 a month every single month and it’s a great service. Plus you get that free inventory health report. I think it’s a really powerful way, so I can’t. I’m so excited how many people have been joining here because I see it and I’m excited because the messages I get from people saying, hey, this is great.
Stephen: [00:03:52] I finally feel like I can focus on something else because Karen and her team are watching this for me and I highly recommend her. Next up is scale solar lamps and scope. We’ll sit it wrong. It’s amazing. I mean, it really is amazing when you sit back and think about, hey, I want to get this product up and it’s similar to this product and that’s what that product does well, well therefore, if that product does well, they have the right keywords, they’ve chosen things correctly, so guess what? You scope and you could see all that stuff and that’s what the most powerful thing in the world is to copy somebody who’s done it right. That’s what you want to. You want to take advantage of that, right? I mean it’s, it’s fair to see and so therefore you can take and apply it to your listing and immediately get that same benefit.
Stephen: [00:04:39] That’s what scope does for me. Sellerlabs dot [inaudible] forward slash momentum. It’s going to save you $50 on service. Oh, by the way, it’s free to try. So sign up, try it and say, oh, this is how it’s done. Boom. And then you’re going to get the lights going to go on and you’re going to be like, man, I can get my products out there. I just can’t wait. Can’t wait. So are labs dot [inaudible] forward slash momentum. The other day I bought another domain. Yes, I bought another domain. It’s almost like I’m admitting guilt, but it’s because I had an idea and it was something that was a pretty good idea. I think it’s going to go pretty far and so what do I do? I go to try go daddy.com forward slash momentum and save 30 percent. So domains aren’t very expensive. You get a few services, it adds up a little bit and I usually buy it three years.
Stephen: [00:05:31] I usually buy privacy by the way, I recommend that to buy that. It’s not that much money, but when you can save 30 percent it makes it that much sweeter and it makes it easier when you’re buying domains and especially if you buy a bunch of domains. I am a domain collector and so I do tend to do that, but that 30 percent makes it a lot easier and I used to go down because what I like is I can pop in an address I’m thinking and it’ll say nope, nope, could try this version or try this extension and then boom, there it is. Hey, you better hurry before it goes away and the right, you know. And so try go daddy.com forward slash momentum save 30 percent. Also want to mention about grasshopper. Was that just talking to somebody the other day? And they were like, Oh yeah, use this company called grasshopper.
Stephen: [00:06:13] I’m like, dude, did you buy through my link and save 30 percent? Hello? Know they missed that. So save 30 percentage, try grasshopper.com forward slash momentum. No surprise there, but you’re going to save 30 percent and what the real cool part about that is they’re using it for their private label business and it gives them virtually a second phone on their current phone without having to get another number. They can make up a vanity number. They don’t have to go and do all the grief and sign loan contracts. Pretty easy stuff, and so if you’re creating a brand that you want to identify, you want to look professional, you want to look like a real company, grasshoppers, a great tool. It’s an app you put on your existing phone and boom, you now have a customer service to. You. Now have a sales department, didn’t have a manufacturing division. You could forward it to somebody else. You can have it go to different voicemails, different departments, and it’s all included. So try grasshopper.com. Forward slash momentum. Save 30 percent.
Cool voice guy: [00:07:12] Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast. We focus on the people, the products, and the process of selling. Today. Here’s your host, Steven Peterson.
Stephen: [00:07:26] Welcome back to the e-commerce momentum podcast. This is episode three, Charles Leslie. OK, this dude, I like his vibe. That’s what attracted me and I love a positive person. I love positive approach. I love somebody who’s willing to admit they aren’t right all the time. They’ve got challenges, they work through them. And that’s the story. That’s the rest of the story. Um, I just think that that’s just a cool place to get to in your life. I’m just imagine Charles and his wife rocking at the tunes in their warehouse and their three year old son sitting in there say, what are my parents doing? That’s a kid who’s going to have it figured out later on in life. Let’s get into the rest of the story. All right. Welcome back to the e-commerce momentum podcast. I’m very excited about today’s guest. I’m just, I love the vibe. I love somebody who has figured out who they are, what they want, and you know, kind of taking away the excuse something Casey Neistat did today about excuses and Charles. Leslie has no excuses. Welcome Charles. Thank you very much. Thanks for having on the show. You’ve got a vibe, dude. I mean, I, I catch a vibe like at night just about positivity vibe, I mean, is that, is that you, were you always that way?
Charles: [00:08:48] Um, I mean I definitely went through a personal transformations that helped me get to kind of the mindset that I have now, but over the last several years I definitely have always been kind of like the optimistic one of everyone around, especially when I got into like Fba communities coming from a health and fitness background. It’s a very positive community and that when I came into Fba I saw there was a little bit of a difference. So I wanted to be kind of that positivity that came into the community.
Stephen: [00:09:12] So. So you’ve gone through transformations, you’ve got to walk us through a couple that because I think a whole bunch of people face them and they don’t know what to do. They don’t know how to push through them because they think it’s. They think it’s only them.
Charles: [00:09:28] Yeah, a hundred percent. And I, that’s something I’m very, very big on. I’m not really the type of business owner that comes in. Like, I’m going to give you the best tactics to grow your Amazon business, like that’s all good and fun, but for me it’s more much more of a personal thing. And what I mean by that is one, one phrase, I don’t know where I heard this from one time, but it just always stuck with me is when you feel your best, you give your best. And I know that my businesses were slacking the most when I felt like crap all the time. And so when I took personal control of just simple things, right? Sleeping, sleeping a little bit more, eating better, moving my body on a daily basis, I started to feel better and that gave me more energy to put into my business, my clients, my friends, every, everyone.
Stephen: [00:10:10] So what does that do for your relationships with your, your spouse and um, your family specific stem, seeing you in a positive way?
Charles: [00:10:21] It’s just a domino effect. Rights. It’s the ripple effect. They see me in a positive mindset and especially when I’m around them, I have the typical family background where, you know, it’s, I have two siblings. I’m the oldest and of course we have like that sibling rivalry. We’re always kind of nit picking at each other and that’s what we grew up with and now that I kind of had that mental transformation when I’m around my family now it’s much more engaging, productive conversations and not so much like the typical family dynamics that we, that we saw growth.
Stephen: [00:10:49] So they see you differently and do they treat you differently?
