316 : John Lawson – Have you thought about your approach to Social ecommerce? Are you always planning on being the middleman selling on Amazon?
Yes John and I spend time talking about our health. Can’t help it, we are the same age and both struggle with our weight. But you know we both are working towards something. You see we are working on something. A better me! (insert you here) So add to it the ability to sell outside of the channels we currently play in and wow! What a future! Get excited to see there is more out there and you only have to get there. So get healthy. Really get healthy in your relationships, your faith if that is you, your mind body and soul. You have the choice.
Mentioned:
John’s previous episodes: #47, # 109
Facebook group- The ecommerce Group
John’s book- Kick Ass Social Commerce for E-preneurs
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] Hey, this is a timely commercial, just wanted to offer up to you, if you’ve been thinking about private label, you know Andy slammings and Lee, Ron and nate, they’re one of my sponsors and they pay me, so I don’t want to mislead anybody. I’m always clear about that. But their course amazing freedom course has been an unbelievable source for so many people. Um, they’re so real. They’re so approachable. They’re so in contact with you. Well, guess what? The course has been closed for quite a while. They actually open it. It’s going to close in like two days. So if you want to join, I’d like you to try to join through my link because then they pay me. So don’t hide that thing or you don’t have to. You could actually go to them and just by. That’s cool. Just meet me in the course because you’re going to benefit what’s in the course.
Stephen: [00:00:40] You’re gonna get the full amazing freedom course. This is one of the groups that actually you get to submit a product idea and they help evaluate it for you. They help you go through and make you think of all these different things. You’re going to get their key word muscle group and of course, which is unbelievable to because it actually teaches you really to understand keywords because when you choose a product based on a keyword, that’s how you figure out what people are searching for. It’s not like try to make your product magic keyword. It’s actually finding that right key word and then finding the product forward. It’s so important. It sounds backwards, but it’s actually the right way. You’ll also get the PPC blueprint course that is unbelievable. That’s Lee Ron teaching you all the tricks as I call him Yoda, that he’s going to teach you all the tricks for ppc because there’s whole bunch of things that just don’t make sense until you understand them and then that’s what you’re going to do, and then finally you’re gonna.
Stephen: [00:01:30] Also get the outsourcing a guide that they give us. The outsourcing guide’s going to really help you figure out who can do this job. Maybe you should. Maybe you should pack all your boxes. Maybe you should. Maybe you should handle customer service, maybe you shouldn’t. And so by figuring out how to outsource better, that’s all included in there. It’s a one time purchase. They don’t open it this time of year. They are right now it’s going to close and like two days or something like that. So I have a link that you could use and I would appreciate if you did I benefit, but if you don’t that’s cool. Just joined the course because you really want to start your private label a tour just talking to a seller today and he’s struggling trying to find products and he’s struggling because his Ra business is drying up.
Stephen: [00:02:11] Well, I mean I have friends that’ll do $7,000,000 this year, so it’s definitely, as they say, the walls are definitely closing in Steve, but it’s still a viable business. But they’re trying to figure it out or they’re like my wholesale business. I ran a, he said he ran 17,000 skews through one of the, uh, analyzers and he found like three products and all the margin was a 15 percent. That’s a scary number to have on Amazon 15 percent because with returns and all the rest of that jazz, you’re probably in the negative and you probably don’t even know it. And so you want to figure out your way through private label. It’s hard. I get it, I get it. But it’s all about building a brand. Now. That’s what people are doing, building brands, you know, ring. Uh, I like this example ring, um, uh, that we have at our warehouse that a camera system, right guy who was on shark tank, right?
Stephen: [00:02:58] Launch that thing, they didn’t make a deal sold to Amazon for billions. Well, whoever heard of ring was a brand that was created, this guy created how many years ago, right? That’s the thing you want to think about. And I’m not saying go for that, but you got to go for your own, you know, when you see a product and you say, Huh, I could have thought of that. I should’ve thought of that. Well, you can, you just have to learn how. And so again, as a Mitchell Lipo, he says, you got to buy time. Uh, I recommend this course because I know these guys, I’m in the course. First off, you’ll see me in there. I’m one of the admins, but you, you actually get a response when you ask a question. That’s the hardest part. When you get stuck, everybody gets stuck. I don’t care who you are, but to get somebody to actually answer a question like, oh, that’s it.
Stephen: [00:03:38] An understand it. Then you can get past that point because when you get stuck at that point, you spin your wheels lease. I do. We’re talking about Steve here and I spend my wheels and I never moved forward. Well guess what? You can move forward. And that’s what this course offers. So it’s all kinds of crazy stuff. The link is free if you go in and you actually go watch some free videos, um, but you should try it. Okay? So I’m putting it out there. It’s on this episode. You absolutely want to get there and take a look. It’s really one of those things that it’s time you’ve been sitting there saying, I need to do something. Well now is the time. Um, so if you want to go there, it’s amazing freedom, amazing freedom course.com/live hyphen momentum. Okay, so that’s a lot. Amazing freedom course.com, forward slash alive hyphen momentum where I’ll just have the link on this episode.
Stephen: [00:04:27] I really appreciate it. If you did, if you have questions, ask me. Okay. We’re asked them again, this is your opportunity if you want to do it because they’re gonna, close it and then that’s it. They won’t be offered until next year and you’re going to miss it. You want to get it ready. You still have time to get ready for q four. Now is the time. Get your products, get them in, get all that stuff resolved so you have real opportunity this year. You have any questions? Just shoot me a note. Okay, appreciate it. Take care.
Cool voice guy: [00:04:53] Welcome to the ECOMMERCE guys. Well, we focused on the people, the products, and the process of incomers silimed today. Here’s your host, Steven Peterson.
Stephen: [00:05:07] Welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. This is episode 316. John Lawson. Yes, I have John Lawson back and this time again we start talking about health. Yes, we spend the first segment, first good portion of it about health because I still believe that I’m trying to build a life and I hope you are too, and a big piece of it is held. I’m sitting there watching people younger than me dropping dead left and right, and I don’t want to be that statistic. I want to. I want to hit that. I want to be an outlier when it comes to age and health and really mobility and John and I spent some time talking about mobility for him. It’s all about that too. You want to be able to. So he’s got some absolutes, which I think are really awesome. Uh, we spend time talking about a Keto Diet. If you’re not interested, you could fast forward all that jazz. I get it. But if you’re not interested in and you’re doing your own thing, awesome. If you’re ignoring it because you’re like, be into saying, Hey, I’ll get to it eventually.
Stephen: [00:05:58] Please don’t go back and listen to it. Join a join our group, the Quito neuropath I’m at. That’s the one you want or find another one, whoever it is. I interviewed Charles Leslie, for example. He was good guy who does a lot of helping people with that kind of stuff. Reach out to him, but find something to help you get this piece of your life in order because quite honestly it affects everything else you do. I mean, it affects your relationships. It’s affecting everything else, you know, the energy, your stamina, and so please, um, please spend some time at anyway. We do also get into some subject and he drags me through it kicking and screaming, but he gets me there. I finally understand what he’s talking about when he talks about social commerce. That’s what he teaches. That’s what he does. And a lot of people don’t understand that.
Stephen: [00:06:40] It took me a while to get what he was talking about, but in the end we really do get to it. So you’re going to go about building a brand. We all know that, right? We all want to build our brand, but he’ll help you get it figured out what to do, how to market to those people that you want to sell to. It’s a lot harder than you think. It’s definitely complicated. Um, and I have some links about some groups that he’s in neural free where you can join to get more information, but I think it’s really powerful. I think it’s really worth listening. Listen all the way till the end because there’s some real powerful stuff. And again, he had to drag me through it. I wasn’t the easiest person to bring through, but he got me to understand it better than I think anybody else has.
Stephen: [00:07:16] And I think it’s really powerful stuff because ultimately you want to sell your stuff, not someone else’s. Right. That’s a real issue. You know, we’re wholesalers and so we do have our, we have some private label, we do a lot of wholesale. So I guess what I’m selling somebody else’s product and there’s been a few times they said, Steve, thanks, but somebody else is going to sell those products. Not You, you didn’t make the cut. I don’t want to hear that anymore, and so I’m working on us, my wife and I, right, so this is good stuff and he gets us there a little long, but it’s worth it. All right. Welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. We’re excited about today’s guest. It’s a return guest. This is three peat and it’s kind of weird because the second one was all about health and weight loss and being a seven figure sale or can it be done and maintaining your health and we’re going to talk about that because that’s a really important issue for me right now. John Law said. Welcome back John.
Stephen: [00:08:07] Welcome back. We just were together what? Less than a week ago in New Orleans and I’m man, our lives just intermingle you. You, you traveled more than anyone. It was a definite sauna. It was very warm. Um, but you know what the highlight of our trip was. We stayed a several extra days and we stay with two great friends and our wives were there, so we had such an awesome time. But we went on that paddle boat, the big paddle boat. The steam one other than the lady with that. Darn, uh, uh, what was that thing? That steam pipe. I’m like, they’ve been church or can. Oh my God. It was the worst. Once she stopped. It was a great trip. It was, it. Was it a dinner cruise? It was now I’ve been on
John: [00:08:56] that one.
Stephen: [00:08:56] Okay. So here’s the big challenge, you know, and we can talk. I guess we’ll jump right into health. I’m on this Keto Diet and I am staying in the zone there. Here’s where it gets complicated is because I don’t eat meat. I do eat fish. I added fish back in my diet maybe a year and change ago. So it was very challenging because, you know, those places, they have carving stations for everything. And so, uh, I found because I ended up eating my salad, I ate two salads a matter of fact, but I ended up finding cream spinach. I love cream spinach, so that was key for me. I ate two giant plates. The rest of the table looked at me a little weird. Um, but you know, I made it and uh, it was worthwhile, but the breeze, that was the only, that’s where I was going with this originally. That was the only place it wasn’t hot and humid was on that water going, you know, however fast they go, it was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.
John: [00:09:47] Oh yeah. That’s a good cars however far down. And then turns around
Stephen: [00:09:52] it was, it was very warm and it was very humid. They did their best to try to air condition to place.
John: [00:09:59] Boy, that’s tough. That is such crap. I’m not going to go here. All right, well now your best. If you did the best, it would be air conditioned.
Stephen: [00:10:10] Yeah, I think that’s a miss. And I think they, I think they have to pull back and rethink a little bit because one of the things that was my takeaway and I sat in on the opening session was when the gentleman said that only 25 percent of last year’s attendees and if I remember correctly, right. And I was at that one. So that means only a bit because I think there were 1200 in New York. So that means only about 300 people came to the second one. Now that would be a clue to me that would say, hmm, why is that? You know, that would be, I would have sent out a questionnaire like, hey, why aren’t you coming to this one? Right. The other thing I noticed was I thought that was a much younger crowd. I don’t know how you’re feeling was. There weren’t a lot of our usual, you know, we all know each other kind of thing. I mean, I, I, the first one I knew 400 people and I’m not exaggerating the second one, I probably knew less than 100.
John: [00:11:01] I mean, that’s a, that’s a testament to a lot of things, isn’t it?
Stephen: [00:11:06] Well, the, the younger crowd coming in, um, mostly all private label for the most part is really a testament of what’s going on in the world right now. There is a huge influx of new private label sellers and they’re, you know, I’m old so I could say this, they’re young relative to me. They’re young and what they lack is the thing that you and I probably have, which is fear from experience, right? Wisdom and the fear that comes along with it. Um, they don’t have any. They’re just willing to try it. Hey, I’m trying. This is my sixth product and I’m going to get one of them putting them good. Oh, okay.
John: [00:11:43] They don’t have kids in college and house mortgages and shit like that. No, that’s all right. It’s responsibilities. None and it’s responsibilities.
Stephen: [00:11:54] They don’t have them. And that’s a fair statement.
John: [00:11:55] Nice. So they have their own but they don’t have the same ones.
Stephen: [00:12:00] So all in all, how would you rate the conference?
John: [00:12:04] I give it out. Um, what, what’s my scale?
Stephen: [00:12:07] I’ll give it a let’s give it a scale of five.
John: [00:12:11] Okay. So I’ll give it a two and a half star.
Stephen: [00:12:15] Okay. Yeah, I was going to say middle of the road there were some really good things and there were some negative things. It’s not negative things, just things that I think are a mist that I think they got to pull back and rethink and again, more than likely they have no one who’s responsible for it. So therefore nobody owns it. And so therefore that’s how that stuff happens, you know? And so, hey, it is what it is. A I’m glad I went. Uh, we got to hang out with great friends and spend some quality time and I got to spend time. It’s kind of a cool story. I’m launching a whole new series of products and seller labs. Jeff Cohen, we sat on the couch. I always sit on one of those couches and they agreed to help me launch them and he’s got some new employees.
Stephen: [00:12:55] He wants to give them some products to mess around with. And so I said, sure, let’s do it together. We’re going to videotape some of it and you know, hopefully not expose my stuff too much. We’re going to try and figure that out, but I think it’s going to be a very cool thing for both of us. A, I get the benefit so I’m actually going to go down to their place and they’re gonna help me do it. So I’m pretty excited about that. That was worth the trip. Yeah. Did you get anything that was worth the trip for you?
John: [00:13:20] Uh, no, not really.
Stephen: [00:13:22] No, because, well let me ask you this question because that’s something. What do you go to, they’re looking for, are you going as a seller or are you going as a, an informed information sales expert, which is kind of what you are and he preneur expert, you know, which, which role do you step into in this particular case?
John: [00:13:44] Well, I, you know, I’ve got a show called watching Amazon, so part of it was to go down there and watch what Amazon’s doing, but the other part of it, at the beginning of the year we had some challenges with our, you know, Amazon stuff. So when I bought the ticket it was really just to deal with that, but that got cleared up between now and then. So I really got off the planes like, okay, why am I even really here? And then I’m like, well, you know, take the video, do some interviews, talk about watching Amazon and that’s Kinda what I did. Although it just know it, it really, I mean, you said something that nobody’s responsible for it. That’s not true. They got a whole team responsible for that. You don’t pull a event for 2000 people with live entertainment, a great food. The food was good, you know, um, and, and it was plentiful, you know, without having a whole team that’s dedicated to that event, whether or not they outsourced it or insourced it, I don’t know. It’s probably a combination of both, but no, in Mercer County. Well, I mean just the layout in general is bad
Stephen: [00:15:01] bunch of those events and not that scale, but similar events and you go by a lot of, uh, you know, the venue says, oh yeah, we could do this and blah blah blah blah, blah. I think the miss was probably reaching out to, hey, can you give me some references so they could go check with them because my bed is, they would have said the same thing. You know, this is June, in the middle of, in the middle of June, in the southern part of the state, close to the equator. It’s going to be stinking hot. Um, with the humidity. Um, fortunately we didn’t have too much rain. Um, so, um, I guess at that helps a little bit. But anyway. All right, so let’s talk about, before we go to what you want to talk about, I want to talk about the weight loss thing. So John John’s previous episode.
Stephen: [00:15:44] By the way, you should go back and listen to number 47 and you’ll hear about John because I think people forget because you get up and talk a lot about. Now you’re talking about facebook and clickfunnels and all kinds of other ways to sell. But one of the things that people forget is John as a seller, he’s had a business for a long time, uh, has a lot of it experience and telephone and stuff like that, but it comes to bear into his business. And so he has a business that runs while he’s jet setting around the world. And this year you did jet set, man, you were in, you were in how many continents?
John: [00:16:17] Everything but Africa for God’s sake. Almost in Antarctica, right? I mean, you did Africa. Oh my God. All right. So we got to get you to the what are the Poles? And then we got to complete. I mean really
Stephen: [00:16:30] this is true. And yet, and this is fair, your business was running and you got more than one business, but your, your product selling business was running all while you’re away. That doesn’t happen by accident. And so there’s a good, I mean, and you should reach out to John to find out how he does it, but it’s a very cool statement because they’re not small sellers either. This is a pretty good size business in addition to his information business. In addition to all the speaking youtube, so hats off to you on that, but let’s talk about health because health is a big issue for you. You are trying to stay ahead of it. You’re trying everything you can to manage it. You’re battling it just like I do. I’ve always battled with my weight and so for me, I’m looking at all different things. And so I finally succumbed.
Stephen: [00:17:22] I was at another conference earlier this year and a four or five friends where they are in there like Steve, try this Keto Diet. And the reason I’ve never done it is because it. The way I look at it, it’s bacon and eggs for breakfast. Well I’ll eat eggs but I don’t eat bacon. It’s have a hamburger for lunch with no bun while I’m out there. Um, and up until a year and change ago, I didn’t even eat fish. And then for dinner it’s a, you know, a, some kind of primary hub, uh, with, uh, a little bit of vegetables. Well I’m a vegetable guy. I like it. Um, and as a vegetarian I added fish back to try to get more protein. And so then these guys, uh, Kinda been heckling me and trying to get me to go and finally I met Carl Gold Camp who eventually will have on the show who’s a, a, a, a doctor and he’s the one who was helping me through it and it gave me some really good advice and so I feel better about it.
Stephen: [00:18:20] And he’s the one who keeps saying to me, Steve, you can do it by just being a pescatarian, what they call it. Just somebody who eats fish. That’s a big deal for me. I don’t want to go back to eating meat. I don’t miss it. I’ve kind of lost the taste for it. I was making the funny stories making Bacon for a bacon and sausage for the guys the other night. I was cooking it for him and I had no interest in it. None whatsoever. It’s like, Eh, doesn’t even bother me anymore, so I don’t want to add it back in. And so I’m starting on this Keto Diet. I’m about four weeks in, probably lost about 10 pounds, but I’m finally hitting my groove. Like I, even that whole trip in New Orleans, I stayed on my diet, I stayed in Ketosis the whole time, which was pretty cool. Um, and in our pre conversation you said you hope I can stay on it. So talk to me about that. What does that mean?
John: [00:19:06] No, look, no matter how you lose the way, no matter, I don’t care how anybody loses the way. If you don’t stay on what you’re doing, you’re going to gain it back. Just simple and play. You know, whatever you do to lose it. You got to make it a lifestyle. And when you get off the path of your lifestyle, you’re going to gain the weight back.
Stephen: [00:19:28] This is, this is an observation I make about you is now we probably saw each other for four times a year, five times a year. You’re at many more conferences and I go to. But whenever I do, I always notice you’re coming from the gym every place we’ve been that I’ve seen you this year, other than I didn’t see you in New Orleans coming from the gym because we were at the event. I didn’t see you at the hotel or whatever because we stayed at an Airbnb, but you always. Is that an absolute for you? No matter what
John: [00:19:58] it has to be. That’s the only way I can do any kind of maintenance. No kidding. You know, because that was the part of my strategy for losing. Right? So part of my strategy was a cardio every day.
Stephen: [00:20:13] Wait, wait. So is it seven days a week or is it five days a week? It’s six. It’s six. Okay. You Take Sundays off,
John: [00:20:19] take off a day off somebody. Well, yeah, maybe one day. Right. And that’s one of the things I do know other thing is you can never miss two days in a row, ever, ever, ever. You know, those are the two promises I try to make them myself.
Stephen: [00:20:36] And what does cardio mean to you? Like I go to a bootcamp and it’s, it’s brutal man. I mean it’s pounding, it’s kettlebells, it’s up. And he had us doing all kinds of crazy things, rope today and all that. It pounds me and I’m an old man and I’m overweight, so it really takes a pounding. How about you, what, what does that mean to you
John: [00:20:56] or cardio for me? Used to be walking to a pro or a tore my achilles. Oh boy. That just put a Kabash on my entire routine. So I’ve finally went. Then I started doing like recumbent bike. That was not good. It was okay, you know, but it wasn’t good. Now I’m back up on a regular bike type, you know, the regular bikes, like a spin cycle. Kind of like A. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that I’m able to get my heart rate up. It’s all about the heart rate because where your heart rate at and where you maintain it, it’s going to be where you’re going to burn your calories, you know? So when I was doing a little recumbent thing, my heart rate never got up high enough, you know,
Stephen: [00:21:47] now you got to help me with this because I’m in a little Quito group just right now. It’s a three of us in there and it anybody wants to join me, message me. If they’re really serious about it, they can join us. Um, but it’s a little Quito group just where we kind of reporting on things. And so I did this morning from my gym, it was 22 minutes of Cardio, 22 minutes of fat burn in six minutes. I guess it’s the other way. So 22 minutes of fat burn, 22 minutes of cardio, six minutes of peak is what I ended up with in heart rate zone. Um, and I think peak is over 140 or something like that. Maybe it’s based on my age, eight age and all that. Okay. All right. So is that what my goal is, is to get it up to a certain number then hold it there. Is that what you’re thinking?