Charles: [00:10:54] Not necessarily treating me differently. I think they understand and accept the fact that I’m in a much different mind space than I ever was. And that’s just something that, um, you know, we’ve, we’ve had our own conversations [inaudible] and we definitely have much deeper relationships. Ever since I came, came to be who I am now.
Stephen: [00:11:13] That’s a pretty cool place to get to because the alternative is you never, you never. You never arrive as an individual. Right. And that’s, that’s terrible. Yeah. All right. So walk us through. So you went into fitness, was that was, were you an athlete? Was that going to be your thing?
Charles: [00:11:29] Absolutely not. I, I basically, I have the background. I quit every sport I ever started when it came to middle school and high school, um, basketball,
Charles: [00:11:39] it was just one of those things. I was always the scrawny kid, believe it or not. So I was like a hundred 40 pounds. I did basketball, I lead up to wrestling and I always quit just because the other guys, the jocks were bigger, stronger, faster than I was. And I just quit because it got hard. And I remember specifically I love basketball. I love the wrestling. And then football tryouts came out in 10th grade and I remember I started to drive to the tryouts. I only live six blocks away. I started driving to the tryouts. I got scared. I turned around and never and never tried out. And that’s always been kind of something that stuck with me ever since. Um, so I quit all that stuff. It was definitely not a great basketball player or an athlete by any means. And once I graduated I went straight into massage therapy schools, started my career as a massage therapist and I actually ended up putting on about 70 pounds. Just the typical like, you know, graduate high school, scrawny kid, I grew up eating whatever I, I could, like I had a high metabolism, it was never an issue with my way and then all of a sudden it’s like I turned 18 and it just boof. And of course, you know, 4,000 calories a day and fast food didn’t help out either
Stephen: [00:12:49] which it 52. What do you see? What happens? All right, so, so you put on all this weight, you clearly have diagnosed because I don’t, I’m not an expert, but some kind of self esteem issue prior. Now all of a sudden you’re carrying around 70 pounds and a self esteem problem. That just doesn’t sound like a good recipe right there.
Charles: [00:13:09] No, absolutely not. And I let that happen for about three years. I was just kind of going through the mundane, uh, just going through the motions every single day. I’d show up to work, work on my sixth massage clients a day, drive back home, and I would play video games. I was actually a pretty addicted to world of warcraft. So I was playing about 10 to 12 hours a day on the computer and uh, I let that happen for three years until finally one day I looked at myself in the mirror and it wasn’t necessarily the stomach or what I saw was I looked myself in the eyes and I thought because of who I’ve allowed myself to become, I was a quitter. I had no integrity with my word. I was always making empty promises to people in my family and my friends. Um, and I just got sick and tired of it. And it was that night. It was right. It was a decision right then and there that I, that was for me, one of my rock bottoms and I just said, I’m done. I, I know that I’m not going to succeed in life if I keep going down this path.
Stephen: [00:14:04] Did you have a girlfriend or wife at this point?
Charles: [00:14:08] Actually, shockingly, we joke about this all the time now. It’s my current wife. She was my girlfriend at the time. So she started. We started dating during this process. So that’s the part that blows my mind and that’s why she’s my keeper.
Stephen: [00:14:19] Oh yeah. So she saw you. Would you would say is your worst? Exactly. Stuck through it. And then she saw, did she, does she say that she saw something in you that you didn’t see mean has she, has she’s been honest with you on that one?
Charles: [00:14:34] Yeah, I mean she definitely knew I was driven. Like when I peeled back all the layers, she knew I was driven. I just always quit. That was my biggest thing. I never followed through with my word and that was probably my biggest hangup
Stephen: [00:14:47] that I had. So what was the first thing that you followed with and what did that do for you? And I think that’s a big moment there.
Charles: [00:14:57] It was. That actually started with just fitness and that’s why it’s such a passion of mine now because that was the first thing that night I sat down on the computer and I saw an infomercial for P90x. And so that was the first brutal. Oh yeah, it was nuts. And so I saw these guys doing pull ups and all this crazy stuff and I’m like, you know what, I can do that, it’s going to suck, but I’m going to do it. And that was the first thing I have completed. So I did the 90 days.
Stephen: [00:15:20] So that was a, let’s say 90 days you’re overweight, you’re, you’re, you’re in the, you’re doing things right. So you’re obviously trying to eat right and stuff like that. But 90 days it’s such a big commitment because I’ve done the 30 day one and it was excruciating. But then you’re like 30 days are a hundred. I gotta take a break, but 90 days I mean. And so you made it. What did you start at A. I mean, how much weight did you lose over those 90 days?
Charles: [00:15:44] In that first round I started about 230 pounds and I got down, I want to say I dropped about 15 pounds my first round. And of course I wasn’t, I wasn’t super strict on the nutrition. My goal was just finished the workouts and then I got better with nutrition as the years went on.
Stephen: [00:15:58] And then doing it a second time, you have a whole different perspective, right? Because you don’t have that learning curve anymore. If you’re serious, you’re there, right?
Charles: [00:16:08] Yep. Yep. And that’s where, uh, so my, my whole thing, it’s the same thing when I, when I teach people business too, it’s all, it’s all directly correlated. Your first round of anything as really just laying your foundation for your consistency. Round two is going to be based on the intensity and that’s where you start to really scale up. And that’s why I love fitness and business because they’re directly correlated with almost everything.
Stephen: [00:16:30] So your first run is where you gain your consistency, who love it, love that. So that’s Kinda how I say that again, in intensity. Second round is where you gain your intensity. So, so the people that are starting out, I mean, let’s just jump right in and then we’ll come back to it again, keeping the story. But. But people that have started out and they hit that wall, everybody hits the wall. I mean there are outliers that go around the wall. I don’t want to talk about them because they’re outliers, right? I don’t care what they would do, they would, they would have that success, but the most people because that’s what I want to help the most people, they hit that wall. They feel like a failure. I see it so much within like, you know, I’m only selling $250,000. And I’m like, do you understand that most main street businesses downtown do not sell $250,000. I mean, most people don’t realize that. They think that. And so I’m like, you started a quarter of a million dollar business. All right, what are we going to do from there? That’s a place to start. Right? And so they see that as a failure. You’re saying the second round is where they gain, right? That’s where they get that, that, uh, that next level.