John: [00:22:32] Yeah, that’s the whole point. Some people do it like they’ll do like, you know, they’ll get on a treadmill for 20 minutes. It’s like, dude, that’s not long enough. I mean, not for weight loss, it’s not going to be long enough. You’re gonna have to keep yourself in that peak. Not peak peak, but in the fat burning zone for at least 20 minutes. So if you only do it 20 minutes, it’s going to take you 10 of them to get your heart rate back up and then you want to cool down. So I mean you’re getting about maybe 10 minutes.
Stephen: [00:23:04] So I didn’t hit the peak this morning, so that’s not good. Let me see. So again, I’m going. Okay,
John: [00:23:10] not peak. Peak is not fat burning is going to start burning muscle.
Stephen: [00:23:15] Oh, okay. So that’s not. That’s when I was really pumping. So it says 22 minutes of fat burn, 22 minutes of Cardio and then six minutes of peak. So that 22 minutes of fat burn is the one that I. I did well in just what you’re saying.
John: [00:23:28] Yeah, you’re doing good. You’re doing good. Okay. Why do that three days a week? Here’s the thing. I mean when it comes to weight loss, 80 percent of weight loss is what you put in your mouth, right? You can’t work off as much as you eat. You can spend all day at the hardest training camp and you’ll walk out of there and maybe we’ll burn a thousand calories. That means that you’re really working hard to do a thousand calories, you know?
Stephen: [00:23:55] So how about you, I mean you travel so much, how do you, how do everybody wants John Time? So I’m sure you go to a million dinners and let’s face it, it’s going to be hard. So I was at
John: [00:24:07] the worst thing ever.
Stephen: [00:24:09] So. So what do you do? I was at a mastermind a couple of weeks ago in Orlando and they a, they pay for everything and they were taking me to, in the group to um, what’s the thing with the horses and the nights, whatever, medieval times. And I looked at it and then I look and first off I don’t like it because people eat with their hands on. That’s another thing. But anyway, so I look at the vegetarian option, the vegetarian option was beans and all kinds of stuff that I’m not supposed to eat at my Quito to. So I’m like, hey guys, I’m just going to pass, go into the meal. So I literally, I messaged a friend, I said, Hey, I’m in my first week on Kido. What do I do? He said, Steve, sometimes you got to say no. So he kind of gave me permission. He’s kind of coaching me through, you know, who you are. And so I ended up ordering room service, which was, he’s like in a salad and salmon, you’re gonna get sick of it because that’s safe at a, at a restaurant. How about you? You eat out all the time when you’re an. Everybody wants John. Tom,
John: [00:25:04] I waste a lot of people’s money when they take me out. So what I mean by that is they’ll go to these great restaurants and I’m the guy eating a salad. Let’s, um, you know, chicken or steak. I’ll eat a steak, an RP, but that’s it. But you don’t eat red meat, so.
Stephen: [00:25:22] Right. No, I get that. But, but for you, that’s it. So it’s not like this big fancy.
John: [00:25:27] No, I never. Okay. And I’m not going to, I’m going to be like, when I’m on, when I’m in the zone, I haven’t been in the zone for like three weeks, but when I’m in the zone and um, I will you double up on the vegetable. No car, no bread, no and no drinking so people don’t get it, but like drinking your calories is really one of the worst things you can do. A simple mixed drink can have depending on whether it’s sweet or not. And what kind of liquor you mixed thinking can have to 300 calories. You’ve just burned all of like 15 minutes of your workout by drinking and then you drink three or four of them. You’re a thousand in before the plate even came.
Stephen: [00:26:16] Uh, here’s, here’s something else I noticed. So I go to starbucks because I like strong coffee and I drink it black. Although I am doing the bulletproof coffee in the morning, that’s another story we can talk about, but I’m drink just black coffee and Americano. So it’s a little. They add water to it, right? Scott Espresso and I’m watching now and I’m want because they put the calories on the menu and I’m seeing some of these drinks are over a thousand calories for one drink. And I see people ordering and I’m thinking, oh my God, that probably was not that long ago where I would just, I deserve a John. I’ve worked hard, man. I gotta you know, I mean, hey, I need it.
John: [00:26:51] So your, your, your radar is on man. You’re so on right now. You. No, I mean your senses are waking up. Your brain is on fire right now. You’re really probably doing some of the best work. You’ve done it a long time in terms of thinking how many? Because you have to under people. Don’t get it, man. I mean like a heavy meal. There’s a reason why a heavy meal puts you to sleep. It takes so much energy for your body to take that heavy food and turn it into energy that you, it has to put your ass to sleep. Just think about that. Your body can’t even function anymore because it needs all of its energy just to digest the crap we just ate. That’s crazy. When you think about it,
Stephen: [00:27:38] it really is. And again, if you’re a mediator, I think the Keto diet per is a very good, uh, you know, uh, a good diet. But again, I think you’ve made this point, it’s going to get you through. But what you do on the other end is the challenge. I think that’s one of the biggest challenges. And I’m going to hit that eventually. Hey, I haven’t lost much weight. Only lost like 10 pounds. I shouldn’t say I’m thrilled that I lost 10 pounds, but you know, I got a ways to go. But.
John: [00:28:06] But here’s the thing, I don’t know if the Keto Diet, it’s just a name change. It used to be called what the California Diet or one of the other ones. And then before that, the original one was the atkins diet. It’s similar, it’s similar, it’s reducing the amount of carbs you take in. That’s all it is.
Stephen: [00:28:27] And you know what? Here’s the, here’s the biggest thing. And my son always says it’s calories in. The one thing I fall on this thing is I’m using a program called chronometer to an APP on my phone. So chronometer with to see if anybody’s interested, I’ll put a link in my site’s free, maybe you can if you got to watch some ads and I’m okay watching the ends, but the fact that I’m counting everything that I’m putting in, that’s really the biggest deal. I mean, I don’t care what it is if you use. Yeah. And then you, you’re, you’re looking at and you’re like, okay, I’ve got a Delta between what I’m supposed to be and that, what am I going to do about it? I think that’s probably the biggest thing. Um, well here’s what’s cool too, is my fitbit, which is on my wrist and my scale talk to my phone, which both talked to the chronometer. So it’s like I’m wired man. It knows how much I slept, how well I slept. My scale tells me what my weight is, my body fat percentage. It puts it all into my phone. The APP tracks my food. So all of it says, Steve, you got a problem. You need to work out harder. You are in the zone, bro. I’m hopeful to stay here because you’ve kept your weight off for how many years now?
John: [00:29:33] I kept it off. Well, I’ve gained some of it back. Shoot. But um, let me see. I did this. I started the journey in 14. Two years. Dude.
Stephen: [00:29:46] Yeah. What, what do you wish your father when he had his first health incident? Now I know he’s old and he is going upstairs. I remember this story but. But he. How old was he when he had his first health incident?
John: [00:30:01] He’s never had a health incident, so never. He had high blood pressure and they put them in the hospital one. Okay. Yeah. And so that was last year.
Stephen: [00:30:11] So you’re not staring that down as well. It could be a mom. Are you staring down any, uh, anything?
John: [00:30:17] See, say the thing is both of my parents, man, I didn’t inherit. You know, you think you’re going to raise your kids. Right? Kids will make their own damn decisions. My parents in the seventies were those people. They were the health conscious, do eat wheat germ and all that stuff. My Dad hasn’t eaten a piece of meat since 1974, you know what I mean? He looks like my brother, you know, matter of fact, he’s in better shape than you know, and he is able to add a mom. People look at my mom and say, oh, she looks so good for her age. She’s 78, you know, and she still cooks her own meals at night. She doesn’t eat a lot of fast food and sugars and all of that kind of thing.
Stephen: [00:31:08] She’s not the typical. She’s not the typical, uh, us a 78 year old kind of heavy that you see at the nursing home
John: [00:31:15] type. Not the, not the typical African American mother either, you know, because sometimes that can be a fried chicken type, a greens, mashed potato, kind of, you know, a heavy carb heavy. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, she’s just never been that way. So I mean, I’ve got these two parents that make me look bad.
Stephen: [00:31:45] That’s funny. I’m, my mom’s very, very heavy and so I am not going to go there. I am. I know. I’m predestined for it and I’m not accepting it. So guess what? Not Happening. Not Happening.
John: [00:31:57] Here’s the funny thing is like my cousins are, are kinda heavy. All of them is me and my sister. We always would talk about that. It’s like man, you know, we, we really fight and some stuff we inherit at some level, but my parents were health food nuts from the beginning and, and pretty much still it still lasts and what that has done for me is that it lets me, especially like last year I took them both to their high school reunion and I swear bro You, there is a difference, a huge difference when you get up in that group. There’s a huge difference between how you live and how you eat and how your exist is, will be at that age. Amazing. I mean they look like my parents look like they are their friends children. It’s weird. It’s very weird. It’s, it’s kind of sad and, and I think it made them. I was driving him home on the way back and you know, they talked about all these person that died, that person died. You see this guy over there, he lost his leg to diabetes and I made. It was just, it was, I don’t think they’ll ever go back. Honestly. This was a little depressing. Yeah. You know, I think it really was because they knew they were a little bit of fish out of water kind of thing when a lot of the people. Not Everybody of course, but I just, it was really weird.
John: [00:33:32] Yeah, somewhat. I mean because we have this thought that um, we can do what we want and we just take what comes to us. That’s what we think, you know, old age has to be this way and you’re going to have this. But um, I was able to look at them and I’m like, you know what? There it is an option that you can take that might be a little bit better for your mobility. All I care about is being mobile when I’m older. Freedom. That’s all.