Charles: [00:17:34] Yeah, that’s just kinda how, again, it all stemmed from that fitness in the very beginning. And that’s how I kind of maintained our, um, our business culture. That’s how I look at everything. Now. It’s, um, you know, I started a youtube channel and it was the same thing, the first round of doing videos. I was nervous. I didn’t really know what, say I was stumbling on my words. Um, I was, I was taking the haters personally, all that fun stuff that goes with it, but I stayed consistent and I had that same mentality of build consistency on uploading valuable content. And then when for quote unquote round two came along, when I decided to make it, that scaled version of it, that’s where I got intense with it.
Stephen: [00:18:09] And so, so business people can take that to. Right. So push through it and once you get through the other side, that’s where you’re going to get there.
Charles: [00:18:17] Exactly. Yeah. It’s just like, you know, we, we’ve got all these people in the facebook groups and other people on Youtube, instagram, all these different outlets and they’re always so scared to start Amazon Fba or an Ebay business, e-commerce in general. It’s always just that starting step. That’s the biggest fear, right? That hurdle. But once they get through it and realize, oh, OK, I sent in my first shipment, I source my first products. That’s, that’s the consistency, right? They started getting consistent with that and then they realize, OK, now I can bring up the intensity, I can source smarter, smarter, I can start to hire out and it can start to build up from there.
Stephen: [00:18:52] I was speaking with a couple of this weekend, great couple. And they were talking about, you know, what, what should we do? You know, she was so fearful of what’s going to go wrong and she’s heard all everything that goes wrong and she’s like, that’s going to happen to me. I’m like, why? Why would you expect that to happen to you? That’s not the right approach. You know what I mean? You know, it could happen. OK, so put controls or she was very risk averse and the husband’s like, I’m very, I want to spend on everything on [inaudible], you know? And it’s like, well no, you just cover her until she’s comfortable, right? How much is it? Do you want me to have on the side to cover that risk? And then you can take that chance. Right. And so it was interesting to see, and I think they ended up getting through and pushing through when they hit it, they’re going to have incredible success, but it’s that fear of taking action that we’re talking about. It really is. All right. So you back to you. So your fitness, you make it through round two. Do you make it all the way through the P90x round two?
Charles: [00:19:48] Yup. Did Round two. Um, and then I kind of, I love those programs, um, that back when I was doing those, now I do my own programming. Um, but back then I, um, they came out with the insanity that was another one of my favorite ones that you talked about intensity. So that was definitely picking up the intensity. Um, but I finished, I did the full 60 days after that and I just continued with it until I, I got good enough. I wanted to get out of my house because I was bouncing around my living room all this time and I was living with my parents. This was before my wife and I got married and moved out and so once we did that, I decided to get a gym membership and then I, I learned the ins and outs of building whatever body I wanted, um, with the weight room.
Stephen: [00:20:29] Um, so that allows you a different diet, um, needs and covers. Um, did you also work on that at the same time or was that at a different approach?
Charles: [00:20:40] Yeah, this was pretty much the same timeframe. And so once I got in there and like you said, diet change a little bit because I knew as the scrawny kid up, um, and then I put on a bunch of way and then I trained and did, um, Portland marathon and this was 2010 and so I had dropped 50 pounds to get ready for that marathon.
Stephen: [00:20:58] Were you ever a runner?
Charles: [00:21:00] I was not a runner and this was all trial and error because I knew I wanted to do a marathon in my life. I want to check that off, but I learned real quick being six foot wider shoulders. I’m not bill as a runner, especially distance. I’m, I’m decent at sprinting but not distance and so I love the fact that I trained out of my comfort zone and did something completely I’m not built for and I got to check it off and then I switched roles again. I knew kind of the body type I wanted to build after that.
Stephen: [00:21:25] So now that you’ve gotten through all that, what did that teach you about life? I mean, you know, you, you have to look back retrospectively, right? And realize, you know, whatever it was that was holding you back. What did this teach you? Because I think a whole bunch of people don’t realize they have this enum right? Everybody has a marathon and everybody has a book in them. They say, right, but everybody has a marathon ability. Most people, 90 nine point nine percent. Never pull it out. What did you learn there?
Charles: [00:21:54] Biggest thing looking back was the importance of not necessarily the mayor sounds weird. It wasn’t the marathon itself, it was the fact that one, I completed it because I just told you my backstory of quitting everything. So that was the biggest thing for me was just completing something I said I would do that for me was a big unlock in my mind, but even more importantly than the race itself, it was learning to stay committed to the daily process. And for me that was big because if I didn’t go out and do these daily five, six, seven, eight mile runs and then a long run of 15 miles once a week. If I didn’t stay consistent with those daily processes, I was never going to do the big race. Right. If you listen to Gary v, he calls it his at bat, you’re never going to get your at bat if you didn’t practice first. And that’s kind of how my mind I’m looking back. That’s exactly how it went down because I practiced every day. I was able to show up and do my marathon and complete it.
Stephen: [00:22:51] And so obviously that’s one of the things that you teach and that’s one of the things that you brought into this ecommerce world is that consistency really is what you gotta do every single day. A hundred percent, but you can turn it off, right? I mean it does everyday meet every day or does every mean every does everyday mean every day. You want to give the effort, I guess. I don’t want to say every day you should because you should. You should be able to have a fluid business. Um, the kids gets sick. You should be able to turn it off and go do what you need to do. How would you describe it?
Charles: [00:23:25] Yeah, it’s, um, it’s looking at your, what tasks need to be done every week to move forward and then you can die. I mean, that’s a beautiful part about being self employed. You look at what big tasks need to be done at for the week or the month even, and then you delegate out to which days those go to a. But like you said, if a day comes up, like for example, two weeks ago in the middle of a Tuesday, my wife and my three year old titus, we’re, we’re all here at the office just working away. We had all of our shipping done for the day. We were just kind of doing mundane tasks and it was beautiful and we’re up here in Portland, Oregon, so we’re just now getting into our sunny season, so we’ve been, we’ve been Pale white skin can rain for the last six months, so when this Tuesday at like [1:00] came around in the sun, popped up at 70 degrees, I’m like, you know what done, we shut the hangar door, we locked up and we got in the car, we went to the beach for the rest of the day.
Charles: [00:24:18] So that’s an example of do the important things that you need to each week, but you, that’s what buys your flexibility to have your time freedom, some kind of a, um, a technique or calendar system to maintain what needs to get done. And then therefore check it all. I’m a checklist guy, I’m an, I’m an old school guy, writes checklists for everything. Um, that’s my technique. Come up for you. Yeah, I’m the same way. I’m actually a whiteboard thien. So I’ve got, I’ve got a six foot why? I’ve got to Six-foot whiteboards in the office and then I’ve got a bunch of small whiteboards. Um, so that’s, that’s where all my projects are, that’s where all my daily tasks are that I can cross off. And um, and then on top of that I use google calendars because it syncs up with my Mac on my phone.