Stephen: [00:34:02] I think this was a great lead into why is this related to ecommerce selling? Because I think most people are sitting here saying, you know, what are these two talking about? I already feel bad enough about my health. I don’t need these two in my year and look, I’m only just saying to you that I am not holier than now, man. I am knee deep in it, trying to figure a way around it and yet we run a business and for example, this morning I had two tractor trailers here picking up pallets. I had to do some bundling for someone and take that to take it to a ups store to try to get ahead of it, right? Plus our regular post office stuff and then I’m doing this and then I have this afternoon I’ve got a whole bunch of stuff. I’m putting makeup. I’m active. I have to be. And guess what? I need that mobility. There’s where the work is right? You, you could sit behind a desk, but anybody who sits behind a desk and doesn’t get out. I mean, I did that in a corporate America forever. It was not freedom. Your mobility is your freedom, isn’t your health. You Freedom John.
John: [00:34:59] It is your freedom, but only. Not only that, it’s your money. How many sick days do you get? A year zero. Exactly. So I mean, look, if I don’t work, I don’t make money so I don’t know about you folk, but if I don’t work, I’m not making money. I don’t get sick days when I’m off, I don’t get paid none of that. I don’t have vacation time, I don’t get none of that, you know, because I am an entrepreneur. So the same thing that you know, we’re all talking about our health is very dependent on our ability to earn. So thinking about
Stephen: [00:35:36] or do you do business
John: [00:35:38] better for you when you go on stage? Because it’s a good example because you have to be, you know, energetic up onstage when you’re in that zone, when you’re doing your workouts and you’re eating, I mean you’re going to say dusty of course, but realistically how big of a difference and have you noticed it, you know, and notice it, it sounds like one day you just wake up and be like, Whoa, look at where I’m at. You know, even though it happens little by little by little, how do I get here? You know? Yeah, exactly. But I mean, you do wake up, you’re like, wow, okay, I just did, you know, 90 minutes on stage and I feel great and I’m ready to go. Whereas before it’d be like, oh, that would just put me flat on my back for the rest of day.
Stephen: [00:36:21] That usually I’ve seen some people who leave it on the stage and they need days of recovery. So that’s a big deal. All right,
John: [00:36:29] so, you know, just real quick. Johnny Rock, Noni freaking Robbins. I went and saw him do his 12, 13 hour days on stage and I was like, dude, I got to be like that guy. It all. What does he do? What’s his secret? And it’s secret is all in his preparation.
Stephen: [00:36:50] And I think, I think we’ve got to get serious about this because I mean, you know, I’m going to be 53 tomorrow and I sit there and I look at people younger than me and my local newspaper dropping dead. And I’m like, oh my God, really? This is it John. This is your life. It’s over tomorrow. It good? Have you got it all done to get it all done? The whole list is checked. Everything. Every box is checked. Your, you know, kids are happy and loved ones are going to be thrilled. No, I don’t think so. And so that’s why I think this is important and I’m going to take, because I talk about, I use this phrase a lot, build a life, right? It’s an, it should be intentional and I wish I would’ve done it sooner, but I didn’t, so I’m going to try and make it right and I’m not better than anyone else.
Stephen: [00:37:33] I’m trying to figure it out myself, but this is a big piece of it. Um, and Andy always says we travel a lot together and he’s always like, make sure we schedule in some time for exercise and we never do, you know, there’ve been a few times. Yeah, we miss it and he’s been, he’s been traveling for extensive and he’s, he’s struggling just because he’s been on the road so much, but it’s like we gotta get back to it. So I’m in it, and if anybody else wants to get in it, uh, you know, hey, this group, Quito, neuropath, Carl Gill Camps Group, um, it’s about Keto and I mean, there are Quito, naturopath, sorry, Quito, naturopath, and I’ll put a link to it. Um, it’s a pretty cool group, but again, whatever works for you. If you’re into crossfit and you’re doing that with your Paleo, your, whatever, whatever works for you, the key is, do not keep talking about. I love it. John gets it. I’m telling you, you’re inspiring me about that. The more I think about it, absolute, that’s an, that’s an absolute for you. And I got to set that same goal, so I’m going to do it. Okay?
John: [00:38:32] Right. Travel real quick. One of the things is, as soon as I get to the hotel, that’s where I go to the gym. So if we’re going to be gone, you know, three days, at least one of the days I got in there,
Stephen: [00:38:44] he pounded into a broken the same thing he said, whenever he travels, no matter what the first thing he does is done because otherwise he gets talking to somebody, he’s out and it’ll come up with a million reasons not to. I think that’s a powerful message. I think it’s really smart and you’re probably pretty good, especially as you’re traveling to there. It’s you travel back is when you’re wiped out. Right? So that’s pretty helpful. Yeah, that’s good. All right. Okay. So I think we beat that horse long enough, but I think it’s really important. John has a loose with John Group also. It’s still out there somewhere. Um, somewhere out there. Um, but I think John’s a good, uh, not accountability because you’re not going to be sitting there saying, hey, did you eat your calories today? But again, if you want to look at somebody who’s on the road and enormous amount and has a seven figure business in product sales, physical product sales, in addition to his information business is a good example of somebody who does it and does it. Just talk about it. So anyway. Okay, tell me what you want to tell me. You’re going to tell me something. Are you going to blow my mind? Go for it. I’m going to blow your mind. I’m ready. You built this up. I’m expecting big things.
John: [00:39:51] I don’t remember. What was I supposed to tell you man?
Stephen: [00:39:53] You said, Steve, I’ve got something I want to talk about. And I’m like, all right.
John: [00:39:58] Or you know what? Here’s the thing. A lot of people just, you know, they, they, they’ve seen me talk to me. They hang out with me at conferences and everybody be like, well what do you do? What John, what do you do? And the thing is, I do social commerce. I wrote the book on it, you know, kick ass social commerce, social commerce is always my thing. And, and the, the, the key point was that most of the folks at the time, like when we first met each other the first time I was on here, we’re not ready for social.
Stephen: [00:40:33] No, there was nobody talking about it. And I use this example. You, I remember this, I’ve told so many people this story and anybody who’s listened to my show heard this, you were the one years ago telling me, Steve, I think it’s going to end up where every product is going to have a landing page basically, and you’re going to market that product product by product. And remember that I’m like, really? But it’s true. It’s their facebook click funnels. That’s perfect world of that, isn’t it?
John: [00:41:02] That’s what it is, isn’t it? Everything’s a landing page.
Stephen: [00:41:05] And that was years ago, you were saying that
John: [00:41:08] that’s because I’m a futurist. But if I tell people I’m a futurist thinking like, what? What does that, you know? But I mean, when I work with IBM, that’s what they pay me for, you know, because your future is, we want to know where the puck is moving. I will tell you not where the puck is moving, but where it’s going to end up even before the guy starts playing with the sticks. So that’s what I do.
Stephen: [00:41:33] I don’t ask you this question. Let me ask this question. This is a fair question because I think this is, I mean, are you one of those guys? Are you the painter whose house needs to be painted or the uh, the carpenter who’s stuff is falling down because you sell products to you walk the walk in. I know you talked the talk, but do you walk the walk? Be Honest.
John: [00:41:54] I have a, you have a. absolutely no, I mean I am the barber that needs a haircut. You know, you ever go into a barbershop or you go in a beauty shop, the person doing the hair never has the best hair. Never. You know, so I mean that’s, that’s because you’re always working on somebody else’s something and then when it comes to your thing, you’ll be like, oh, I’ll get around to it. So that’s a absolutely not. If you go out and you look and you say, let’s check out, you know, my product page, it’s not the best product page. It’s not as optimized as I do for other people because people are paying me for that work, you know, myself. It’s just like, ah, I’ll get to it. So yeah, I’m that guy.
Stephen: [00:42:40] You weren’t that guy. Alright. So the futurist, you’re looking at trends and patterns and you’re looking out there and saying, hey, this is likely where we’re heading is how accurate do you feel like you have been? I mean, because I could use my example with you cause you to match the God’s honest truth. I have no gain in it. I remember it and I, I, I remember him saying it. I’m thinking, man, really? And it’s true.
John: [00:43:10] You know what Gary? Gary Vaynerchuk taught me this, right? He’s like, look, it doesn’t matter how many times you’re wrong, as long as you’re right, people will forget when you were wrong. When you hit it out the park and you’re right. Then you’re just going to look like a rockstar. So part of the game, and I’m not going to end it, is a game, I mean businesses, again, part of business really is being able to speak with authority, authority that. Right? So I speak with authority. How many times am I right? I’m probably right 20 percent of the time and wrong 80 percent of the time, but most people won’t get up to bat. So they’re never right. I don’t, I don’t have a fear of being, you know what I’m saying? A challenged on some of the things that I didn’t get right. Um, if I was like, I would’ve thought ebay would be dead by now, you know, that would have been one of my things. My predictions with Eva was going to be either a now. I never thought it was going to be dead. I thought somebody would buy it by now and integrated and nobody has.
Stephen: [00:44:23] Well, what does that say? Does that mean you’re wrong or does that mean people looked at it and kick the tires?
John: [00:44:28] No, it still can, you know, but people just don’t think. I mean, if you’re, if I put out here’s the things that’s going to happen in 2018 and I’ve got a list of 20 things, right, am just five of them happened and one of them hits big. They’re not going to. They’re going to totally forget the other 15.
Speaker 6: [00:44:48] Hmm.
John: [00:44:50] Interesting. Totally freaked because nobody else got five,
Stephen: [00:44:55] right? Oh yeah. Nobody’s looking at when. When you’re looking out there, what are you looking for? So like right now, for example, right? We all know that, right? We all know people that are selling off of Amazon, right? Even though Amazon’s the place, we all know people, you and I personally know people that are selling many millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars, not on Amazon, and none of them had some, some of their sales. Not one dime is on Amazon. They’re like, hey, what’s that Amazon thing? Now I don’t need it. I just use facebook ads and click funnels or Infusionsoft, whichever one they choose, but that’s what they do. When you look out there, what do you see?
John: [00:45:33] Well, I mean, here’s a. This is gonna sound so simple, but it is simple. You don’t look forward. You look backwards. There’s nothing new under the sun, man. Everything that’s going on today has gone on before. Alright, so you just got to find the similarities. Uh, we just talked about Ebay. The natural progression of eva is very similar to the progression of Amazon. Amazon feels new, but it’s not new. Amazon’s changing. Not really. It’s following the exact same path that Ebay followed. Eba did the, you know, catching up a lot of the tuna in the, uh, what is that fish dolphins in the tuna net. That’s what’s happening on Amazon right now. So every, every marketplace starts out with just tom come one, come all be free until they start realizing that, hey, we could really make more money if we just appease the brand owners and give them priority because I only have to deal with them one customer and that customer is a professional customer other than dealing with these crazy insane third party sellers that are driving me nuts, trying to
John: [00:46:52] one up each other and teach each other all of these bad habits, you know. And always trying to print and find ways around our rules. They’re like, hey, it’s not worth us to continue serving those people when we can go right now to the brand owners. Right? But the brand owners didn’t want to talk to Amazon 10 years ago. Say it was Amazon wasn’t selling as much. They would 45 percent of the fourth quarter sales were being done on that one platform. So we see the exact same thing happening now to party sellers that happened in the past. Amazon is notorious for removing the middleman. That is their job, that is their modus up. They can show me the fly wheel all they want or they can just show, hey, our job is to remove the middleman. That’ll make everything cheaper, that’ll make happy customers more happy. And that’s what Amazon does. That’s, that’s what they always have done. Right? And so when we put ourselves in a position to becoming middlemen and don’t recognize, that’s the worst part. I don’t mind being in the middle man. I’m a middleman. I. But I know I’m a middleman, so I know that my so called business and I’m doing the air quotes here. My business is not what I’m doing, my businesses always finding out how I can be another middleman and make money. That’s my real business.
Stephen: [00:48:21] So wait, let’s pause. Let’s pause because I think this is the place you’re going deep. And I like it. So you’re saying, Hey, wait a second, let’s just call it what it is. I’m a middleman in all these marketplaces, whether it be Ebay or whether it be Amazon or whether it be any of these other channels that are out there right now and let people used to use overuse this phrase. You know, it’s Amazon sandbox. So you know, you got to play by the rules, right? But you as a middleman, if you, if you say it that way, then you really understand you have no control on the front end or the other end, right? But that’s okay because then you can plan. You can only really handle what you can handle. So you can’t get upset when Amazon makes a change because they’re making a change the best for them. Yeah, it sucks, but whatever, right? You have to flex. Or You could stand your ground. We say this, Jeff Besos never calls me to say, Steve, what do you think, John? What would you do? Right? He’s never going to call you. So. So in fairness though, by recognizing where you are as a middleman now, when you come to that approach, what does that mean to you? What is a middleman mean for you?
John: [00:49:28] A middleman means for me is I’m, I’m putting the need in touch with the manufacturer. Right? So as long as those two can’t get on the same page, there’s an opportunity for me.
Stephen: [00:49:43] So. So the, the need, the demand versus manufacturing supply. So you’re going to be in between. You’re the intermediary,
John: [00:49:53] right? And as long as I know that and understand that, that I’ve always kind of looking for more and more areas where I can be that. But if I get into the thought pattern that, hey, this is my business, is I still this cheap crap from China, that’s not a business. You’re the middleman because you don’t make the cheap crap and you are not responsible for the people buying the cheap crap because you’re not marketing yourself, right? You use a marketplace.
Stephen: [00:50:26] Okay. So let’s just stop there a second to that. I want to get there. So you’re saying even with a private label seller, right? Who’s making a water bottles? My water bottles on my desk. I’m making water bottles. I’m still, even though I’m bringing them to market and they say Steve’s water bottle on it, I’m still a middle man because I’m not, I’m not sure.
John: [00:50:44] Got his water bottle. It looks just like yours is that appears is yellow say. But if you understand that, it’ll make you think differently. So what you didn’t start doing is how do we take Steve’s water bottle and turned it into a brand so that nobody else can knock off Steve’s water bottle so that when people think water bottle, they’re thinking Steve’s water bottle. You can drink all kinds of clothes, but if I say Cola to you, you say, coke, guess what? That’s what I need to do with my Chinese knockoff brand.
Stephen: [00:51:22] How easy is that?
John: [00:51:24] It’s it. You know what? It’s as easy as it was for you to start finding the Chinese knockoffs and make them
Stephen: [00:51:31] really well. You’re not. You’re not gonna. Throw that out there and leave it. Lay. Let’s go buddy.
John: [00:51:36] How much? How much time did you spend doing that? I know the guy that sold you the course told you you can do it overnight. Just two hours a week, but we all know that’s bullshit. We spend hours and days of time. We pulled our hair out trying to get all of the things in order, so we got the time. We’ve got the talent. We just don’t spend enough time. If we just took 10 percent of the time we spend on all these other things, learning how to say, Oh, okay,
Stephen: [00:52:09] I’m going to get frustrated. No, no, don’t get frustrated because I’m with you because what you’re saying is, Steve, instead of finding six other products, build out that product, you have the water bottle to its full capacity direct. Um, uh, there’s, uh, there are very few people and I’m not putting anybody down and that’s because I don’t know everybody. I know there are tons of them are going to say, oh no, I do it. Okay. I’m not criticizing anybody else. I’m just saying I know a couple people that are crushing it with so few skews because guess what, they’re not looking at anything else. They got their head down and they are doing the work on those. They are, so you named a platform, they’re there. You name a click funnel, they’re there, you name it, they’re doing video, they’re doing audio there on podcast or instagram influencing. They got old and I think how do they do that? But guess what, it’s the one, two, know if they have variation skews, that’s it.
John: [00:52:59] Right? So that’s when you say, what am I looking at? That’s what I’m always looking at because that always wins. That always went. And you have to understand, man, business as a life cycle. No business lasts forever or at least none that I know, you know, and I at some point, everything like ge is about to go belly up, right? You think that was going to be around forever. Nothing lasts forever. Everything has a cycle. Even our products have a lifecycle. So you kind of just want to be in the mode, man of looking at the next thing that you’re going to go into that makes sense and that you can take from what you already are in and doing and roll that into that next day.
Stephen: [00:53:44] So what’s your counsel to people? So there were, you know, most of my audience are going to be selling on Amazon, Ebay, uh, probably
John: [00:53:50] shopify store. Build a brand, build a brand, a brand, build a brand, build a brand builder bar.
Speaker 7: [00:53:58] Hmm.
John: [00:53:59] And build it Amazon. Yeah, go ahead.
Stephen: [00:54:02] Well, I was just gonna say, what does that mean? Build a brand I want you to just to be. Because I sell water bottles. Are you saying to me, Steve, you need to make the best water bottle that meets the demand of the marketplace or recognize that there’s so many other people selling water bottles. It’s diluted. Find a better brother.
John: [00:54:18] I always tell people, I mean, you’re old enough so I can talk to you. Me and you the same age, right? You Remember Betamax? Sure. I bought 1000 bucks for it. Was it better than vhs?
Stephen: [00:54:31] They say it was. Um, so I’m going to say yes.
John: [00:54:35] Unpacked. It was. I mean, there was a whole lot of reasons, but it was better. Yes. It was a better technology. Is Windows better than Mac? No. Okay. So let’s remove the thought that you have to have the best product. You don’t have to have the best product check. Okay. What’d you have to have is the best marketing, marketing trump’s products. And I’d use the word for trump for a reason.
Speaker 7: [00:55:05] Hmm?
John: [00:55:07] When I go in there and we’re not going there. So go ahead, keep going. We’ll go there because I’m not Donald Trump. Our president is one of the best marketers in the world. And one of the reasons why is because he’s very good at giving his opinion as opposed to stating fact. There’s a difference between facts and opinions. Right? So when I tell you I’ve got the best water bottle, in my opinion, that’s one thing actually creating the best water bottle. It’s probably hard and I don’t even know what that would actually be. But when I sat there and I’m able to say this is the best water bottle because I use this everyday. I know that when I put my stuff in this water bottle, it’ll still be there tomorrow. When it’s cold, it stays cold. See, I’m expressing honest opinion. That’s great marketing.
Stephen: [00:56:08] Well let’s talk about that. So how do you do that? Because here’s the problem. I would say,
John: [00:56:13] well no because I’m about a wait, wait, wait. Just go quick and they don’t lose your question, but just think about it. What we’ve been taught is that our bullet points need to be facts. Right? Right. That’s where I was going.
Stephen: [00:56:24] Right. That’s because their name is on. I got a bullet point. I can’t. I don’t have that ability to put that other stuff. Huh?
John: [00:56:31] You can put what I just said.
Stephen: [00:56:34] Well, it Steve’s water bottle if I met somebody else’s. Yeah. Okay. So you’re saying that’s the better approach by putting that clever, you know, really putting those kinds of communication into your listings. That’s how you can. You can rise above.
John: [00:56:49] I’m saying that’s just how you market a product. Okay. All right. You got a market, you’ve got to learn the language of marketing. Right now, everybody’s in clickfunnels. World. Click funnels, I think has done some of the best marketing ever have got people paying you for a landing page. It is nothing but a landing page designer. That’s all it is. It’s, I mean, it’s a wordpress for stupid people. I mean literally, you know. Well, it’s a little bit deeper. Yeah.
Stephen: [00:57:25] Because it’s got the, you know, the ability to keep marketing to you. Right,
John: [00:57:29] right. But I’m trying to make a point here, right? Anything I can do on that tool I can do with wordpress, but it’s easier to do it over there. Right. Does that make it better? No, not necessarily. It. The reason why it’s easier is because it only allows you to do certain things. Whereas if in wordpress I can do anything that my brain wants to, but it’s hard. I got to learn to code. So in order not to learn to code, you have to remove to the complexity and make it easier with drag and drop, but that drag and drop actually limits the amount of stuff you can do. So how do we market that? How do we market something that has actually got less functionality than the current thing that’s out there
Stephen: [00:58:19] by telling you it’s the best thing ever.
John: [00:58:21] What are you going bad? They’ve actually taken what’s negative and turned it marketing wise into a positive. So the fact is that I tell you, you can’t do everything. I don’t tell you that I tell you what you can do and made it easy so you can just drag and drop it. So I’ve turned the negative into a pot. You, that’s what you got to do.