Charles: [00:25:01] So I have alerts that pop up for all my, all my small stuff every day. And network is hard to set up one time. Then you just maintain it. Right? And that’s the word, right? OK. Right. So, uh, you finish a marathon, you’ve obviously realized now you can finish anything. How does e-commerce come into your life? So this came around a lot of people that follow our youtube channel, they think that Amazon and E-bay are youtube when that channel specifically is where we started with most of it, but it’s actually not. So during the time of my weight loss journey, I was running another youtube channel, so I documented the whole weight loss process, um, for many years from 2000. And I want to say late 2008 up until 2015. So I had progressed throughout my massage therapy career of working for a big time fancy spa, and I was.
Charles: [00:25:58] I was a slave, right? I was, I was the typical nine to five while not really nine to five, more like eight to eight, but I was working on six to seven clients a day at this big spa and I, I loved what I did, but I did not enjoy the fact that I had to miss out on family events, camping beach trips. I did miss out on so many outings because I was tied to that job in anyone in the hospitality industry knows that you’re. You run by their schedule, there’s no option. So with that I ended up putting in my notice. I quit. I started my own massage therapy business just right downtown. I rented out a little space, was running my own clients, started the online health and fitness coaching because I felt such a difference with my own personal journey. I wanted to start providing that for other people too.
Charles: [00:26:43] So once I got into that realm, about two years in, I was fairly successful, but anything that’s client based, you always have peaks and valleys every month with your income. So with massage therapy for example, here in the northwest, wind seasoned during the summer is huge. I was booked all the time, but then when it got to the winter months I had no clients for for weeks on end sometimes. So it was a huge shift from end to end and I, I kept reminding myself like I’ve got to have a second or third and fourth income stream if I’m going to keep doing this just so I can break even each month sometimes. So that’s when I started looking into the health and fitness coaching. I pushed a little bit more and then I, I went to a little seminar and I heard this little thing called Fba. I was the regular Amazon prime customer who had no idea that I was buying from third party sellers.
Stephen: [00:27:36] Like 90 percent of people today still has no clue that we use.
Charles: [00:27:40] Exactly. So I was that guy and I went to this little seminar, kind of like one of those try before you buy things where they have like a real estate guy. They had a um, um, you know, online marketer guy had all these different guys up there talking and this guy was talking about Amazon Ebay. So I bought into a $49 seminar for the three day series, took the three days. I declined all of the $40,000 coaching
Stephen: [00:28:02] like you missed out. You missed out
Charles: [00:28:04] I either. Right? So I shook his hand afterwards and saying, you know, thanks. Anyways, um, I learned a lot here. I learned what I needed to learn and I downloaded the Amazon sellers that and I got home on a Sunday night. I went into Walmart on Monday morning and I just got to work
Stephen: [00:28:20] bu you call it right on. Does it, did it flow. I’m like, I always wonder how people, like some people can just, it’s like turning a faucet on, right? Just an automatically happened. Did it flow naturally for you or did you, do you look at an island like scan day? I can’t find anything which was found every time we found nothing.
Charles: [00:28:41] No, it was definitely the nothing. I’m in a very small town. I’m not super small. We’ve got about 30,000 people here. We have a very small walmart. One that’s small enough, doesn’t have a grocery section. And that was the Walmart I went into and of course I found like three things, one of which was a perfume because I didn’t realize what has or restricted meant on the APP. So yeah, it was definitely the kind that I, I bought a few things that were probably just horrible buys and I just came home and did a bunch of research, found youtube, found google, found blogs and all these fun things. And um, I just researched as much as I could that whole week and I’m, I’m doing massage therapy and personal training on my own. I gained the mindset of you can only research so much until you just need to practice it.
Charles: [00:29:25] So I knew that when I got into Amazon I couldn’t allow myself to turn into just a research junkie who never actually did anything. So I challenged myself to go out and find 30 items, um, at this point I knew enough that I could start to put together first shipment and I knew that you couldn’t just send one or two things without, you know, eating the shipping cost. So I knew I had to get like 20 or 30 things. I went to dollar tree, I found these specific puzzles that were selling for like 1299. And so it was, it was, it was a decent thing and I got 30 of those plus a few small random items I got at Walmart and I just, I did my first swim and it took me like two days. I messed up a ton,
Stephen: [00:30:04] do all my labels, but you’re probably doing 30 up labels to back then, right? Oh, exactly.
Charles: [00:30:11] Yeah. So I did all the Newbie mistakes, messed up a time. But after I did the first shipment, I was like, OK cool. When I come back I’ll know it better and I’ll be able to do it better.
Stephen: [00:30:22] And so did that happen the second time? I mean, when you, you said it took you two days for that first shipment and I think everybody can relate. I’ve seen people say it’s taken a week, so they started and they get hit the wall and then they stop and then they come back to it and they pick a little bit more pickup. And so how about the second shipment?
Charles: [00:30:37] So job was going to say easy, but it definitely went better when smoother. And then of course everything after that you just get. It’s funny, it’s like when you practice, you get better. Weird how that works.
Stephen: [00:30:47] Wow. Really? Somebody should put this on a shirt, a maroon shirt. When you practice it gets better. OK. So, so then, you know, looking back now, what, what led you here? I mean, when you think about all those things, I mean, was it the marathon? Was it the decision to get into shape and take care of your health? What was it that really, if you think about how you ended up today, where you are, what was it?
Charles: [00:31:14] Ultimately? It was my, um, what’s the word I’m trying to think, have I have. I’ve always had an issue with authority and being told what to do, so ultimately if I were to pinpoint it came down to I needed to own my own life and not allow other people or other things to dictate what I’m going to do with my life and even as simple as a regular job. Right. I’ll remember one quick story. There was a time as a licensed massage therapist. My job is to help people through massage therapy. I’m at this big fancy spa and I had one client cancel on me last minute so I’m chilling in the break room and I, I had a secondary client that was about to come in and I had about 15 minutes to my client was going to show up and I had gotten a call from the front desk and they said, Hey Charles, we need you to go clean up one of the Jacuzzi rooms, big fancy spa.
Charles: [00:32:08] They had like these Jacuzzi bath tubs, a, you know, like $50 bats for those people. So I show up, I walk in the room and I thought it was just like, you know, go pick up a few towels and bring them in the back or something. No, they wanted me to hands and knees and scrub this tub and there’s nothing wrong with that necessarily. But I remember in that moment as I’m scrubbing this tub, it’s like a light bulb went off and I thought I am a licensed massage therapist and I’m scrubbing a tub right now. This is not going to be my life. And that was like the split decision right there that I said I wanted to have my time freedom to do what I want to do.
Stephen: [00:32:45] So wasn’t financial freedom. It’s time freedom. Has that stayed true to who I know because in the pre-call you got into even a cooler place, but has that stayed true for you? Um, and, and when you look at the successful people you’re around, do you think they have that figured out too?
Charles: [00:33:04] A hundred percent in my, just the way my mind works. I believe that you can always have debt and you can always have the financial stuff going on, but as long as you own your time. For me, that’s where my happiness lies because I, I, my mind operates a little bit differently than most people sometimes, but that’s just the way I’ve kind of operated out of and I’m a firm believer that you don’t need, and especially I’m talking to the most of the newbies here, a lot of newbies because this is the way that I thought about when I first came into the Amazon world because an Amazon world, some people pull some huge numbers, right? You’ve got the [inaudible], the 20 to $30,000,000 sellers and above and when you see these big sales charge floating around as a Newbie, it’s so defeating and you think, well, I can’t be successful unless I get up to that level.
Charles: [00:33:49] And when I stopped, when I stopped thinking like that and I started looking at my own life and I thought, OK, how much money do I need to survive? How much do I need to put back into product and how much do I need to help my wife quit her job? That’s when we started to look at what we needed to break even and then what we needed to make the business grow so when when we ate were able to do that. We matched what we needed to live on, which was great, but my wife’s still needed that job, that income to help us grow the business, and then about six months later, that’s when she was able to quit her job and now we operate out of a mindset that we’ve still got debt. We’ve still got some financial stuff we’re taking care of, but at the end of the day, we both get to live the lifestyle that we want. Again, we were able to just up and leave on a Tuesday afternoon and just go to the beach because we could just. The fact that you get to work with your three year old around. I mean that alone is incredible. Oh, it’s amazing. Earlier today, right before the call, we were building a cardboard ramp with the forest hot wheels. Just right on our prep table and it was a blast and I, I live for those moments every day because I had to miss so much of that when I had that job.
Stephen: [00:34:57] You got to come visit the east coast. We have a money machine in our warehouse. We haven’t launched it yet, but I’m dying to picture squeezing dollar, you know, you’ve seen those things. Were the things blowing around money and that you can reach in and we’re going to let people do in those, those things though. Those today, for example, I was just at an event. I came back and my wife and my son and I were all working in the warehouse and it was just so cool for all of their music cranking and just doing our thing. That’s what I style. To me that’s. You can’t find that any other business.
Charles: [00:35:32] I agree with that a hundred percent every single day that we’re in this warehouse and it’s just the three of us chilling. Again, blasting music. Like I have these moments where I just stop and I’m like, you know what? Even if I’m financially broke the rest of my life, but I get to do this every day, that that’s my time freedom. That’s why the financial part, like yeah, it’s motivating. I have the financial goals, but if I have my time freedom first, I’m. That’s what I live in
Stephen: [00:35:57] for. Do you remember ever seeing your mom and your dad dancing? Doing work in your house or anywhere? I mean, just think about that honestly. Yeah. No, never, never. Your son is seeing his parents. I’m sure every so often one of those goofy songs come on and you guys goof out. Think of what that’s building into his life. I came from. I mean, someday he’s going to be up there. I came from one of the happiest homes, one of the happiest environments I saw my parents dance. They were dancing and they taught me to live. Oh Dude. I’m getting chills thinking about it. All right. All right. You got me excited. Um, I love. I love a cool vibe because what you did say one thing though, I wanna I wanna I’m gonna question on this one. You said you came from a pretty positive environment in Jim’s, uh, in the, in the physical fitness world, and then when you came to Fba world wasn’t positive or you see some of that.
Charles: [00:36:54] There wasn’t an, it wasn’t necessarily an Fba as a community. It was a few very specific facebook groups. Oh, OK. And so I went in there and I did the typical newbie thing where I go in and I start asking the dumb as questions as a Newbie, right. I did it just like everyone else does. And I got renamed a couple of times and I’m sure at the time it was, it was people trying to help me, but of course as a Newbie, I took it the wrong way. And that’s where I, that’s where I said, you know what, I’m going to create my own facebook group, my own youtube channel. I’m going to bring a positive, um, in, for my term what positive was at the time. I’m going to bring that vibe to the community.
Stephen: [00:37:34] OK, thanks for clarifying that. I brought a friend to an event this weekend and he’s like, Steve, these are the most positive people I’ve ever met. This isn’t like where I work. And I’m like, well, that’s what I’m, that’s my experience. And I understand that some people go through personal things and sometimes they’re having a tough time. So sometimes that creeps in and you know, and then there’s crazy and I mean there’s always those kinds of things, but for the most part I always find this pretty positive. OK, good. We’re on, we’re on the same page. I, I just didn’t understand that one. OK. So, so life is going good. You found this Fba, you’re going to supplement your income, boom. That’s all it was going to be. Right. But it was going to supplement your income. And so how much success in. What did that mean for you?
Charles: [00:38:20] For me, at the time when we first started, I was already self employed doing massage and fitness, but like I said, the swings were so big and clientele, um, sometimes it felt like I wasn’t employed just because I go a couple of weeks without really much income coming in. So for me when we started Amazon one, it was just kind of fill that gap so we had consistent income. But even Moreso it was I, I loved quitting my job. That’s one of those feelings that, I mean, you know, anyone who’s quit their job understands what I mean. It’s one of the best feelings ever to walk that letter into your boss. If you even do give them a letter. Some people I know, they’re just like, Hey Chaz, I just walked into my, my job, I’m ever going back to they, they’re always wonder whatever happened to that guy, he never came back.
Charles: [00:39:02] Exactly. So that was the first moment. But that was before Amazon. So the coolest thing was one of my wife, because of Amazon and Ebay got to go walk her noticing. So that was the first big goal was to be able to, one, have her be able to quit her job and to keep her home. Right because it’s one thing to quit your job, but six months down the road if you’re not making money, one of us got to go back. So that was the big push and a motivator financially for me. It was just to make enough so we can both stay home and we can keep growing this thing into the business. Um, as much as you do. I mean, does she, is she good at it? Does she enjoy it or is she just doing it because we see this as part of your job?