Stephen: [00:58:44] Well, how, how are people doing? How are the outliers? You know, because I think about, um, some of the companies that aren’t starting brands and you’re seeing some of them right, that ring, like I have the ring camera system here that was a great company, a great, it’s great products. Um, you know, I don’t know how good all of them are, but they’ve really done a good job and then they just stood out. They stood out pretty much better than anyone. And then Amazon comes along and buys them for a couple billion bucks. I mean, that’s a good example of somebody who took a brand, took an okay product, which is cool, and then created this brand that we all have to have. Now. Every person I know has this. We were comparing ring pictures, believe it or not, at an event in front of your house. That’s. Well, yeah, I have it at the warehouse, but it’d be, what does yours look like? Oh, here’s mine.
John: [00:59:31] What did ring this is, this is a question for you. What did ring do that propelled them into that space that their competitors did not do?
Stephen: [00:59:41] Well, what they sold me on was the ability. For instance, function at a. it’s simple. I mean it’s, the dumb is three wires turned it on. Right? So it’s simple. Second thing it did is it gave me the ability to have instant instant communication with someone at my door. That’s huge for me, you know, because I travel a lot and that kind of thing. And they got in front of me. I think that that’s probably where you’re going with it. They got in front of me, they probably would. Those facebook ads were because I don’t watch TV, so it has to be facebook ads that I’m like, Oh man, I gotta have one of those things. That’s how they got me. Huh?
John: [01:00:14] Right. So I mean, what’s the diff tree bring in nest?
Stephen: [01:00:18] I’ve never seen ness so I don’t know.
John: [01:00:20] So you didn’t even can do a comparison when it came to you make that a brand brow, you didn’t even compare? Nope. You didn’t go there and say, hey, why should I buy ring versus math? No, you said, hey, I want a, you know, automated, you know, online doorbell with a clot with the, you know, the camera. It was like ring because the brand was in your mind
Stephen: [01:00:46] and when I was supporting them, so I was like, okay, that was not supportive
John: [01:00:52] background and another thing is to see, here’s the thing. Ring was never really trying to sell to you. They were trying to sell to Amazon or to somebody they wanted to get bought out. What people don’t remember. His ring was actually called, I can’t remember what it was called, but it was on the TV show. What’s the TV show with the people sit in shark tank.
Stephen: [01:01:17] It was on. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember that. Yep.
John: [01:01:20] You remember he was on shark tank. It wasn’t called ring at the time and I think one of the things they mentioned to him, because they didn’t buy into it, they told him here’s why they didn’t buy and he went back into the lab and did exactly what they said to do and then it got bought out.
Stephen: [01:01:38] So. So let’s bring this back to a. we’re selling products. What, what are, what should we might create a brand that’s. So your bold statement is. I get that everybody’s saying the same thing
John: [01:01:50] because you already got one because that’s what we talking to. We’re talking to an audience that’s got private label already. Right? And my thought, my, my, my advice to them is figure out which one of those products can be turned into a brand
Stephen: [01:02:08] and then go all in.
John: [01:02:10] There you go. All in. What does that mean? You don’t know? You know what? Go 80 percent. Yeah.
Stephen: [01:02:14] Okay, go 80 percent. What does that look like to you? What is 80 percent looked like to John? Well, I,
John: [01:02:20] I can only talk about my own personal thing. I mean I used to sell 500 different products. The economy got bad and all of a sudden we were looking at a slow down in our revenue and we had a meeting and I sat up there and I’m like, look, we’re going through the 80 slash 20 process. Eighty percent of our money comes from 20 percent of our product somewhere in here because that always works. So we pulled out the 20 percent of the products that we’re making, 80 percent of our income and then I prioritize them based on, I think there was 10 of them, you know, eight to 10 of them. I took the top 10. Yeah, I remember now I took the top 10 and I prioritize them by which one I thought we could make a full brand and that’s how we ended up with drinking.
Stephen: [01:03:15] Okay. And so when you’re, when you start with that brand, what was your vision for it and did it come to fruition? Because I mean it’s hard when you’re sitting there saying is a brand is a brand like ring? Whereas a brand like uh, you know, regional. I mean, I, I don’t know how perspective. Is it a million dollar brand? Is it 100 million dollar brand? I mean, when did you start with.
John: [01:03:40] Well, you mean start with
Stephen: [01:03:41] what were you thinking when you’re sitting there saying, hey, I’m going to make this a brand. What did you, what was your expectation?
John: [01:03:47] That’s a good question. I will say
John: [01:03:53] that now that I’m thinking about, we beat the numbers that I thought it would be. Yeah, very cool. I thought it would be so much bigger than I thought it would be. Um, and I do know I fight with my partner because he’s not $1,000 on the brand thing know. I mean he just wants to pack boxes all day and just leave me the hell alone kind of thing and not market, you know, I’m just not comfortable with the marketing and where’s the money going? I always have to deal with that and there’s only two of us, you know, so we go back and forth. But. And then I mean it’s probably good and bad because the car has both a brake and an accelerator. So I’m the accelerator so I always think we should be going further and faster.
Stephen: [01:04:36] Well it is for firestone says 25 percent, right? Twenty five percent is your, your number you should be spending on advertising.
John: [01:04:44] Yeah. Um, I would probably go around 2010 to 20, but yeah. So you know, it’s, it’s, it all depends on what your profitability is. And what your expenses are,
Stephen: [01:04:55] but if you, if you’re spending 20, 20 and you spend a 20 and you’re not profitable, then you have the wrong product is what he would say. Because if it can sustain that, it can’t support it, it’s probably not going to be sustainable for the long run because you got to. If you’re trying to build a brand is what.
John: [01:05:12] Yeah, I’m on. My thing is, I mean look, if, if the advertising doesn’t pay for itself, at least at zero, this is a russell thing. You know, once you get to zero, you got a winner. Zero, meaning that every dollar I spend, I get back. If I get to that money then I can propel it from there. So I already understand that. If I spend a dollar and I get a dollar five cents out of it, I’m not ever going to stop spinning that dime. Right. You know? But everybody’s not like that.
Stephen: [01:05:43] No. Well, I think this is the problem is that quite frankly we’ve been spoiled. Right? And in some ways, when you come up to the Ra, oh a way, you know, you’re just buying stuff cheap and selling it, right? You’ve got a little APP that tells you to buy it, right? That doesn’t teach you how to market, that teaches you that somebody. We don’t even think that Amazon spending a fortune marketing right? For us, that’s part of their fees. We think their fees are too high. But guess what? They’re spending that money go out on your own. And my click funnel facebook guys, they spend 25 percent. They spend millions of dollars a month on facebook ads. They sell millions, but they spend millions. And so it’s a little. It’s a, it’s a different. It’s, I want my cake and eat it too, John. I want low fees and I don’t want it to spend money on advertising. That doesn’t work. Does it?
John: [01:06:28] You know what? Here’s the, here’s the. Here’s the thing, this is where I come in. That’s why I say I’m social commerce, right? I’m not paid media. That’s a different thing. I show people how to use organic social media to support their paid media. So that their paid advertising is cheaper.
Stephen: [01:06:48] Well give me an example.
John: [01:06:50] So let’s say right now you’re spending $100 on an ad, right? But you don’t have to audience dialed in and why don’t you have the audience dialed in is because you don’t even know who the audience is. So we’re just spending money on people that are age range and that has this income and might actually liked this product. But if you just take some time to educate people with a good offer, right? Hey, like right now, you’ll see everybody right now. This is the hot thing is free books because we’re also did a free book and he did like crazy money on a free book. I’ll send you the free book, right? And you just pay shipping and handling. It will be nine 95. Well we’re, we’re not. I mean come on, we’re all educated here so we understand that it doesn’t cost $10 to make that book and it caused even less to ship that book for 10 bucks. I can make that book on kindle and ship it to you and still probably make a dollar. Right. So yeah. So yeah.
Stephen: [01:07:55] No, I’m listening. I’m just trying to soak it in because you said kindle then. Okay. And then you threw me for a second and I’m like, wait a second. You mean to create space or something like that. Createspace, createspace. That’s what you’re through me and I’m thinking, okay, so you’ve got to create space. You print the book, you send it media mail, you’re still gonna buck or two cleared. Okay.
John: [01:08:10] Correct. All right. But what you don’t get is the book is just a marketing thing.
Stephen: [01:08:16] Yeah.
John: [01:08:18] The book is just there to educate you on the opportunity that you’re missing out on without this solution and the book is all about the solution that you should come and buy, but it doesn’t say that in the most. You know, it’s very, very well written and well put together. What that is doing is finding you an audience that is going to be way more likely to buy your book or your. I’m sorry, your solution based on the fact that they were interested enough to get the free book.
Stephen: [01:08:58] So is that like give you authority and you have now have a relationship and so there’s a trust established. Is that where we’re going?
John: [01:09:06] That’s secondary. Primary is you found people that are actually interested. Qualify the leads, right? Yeah, so it’s totally qualified leads. When I run ads to qualified leads, it cost me 20 percent as much as it does when I running ads for unqualified
Stephen: [01:09:31] you. I’m with you. So I’m with you. I’m right with you. So now I’m going to direct you though, back to my water bottles. So I’m going to use my example. So I’m, I’m a water bottle cellar. John. Mine is a very good bottle. So in your example, I get what Russell was doing because then it identified the people that want to sell stuff to other people. Therefore it. But I’m selling water bottles. So give me an example how you would direct me to get a qualified audience of people that would likely buy my water bottle. Eventually
John: [01:09:58] you got to give me a 10 percent. No,
Stephen: [01:10:02] I won’t lie to you, I don’t want to disappoint you, but nothing. You get nothing.
John: [01:10:06] Ears ago. Here we go. Let’s do it. Who uses water bottle?
Stephen: [01:10:10] Um, these, these are designed probably for outdoor because it’s a Columbia. What about. So it’s an outdoors type of water bottles for hikers and active people.
John: [01:10:20] So you’ve got outdoor, you got hikers?
Stephen: [01:10:24] I don’t think these are bicycle type, but yeah, it’s probably maybe bicycle as a biker’s yeah, maybe.