Charles: [00:39:47] She ended up in the beginning it was definitely, she felt like the assistant to me because I was the one that knew, knew how to do shipments. I knew how to do all that stuff, so I had to train her hands on and learn how to do that. And then this was just purely Amazon to. I had no interest in Ebay whatsoever, but about, I’d say six to eight months in, she started following instagram and youtube channels and people were doing used clothing from the bins on Ebay, you know, you go to the binge, you pay by the pound, so you’re paying like fifty cents for Eileen Fisher and all these, all these name brand clothing items that can sell for 15, 20, 25 bucks. And she was super intrigued by that. So she actually went in on E-bay at that point. Um, and now that’s what she does pretty much full time is Ebay.
Charles: [00:40:32] Um, so now we, now we’re in a position, especially as as spouses, but also business partners where we delegated the rolls out. So I’m kind of the Amazon half. She’s the E-bay half. It’s cool it, you know, the other thing you’re doing is you’re taking the same warehouse using the same tools, using the same camera, using the same computers to go on to income streams. And to me that’s very, very powerful. Did I see that you also sublease some of your warehouse to someone else? Uh, so it’s, uh, not quite subleasing. It’s a business partners of ours, but right next to us because we basically have a 2000 square foot space and there’s a big opening in the middle. So technically we’re connected. Um, so this was a long story short. She started as my assistant and now she’s a business partner. Um, but she started a prep center out of her half, so we technically, yeah, so we’ve been helping her get that up and running and it’s here in Oregon which is a sales tax free. So it’s been a huge benefit. Very cool. But it also mitigates your costs and all those things. I mean, to me, I think more and more people and there’s a big conversation as we can more and more people to partner up on a warehouse,
Stephen: [00:41:34] especially with Amazon and storage fees. You do have to start dripping your inventory in the old days we used to send everything in. You can’t do that anymore. They are not a warehouse company. They were a fulfillment company. So, uh, but you can really reduce your cost and, and when you’re off, I could be there filling in for you and vice versa. To me that’s really powerful.
Charles: [00:41:55] Exactly. And that’s been a huge thing that we’ve, we’ve discovered since we’d got this place, because we’ve only been in the warehouse for about five, going on six months. We before that, bill everything, the first two years of us doing this, we did all of it out of our garage, rainy Portland grudge that cold. It was miserable. It was miserable a lot of days. But again, it comes down to we showed up anyways because we knew what we had to do to build that foundation. So we’re able to reap a little bit of reward and upgrade to a warehouse space and it’s been amazing having it.
Stephen: [00:42:29] So when you look back now, what is your biggest strength? What would you say is Charles superpower that you can. You can honestly say, and maybe let’s take your ego out of it. Maybe it’s something that all of us have. It’s just the ability to recognize it.
Charles: [00:42:47] I know for mine it was, I just did a video on this, um, a couple of days back, somebody asked me what my favorite side hustle was because we have multiple and I asked myself this question, if I never got paid a dime to do all of this again, what would I continue to do? And my number one question or my number one answer was youtube and the facebook groups. Because my strength is people and connecting. I love people. I like it. It’s in a weird way. I love to help other people succeed way more than I love helping myself and our [inaudible].
Stephen: [00:43:18] I totally get it. Totally get it.
Charles: [00:43:20] So that, that’s like my number one thing I’m all about is people I’ve, I, I drop everything I can just to help somebody else for it.
Stephen: [00:43:27] There’s very, it’s very rewarding and you get nothing out of it, but it’s very rewarding. All right, I’m with you on that one. Just had that conversation with somebody this weekend and it’s like, no, don’t want anything. Not expect them to thing and it’s just so awesome. Just seeing you get ahead is enough for me. Love it.
Charles: [00:43:42] I mean, I got a message from somebody and they were like, Hey Chaz, because of you, I’m doing 50 grand a month on my holy crap. They like far surpassed us and I could not be happier for. It was just, it was, it was one of the coolest messages I’ve ever gotten.
Stephen: [00:43:57] How about struggles? I mean, it’s not all UNICORNS and rainbows. I’m sure. I mean, I’m sure that you hit that wall and, and you know, Charles, you are a quitter. After all, what are your struggles?
Charles: [00:44:11] Uh, it Kinda goes through the phases. I feel like we’ve gotten really, really in tune with our strengths and our weaknesses over the last probably really since we’ve got the warehouse, we’ve really learned what we’re good at, what we’re not good at. Um, I’d say one of the biggest struggles for myself has been, is, I’m trying to think of the right word, not delegating. It’s managing the cash flow. We, on a personal level, took a lot of our profits from 2017 to pay off personal debts. Um, we’re, we’re focused on getting a house credit score needs to come up, so we paid off a lot of personal debt, but that, that put a cap on what we were able to spend on inventory. So I feel like that was a big struggle for us over the last year. I feel like the last six months we’ve gotten a lot better with this and now we’re not paying off as much personal day and we’re focused more on growing right now and paying off debt later down the roads. But that’s definitely been probably top of the line.
Stephen: [00:45:03] It doesn’t that force you to get stronger, right. Those struggles. I mean, it sounds like this, hearing it in your voice, we are much stronger now. We know exactly what we’re doing, blah, blah, blah. That that’s a, that’s a win. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. All right. And let me ask you about advice. Um, you’d give out a lot of advice. What advice have you listened to that you think has really changed your business in your world?
Charles: [00:45:27] My biggest one lately, we have always been, we’ve been a hundred percent retail and online arbitrage, um, since we started. We just in the last two months are trained to transition everything to wholesale, so we’re cutting all [inaudible] out and going straight to wholesale. The biggest piece of advice that I took from somebody that I’ve been implementing in at works is picking up the phone instead of emailing everybody for wholesale accounts. That was, that was a game changer because again, my strength, I wasn’t playing to my own strength which is connecting with people. Right? So you would think I would want to talk to somebody, you know, quote unquote face to face versus just emailing them. I can’t connect with people through email you, there’s no tone, there is no passion, there’s no, hey, here’s what we’re about. But when I can call a wholesaler or a brand or manufacturer, whoever I can call them, get them on the phone, voice to voice and then they can hear what I’m about. And that’s, that’s helped us make a lot of really, really great connections.
Stephen: [00:46:23] So a wholesale model, what do you expect that you’ll have different in a wholesale model versus a retail? Because Retail Arb, you’re going store to store you always on the run, right? It’s time, your time is gone. What do you expect from a wholesale model time. So are you OK?
Charles: [00:46:41] Yeah, cause I was driving around, especially q4 man and I was driving like 30 pro. I mean probably even 40 hours a week sometimes. Um, but yeah, you’re just, I mean store to store unless you get to the point where you can hire shoppers, which I did in Q4 radical people that were out shopping for me. I’m on top of me going out. Um, I just got tired of, of the daily driving around because again, being in a small town, my nearest target or good size, walmart is 45 minutes away. So I can’t go out and just do these little one hour trips. I have to make it a day because if I’m going to go dry for an hour out of my way, I’m going to at least hit three, four, five, six stores and then turn around and come home. So my ra days were like eight hours long and so you know how the ballgame goes. Sometimes you go out for eight hours, you don’t get a single thing that’s just part of the ball game and I just got tired of all the driving around, so I finally just made that, made that, that, you know what we need to have access to quantity of items. I’ll take a lower roy if I can either make a phone call or do a few clicks and have product at my door in a couple of weeks.
Stephen: [00:47:41] This, this is something to think about. Somebody who’s listening to this saying, I agree with him. I need to get off the road. I mean, there are, there are road warriors in this business and I, I know I’m friends with them all and it blows my mind, but that’s them. They have it in them. They’re just gifted in that way. Um, is it, it’s not a faucet where you just turn it off and turn on the shower, right? It is a kind of a segment. Maybe that’s the right way to say it, where you’re taking in saying, OK, I’m going to place 10 percent of my business or I’m going to stay home one day a week with this. Now that I have this much wholesale, how are, how are you figuring that out and when will you know that you’ve hit the level that you can back off a lot?
Charles: [00:48:20] Yeah, that’s kind of where we’re at right now. So I did come down tremendously. One number one reason was just because of capital. So instead of putting all the regular capital I would into my Ra and my, uh, my Hoa, I got a hold of a few really good products that needed a large capital orders. So I basically had to sit on my hands for like three weeks and not do a single day of sourcing to me. I’m like, I know I’m a treasure hunter who I, I treasure hunter. I love to go out to garage sales. And this is for Ebay, of course, I’d love to still do the garage sales and thrift stores. I’m a treasure hunter, so I love to be on the road, um, in that aspect. So it killed me to not source a single day for three weeks, but I put in the order.
Charles: [00:48:59] Um, we’ve got some products in, we’ve been making sales. So now I, now I’m balancing out like two, about two days a week of Ra right now. And those aren’t full days. I did cut down the hours I’m out, so I’m only going to like three or four stores a couple days a week. And then we’re just, we’re waiting for new wholesale orders to come in. Are you buying smarter because you have that limited time? Yes, I’m definitely making sure they’re going to be faster because in the past I would love to do long till items and hold out for a bigger margin. But I’ve learned cash is king in this business. I need to create a faster cash flow which is going to help me turn it around bigger over time.
Stephen: [00:49:34] So if you were advising somebody who’s thinking about coming in this business and you know, and, and you were going to say, hey, you want to start an IRA, you want to learn and all that kind of chance, would you suggest they kind of take the same path? Thinking back to where you are now?
Charles: [00:49:48] I would because of a couple of reasons. One, it’s going to help you learn Amazon system and if you go into, like for example, I’ve had people message me and say, Hey Chaz, I’ve got a thousand dollars and I want to go straight into wholesale and I tell them, you know, you might want to consider just doing a few things with [inaudible] number one reason is because if you go to a brand or a wholesaler and you have a knowledge base of Kipa, you have a knowledge base of listing optimization, photos, Sto, all that fun stuff that goes with it. If you have that knowledge base, that’s a skill set that adds value to the wholesaler or the brand. Whoever you’re go into that is going to help you land an account. Waiting for a Newbie who comes in without ever doing a shipment, so I would much rather somebody kind of take that process and it doesn’t have to be for months and months on end, but even just in the beginning of get your feet wet, learn how Amazon system works, right?
Charles: [00:50:40] You got to learn about coupa. You gotta. Learn about why you can’t just trust a current sales rank when you scan an item and you’ve got to learn what do you do if you want to upload a better photo, what do you do if you want to change the back end keywords, all those little things. It’s like a combo lock that creates a great listing for a great product that helps get those sales. So if you have that foundation built first and then get into wholesale and private label, that’s only just going to help your ballgame
Stephen: [00:51:07] in the meantime, your wife can still do what she’s likes doing and contributing in her way, um, and, and, and help balance out that income. Um, I think that’s a very, very cool thing. Um, have you, when you say you go out and buy for Ebay and that a treasure hunter now, are you looking for specific things, knowing the value, I mean not just looking to buy things that you can make money on. Are you much more specific than on that side too?
Charles: [00:51:33] Uh, yes, I definitely have gotten into Ebay. Not as much as Amazon, but I love to flit [inaudible] electronics on Ebay. I’m in shoes. So I recently put out a video that went viral where I showed people how to source shoes from Ross and you can use the same methodology with Burlington coat factory. So flipping shoes in nineties electronics had been two of my favorite things, especially during garage sale season right now. Again, Portland, Oregon, we get rain seven months out of the year, so we only have about three to four solid months of garage saling. But I can walk into a garage sale, pick up these [inaudible] cam quarters, um, vhs, like all these cool nineties things you can pick up for five, 10 bucks and you can flip for 80 to 90. It’s crazy.
Stephen: [00:52:19] Are you mentioned this youtube channel, what’s the name of the Youtube Channel?
Charles: [00:52:22] If you just look up side hustle pros, you’ll see that it
Stephen: [00:52:25] sold pros and side. Also pros, these are free videos people can watch. You have a facebook group.
Charles: [00:52:34] We do. We have Fba rockstars and Ebay rockstars.
Stephen: [00:52:38] Fba Rock rockstars. Free Group. Yup. E-Bay, rockstars. OK. I’m putting both of those out there and they’re free, but you got to make sure you’re real. They’re going to probably ask you a question or definitely have some admins. And the how, how, how, how often do you post videos?