John: [01:10:30] Okay. So let’s say we’ve got outdoor, we got hikers and bikers. Those are our three audience. All right? Totally different people. So I can create a book about, you know, not, it doesn’t even need to be a book. Can be a top. I like list top 25, top 100 things that you need to know about how door. Right. I just made that up.
Stephen: [01:10:54] So wait a second, are you telling me every time I watch one of these stupid top 10 list on Youtube, I’m getting profiled. Every time I click on one of those facebook ads, let’s say 15 people who blub blub. How are they identifying? Oh my gosh, yes. No, I’m so stupid, but it’s not stupid.
John: [01:11:14] I mean why? I mean the deal is, it’s really a win win because I’m interested and I want to find the best solution for the water bottle. I mean, so you gotta look at it that way to you. That’s really, that’s really the way you want to create your content.
Stephen: [01:11:29] Okay, so you’re offering utility.
John: [01:11:32] You’re, you’re doing, you’re doing good content for your audience whether they purchased from you or not. Right? Okay.
Stephen: [01:11:40] So you’re putting something in front of them like, Hey, here’s what this water bottle would be used for the best ways, best opportunity or whatever it would be. And then
John: [01:11:49] no, you haven’t even met. You shouldn’t even mention a dag on waterfall. You might put an ad at the end. Okay. You know, you know, even by the way I sell water bottles, here’s my site if you ever want one. I don’t care about that because this is not. This part is not the sale.
Stephen: [01:12:04] This is just qualifying the leads. Okay.
John: [01:12:06] This is just qualify. All we’re making is lead generating content.
Speaker 7: [01:12:11] Hmm.
John: [01:12:13] Gotcha. You generate the lead and then you want to go even deeper. That’s the top of the funnel awareness, you know before, before we don’t know whether they’re gonna they’re ready to buy a water bottle in a day or maybe five years from now, but they’re going to remember that top 100 list that you gave them that they thought was so awesome that got them started.
Stephen: [01:12:38] So again, it’s outdoors or outdoors activities or top biking things or anything related to that to get people. That would be good.
John: [01:12:47] Go hire yourself, va and that’s their job
Stephen: [01:12:49] and so how do you collect it? And that’s a good. This is a good point because I think people are going to be like, okay, I get it now because it took me a while to get it. They probably got it five minutes ago. I’m sorry. I’m so. So they get it. No, it it. It’s very clear. Now that you say it, that I’m thinking about, it’s very clear. So they got these leads from all different places, which is what your advice is. Not. Don’t just get one list. You get them from all these different places. I got all that information, which I guess I’m collecting emails I guess, or facebook.
John: [01:13:13] You’re collect emails or facebook, you can collect engagement.
Stephen: [01:13:16] Engagement. Okay, so I’m collecting that information and then what’s my next step? So I’m going well, or what? Where do I gather it? Let me ask that question first. Segmenting your list. So where am I gathering that information? What’s the. What are the tools that you recommend that people should be using to gather and put those in someplace?
John: [01:13:36] So for them to get the.
Stephen: [01:13:38] So. So for example, like I use convert kit for my email list. So is that a, is that a term? Is that a place where you would put things and then qualify them and say, oh, this person’s a bicyclist, enthusi this is.
John: [01:13:48] Okay. So now that you’ve got their information. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bought they bought or they’ve got your free thing,
Stephen: [01:13:56] your free list, your free Ebook, whatever it is. Where am I putting that day? Yeah,
John: [01:14:00] we talked about, we got outdoor hiker, biker three audiences. Outdoor doesn’t want to see the same thing. Bikers want to see, and bikers don’t want to see the same thing. Hikers want to see,
Stephen: [01:14:12] even though in my example, they’re buying the same water bottle, it’s the pitch eventually that would be different, right? Just what you’re saying.
John: [01:14:19] Okay. Absolutely. All right. You want to get them engaged. You know, people buy from those that they know, like, and trust. So your next phase is you want to get them to know, like, and trust you before you even tried to sell them.
Stephen: [01:14:34] Well, I don’t know that you answered my question of where you put this data because I just got to get that in my head next.
John: [01:14:39] Okay. So you’re saying you got your.
Stephen: [01:14:41] I ran a list, right? I ran a list and it’s $100 Acre biking places to go.
John: [01:14:47] Yes you will. You put it in your convert kit and you want to start sending them emails with good quality content about outdoor
Stephen: [01:14:58] and and you’re going to say, you’re going to say this is stupid, but I want to make sure I point this out to people in that email list because convert kit allows that. I’m able to profile them so and I would say that they came from the biker list, right? Or something like that. Some way to identify them so they’re unique even though the written next to a million other people. Okay. All right. I get that finally. All right. Sure. I’m slow on this stuff
John: [01:15:19] so people are going to fall off. They’re going to say, stop sending me crap. Okay. That’s where we want. We don’t want them. If they don’t want us, we don’t want them. Right. That’s fair. Okay. Then once we got that list scrubbed a little bit, we’re going to take that list and we’re going to put it into facebook.
Stephen: [01:15:39] So you’re going to actually take those. So am I going to profile those people and create a similar audience in this case because I’m familiar with that? Or is this actual where you’re going to put Steve’s email in that facebook.
John: [01:15:53] You’re going to put Steve’s email. This is going to be your custom audience. No kidding.
Stephen: [01:15:57] Okay. So this is a real audience and you’re putting it in there.
John: [01:16:02] That’s right. You’ve got to put your custom audience in facebook allows that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Every matter of fact, if you guys haven’t done that already, anybody that’s your customer and you got that information, you need to be putting that in as a custom audience and if you can segment it by product, that’s even better. All right? So we got upset. We’ve got three audience and now we got outdoor hikers, bikers, all three in different custom audiences in facebook. Okay? Facebook. Alright. Now the crap you send them and to just being funny when I say crap. All right? When you create this, let’s say a for our outdoor people, we’ve done five or six, five to 10 posts. All right? We’ve done the one that we turned into a, a, a free offer, a free giveaway, and then let’s say every week for the next two or three weeks we just send them some great information. All right? When you put the list into facebook, what you want to do is you want to brand it with your brand and you want to retard get them back to your free information.
Stephen: [01:17:15] Okay? So let’s just pause there because I’m going to lose this one. All right? So he can tell you that, right? So I’m going to have steel water bottle brings you the top 10 places to hike or whatever. Okay. So or whatever. Or brought to you by Steven,
John: [01:17:28] not about places to hike in Arizona. Adopted. Yes. You can do that. Okay.
Stephen: [01:17:33] Alright. So I’ve done that. They keep lists, they keep reading or whatever. They’re not dropping from there. Engaging. Okay.
John: [01:17:42] Gauging. And then when they’re engaging with you they’re going to know, like, and trust you. And then just like the book says, Jab, Jab,
Stephen: [01:17:53] right? And so when, when you say retargeting, tell me what that means. So I’ve been sending John Messages about hiking because he’s interested in, he’s looking at them. Tell me how to use that term, how you would use that term for retargeting for facebook.
John: [01:18:10] So the deal is is when you write your email and you send them to a page to read your, you’re a blog post or whatever, right? Everybody’s not going to do that. They might even just see your email and just keep moving. What are you going to do in the facebook side is let them see your email basically again
Stephen: [01:18:34] on facebook in and facebook ad,
John: [01:18:37] right? Right. You’re running an ad just to make them get engaged with your content. So you’re reinforced, you’re retargeting them to get engaged with our content. Once they click that ad, you dropped them off the list. That’s. That automatically happened. Alright [inaudible] your engagement is for the click. So once they click, they get dropped off and they won’t. You won’t be spending money on that ad to them any longer.
Stephen: [01:19:05] Okay. And that takes your now off of there to where? To the to the blog post. So it takes it back out to my website or whatever I had where I was originally had them. And then that’s where. Is there an offer at this point or is it again, is it still just content?
John: [01:19:21] Well, I mean there can be an offer at, like I said, you could put an offer at the bottom but you’re not really trying to sell them. We’re not trying to sell them yet. We just want them to know like, and trust are off.
Stephen: [01:19:32] Oh, product. You’re scrubbing the list, you’re scrubbing the list even then, right? Because if somebody doesn’t, okay, cool. Alright. And then you get to sell. And so after it comes to assess and yeah, I was gonna say that. So after all that, you know, what’s a reasonable cost expectation for somebody to think about that because it’s, you know, I’m selling water bottles that I got a margin, you know, what do
John: [01:20:00] you need to. What you need to know is how much you can pay to buy a customer. That’s the first you have to know.
Stephen: [01:20:08] Well, does it matter that it’s a onetime sale? They’re not going to be, for example, you know, I guess we can have him come back. We want to create a loyal group, but customer acquisition cost for a one time use versus a longterm
John: [01:20:26] brand, I guess you can’t really know whether they are that or not. Okay.
Stephen: [01:20:33] All right, so you’re not thinking that way. So
John: [01:20:36] No, I’m saying most people haven’t done the work just to look at their numbers to see if anybody really does buy from them. Again, what is the average spend of a customer? Yeah, we used to all your customers only come in one time and bought a $10 water bottles and it would be $10.
Stephen: [01:20:53] Yeah. We used to do a lifetime value of a customer right now that’s it,
John: [01:20:56] right? You got to do an LTV.
Speaker 7: [01:20:58] Hmm.
John: [01:21:00] Why don’t you know your, your lifetime value of a customer. Then you can tease out how much you can spend to get a customer. If I know a customer will buy one and a half water bottles from me, that means they’ll spend another $10 water bottle. The average customer will spend $15, but it costs me $3 to pay for the water bottle and another $3 to pay Amazon, so that only leaves me with on a $10 spend, $4, but they buy one and a half, so I know now that I can purchase a customer for $6 and I would still be even money. Okay, Bam. Now we have a budget that we can work with because you’ve got to figure it all these other things that you’re going to do and you might come out and say, look, I can spend $4 for a customer
Stephen: [01:21:52] and still make money.
John: [01:21:54] It’s still make money because what you’re trying to do is scale the number of customers, period, period. So everybody gets so stuck on the $6, which is sexy when you’re selling a thousand of them a day. But how about if you get $2 and you’re selling 20,000 a day, right? Big Pie, small slice or do you want the whole pie?