Charles: [00:52:58] Uh, we are on a roll right now where we’re trying to do about four per week and we’re trying to, we’re trying to do it a little bit different, so I’m one of those channels that we grew up in a decent sized subscriber base off of only a hundred uploads versus some of the other guys who upload five or 600 videos. Um, so my goal has always been content for or I’m sorry, valuable content first. So instead of uploading what used to do, which is one or two a week, I decided instead of uploading the same style of content, we’re going to switch it up a little bit. So as for uploads per week, but it’s a different different type of video on each time.
Stephen: [00:53:36] OK. All right. And so then if you’re interested in the one you would get the one a week pretty similar to the one that you’re interested in exec style-wise. OK. All right, cool. All right. So you’ve clearly gotten to where you want to be. Oh, I don’t want to miss this because one of the pre call conversation topics was that you’re back into doing some health fitness stuff for people. So because you want to, that’s, that’s, that’s where the story to me is right there because you want to and you still enjoy it. How different is it now doing it knowing that you don’t have to, you get to pick and choose.
Charles: [00:54:16] It’s game changer. You, you. It was the same thing with massage therapy. You can love what you do, but the second that you aren’t have to do it to pay the bills, especially when you know you’re coming up short or you’re living paycheck to paycheck. It doesn’t matter how much passion you have for something that’s gonna, it’s going to turn into a job. You’re going to lose that passion pretty quick. That fire’s going to go out and that’s what happened with the massage and fitness is I got so burnt out on it because I was forced to do it every day in order to pay the bills. So I took a good, I don’t even know, six to eight month break from doing any of it and I no longer do massage therapy, but I miss the fitness coaching because I know that was something that had a tremendous impact on my own life and I carried everything I learned in fitness and building my mentality with it.
Charles: [00:55:02] And you’re on the mental, physical aspect. I. Everything I learned from doing that journey directly carries over into our business and because of the impact that had, I really, really did miss it. And so now I get to do it on my own terms and um, I developed my own programs now, so I have a six week program that we came up with. So I run clients through that. I coach them, I help them out. And the breakthroughs that they’re having is so much deeper than just, Hey Chaz, I lost 10 pounds. Like, OK, that’s great. But what other benefits did you have in a lot of the time? You’ll hear I lost 10 pounds, but I’m off my medications, I have more energy, I’m more confident. And guess what, that carries over into, hey, I have more energy to source for eight hours instead of six or I have more time to prep my boxes and not get as tired. Um, those are the kinds of benefits that I just, I thrive when I get those messages.
Stephen: [00:55:51] And you get to do it because you choose to. Oh yeah. Well, all right. So the big goal for this podcast is to help people move forward, right? And get past stuck. Got a tip or trick that somebody can do to get past that 20, $30,000 a month, really part time job into that full time income.
Charles: [00:56:14] It’s got to be scheduling for me and I know some people are going to go. Here we go. Talking about scheduling, like I know it sucks. I not like following a schedule, but following a schedule allows you to show up even on the days you don’t feel like it necessarily because we all have those days. Um, but when you follow some type of scheduling for some of you, you know, like Stephen, I mentioned we love checklists so I’m not, I’m not as scheduled where I have every single minute planned out. Like some people love. I don’t care if you follow a written planner, which is what my wife loves to do. She has a full on like planners. She loves to write stuff in it all the time and I can’t do the written thing. I have to follow a whiteboard. Um, and then I, s I do a few blocks in my google calendar which alerts me on my important tasks.
Charles: [00:56:58] Uh, you know, content, uploading data as far as researching product goes, shipments, all that fun stuff I’m coming with the schedule for yourself is really, really beneficial. And then number two is reverse engineering from where you want to go to, where, what you have to do today to get there, because if you want to do a 50 k a month or whatever your goal is, even if it’s five k a month as a brand new person, doesn’t matter what the goal is, just reverse engineer and ask yourself, what do I need to be doing weekly and daily to make that happen? And then put that into a schedule that you follow in that builds, again, it all circles back and builds consistency and when you become consistent, you learn to be more intense and the intensity is where you’re scaling starts to really happen. How do you run a marathon?
Charles: [00:57:42] Right? That’s, that’s really where the beginning of this conversation started and that’s really where it ended. You start running, you start planning and you start doing it. You just can’t get out and run. You got to have a plan. You know, I was thinking about your scheduling and I think people should hear this too. They don’t have to schedule all 24 hours. Schedule six hours of real work. Don’t you know, I always say people work. I worked 40 hours a week. Now don’t give me that crap. You show up for 40 hours a week, you know you’re going to the bathroom, you’re talking to seven people, your, you know, your research and stuff on Amazon. You’re buying stuff for your kids working. You’d probably work 12 hours. Imagine if you work six hours a day though. I mean like full on Charles, you’re going in here.
Charles: [00:58:24] These are the things you got to get done. You’ve got six hours to get it done. Boom. It’s like a race. You will get more done if you scheduled at six hours intensely, you can have an enormous day. Right? So you don’t have to schedule. I’m going to be at, you know, it’s like a full time job. No, no, no, no, no, no. I’m very powerful stuff. All right. Best Way to get in touch with you. Somebody has follow question. Uh, best way to get in touch with me two different ways. One is instagram. I’m in my [inaudible] every single day. I spend a couple hours a day just messaging back to people on that side hustle pros on instagram and then also emailed Chaz, which is c h e c h a, z m. it’s 50 50 fiftieths. Either people call me chancellor, they call me Chad. Uh, it’s probably the most common name I get called Chad. Chad can Jay z at side Hustle Bros, man, dude, I’m, I’m intense right now. I am pumped up because I love, I just love the vibe. I just love the fact that you know who you, your wife knows who she is.
Stephen: [00:59:22] Your kid sees the parents dance at the warehouse. I mean, that’s a cool life. Very, very cool man. Thank you so much. I wish you nothing but success. Yeah, of course. They get so much for having me on the show. Cool Dude. Great vibe again. Um, I just again think, you know, you can look at it as the glass is half empty or the glass is half full. I think we’re very fortunate for him to get to that place in his life where he can now do the thing that he loves, to help people with their health, change their lives in ways that are just incredible ways and he can do it because he’s figured out this other world. He’s disciplined enough. Remember that first round is where you gain your consistency. Your second round is when you gain your intensity. Use that. That is such a powerful statement, a great guy, great story of e commerce, momentum.com, e-commerce momentum.com, but I’m pumped. Take care.
Cool voice guy: [01:00:15] Thanks for listening to the e-commerce momentum podcast. All the links mentioned today can be found at e commerce momentum dug under this episode number. Please remember to subscribe and like us on itunes.