Stephen: [01:22:19] Hey, this is complicated and anybody who doesn’t think it’s complicated. It’s definitely complicated and I know I struggled my way and I appreciate you, you know, working your way through this with me, John [inaudible]. I really do. It is complicated. What does. I mean this is when you got to buy time and this is where for me, do I want to spend my time putting this together now? I think it’s the value to learn this. How much did I say? I forget what percent of your time. Well, yeah, that’s what I was gonna say is this is a better investment of your time than watching you know, are going out and searching more product. If you have a valuable brand that you think can make it. Once you get this, that’s where. That’s where the fruit, because this has to become almost rote, right? Once you get good at it,
John: [01:23:08] why don’t you, I mean literally. Let’s say we were just talking about that one audience. Alright? That one audience outdoor. Let’s say we wrote 10 blog posts about it and we put this system together. It works no matter what. Once you put the ads up, once you put the landing page up, once you have the, the emails lists inside of your email, uh, automation, it just constantly works for you. It’s marketing when you’re asleep.
Stephen: [01:23:35] So it’s really the hard work upfront, put in the effort and energy and then you can kind of. It’s kind of like a vending machine.
John: [01:23:43] Yeah, if they would. Most people is like, look, if you would turn off your facebook groups and just do this instead, you could have it done in two weeks. Okay.
Stephen: [01:23:53] Alright. I like it. I like what you’re saying. That’s where the energy and efforts should be. Well, no, I think. Well, I think we all know it. I think we all see it because how many times are you going to sell somebody else’s brand and then get told you’re not allowed to sell the brand, right? Every person listening to this has this, has happened to them, or let me go even one step further. That’s an Ra thing. Or you’re a wholesale seller and you’ve been selling the brand for long and you have a great relationship with them and somebody came in and put an extra zero on their check. Guess what, Steve, you’re gone. Nothing personal. This is business and that’s happened to us because we’re wholesale sellers lots of times and I don’t take a personality test. It stinks, but it happens, but it’s their brand and they’re making the best decision for themselves and I get it.
Stephen: [01:24:40] Well, how many times you’re going to do that now is the time you’re saying, Hey, go your private label. Put out your own product, but darn it, you’ve got to take it all the way and you just can’t rely on Amazon to do that for you anymore, and I think that’s really important to realize is that on water bottles, there’s 10,000 different water bottles on Amazon. They’re not marketing water bottles anymore. They are the water bottles store. They’re already there. You have the responsibility to stand out above the other one and that takes work and effort. Love the John. You are pretty smart. You’re not all just eye candy. You are pretty smart. Wow, that’s funny.
John: [01:25:22] Here’s what I don’t understand. I mean, you know what? We get inside of our little bubble of Amazon and we really start believing that Amazon is the entire world. Yeah, it’s fair. Very small part of retail in general.
Stephen: [01:25:41] You know, Andy just came back from China and we were together and he said, Steve, you can’t believe in a built up Chinese, but just we think of this, but it’s where a speck of the ointment. We really are a speck in the ointment when it really comes to how big, how big that ecommerce world really is or the whole, the whole retail world is. We really are. We’re, we’re planning
John: [01:26:04] right now. We’re planning the one digits, maybe two, but there’s, there’s some huge players out there and, and we say they’re huge. You know what? Here’s the one thing that was eyeopening for me and I’m going to let this go. I did a keynote at a place called me Va Miv a. The reason why I’m spelling it out, because you probably never heard of them, but they have been one of the longest running store solutions for ecommerce. Never heard of them. Right? So it’s an. It’s me, va A. I think it used to be me even merchant, but now they’re just me, va, and they set up shopping carts and stores for retailers. Right? For e-tailers, I go to their conference and I’m speaking and I asked the audience, I said, how many of you guys are doing a million or more and this room? 300 people.
John: [01:27:03] Every single one of them raised their hand. I was like, Whoa, Whoa, wait a minute. Because I come from the, you know, marketplace world. So I’m like, really? Oh, okay. How many of you are doing 5 million or more? Mid Forty percent. I was like, Holy Shit. How many of you doing 10 million or more? I’m not going to tell you how many [inaudible] I don’t remember how many it was. It was enough for me to go like, dude, I’m, I’m missing something, but I will never forget this old dude that was on like the second row after I got off stage, he came up to me. He’s like, Hey, great speech, blah, blah, blah. I’m like, what do you sell where you’re doing $10,000,000? Needlepoint needles? I was like, I’ll be gone. I’ll be. Damn, are you kidding me? You’re doing tip. I was like, are you on Amazon? Never been on Amazon. Never been on Ebay. $10,000,000. Needlepoint needles. Never been on a marketplace.
Stephen: [01:28:05] So what we know because we do get a close. I kept you way too long, but does that tell you, well, we talked about health and I think it’s really important, but does that tell you that that ability to do that still exist? I mean, I think that’s because I think this was breaks my heart. There’s some unbelievable sellers that have had some real success and then you know, the rules get changed and they struggle and they walk away and say, you know what? This is too hard and it’s not because they don’t have the abilities, it’s because this is what they know because they’re not exposed to that other side. Is it? Are you saying that that’s still. That possibility still exists today to sell nita point or needles and get to a couple million dollars in sales off of 100 percent off of Amazon.
John: [01:28:50] Look, I’m sorry. I’m asking him. You know how I’m asking them this question? How are you doing? Need appointment. Oh, I’ve been doing this for 25 years. I know the people. You know, I know the industry and I’m like, okay, I get it. He’s done his homework. He knows the people. He knows the industry. If he just started selling. The problem with that we have so much is the shiny object syndrome. We get so distracted with all the other things that we never let our core thing grow to. It’s flourishing because we keep feeding all the other plants around us.
Stephen: [01:29:31] Yeah, no, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you’re exactly right. I think everybody listening, if they were honest, would say the same thing. They get halfway and have some success and they’re like, okay, let me add another one and they go on and move on. Another one. Yup. What’s the next thing? Guilty. Guilty as charged. All right, John.
John: [01:29:48] All right.
Stephen: [01:29:49] No, I get it. I’m telling you. It’s very exciting because again, I go back to this conversation years ago when you said to me, Steve, everything’s going to have a landing page and that’s how you’re going to sell and that’s where we’re going. And this was. I’m telling you, this was years ago.
John: [01:30:04] Go back and listen. I’m totally remember now, but that’s funny. Yeah, that’s,
Stephen: [01:30:10] that’s the God’s honest truth. I remembered that and I’ve given you credit for that a zillion times because it’s the truth. So the best way to find out more because I think this is important for people. Um, there are a whole bunch of group, a whole group of people that are listening to this right now saying, I need that. What we talked about and all the rest of it was funny, but realistically that piece we got to at the end that you finally dragged me through and made me understand I need that. I’ve got something I think is a brand. I think I can get the full potential. I want to find out more. And so the best way to find out more of what you’re talking about.
John: [01:30:46] Oh, um, that’s a good question. I mean go to John Lawson.com, but you’re not going to see it. You need to by the book, but who wants to buy a book? So I’ll tell you what, here’s what I’m gonna do. Go in. I’m going to just take what we’ve done today and I’m going to recap it and put it all together and I’m going to do it in the ecommerce group as a live presentation. That’s what I’m going to do. So what’s the name of the group so people could join your group? ECOMMERCE group on facebook.
Stephen: [01:31:17] It’s called ECOMMERCE group.
John: [01:31:19] The ecommerce group. Okay. The
Stephen: [01:31:22] ecommerce group on Facebook, and I’m going to put a link there and you joined that group and I think it’s very exciting to me because again, you’re helping people figure out that they don’t have to be dependent upon if you didn’t get gold from that last comment when you were talking to this $10,000,000 seller because this reinforces the click funnels was the same thing. There were all these sellers that a lot of them never sell on Amazon. They’re doing it right off of Amazon and they own their marketplace. Now, I’m not saying it’s easy, but they own it. If you’re going to put your time and effort into something, you might as well do something that benefits you for the long time. Again, if you build that brand, that brand has value. Hence the reason ring got sold to Amazon. Oh God, you’re so good. All right, so you got also a site watching Amazon. What’s the website for that?
John: [01:32:10] That is again, that’s a facebook or watching Amazon.com. Okay. All right, so watching Amazon.com,
Stephen: [01:32:17] John last [inaudible] dot com. The ecommerce group a is a facebook group. I’m going to put that context there because I think if somebody has further questions, that’s the place to ask.
John: [01:32:26] That’s fair. Yes sir. I’m dude.
Stephen: [01:32:31] You killed it. Um, we definitely got to. Well, we both had different subjects we want to get to. We got to. And it’s very important. I really think of you as a mentor and a leader and you’ve done nothing but. So I appreciate it. I wish you nothing but success. Thank you so much.
John: [01:32:47] Oh Man. I really appreciate it. Glad I got to see you. Peace
Stephen: [01:32:51] again. Long, long episode. Apologize for that. But both of these issues are really important right now, especially right now, right when he said about that, that a seller selling $10,000,000 of needlepoint needles and never selling them on Amazon yet doing $10,000,000. If that doesn’t wake you up to realize how small we are when we think that this marketplace has everything and it’s the hot thing. And don’t get me wrong, we sell. Ninety percent of our sales are on Amazon, so I’m not criticizing in any way. I love it, I’m thankful for it every single day, but we got to think bigger. We gotta think of other places because you don’t want to be controlled if you’re tired of being told you can’t do this and hear this role is today, and then guess what? I’m interpreting it different and then the rule says this, but hey, it’s my chance to interpret and, or I got a boss telling me, sorry you can’t do that anymore, but I’ve been doing it for her. Or I had one where I’m selling person’s brand and then they kicked me off the brand. I’m like, hello, it’s me. It’s your friend. And uh, oh, sorry. Um, that happens. And so I want to control my destiny. And so this is important stuff. The health thing is real. You’ve got to get serious about it. If you’re not, you know, you really want to get serious about a police. Do I want to say I want to hang with you for a long period of time? ECOMMERCE momentum to come, ecommerce momentum.com. Take care.
Cool voice guy: [01:34:08] Thanks for listening to the momentum podcast. All the links mentioned today can be found at ecommerce momentum. Doug, come under this episode number. Please remember to subscribe and the like us on itunes.
